Boxes, Baskets & Calendar Cats!

Millie & Molly would like to send you all a BIG thank you for your lovely comments about their photos :-)

The calendar came into the shop on Friday and i went to pick one up straight after work
Introducing the calendar girl of 2011!

Apparently there were almost 200 photos entered in the competition, didn't she do well to get chosen! I can report that the fame hasn't turned her head one bit, she is still the same self assured Molly who gets her own way with everything :-)

The local paper that featured the competition are doing a follow-up on it so my mug shot will be in there in the next couple of week (I'm preparing myself for the comments from work about that!)
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Last week i was in and out the house for one thing and another and couldn't settle into stitching except for finishing another LHN ornament.

This is Peppermint Twist made up into yet another puffy pillow (are you getting fed-up seeing this type of finishing yet!)

I left off the button, i didn't think it added anything to it.

While i was out and about last week a few things made it home with me. My LNS had this limited edition DMC box in, it's on sale with 40 threads included but Sharon said if i wanted the box she would knock off the price of the threads, how could i pass a chance like that!

Isn't it great! (you will have to tilt your head to one side now because i just couldn't get blogger to co-operate!!)
It fastens with rustic string a a little heart toggle. I think i only ended up paying about £6 for it, bargain!

Continuing with the bargain hunting, i came across this little box in a local department store

It's all shabby & chic and i love it! When i get round to sorting more of my threads out this is where they are going :-)

I've saved the best bargain until last, while i was collecting "the calendar" i spied this

How gorgeous is this shopping basket!! It cost me all of a fiver! I said to daughter #2 that i felt like i should be walking in a picturesque village somewhere do my shopping, she said, i think you look like you should be skipping along in a wood wearing red cloak, lol - kids what do they know!

Until next time x

Whoooohoooo Our Very Own Super Model!

No, I'm not talking about cars, I've had it up to here with cars, lol (but thank you all for you good wishes and sympathies, i'll update on news another time)
I want to share some happy news with you this time.

A couple of days before we went on holiday i saw a competition advertised by the Cats Protection League in our local paper, they were looking for photos of cats for their 2011 calendar.

Despite much snickering from my family (they think I'm the crazy cat woman) i entered a photo I'd taken of Molly.

It had slipped my mind, what with one thing and another going on but i got an e-mail last night telling me that Molly's photo had been chosen to feature in the calendar!

I was over the moon :-)

but, it gets better

I emailed them the photo as they asked, and today i got reply to say that Molly has actually been chosen as the overall winner and her photo will appear on the cover of the calendar, and we also get to choose which month she will be! How cool is that!!!

Even better still is that she has also won a photo session with a professional photographer who will come to our house and take a set of photos which i will the be given on a disc (insert big grin here!)

Here she is the super model herself in her winning shot

And because i have 2 beautiful girls i can't leave without showing a photo of Millie too, after all a mother has no favourites ;-)

I wish now I'd got a better photo of Millie too, then i could have entered them both, although It's harder to get a good shot of Millie because she is so fast and she thinks everything is a game, and being all black makes it harder

Millie

I can't tell you how much we love these two little faces, they mean the world to us.

Until next time x

Things That Go Bump..

Into my car! While we away last week i was phoning home every day just to check up everthing was OK, as you do, on the Thursday night my daughter asked me if i wanted the bad news.. as you can imagine everything raced through my head at those words, what i wasn't expecting was "someone's run into your car mum" That would have been bad enough, but i have had this car (a super duper Mini Cooper s, bright yellow in colour and complete with racing stripes!!) for less than a month.

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This is the best photo i could come up with which resembled my car. The difference being, mine has white wing mirrors and normal alloys, not silver.

(this one i've uploaded though looks more like a dinky car, don't you think?)

Luckily (if you can call it that) it was the fault of a neighbour 2 doors up and she wrote all her insurance details, date and time it happened down a gave them to Stevie.

Now, we live on a very steep hill, so i assumed she had parked behind my car and rolled when she pulled away, but no, she had parked outside her own house, gone in home and when she looked out of the window, no car, she must have forgotten to put the handbrake on and it rolled down the hill colliding with the back end of my car on the way!

