Its me!

Hiya there!

Yes those pesky time thieves have struck again! I mean where do they come from? I never ever see them coming....

I seem to have been really really busy but I haven't got an awful lot to show for it. Well there was lots of cooking but that's gone to customers.... Oh and the weather! Blimey I thought we'd been transported to the tropics, minus the warm temperatures, with the amount of rain we had the other day! I only dashed 3 yards to the bin and was drenched. Trust me I chucked the next bag of rubbish on the step and waited till it stopped!

Now I love feeding the wild birds in the garden. The starlings are thanking me by scoffing all the cherries on my tree! Cheeky buggers peck all of them %-( I think they do that to make sure we don't eat any of them to be honest. Now I put meal worms out for the birds (they're weird they look like they're wriggling even though they're dried ugh!) and I noticed the other night we have another visitor who likes them.

I'd like to introduce....

Hedgie! He ate a huge pile of them. Yup all that pile which I put out when I saw him were scoffed!

Cute isn't he? I hope he returns the favour and attends to the slugs and snails!

Now a new challenge has launched.... I make it sound like a rocket, over at Totally Gorjuss This week we'd like you to use ribbons and lace on your entries. This weeks sponsor is Fantastic Ribbons

I've used one of the last boy releases from Lili of the Valley I managed to include ribbon and lace on a boy card! A first for me ;))

Teddy has been coloured with Copics and the papers are a mix of Basic Grey Pyrus and Kraft.

Back again!

Yay!

Its me! Again and so soon! Now is that a good thing or a bad thing..... hmmm??? I'll let you decide..... ;))

Now I thought I'd share a few pics with you. Over the weekend the OM and myself had a little 'don't know where we're going but we'll go anyway' trip. Basically I pointed the car up the M18 and drove. Eventually we came to the North Sea and so I thought it would be a good idea if we stopped! Anyway we were at Withernsea... oh my! It was.... how can I describe it? Er.... brown! Sorry to any Withernsea residents who may be reading! Please don't think the sky is blue, they're actually grey rain clouds! So we hopped back in the car - pointed it again and.....

went to Hornsea! It was slightly less brown! The OM took a quick pic of me (don't be scared!) Yes it was as breezy as it looks. The joy of an English summer, yes jeans, jumper and a coat!

Can I think of a nice thing about Hornsea?.... Well if you're ever there I can recommend the seafront chippy - the fish and chips are wonderful! Made the trip worthwhile. They did make the car pong a bit but hey ho. Totally delicious!

So a little make to share with you. While I was on my jollies I happened, by accident, to acquire a couple of quilting magazines. Now they have some rather fabby makes in them, other than quilts.

One of them being a needle case.....

So.... taaaa daaaaaaaaaa! The needle case! Its actually easier than the instructions! I have to say they weren't worded terribly well, unless..... unless I'm thicker than I think I am that is..... well anyway its a good make for fabric scraps. The strips on the front are made from pieces 1" x 5" so with seam allowances they're 1/2" wide! Its really dinky.

The front.....


The back....

The inside, the needle 'holder' bits are felt

Its even got a pocket on the inside for...'stuff'

So that's my latest little make. Now I'm acquiring fabric and saving all the bits I reckon I can make one or two more!

Return from the time warp!

~creeps in with a snigger~

Hi there its me again! Yup the time thieves have been here again! Pesky things sneaked in and stole loads of time and I never noticed....well hardly..... er OK I did but I've had a mixture of being busy/poorly/busy/poorly and well that just whipped the time away from me. Oh and the God awful weather doesn't exactly help does it? I mean what month is it? Its like April! Sun one second and then a torrential downpour.... then more of the same. Its been so cold too - my poor old joints don't like it one bit :(( I feel like a creaky door and I swear I can hear my joints creak!

So enough moaning, unless you want more? I can moan real good..... OK enough then. I thought I show you a couple of pics of something I made the other day. Pork ribs - my word I have to say they were absolutely delicious! First of all I put them in a roasting tin and put about an inch of water in and covered with foil. Into a slow oven - 160c for just over and hour. This way the sort of steam slowly. While they were doing that I made a glaze. In a bowl 2 tablespoons of honey, same of mustard, dash of Worcestershire sauce, two glugs of balsamic vinegar and a good squirt of tomato ketchup and then a teaspoon each of ground cumin and coriander. Mix together and then brush liberally over your ribs... pork ribs that is. Return to the oven and turn up to 180c for about another half hour. You can brush the glaze on as much as you like. When the ribs are tender they're done.

