Corners of my house

I'm pretty sure I've seen this type of feature on other peoples blogs but it didn't register at the time as to whose blog so if you do know then let me know :)

So the 'corner' of my house that I am featuring today is my mantelpiece. I'd dusted it the other day and thought I would capture the cleanness of it all :)

You may have guessed that I collect a lot of kitsch (tat as it is sometime called by my loved ones!) and glittery deer and ceramic dogs are just part of that.

As are glittery flamingoes and little pots with ceramic squirrel and deer on.

And there it is in all it's glory :)

Do you have a favourite 'corner' of your home? If so share it and let me know in the comments!

52 weeks, 52 books - part 10 and 11

Well my September reading was atrocious but the past two months have been better :) Apologies for no update last month but CL prep got in the way!

This was a very good book and if I see any others by George Mann then I will pick them up. It's set in Victorian England and features a tortured detective and his kickass (for the time anyway) female assistant. A good story that was well paced throughout.

Itch Rocks is the sequel to Itch which I read in January and re-read before reading this (I'm not counting the re-read) Again it's another good story but I do wonder how much more action/trouble Itch can get into as a regular teenage boy! I'd still re the next one if/when it comes out.

This is a book that Anya read as part of her school book club so I pinched it too as she gave very good updates/cliff hangers as she was reading it! I enjoyed it and although it was a childrens book I didn't see the end coming.

This book has been on my book shelf for many years but I only got round to reading it in October. I loved it and will be getting my hands on the film version soon. I gave it to Anya to read but she has such a vivid imagination and tends to read before bed that she put it down and is saving it for the holidays when she can read through the day!

I read this book last year and then in a fit of madness gave it to the charity shop in one of my clean ups. When I saw it again in a different charity shop I knew I had to buy another copy. I love this book and will save it to give to Anya when she hits her teens (it's really that good and funny!) I will also lend it out to friends as everyone should read it even if you don't consider yourself a feminist. Keep an eye out in charity shops for this one :)

48/52 :) I'm currently on track for completing 52 books this year so fingers crossed I get there!

I have to stop giving excuses and just type :)

Yep still here! Still making although it does involve boring house sewing (repairing bed sheets anyone?) rather than chicken making! The Country Living Fair didn't quite go as planned and I was very disappointed with a) the organisation and b) the footfall of the hall we were in. But I'm not dwelling on the negatives and at least I tried :) And as the wonderful Neil Gaiman says

And also (because I'm being a bit zen today)

Well as zen as I can be when faced with a trip to the cinema with 8 girls aged between 7-10 and then for a meal afterwards :)

*Peeks round corner*

I'm still here! Sewing up countless chickens but still here :)

I have been featured in this lovely article in the Yorkshire Post about a group I belong to on Facebook. And you can't really see it here but in the group photo there is a flash of orange in the middle - that's me in my skirt :) I'm mentioned as the only person living in Lancashire - the rest are in Yorkshire but I snuck over the border :)

I'm also very excited for tonight as it's the 50th anniversary Dr Who episode :) *waves fangirl hands* It's also exciting as it is 19 years ago today that I got together with Matt! Seems a long time since I was 16!!

That's all for now :)

And the winner is.......

........Twiggy :) Well done - I think I have your email address so will be in touch to send you your tickets to Country Living!

Thanks for entering everyone!

Win Country Living tickets

I have two sets of two tickets for Country Living Harrogate (28th November - 1st December*) to give away!

And because it's nearly the weekend I am giving away a set of Robin gift tags with each pair of tickets! You can either enter here or on my Facebook page (or both and I will count you twice!)

I will draw two winners (one from here and one from Facebook) on Sunday 10th November. Good luck!

*These tickets can't be used on Saturday 30th November - the other three days are fine though.

New chickens!

I've been very busy with Country Living prep (yeah Lynsey we know!) and I haven't added anything new to my online shops since before the summer - eeek! So for those of you who can't make it to Country Living in Harrogate, here are some chickens that you can buy now from my Folksy shop.

