Sorry - busy busy!

Really busy this week preparing for the craft fair so any crafty posts over here will be limited. I will however still be posting things so come back each day to see what other weird and wonderful things I have found for you!

Treasury

This is one I have made rather than one I have been featured in! I grabbed it this morning but have only had the chance to post it up tonight!

It's here if you would like to give it some love! Oh and if anyone reading this knows me in real life then I grabbed these things out of my favourites list - just in case you are looking for Christmas presents :)

Party girl!

Anya turns 5 on Tuesday but is having her parties this weekend as I have a craft fair next weekend :) Here she is dancing in her new fairy dress - it's blurry on purpose, honest guv ;)

And yes she is eating a lollipop.

I didn't really get time to take photo's during the party but I did get a couple at the end. I was too busy being the hostess (i.e. faffing around!)

This little chappie loved this costume ever so much - he tried to be scary but you can see one of his eyes peeping out. It's hard to be scary with eyes that cute.

Anya and Jacob - Ruth's younger son.

Anya and Samuel - Ruth's elder son.

And I would love to know what Samuel had just said to Anya - whatever it was it was funny!!

1 party down, 1 to go! At least tomorrows party is grandparents and aunties and uncles so hopefully not much spilt food on the floor for me to hoover up :)

Owl video

No time really to post properly today so here is another one of those funny owl clips! This one had me laughing for ages :)

The Scavenger Project!!

Eeeek - I'm excited about my new project! I have submitted some artwork to this project in America and one of my pieces (or at least one) will be published in a book!! You basically got a list of things and had to come up with something to represent the things on the list. My eyes lit up when I spotted number 24 - chicken!! This is what I submitted for that one.

You also had to email a random photo to them so I sent in this one.

One of the things on the list was 'In my past life I was' so I had to include 'Pretty In Blue'.


And the last thing I sent in (there were 24 things you could send in but I ran out of time!) was for the theme 'Childhood Memories'. It's a really gorgeous photo of the girls sitting on a tree stump enjoying a snack after a long walk in the woods when we were camping. Unfortunately I can't show it to you at the mo as it's in Matt's Flickr and I don't know the password!

On my desk....on a Wednesday

My desk today should have been the kitchen table that you can see here. I say should have been because I didn't actually do any of the work I'd intended as I spent most of the day sorting in the front room to get it ready for the weekend when Anya is having 2 birthday parties. Also Matt was feeling a bit better today so he sat in the front room and read the news stories out to me from BBC news whilst I was tidying. Yes we do know how to live!!!

So I was planning to turn that pile of cardboard into the backs for my gift tags and this was actually done whilst I was cooking tea - good multi-tasker me!

These gift tags need photographing and stringing but this didn't get done today.

My paper trimmer needs fixing and then those lovely pages of nursery rhymes can be turned into envelopes - again that didn't happen today but I'm hopeful for sometime this week. Although I'm sure on Friday they will be bundled into a box and hidden from guests view in our bedroom!!

Find more lovely 'on my desk' players over here.

More tresuries :)

Two more treasuries! The pink one has expired now so you can't click on it but you can click on the lovely lady who made it and that was Baby Loves Pink. It features members of the Crafting in Colour team.

The green one was made by Liz Plummer and is for the Eco Etsy team.

Taken a break from the envelopes...

.....to make tags!


The first two lots have been made from a vintage children's book found at the charity shop called How The Nightingale Got His Voice and can be found here and here.

And this lot came from the front cover of the Ordnance Survey Atlas I used for these envelopes. Waste not want not!! If you want the tags then they can be found here too.

This is...a recipe I would like to share

Well it's more guidelines than a recipe for vegetable soup!

You will need

an onion,
some potatoes,
water,
a variety of vegetables
salt and pepper
milk

1.Chop up your onions and potatoes and boil them in some water until tender. Ensure that your water just covers the potatoes.

2.Chop up the rest of your veg and add it to the water. I tend to leave things that don't need as much cooking until later to go in - things like mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes etc. I tend to boil root veggies for longer.

3. At this stage you will probably need to add some milk - be careful as it tends to like to boil over so keep an eye on it. After about 20 mins your potatoes and other root veggies should be cooked so add your softer veggies for about 10 mins.

4. Get a hand whisk and whisk it all down so it is smooth. You will be able to tell if it needs more milk/water by the thickness. Personally I prefer thicker soups but add liquid until it is the consistency you want it.

5. Add salt and pepper to taste. That's it!!

You will have noticed that I haven't given any specific weights for the ingredients mainly because I tend to use leftovers or things that are hanging about at the bottom of the fridge nearly past their best! Experiment with ingredients too - lettuce added to potato, onion and peppers makes a very good soup. Basically as long as you have potatoes and onions as a base then you can make really nice soups - they are cheap, nutritious and served with nice bread and maybe some cheese on the top, delicious!

For other delicious recipes and more This is players check out Angela at Three Buttons.

Sew Hip

I think I must be the last person in blog land to get my hands on this new UK based magazine!

It didn't take me long to read and there are a couple of projects that I like the look of in there that I am going to try. I also like that I recognise lots of the people featured in there :) I'll have a look out for the next issue and then decide if I want to subscribe to it or not. Right off to make a start on Tom's Christmas present now - if you hear squeals of anguish coming from my direction then you'll know that it's because I've taken on a huge project for my first quilt!!