Then they look like this - they are absolutely delicious! The OM said they were the best he'd ever had! Even in the States! Trust me from him that's high praise indeedy ;))


Now I made these little babies the other day.... these are blueberry crumble tarts. Pastry, a spot of jam, fresh blueberries and some crunchy crumble on top. Were they nice? They were absolutely gorgeous!


I'm sorry if I've made you hungry....

So enough food I'll show you the card I made for the new challenge at Totally Gorjuss This week we want to see flowers on your entries. So I inked up this sweet little Tilda and broke into the new basic grey Hopscotch pad. these colours are a new thing for me.... took me ages to decide what colour papers to use as a backing and what colour to use for her dress! Take me away from my usual shades and I'm all a dither - haha!

Over at Just Magnolia and hAnglar sTanglar they have a sketch and flowers challenge. So I've entered this into that too - I'm not sure if I've 'over-tweaked' the sketch though!

Then I discovered I didn't have the exact colour flowers I wanted..... by then it was almost all stuck together so I improvised. I think it kind of looks OK..... I echoed the butterfly on Tildas hand with this Martha Stewart butterfly border punch.


My close up.... now I do have an arty shot...... Blogger doesn't like it and will not let me load it! How dare he? Very easily it seems ;)) Oh this week the challenge is sponsored by Crafters Companion - some lucky person gets £10 to spend - good huh?

Howdy there Bloggettes, yup the time thieves have struck again! I mean where did they come from? I think the same guys also stole the sun too. The weather has been pretty rubbish here. I mean its the end of May and we still have the heating on! But I can't bear being cold..... please come back sunshine!

Now we've had a bit of a mystery, well kind of, over a dove cooing outside the bedroom window at 4.30am most mornings! The OM of course has no knowledge of this whatsoever - the upside of being a bit deaf eh? Well the other day I saw a dove almost fly into the bedroom window with a twig in its beak.... So I went outside for a look. Guess what I saw?

Yup the little dove has made herself a nest on the bracket of the security light! You can see how close to the barge board she is - not much room is there?


In fact so little room there's a good deal of overhang in the tail department!


But she does look nicely settled doesn't she? On the plus side of course there's as much food as she can eat in the garden. We've got a newly fledged baby dove in the garden, I wonder if its the first one out of this particular nest? I've no idea how long she's been there. On the plus side I suppose there's no one else trying get up there with her, the wind won't blow it and she'll be dry when it rains!

Now over at Totally Gorjuss we have another challenge up and running. This time its 'strings the thing' which basically means put some string on your card in one way or another - easy as always ;)) Now I had the idea for the card but then decided that I didn't want to just wrap it around the card kind of thing...... but what to do with it? Now while I was away I saw some flat coils of string so I had a go at those. I think its quite a good manly embellishment.


An arty shot of said manly embellishment!

Now I'm sure you've heard me mention the girls.... if not where have you been! Now me being a cruel Mummy I like them to earn their keep!

We had Tinker on cutlery duty the other day.....

I'm not quite sure she got the hang of it somehow.....

Woohooo!

Well howdy y'all!

Have you missed me??? Had you even noticed I'd gone?...... Well I've been MOH, that's Missing On Holiday!

So that involved these two, Tinker at the front (nearer my fingers) and Harry looking for food going in their new travel cage. Its better than the old one but I have to say the 'parrot proof' door fastener is rubbish! Tinker had it open in about 2 seconds flat! Hence a cable tie holding it shut. Harry was actually a bit less car sick than usual, now whether this is because she can see more or she's getting better car legs... well who knows?


So we've been here! Yup lucky me has had another Florida trip. We started at Clearwater Beach, this was the view from our balcony - directly onto the beach. This is sunset the first night. Isn't it beautiful? As the sun drops lower and lower it seems to take ages. Once it gets to the horizon though it goes really fast. One minute its there and then its gone! Oh and the sea was beautifully warm too, none of that gasping in shock that we get here in the UK. Oh and its clean, as are the beaches. People just don't seem to dump their litter everywhere, they use the bins on the beaches. Perhaps something we ought to have don't you think?

