Bah Humbug!

This has been the view from my front door for the past week or so.

Very pretty and white but I am glad to say that it has been raining steadily in Burnley for the past couple of days and the snow has nearly all gone - yeah! It means we might be able to get the car out of the bottom road at last (it has been stuck there since Monday!)

A change around!

I am in the process of moving all my mixed media artwork and Aceo's out of my Swirlyarts shop and into my Anya's Attic shop. When I asked for comments about my Swirlyarts shop most people said that the artwork didn't really fit in with the recycled/repurposed nature of the main shop and that I should open up another shop just for them. Instead of that I decided to move them to Anya's Attic where they fit in much better! And just as a reminder, here are some of the pieces that will move or have been moved so far.

I will be discontinuing my 'normal' drawn Aceo's and have reduced them to $1 each and you can find them here in my clearance section. There aren't many left now so hurry if you want one. Some I have already taken out of my shop and they may form part of a giveaway soon :)

I am having a big clear out in terms of stash and of made things so keep an eye out - I will let you know here of course first!

Merry Christmas!

May your day be jolly and bright!



With plenty of fabulously decorated Christmas cake just like this one!

Merry Christmas to one and all :)

Christmas eve 2009

1. Lots of frantic early morning tidying and sorting ready for tomorrow.

2. Picnic lunch with Matt's delicious salmon rolls (we know it's Christmas when they are made!)

3. Snuggling on the sofa with hot choc, Quality Street and some Disney Christmas films.

4. The lighting of candles and sitting in near darkness watching the tree lights

5. Excited girls carefully choosing the right plates and bowls for Santa and Rudolph's snacks.

6. The thoughtful writing of a note to Santa.

7. Lots of giggling and excited smiles as we tracked Santa via Norad.

8. Finally hanging up the stockings in their bedrooms (near the door so Santa can find them easily!)

9. Some snuggling on the sofa for Mummy and Daddy - perfect!

I hope your Christmas Eve has been good :)

Winter wonderland

Lots of pictures of my in-laws garden!

The bridge next to the pond

The frozen pond

The view across the pond and back up the garden

The very bottom of the garden. I wasn't taking pretty photographs all the time though.

First there was the obligatory foot shot (I do these all the time!)

Then there was some sledging to do (whilst getting wet through!)

Some footprint making in the fresh snow

And some chasing of Grandad as he whizzed down the slope! I didn't get a photograph of him bumping into the wheelbarrow ;)

Gramp's birthday

Matt's Granddad (Gramps to the girls) had his 96th birthday on Sunday.

Here he is looking happy to see his family.

The girls were very eager to give him his presents - they helped him open them too :)

And he seemed to have a good day which is always nice. The girls were thrilled to see Gramps too and Tara danced and sang for him! Always the showoff! Anya was a bit shy :)

Whooo hooooo - some evidence of craft activity!

Can you believe it? I was so tired this week after the manic panic of the past few weeks with fairs and orders and madness that I haven't been creating much. And admittedly these items were made during that period of madness but have actually been listed rather than languishing in the 'to put onto Etsy/Folksy/Misi shop' folder I have on Flickr!

Some cute Hippo recycled gift tags - they are cuter in person! I also have the covers from this book turned into a small notebook if you know someone who likes hippos! No photograph of the notebook though yet.

Around the House gift tags (set 1) These are great and came from a vintage word book. There are some great illustrations :)

And Around the House set 2 gift tags - from the same word book as above.

That's all so far although there are many items to be listed yet - hopefully next week when I cut back on the Cuteable posts for a little while! 3 a day this week has been tiring me out!

Teacher presents

The teacher presents are bagged up and ready to go.

The bags are from Ikea and match the lights on the tree.

And the tags are recycled from the fronts of last years Christmas cards and the presents are some of my recycled Christmas trees :) Hope the teachers like them!

The goose is getting fat!

Following on from yesterdays blog title! The other day the girls got a little scissor happy with some white paper and made a mountain of snowflakes - and I mean a mountain!! I decided to use some of them to create a display on our front window - hopefully it will give the postman something to smile about :)

Here are some of my favourite ones :)

Simple but effective!

Christmas is coming!

And here is the big tree in the front room :)

No tree is complete without a Santa

Or a snowman - Tara has a personalised one too.

You need a handmade Rudolph.

And of course in this house you need a chicken!

I tried to get some photographs of the other special decorations but the camera/lighting situation just wasn't working!