A Wednesday Catch up With a Small Give Away

I was tickled to read the comments on my last post about the flower/weed in my garden, i knew that you ladies would come up trumps :-)  I'm greatful to those who told me that it is an Aquilegia or a Columbine, depending on where you live (I think).  Cath let me know that it is also known as Grandmother's Bonnet, how sweet is that!  The flower does remind you of a frilly bonnet when you look close. Thanks for the advice on the plant too Cath :-)  

Katherine also let me know that it is the state flower of Colorado.  So now i'm just going to let it flourish, how could i possible get rid of something with such a pretty name and a one that has a title too!

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My eldest daughter had her 20 week scan on Monday, I'm glad to report that all is progressing nicely.  Apparently this scan is known as the gender scan, apart from checking that everything is as it should be, they were also asked if they wanted to know what it was.  They were both agreed that they didn't want to know what it was before the birth, Jenny's answer to anyone who asks what she's having is, "it's a baby" !

She will most likely want to kill me for sharing this photo!

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I do have a stitching finish to share this time too (about time I hear you say!)

Can you guess what it is?

It's Dandy Dreams by Silver Creek Samplers

I enjoyed stitching this so much, 

once I started I couldn't put it down

Mark, at the stitching shop did a lovely job with the framing again, he even customised this frame for me, he painted the frame to match the green thread i used and distressed it.

Here it is a little closer

This one will have a place in the guest bedroom, 

(which should be finished next week)

The Give Away

Since I enjoyed this one so much I thought someone else might like the Dandy Dreams chart :-)

If you would like your name entered in the draw please say so in the comments only, (not by email), and I will draw a name next Wednesday evening, June 6th.

Oh, and it will be open to anyone, home or overseas :-)

Until next time...

Is It a Plant or Is It a Weed?

It's been such a beautiful day here in the UK and we know that when the sun shines we have to make the most of it because it has a habit of going missing for weeks on end :-)

I've made the most of the late afternoon sun by sitting reading in the garden, such a treat!

Before I came indoors i thought i'd take a few photos to share, if you are a regular reader of my ramblings you will know how much i love my Hostas.

I re-planted these into a huge pot last year, and they are doing well in the same pot this time.

So this spring i did the same with some others.

Hopefully these will grow just as well.

I cleared a small area that's somewhat in the shade and re-planted 3 other plants, thankfully i didn't kill them off!

The raspberry bushes are coming along nicely.  We started off with one bush and have ended up with several :-)

Last year we had lots of lovely raspberry's, i ended up freezing quite a lot because we couldn't eat them quick enough!

I always think it looks cramped in this corner, no idea what the shrubs are called but they are pretty when they flower :-)

 The blue bells are still flowering 

(at least that's what i think they are) 

Now, the one i need your help on is this last one.

It's appeared in several places in the garden and at first i thought it was a weed

I thought i'd leave it and see what it became, and now it is about 12-15 inches in height and has the loveliest pink flowers, and i don't know if it's a very 'pretty' weed or not.

If anyone has any ideas what it might be please do let me know.

I hope that wherever you are that the sun is shining  for you to :-)

At Last - The Kitchen

Paint and brush have been my new best friends lately, but at last there is an end in sight.  I always underestimate the amount of time it takes to paint walls, i start out thinking it'll take a couple of hours and what feels like weeks later i'm still at it!  

It's all the little bits that take the time, that and the fact that once you decorate one room it shows another one up, or in my case two other rooms. 

 Being an old house our bathroom is downstairs and off the kitchen, so we, well ok, I decided that it needed freshening up, so that room too has had a little make over, fresh paint, towel holders, new radiator and a new door.  Our dining room is also off the kitchen so that room is on my next hit list, perhaps in a few weeks time when I've had time to recover.

So, the kitchen is done, well apart from another coat of paint on the radiator and a radiator shelf which Mark has promised me is being made at work as we speak.  Now, at last i can show you some photos of the smallest kitchen which has taken the longest time :-)

The kitchen i inherited when we moved in lacked cupboard space, so i spent a lot of time thinking about what i wanted in the way of cupboards and storage.