We also fed a few of these on the beaches too! Its amazing you wander down with your bread or whatever and there's not a bird in sight! Once you have one you soon have a load of them, they are so acrobatic.



We also saw lots and lots of ospreys. There seemed to be a nest in every tree with chicks in. Now these are nesting on top of a floodlight on a soccer pitch. There used to be lots of these lights but they've been replaced with modern ones. They left this one though as the pair were showing signs of breeding so its had a reprieve for a few months till the chicks fledge. Obviously Florida (this part for sure) is ideal for Ospreys as there are so many lakes and fish to feed them all. We even saw them catching fish in the sea too. So the huge nest on top of the light! Oh they don't use this light when there's a nest on it, there would be a risk of fire and the chicks getting burnt too. I wondered how the chicks cope with heat, some days it was over 90f.

A bit of a closer view, as you can see there are two chicks and the mother in there. She was shouting her head off! I'm guessing to her mate to hurry up and bring them a fish!

This is a nest in a tree on the golf course at Dunedin, as you can see its right over the path where all the golf buggies drive. The birds aren't fazed by these in the slightest though. There are chicks in this one too, they decided to duck down as I took the shot! In the space of a small area there were 3 nests so they obviously don't mind close neighbours.

One of the neighbours nests! You can see they use rather big lumps of wood! Makes you wonder how they manage to make them really. I don't think I could using both hands, and they only do it with their beaks without any instructions either ;))

Now seeing as I've been in the Shopping, sorry Sunshine State I felt it necessary to indulge in a spot of retail therapy. Well it would have been rude not to. Oh I also bumped into the Lord of Inkiness too ;)) So here is a small view of the meagre amount of stuff I acquired.....

Now I'm sure some of you may have noticed my interest in fabric.... well I just so happened to find a haven for fabric strokers everywhere! Oh my I almost got thrown out when I screamed yippee and threw myself on the bolts of fabric... Luckily it would appear I'm not the first person to have done that! I've never ever seen so much fabric in my life! Now I got ~coughs~ one or two pieces.... but I could have filled 20 cases with it (funds and luggage allowance permitting). So I chose carefully(ish) and also bought a few patterns, magazines and 'stuff.

So see hardly anything really.... What I mean by that is 'hardly anything compared to what I saw and wanted as well but......' You know what I mean? Now of course I will have to brace myself to actually cut it! But for now I'm more than happy stroking and wrapping myself in it!

Easy as 1 2 3!

Yay there Bloggettes - how are you on this sunny and breezy weekend? I can't believe its another long weekend! Mind you the Big L is not impressed, he's working again. I tell him to think of the money ;)) I'm not sure it works though!

Now a new challenge is on at Totally Gorjuss As always its easy (If I'm picking trust me they're always going to be easy). In fact its as easy as 1 2 3! What that means is you need 1 of one thing, 2 of another and 3 of another!

My 1 2 3 is 1 flower rosette, 2 nestie shapes and 3 ribbons. The images are all Molly Blooms - aren't they cute? This is a recipe box - though if you changed the image it coould be used for anything really. I think it could be adapted to hold photographs and display them too.

Now do you remember me giving you the news I'm now a step great grand mother which I know is totally unbelievable seeing as I'm only 23..... Well here is a picture of the little man himself. He is a lovely looking boy, not wrinkly at all!

Here's Isaac John, oh and the one who is wrinkly is the OM himself ;)) Little Isaac was very comfy and slept soundly, apparently he's not got the hang of this at night yet! Oops.

hey baby

Hey baby! Happy royal wedding day!

Well a quick one from me, don't want to bore you..... well twice in one week. This is a quick card I made for the new addition to our family. The OM's grand daughter gave birth to her first baby and his first great grand child! which makes me a step great granny! Which as a 23 year old surely cannot be right! So little Isaac John has arrived and he's lovely.

So this is the card I made for him.

And now a little video of Harry going though her paces! She's having a workout on the camera case. I think it looks like she's on the Olympic rings!