As you can see they are all Liberty fabric chickens and they will be available in small numbers until after Country Living when there may be more to buy. It all depends on how sick and tired I am of making chickens by then! There are more in the shop but I didn't want to bombard you with pictures here. I'll be back later in the week with an opportunity to win some tickets to Country Living!

Happy Halloween!

From the dead/zombie/scary bride and her skeleton friend!

Have fun!

Revamped set of shelves

Following on from my card stand last week here is my new (to me) piece of furniture for Country Living.

Not too bad you say - yeah well look at the close up photographs below :)

It was a very well loved shop fitting! So after a good wash it was ready to be transformed!

Here it is half way through. I decided on washi tape as it's very easy to use (Anya helped out) and if it went wrong then it peels off very easily too. Also washi tape is brightly coloured which is always a bonus in my mind! The next photos are of the finished item which I am very pleased with.

Ta Da! What do you think? I'm really pleased with the transformation and very pleased that I could turn something that was unloved into something useful and pretty :)

P.S. I get my washi tape from here and here - the latter is run by a two friends of mine who are lovely :)

New card stand

I found a wonderful shop last week that supplies second hand shop fittings for sale - a dream to look round and I know where to look when I get my book shop/cafe/craft shop*

So back in the real world I actually went to buy two old stock trolleys (the kind you see with 3 sides in the supermarket/large shops that hold, well, stock!) I figured that as I only have 15mins/half an hour to unload all of my stock/furniture when I go to Country Living, anything that would speed up the process would be good. However, they are very large (duh!) and very heavy so I need to pull all of my jigsaw acumen/inherited Searle packing skills together to get them into Taz along with my large cupboard!

While I was there I also found a couple of pieces of furniture that will look good on my stall - one is undergoing a transformation (more on that later) and one is the card stand you see below.

Ignore the terrible photographs please! This card stand started out life as a book stand for a school book corner and we used to have one exactly like it when I went to school :) It doesn't stand up on it's own and will be going on the wall of my stand.

And here is my artistic director deciding on how to arrange my cards to make sure they look their best - we decided that less is more :) Anya has been super helpful this week and is really enjoying helping me revamp the other piece of furniture I got at the shop fitters :)


*dreaming!

Folksy shop front

If you have a Folksy shop you may have noticed that some peoples shop fronts are changing. I'd known about the changes for a while but hadn't got round to changing my own until I researched a Cuteable post and saw just how fabulous the new shop fronts looked!

I saved a photo of my old Folksy shop front before I replaced it with the new but then I stupidly managed to delete it and all of my deletes from this computer are hard deletes rather than sending to the rubbish bin. Ooopps! So the picture above is an old image of my Folksy shop from 2012 (thank goodness for blogs eh?) but you get the general idea!

And above is my new shop layout which I am really pleased with. I think the new banner helps a lot but I love the fact that you can now add links to all of your social media and the fact that it is nice and bright and white with added colour from me! There are a couple of niggles but I'm going to fill out the feedback form and let them know about it :) You can check it out in person here too!

Do you have a Folksy shop? Have you changed your shop front yet? What do you think of the changes?

New stickers....

....for packaging!

When I am at fairs I can explain to people why my chickens are flat packed (saves the customer money on postage if it's a gift and on the actual cost of the item) but when my chicken doorstops are in stockists, the owner of the shop/gallery doesn't want to have to follow every potential customer around the shop explaining my products! Hence the stickers :)

I have to say thanks to Matt for these as he managed to sort them all out so that they would print the right size for me in about 10 minutes the other day. It would have taken me about 4 hours and countless swear words!

Sophie and The Snozzcumber

So this week has been book week at school and what is the point of a book week if you don't get to dress up as book characters! Tara immediately decided that she wanted to go as a Snozzcumber which is the icky-poo vegetable that the BFG is forced to eat as there is nothing else to eat where he lives. I did a quick google search (other search engines are available!) but I couldn't find a picture of anyone dressed up as a Snozzcumber (some birthday cakes and food ideas but no costumes!) Luckily after a 'help me' shout out on Facebook the lovely, lovely Sarah from Ditsy Bird came to my rescue and drew out some ideas :) Did I mention she is lovely?