Although i liked our old green units and wooden counters it did make the kitchen feel small, so we knew we wanted something light.

We are lucky enough to have lovely high ceilings in this house so we were able to go for the taller units, the one in the corner is hinged in the middle making it a double cupboard

The drawer unit holds all my utensils

(top drawer is knives, forks etc.)

My herbs and spices in another drawer

much easier than rooting around in a cupboard for them.

I bought a roll of grip liner from the £ shop which stops them rolling around

Before, the microwave was on the counter taking up precious work space, now it has it own home.

The angled cupboard next the the microwave is next to the window and was the kitchen designers idea and i think it works really well.

The tall double doors on the other side is the larder unit, and the best thing, i just love it :-)

It has shelves from top to bottom and houses all our food.

Our sink is smaller than the belfast sink we had before, but again it works better size wise in the kitchen space, and we have a dishwasher so don't need it for washing dishes.

It was hard to take a picture of because of the light from the window, but you get the idea

The worktop is granite and fantastic for keeping clean and tidy.

We decided against tiles on the floor, instead we went for cushion flooring.  We got some very strange reactions when we mentioned cushion floor, (or old lady flooring as one of my daughters called it).  

Whatever you choose to call it i'm glad we decided on it, it's much easier to keep clean and warmer to walk on, and all my daughters now agree, it was a good choice :-)

(The one we went for is Rino Floor and is nothing like the lino/cushion floor of years ago)

(The room you see in the background is the bathroom, waiting for it's new door, i know, good job we don't get many visitors!!   Please excuse marks work clothes on the washing basket.  

The small space you can just see between the kitchen and the bathroom houses the washing machine and tumble dryer)

Now this is my baby, lol

I fell in love with this cooker when i saw it.

What else can i say, i think it's beautiful :-)

The whole kitchen feels much bigger and is so much easier to work in, i'm glad i waited, thought about what i needed and how it would work and had what i wanted.

I finally got round to finding a place for and hanging my Chat Noir poster too :-)

I just love that crazy faced cat, lol

And see my little chicken?

Mark just rolled his eyes when i bought it home, lol

But don't you just love her little face :-)

The Kitchen Chicken

Until next time xx

Not Your Typical TV Hunks (and Elizabeth Jackson)

I wouldn’t consider myself a a big TV viewer, I don't put TV on unless there is something that I want to watch. We have what feels like a zillion channels to choose from but there never seems to be anything on them, that’s worth watching anyway, well ok, Sunday nights have been good lately with both Titanic and Homeland 

(on different channels but same times mind you! – what did we do without catch up tv!). 

Anyhow, I do like to have something on when I sit down to stitch in the evening so a couple of weeks ago I joined lovefilm and have been enjoying the delights of Lark Rise to Candleford.  

I vaguely remember this being aired but never took too much notice at the time.  It's set towards the end of the 19th century and tells the day to day story of the lives of the cottage people in Lark Rise who are poor working folk and the town’s folk of Candleford, who are more prosperous.  I’m on series 2 at the moment and it really is a joy to watch, of course the gorgeous Brendon Coyle (who plays Robert Timmis) makes it easier, lol

This picture of him is from The Glass Virgin, a TV adaptation of a Catherine Cookson novel – OK, this is him in his younger days, but it’s the eyes, they just scream passion, lol and there seems to be laughter lurking behind them, he may be older (and slightly heavier) but those eyes are still the same J

Another TV programme I've become totally addicted to in the last week is Life on Mars 

 Now this was one I'd never heard of, but It's brilliant! 

(See that old Alegro Panda Car in the photo, do you remember them?   and a police woman in a skirt!! - This series is set in 1973, there are some great reminders of the '70's - how the world has changed!

There is something about Philip Glenister who plays Gene Hunt, don't quite know what it is, but he's got it J

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 I've been watching is Torchwood on catch-up TV

I remember some hype about Torchwood, but again not something I watched.  –WOW I’m totally hooked, can’t get enough!  John Barrowman, aka Capt Jack Harkness is just brilliant.

