A round up of 2017 crafty makes

It's that time when we look back and see what crafty things we have made throughout the year.

I may not have done a lot of stitching this past year but I have certainly done a variety of things

Halloween exchange ornament my first attempt at making a nappy cake and the only Christmas ornament I managed to stitch for my own tree this year!

 V stitch blanket made for mum and two pieces made for a Valentine exchange

The largest stitched piece I managed this year

and I'm happy to say that Joanne was very pleased with it :-)

My attempts with the sewing machine

There are 3 a items missing which i didn't get to photograph before they were whisked away, the scarf for Oliver, another blanket for Bonnie and some bunting, also for Bonnie.

And here I was thinking that I hadn't really done a lot this year, put all together like this I'm pretty happy with my makings for 2017 :-)

Thank you to all that have taken the time to leave comments on my blog this year, I really do appreciate it.  

I know blogging has fallen out of favour with a lot of people at the moment and at times I have thought about stopping myself, it does take time and a certain amount of commitment to write regular posts so it's nice when people do take the time to say 'Hello'.  

I like to keep a record of what I've done throughout the year too, and I think blogging is a good way to do that so, I will be here again in January to start off a new year.  

I'm not going to make any New Year resolutions or set any goals for next year, I seem to sabotage myself if I do that, but i'm stealing Emma's idea, (from the Potter & Bloom podcast) and I've chosen a word for next year..I will let you know what my 'word' is when I post in January. :-)

So, I will See you in 2018

I wish you all a

Happy New Year

-X-

Some stitching finishes

The snow has now disappeared, only to be replaced by miserable damp rain, ugh, I hate rain, give me snow any day over rain.  While the snow is here at least you know the days are going to be bright and the sun will shine, even if only a little.

Anyway, I'm catching up on some more finishes today, I have 2 stitching finishes and 1 crochet finish :-)

I must first apologise for the terrible photos, by mid afternoon when I get home from work the light has all but gone and these were taken on my phone which doesn't have the best of cameras and If I wait to get some decent photos i'll never get another post in before Christmas!

Bonnie's 1st Christmas ornament

This is the second time I've stitched this chart, I did the same for Oliver's first Christmas, and will more than likely stitch it again next year for the new grand-baby's 1st Christmas :-)

Bonnie's birth sampler.  

The frame is grey, although it's coming out greenish on the photos, the colours are also much better than showing here, (tut)

And again, this is the second time I've stitched this one, I also stitched it for Oliver for his 1st Christmas in 2012.  I do love this design, it's not too childish, something I hope they will still want hanging in their rooms as teenagers.

This blanket I started (and finished) a while ago but i'd forgotten about it.
It's one for the new grand-baby.

Just a simple granny square with a nice crab stitch boarder to finish it off.

The colours are actually turquoise and cream, see what I mean about terrible photos!!

Nothing else to report at the moment, I break up from work on Thursday and am looking forward to spending some time doing not-a-lot, lol  - Hopefully I can get one more post in before Christmas takes over completely.

See you soon
-X-

If only the snow had waited another 2 weeks we could have had a white Christmas!

We've had a lovely weekend visiting Lincoln Christmas market. 

On Friday morning we woke up to quite a bit of snow and we thought it would take us longer than the estimated 2 hours to get there but when we reached the other side of Birmingham there was no snow to be seen, so we made good time and got to the hotel just after 2pm.  We dropped our bags and drove into town and managed to park the car on the retail park a short walk from the centre.

The hotel was further from the city centre than Booking.com had said (!) so on Saturday morning we caught the bus there and got a taxi back in the evening as we thought it would be busier than the day before.  We browsed the shops in the day and after a late lunch we made our way up to the Christmas market again.  The market is mainly centred around the area of the Cathedral and you make your way up via lovely pretty cobbled streets, very steep streets, in fact one of the streets is called Steep Hill.

I wish I had taken my camera on the Friday as on Saturday there were so many people it was impossible to get any decent photos at all, and also very hard to look at any of the stalls.  If you ever think you might like to visit Lincoln's Christmas Market take my advice and go on the Friday, it's much less stressful.

The wonderful Cathedral

This morning we woke to snow in Lincoln too, so we set off for home as soon as we could, again expecting delays.  The traffic was quite light so we got home safe and sound by just after lunchtime.

The conditions got worse the closer we go to home

I couldn't resist taking some photos as we were near home, everything looked so pretty!

Turning into our estate

And then our road

Then seeing our garden turned into a lovely white wonderland :-)

Looking over the garden fence

 (Below) Two doors away, part of their garden transformed into a magical scene

One of the first things I did once we had got the bags in was make sure the birds had some food.

My little Robin was soon back once he knew there was something :-)

Along with our other regular visitors

Sorry, I do seems to have posted a lot of photos again!

I have tomorrow off work so I'm going try and make the most of it and have a rest after all that walking.

See you soon

-X-

Who doesn't love a pompom or a snowman

All the decorations are up, Alexa was playing Christmas songs for me while I was doing it so i'm officially in the Christmas spirit, how about you, is your tree up? or do you wait a little longer?

Ours will stay up for a month, on New Years Eve I will get up early and all the decorations will be got down, packed away and I will give everywhere a good clean again ready for a fresh start on New Years day.  It makes me feel good to start the new year off with a clean house free of Christmas clutter.

Oliver took his new ornament home last week ready to hang on his tree, he got a snowman this year, Mark says he has scary eyes, what do you think?

I suppose he does, sort of, Oliver thought he was cute anyway.

I've been making Bonnie's ornament up tonight so can't show you that yet, it's currently sitting under a pile of books so that the glue will stick properly to the back and front pieces, I will put the cording on tomorrow.  These ornaments take as long to put together as they do to stitch!

I did finally finished my pompom wreath though,  and i'm just so chuffed with it!

It's big, and I LOVE it!

I have no idea how many pompoms I made in the end, I've been making them on and off for months but I still had to make more when I finally came to attach them.

I used the extra large Clover pompom maker and tried to keep them a bit fluffy so they looked more like snowflakes.

I didn't want to hang it on the front door, I wanted to put it where I can look at it, so it's got centre stage on the TV sitting room fireplace.

You can see better on this photo how big it is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Birthday Celebrations

Saturday was Joanne's 30th birthday.  She is a bit of a sweet fiend so I made her this cake

I think she liked it :-)

We also went for afternoon tea on Sunday, my treat to Joanne and Jenny, (who also has a birthday later in the month)

We came away quite stuffed!

Before I go I wanted to show you something I made earlier in the year, It's a chalkboard made out of an old painting I bought at a charity shop.  I thought of hanging it in the kitchen but it was just left in the garage until I came across it when we were clearing it out in preparation for converting part of the garage into a shower room, (more about that another time, it's almost finished now)

Anyway, I was never very good at drawing but I thought I'd give it a go, this is my second seasonal attempt , and it appears that although my art work wouldn't stand up to close inspection, I can search google and copy a passable image, and it really doesn't matter if it's not perfect, it's supposed to be quirky and fun :-)

So here's my snowman for December

Looking at it now I think maybe I need to add a couple of little houses on those hills.

Below was a joint first attempt by me and Stevie, I did the lettering, leaves and roots, she did the pumpkin.

We are going away on Friday to  visit Lincoln for their Christmas Market.  We are making a weekend of it, the hotel is a couple of miles form Lincoln itself  so close enough to walk if the weather's not bad, if it is we will get a taxi to save hunting for a parking space.  Hopefully I can share lots of Christmassy photos from there in another post.

Until next time

-X-