The damage is not too bad, the bumper will have to be replaced and the little black grill, but apparently the damage on hers is much worse, i haven't seen.

However, as if that wasn't bad enough, i needed to go and get some food supplies in on Tuesday afternoon after getting back from the airport very early hours Tuesday morning, but my car wouldn't start, after calling the dealer we got the car from, and an AA man being sent out i was told that the starter motor would need replacing and it would have to be towed to the dealer garage the next day. Another AA man arrived the following day and tried it again before loading it on the truck, right away he said it was not the starter motor but the timer chain, much more serious and as far as i can make out is a big job, we are talking getting the engine out and stripping it down job!

I mean, this car is not old, 3 years is all! I've had a right game trying to get the dealer to give me a courtesy car (they were all out, yeah right!) when i asked about a hire care they said yes, you will have to pick it up from Stafford though, a 45 minute drive away..HELLO, I HAVE NO TRANSPORT HOW DO YOU SUGGEST I GET THERE??!!!

no answer came the reply.

Several phone calls later and after me ranting & raving like a woman possessed and telling them that if they didn't sort it out they could keep the car and give me my money back they said they would send someone out to pick me up and take me to Stafford to fetch the hire car.

Goodness knows when I'm going to get my car back, they won't commit themselves to a time yet, but at least i will have some sort of transport while it's in. The damage done to the rear end will have to wait until this episode is over.

Apart from coming back to this we had a lovely week away in the sunshine and i will post some photos next time so you can have a look see, for now though i really can't get in the mood for anything.

A happier update to follow soon i hope, until then take care and have a good weekend.

The nights are drawing in and there is a definite chill in the air here in my part of the UK, a reminder that Christmas is just around the corner :-0 and it will soon be time to decorate my tree with all those lovely LHN ornies i have been stitching, i can't wait!

So i got a move on and completed another 2.

Here's the Red House. I didn't have the required red for the house so i used my favourite red, Threadworx 1089

I do love little houses, and i think this one is my favourite ornie at the moment.

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Next is another cute little snowman, i wasn't too kean on this when i first saw the chart but he has grown on me since stitching him.

Again i substituted the green because i didn't have what was called for, i used a Weeks thread instead.

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Not in the Christmas theme but, i do have another finish, Souvenir de France which was a freebie doing the rounds a while ago.

Finished as a pin pillow using DMC 4140 (variegated thread). It's a little big for a pin pillow really but at least i now have somewhere to stick my needle when i finish stitching for the night :-)

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I have been working on Yesteryear a little too but it got abandoned in favour of all the above, it's on my list to get finished off by the end of October though if i possibly can.

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I'll be MIA for the next week, we are going on our last sunshine break of the year, we shall be in Gran Canaria by this time tomorrow night, hopefully i'll be sitting somewhere warm with a glass of Sangria in my hand, lol.

Thank you for your visits and comments, they really make my day :-)

Have a great week whatever you may be up to. xx

Catching Up & Finishing

My week off was over all too soon and 7am Tuesday morning rolled around too quickly for my liking, it's sods law that the week i had off the weather was pretty rotten the whole, and this week we have glorious sunshine! We had our day in Bath as planned non the less and apart from a couple of quite heavy (but short) downpours the day turned out not too bad. As none of us had been before we did all the touristy things, the Jane Austin Centre, the Roman Baths, Pulteny Bridge, Royal Crescent (the setting for Jane Austins Persuasion if i my mind serves me right) and Sally Lunns tea shop, where i sampled a Bath Bun (the girls opted for cake). We had gone there for their Cornish Cream Tea but there were no scones left!! can you believe that?? our faces must have been a picture because we had been anticipating this cream tea all day! Apart from that we had a fantastic time, it's a great place and we will defiantly go again perhaps to do a tour of all the wonderful shops.
All the links above should be clickable, do go and have a nosey around there are some

great web sites.

Here's a little collage of our visit.

