Merry Christmas!

Before i get caught up in Christmas activities i thought I'd stop by and wish you all a very Merry Christmas, i want to thank you all for your visits to my blog over the last 12 months, i know that i have enjoyed visiting you all and seeing your wonderful stitching, finishing and getting getting to know you. I have a few things to share, namely the last of my LHN ornaments, i have really enjoyed these, i can't believe it's been 12 months since we started this SAL! The only one i didn't get finished into an ornament was the Pear Tree, i cut the fabric too close when i finished stitching and the only thing i think it will finish as is a pinkeep and as yet I'm not brave enough to try that finish. Any how here are the last two:

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My favourite out of these two is definitely All is Calm, so cute!

I did one last trip into town today and there was a half price sale of Christmas decorations, amongst other things i couldn't resist this metal tree

Isn't it perfect for stitched ornies :-)

It will hold 15, so I'll have to get busy for next year, but I'm also thinking it could be used for seasonal ornies too as it's not a Christmasy looking tree, what do you think?

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Last but by no means least is a lovely gift i received from Elaine, such a pleasant surprise to receive this lovely stitched and finished snowman ornament (there were also some chocolate Santa's that got eaten right away :-) and some lovely hand and body lotion which is now in my treatment basket in my bedroom:-)

Thank you so much Elaine, everything was appreciated and your snowman will always have a special place on my tree :-)

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Well the presents are all wrapped and ready and i will be heading of to bed soon, tomorrow i have the day off preparing food as we are going out for Christmas lunch this year, Yipeeee no cooking, lol. My mum, sister and brother in law and my Niece and her boyfriend and their daughter are coming too so hopefully it will be a good day. After lunch we are going to my eldest daughters for more nibbles and present opening.

Boxing day will be my day to sit and stitch and play with my presents :-) and then the day after will be my birthday! 2011 will be my last year in my 40's ;-)

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Have fun whatever you may be getting up too - Until next time - have a good one!

Time has just run away with me again, i suppose it has something to do with the time of year but also to do with the fact that i have been a lazy blogger!

I owe a long over due thank you to Mylene, i won a give away on her blog a while ago and this is what arrived in the mail....

...My very first pyn keep! It is stitched and finished so beautifully, thank you so much Mylene, it will always have a special place on my tree xx.

My own stitches have be few and far between, i have managed to finish another LHN ornament and put it together at the weekend

Only one more of these ornaments to finish off now and i can proudly say that i kept up for the whole 12 months (that's a first for me!!) The little angel is almost stitched and the two little houses are stitched up but i have yet to finish them into anything (forgive me for not giving the charts their proper names, i have a mental block when it comes to remembering chart names!)

Daughter #2 had a birthday while I've been absent, she turned 23 on 2nd December

She took her driving test last Thursday but unfortunately didn't pass, she managed to get a cancellation this morning for January 8th, so lets hope she has better luck 2nd time around.

Today has been one of those horrible dark, cold and damp days, but for a couple of weeks we did have snow and ice causing havoc on our roads (if you know the UK then you will know how what little snow it can take to cause havoc, and keep us talking about it forever!! LOL) Personally i would rather have the snow and ice back, to me there is nothing better that a lovely crisp frosty morning :-) I took myself and my camera off to the park after work one afternoon last week so I'll leave you with some of the results.

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The guy in the red coat and the bike just happened to walk up as i was taking the photo, how lucky was that!

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I didn't realise until i looked at the photos on my computer that there was a couple sharing a kiss under the tree...how sweet.

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The last two photos are of a couple of friends i made that day ;-)

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My blog header photo is also at the park that day.

I owe quite a few of you blog visits and comments, i will be trying to catch up this week.

Thank you for stopping by today, and have a great week whatever you may be up too xx

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