Valentine swap loveliness!

Moogsdad wandered up the rickety stairs to his beloved wife's sickbed this morning bearing a parcel handed to him by postie.

Inside was a very pretty parcel wrapped in a fat quarter of gorgeous Moda fabric from my swap partner Carey at Blueberry Lane Designs.

The photos aren't great as I photographed them on the very sickbed in which I lay- suffering from the worst headcold anyone has ever had - ever......ever!


The parcel contained a beautiful bag, a length of ric-rac and another of bobble braid, a pair of handbag handles and some gorgeous ceramic buttons plus that lovely Moda fabric.





Thank you Carey!!!!! I'll have to think of something really special to make with all those goodies. I'll use the time that I spend valiantly fighting this dreadful ailment to work on those ideas.

Now ....cough....splutter.....sniff.....I shall retire to the sofa and may even stitch something.......sniff............

Hush hush

I've got so much I would have liked to post today but I can't as it's all secret stuff for the Valentine swap and this week's Crafty Challenge!!!

Maybe some pictures of some bits I made some time ago will pretty things up a bit!

I was digging through a box of old rubbish treasure the other day and came across an old carrier bag stuffed with junk embroidery threads and this that I did several years ago:

It was not meant to be anything - just a play about with hand and machine embroidery that I didn't know what to do with after a while - thus leading to its being unceremoniously stuffed into a grotty old plastic bag and forgotten about.


I may have to make it into a picture somehow, sometime.

Then I was trawling through my zillion photos in Photoshop as Mrs Locket has requested a photo of me so that she's in with a fighting chance of recognising me when we meet up next month.

It struck me that there are very few pictures taken of me as I'm usually the photographer. Also the ones that I do have will only frighten her!! I'm now on a little mission to get a haircut and get a half-decent photo done!!!

I stumbled across these photos of some scrapbook pages that I did last year.

Here's my sweet baby girl - looking angelic and feminine:


Here's our worn out old lady exhausted after a long walk whilst we were camping last year:


There you go - short and sweet (just like me ;) ).

Hopefully I'll have something new to show next time. How about a bit of this in the meantime? Now I've gone and done it and got all overexcited about my FRENCH AND SAUNDERS TICKETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Did I mention I was going to see them - LIVE - ON STAGE - did I?

Byeeee xxx

Totally terrific Tuesday!

Cor blimey it is one extreme to the other round here!!



Yesterday was, it has to be said, somewhat pants on the satisfyingly lovely scale.

I must say, however, that the words of support from the Blogland Women's Army were very much appreciated!!! So far I have not had to call on your services with knitting needles or malarial pathogens but there is disturbing news afoot!

But first (and I know you don't start sentences with but!) just feast your eyes on the loveliness that fell into my hands shortly after I had grappled the postie to the ground this very morning:

Hello, is that for little ol' me?

As you can see I unwrapped this beautifully parcelled gift very delicately :)

I opened this first and may have become slightly overexicited judging by the disapproving and matronly look on Moog's face! A beautiful handbag charm - see how pretty it is and so girlie and gorgeous and can it really be for me?

A little more maniacal tearing assunder gentle unwrapping led me to a lot more gorgeousness. Just feast your eyes on this:

I have to say an enormous THANK YOU to the very lovely Kaz for this beautiful gift that I was lucky enough to win in her 100th post giveaway just last week.

I really don't want to give any of those lovely cards away but I have some special birthdays coming up soon and may force myself to relinquish one or two!

As for my beautiful Ideas book, complete with a fab pen might I add, I shall be using that for my good ideas that have gone through the initial stages on the back of an envelope!!!

Once the initial excitement had subsided (but still with a delirious grin on my face) I got down to making the most of my Moogsdadfree time.

If you want to see how this turned out go here!


Then I got onto something secretive for my swap partner:
How, you may well be asking, can such a fableous day have any sort of anything go wrong?

1. Send son to school without swimming kit even though it clearly states on 'family calendar' that he has swimming today (despite sending said kit in last Tuesday when he did, in fact, have no swimming at all).

2. Learn the disturbing news that one's husband will be 'working from home' again on the morrow and will be requiring use of computer and all available work/personal/air space to be able to complete highly important top secret manly task (suffice it to say he has the type of job whereby if I told you what his paper was about I'd then have to kill you!)