Mine looks nothing like this but I took some ideas from it!

It's basically a tube with a drawstring at the top but hey it works and Tara is very pleased with it! She will have to take it off at playtime though as she can only do a shuffle run in it!

Anya decided to go as Sophie from The BFG (thank goodness she changed her mind from going as the Golden Ticket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!) This was an easy costume - long sleeved white top underneath a nightie type dress (charity shop many years ago) some old glasses (frames only) of mine and a blanket that was made by my sister :)

And here they are together :) Matt came up with the idea for the next few photographs and I have to say it was a brilliant idea :) I introduce Sophie trying a bite of the Snozzcumber for the first time and her reaction to eating it!

Funny girls :)

Chickie in der boxie :)

You will only understand this title if you know about the Swedish chef :) And I am, of course, referring to my new chicken boxes!

If you order a chicken pincushion or paperweight from me from now on it will come in a lovely recycled box which can be used as a gift box and due to it's colour, any ribbon will look good! Of course it would look great with some gift tags added to it too ;)

Wholesale customers - if you already have some of my chickens and would like boxes then do get in touch :)

Ooooooh - win some of my things :)

Look! You can win these 5 sets of gift tags made by me :) There are also a whole host of other prizes up for grabs over at Retrash. There are 6 weeks of giveaways organised ahead of the Kickstarter book launch (I'm going to be in the book too!) so keep visiting to try and win lots of upcycled goodness from people around the world!

52 books, 52 weeks - part nine

So I was a big slacker in September and only managed to read one proper book! Shocking I know :)

This is the book I read - I grabbed it in the supermarket in their 2 for whatever deals and I enjoyed it. However I think I have read too many thrillers/horror books for the horror within this one to be truly horrid. It's more hinted at that described too so that didn't help but well worth a read.

I did read about 300,000 words of fanfiction last month but this challenge is for books and while fanfiction is brilliant, it's not in book format so I'm not counting it!

Good news though as I've finished my first book for October and I'm onto the second chapter of my second. Hopefully I'll get back on track this month :)

43/52

Spinning gift tag rack

I promised you a picture of the spinning gift tag rack and here it is!

Ta da!! It looks better in real life and when there isn't so much stuff piled up around it! Oh but that is not all - I even took a video of the rack spinning! Don't say I don't spoil you :)

Whovian's unite!

I've been drawing lots and lots of gift tags for the past couple of weeks and Dr Who watching is compulsory while doing so :) I think I've found the newest Whovian!

He sat watching for a good 20 minutes before he decided that he needed a snooze. Well it is tiring watching Matt Smith be gorgeous!

Church news

So, what's been happening with the church? Well the sad news is that our family circumstances have changed and we are having to sell the church :( I'm not going to go into the details here but as you might well imagine there have been many hours of discussions and many tears. The church is up for sale with Pugh Auctions and you can see the details here. Just in case you want to buy a partially converted church in Todmorden :)

There are also more pictures of the inside here if you want to take a peek.

Some thrifty finds

On the way to the dentist (which is where I was this morning) I pass a fabulous charity shop called Emmaus and I always pop in! It's a huge building (it was a former school) and it's packed full of all sorts of good things.

The tea towel and the squirrel bowl are from there and were 50p each. The two books are from the smaller hospice charity shop across the road and were also 50p each. And thank goodness for changing rooms in charity shops. I spied a nice looking gold coloured skirt (nice gold not nasty gold) and when held up against me it looked like it would come to just above my knees. It was a grown up version of a ra-ra skirt and was much nicer than it sounds! However when I tried it on, my bum, hips and stomach made it stop at mid thigh level and while I'm a big believer in wearing what the hell you like and not pandering to 'dressing for your body shape' (I hate that phrase!), it didn't suit me and I would have felt self concious wearing it. Phew, long sentence there!

To sum up my hatred of that phrase here are two of my pins from Pinterest - one a bit rude (pixelation not mine) and one not so rude.

Are you on Pinterest? Do you pin brilliant stuff? Let me know so I can take a look :)