Isn't he cute and so fresh looking!

I've almost watched all of Torchwood now, I'm going to miss this one.

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So, while I’ve been watching all these wonderful programmes I've been stitching on Elizabeth Jackson and here’s my progress.

I really want this one done now, all the little bits are starting to get to me and I'm itching to start something new.

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The guy is just finishing off laying the kitchen floor as I type,  and I've been painting all week so hope fully next time I may be able to show pics of my finished kitchen - at last!

I hope you have a good weekend whatever you are up to - someone  in our house is 18 tomorrow :-o  and I have nibbles to put on for about 12 teenagers before they head off to town clubbing - oh to be young, lol

Until next time x

Some Good News!!

Well FANTASTIC news really!!, 

I mentioned in my last post that I would be sharing something after the April 3rd, well here it is....My eldest daughter is making me a Grandma!!!  Can you believe that, me, a Grandma! I'm so excited!

She wanted to wait until after her 12 week scan before sharing the news with everyone, her scan was today, so here is the first photo of my first grand baby

I know, you can't make a lot out, but i think it's great! I can hardly believe that my first baby is having a baby of her own!

I've already had the knitting needles out and finished a small blanket and there is another blanket in the making, and I'm having fun looking at all the little baby clothes in the shops, I want to buy everything, lol

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I have also been awarded the.....

If you aren't familiar with the word Liebster it means 'favourite' in German, and the award is a way for bloggers to help each other out by spreading the word about cross stitch blogs with less than 200 followers.

I have been lucky enough to have been nominated for this award 3 times by different bloggers...WOW.

I want to thank Beth, Katherine and Dana who all nominated me (and all have the most amazing blogs which i love to visit).  I really do appreciate your nominations.  I truly hope that you don't think me a spoil sport but I am having a hard time choosing who to nominate, there are such a lot of  great blogs out there, plus we are supposed to list 5 random facts about ourselves, now I consider myself quite boring and I'm struggling with this, lol, so ladies, thank you so much and i really hope you don't mind too much, but I'm going to bow out of this one.

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Easter is fast approaching which means this week and next are are a 4 day working week, (so grateful for that!).  I've been asked by the girls if I'm cooking lunch on Easter Sunday, I suppose now i have a brand new cooker I really don't have a good excuse not to, lol

Until next time x

So Out of Sorts (But some nice things to share too)

I feel so out of sorts i could fall out with myself!

(Or pick an argument with my own finger nail, as my mum used to say)

I've been plagued with a recurring migraine this week and I'm not sleeping at all well.  Waking every few hours, put that all together and throw hot flushes into the mix and you will understand 

why i feel so blah.

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Before i started to feel too blah, this past weekend was the Hobby Crafts show at the NEC in Birmingham, I had a lovely day wandering around by myself while DH was at home latexing the kitchen floor.  (i've learned to keep out of the way when things like that are happening else i get dragged in to 'lend a hand' :-)

There was a display of some of the Downton Abbey costumes

Bet you recognise some of these

Aren't they gorgeous?

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Plenty of stands to buy new stash :-)

Michael Powell stand

Not something i would personally stitch but i love the cars and VW's

Jane Greenoff stand

And again

I did buy a Jane Greenoff kit and she served me her very self, lol

The stand below is always very popular, i bought from them last year, they sell a lot of American designs.  Shame they done have an online store, although I think they do mail order.

Some lovely yarn stalls

These knitted bags really caught my eye, but at £93 for the large kit, a little expensive (although it is alpaca), so that's ok ;-)
Don't you just love that huge button?

And how about these needles, now they would get the job done pretty quick I think :-)

I don't know if you will be able to read the text, basically it's about a knitting census, what a great idea!

And here is the wall with some of the squares knitted

I've yet to take photos of the goodies i bought, so I'll share those next time.  
I did get this offer of 2 Prima magazines and goodies

When I opened the bag there was a box of Menopace tablets - just what i need, lol


Until next time x