As my lovely Mum always used to say (and you have most definately read this here before) 'It's no good moping about. You've just got to get on with it!'

Therefore, to avoid any feelings of 'how very dare you interrupt my very important lady pursuits!' tomorrow I shall be occupying myself by visiting the council planning department on a roofy type errand for Moogsdad PhD (yes really - and he married little ol' me!) and then accidentally driving to Romsey to accidentally search out a fabric shop that I have been led to believe, by the internets, is there somewhere......

If I need liberating by the BWA I shall let you know - not sure how I'll let you know but I may have to make an assault on a public library!!!!!!

Now, where did I leave my combat trousers?................

Disclaimers:

1. overly dark photos - in spite of a much brighter day my house is very dark due to being enveloped in a big scaffoldy blanket. Too dodgy to venture outside to take photos as various missiles keep falling from roof at least expected moments.

2. possible odd blog spacing - Blogger seems to be having a 'how crubbish can we make the gappage tonight?' thing going on!!!!

3. I haven't ignored your request for 7 spurious facts about me Mrs Trash - I just felt there was only so much of my wittering everyone could stand in one day!!!

Aaaaaaaaa-at ease!

You may stand down until the morning but be aware you may be called upon at any time. Please polish your knitting needles before retiring for the night :)

Feel good Friday

Is it Friday already?

I've had a lovely week - due in no small part to all you lovely real imaginary people out there :) It has also felt a little mad at times as Lucy and I jumped into our Crafty Challenge idea with both feet by opting to start another blog!!

As if that and 'normal' blogging plus tending poorly children and doing all the usual domestic engineering things isn't enough Lucy has launched a fab Valentine Swap - head over there to sign up if you fancy joining in :)

Rather than glueing myself to the computer again this morning I ran away for a while. After stocking up at the farm shop it was over to Hobbycraft for some supplies for an order I'm making.

There seems to be a dearth of decent fabric shops in the Southampton area (email me if you know different!) and as I'm Mrs Impatient I didn't do the sensible thing and shop online. Therefore I spent, what I felt, was too much for some plain pink cotton. Still, it's pretty and will go with the pinks and purples theme requested.



In order to waste more time in order to avoid housework gather more inspiration I popped over to Borders in town. I wasn't very impressed with their craft magazine selection so accidentally wandered upstairs and, somehow, came out of the store clutching a carrier bag containing these.

I must have blacked out there for a minute ;-)

What a shame. Please note - this was not as extravagant as it seemed. Rather than using grocery money I finished off my Christmas money on these - honest guv!

As I got home the postman arrived with some of our post - amazingly, as he usually delivers it to the house in the next street that happens to have the same number as ours!!

A-ha - been waiting for these:

New needles for my embellisher as it ate the last lot. Is it me or doesn't it look much for £20? It'll be gently gently with these babies. If I break any more I'll have to sell a kidney!!

Then there was another something addressed to me. Something unexpected. I like this sort of unexpected :) A very special package from the lovely Julie.

These are Angelina fibres and I commented on a post on Julie's blog about them. I've never used them but my aunt was telling me just last week that Father Christmas had bought her a lovely book about these fibres.

Thank you so much Julie!!! This was lovely to come home to and I can't wait to try them.


Aren't the colours beautiful?


As the morning has been so full of goodies I thought I'd get in an early post today. I've made a management decision and have booked myself a weekend off blogging. I have a creeping feeling I may have spent rather too much time on the computer this week and my family have had to talk to the back of my head more than any of us would like!

I also have to get some housework done (so that I can ignore it again next week) and a mountain of ironing. Before you tell me off I have taken on board many of your tips from my previous laundry winges and iron a fraction of what I used to. Unfortunately I now just leave it four times longer before I give in and actually do it!!

I shall find a little time to play with my new baby - as yet still un-named, and also try out my new embellisher needles and of course I shall be getting between the sheets with Angelina (the fibres!!! not Mrs Pitt!).

I have a feeling my little folk will want to play too. They have already had a play on 'Baby'. More coasters to add to the growing collection - Minx of course did the pink one :)


I hope you all have a happy, relaxing and crafty weekend and thank you for making this such a great week.

Lesley xxx