See Joanne top right? that's her, large as life and twice as loud, lol. They both tried the hats on in the Jane Austin Centre, somehow i don't think they fit the image of Lady's who lunch, lol.
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I managed to get quite a bit of stitching done while i was at home, i started and finished the design of Primitive Bettys.

Olde Pewter Letters

Stitched on 28ct with DMC 169 & 535

Not to sure if i should frame it or finish it some other way, any suggestions?

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I found a forgotten piece and have been working on getting this finished, this is where it was at when i abandoned it.

Now almost another 2 blocks completed, so hopefully a finish soon, and it's a fitting piece to hang in my 100 year old house :-)

LHN Yesteryear

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Finally, i collected Rubie from the framers last week, here she is all dressed up!

She now has pride of place on my sampler wall, which is a work in progress but i am working hard to get it filled ;-)

Phew! I've waffled on again haven't i! you'll be Glad to know that all for now, thank you for visiting my little space today, i really appreciate all you visits and comments. Till next time - have a great weekend. x

The Winner Is......

Elaine !!

This is what Elaine said in her e-mail.....

This really dumb Scotswoman would love to enter your give-away. I sat here for about an hour tonight driving myself nuts trying to work out where these photos were taken. Then it dawned on me maybe it was places you had visited so I started to look through your blog. I found most of them on your blog but was a bit stumped with the ones in Paris but eventually I got them.. I think.

And so you did!

Starting at the top left to bottom left they are:-

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Fountain at Hampton Court Palace

Blenheim Palace

Notre Dame

Beatrix Potter's House

Middle:-

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Windermere

Leicester Square, London

The Astronomical Clock at Hampton Court Palace

Right hand side:-

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Westminster Abbey

The Louvre (That DD#1 pushing it!!)

The Seine in Paris ( That's DD#1 & 2 walking along)

Charts of Rubie Owl and Stories To Live by, Eve will be on their way to you as soon as you send me your address.

Only two others had a guess, Loraine (you didn't leave me a link to your blog) you had 7 right so i will send you the other copy of STLB Eve.

Hazel i'm afraid you only got 3 right but as you were the only other person to have a go i am going to send you something anyway:-)

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I've had a break from the computer this week and given myself more stitching time, Rubie is in the shop being fitted for a frame and i have a small finish and a blast from the past to show next time :-)

Hope you all have a great week, i know i will as i have the week off work, yayyyyy for lie-ins, lol, tomorrow me and the girls are off to Bath for the day, lets hope the rain stays away, then the rest of the week is just for me to chill and stitch as i wish :-)

Almost There

A few more nights and Rubie should be finished. I really wanted her to have a face to show you tonight but as the weather was nice yesterday afternoon when i came from work i spent 3 hours in the garden, weeding, hoeing, pruning and generally giving it a tidy up, by the time I'd had something to eat and a shower i was so knacker i headed up to bed at 9.30. It's true what they say, the older you get the longer it takes, lol, I woke up this morning and had to lie there a few minutes and decide what part of me ached the least, lol.

No such silly antics going on today, I've got a stitchy / TV night planned

Wrinkly Rubie!

I really appreciate all your lovely comments and encouragements on this piece, especially when i had a mass invasion of frogs and could have cheerfully thrown it in bin, but all your kind words and lovely thoughts made me carry on, and I'm glad i did!

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Because of my imminent finish there will be a give away as promised.

The give away is- Plum Street Samplers charts -

Rubie Owl & Stories To Live By Eve

(Sorry, but blogger won't let me upload a photo of th charts!!)
Now, did you notice my header photos? how is your geography? because in order to win the charts I'm going to ask you to name as many of the places/buildings (or river in one case) as you can, the person who gets the most correct wins, simple as that!
If there is no outright winner then the names will be thrown into a hat and my daughter will draw a name.

Please do not leave your answers on the comments page, e-mail me at

hydenseek61@yahoo.co.uk

mention 'Rubie' in the subject line
And i will post the winner on August 23rd, so you have plenty of time!

This is open to everyone, regardless of where you live.
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I'm off to put bum to sofa and get some stitching done,

hope you all have a great week :-)