In a change from the scheduled program ....

You might remember from a couple of posts back that my next cross stitchy project was going to be the Wildflower piece that Kate recently gifted me the chart for ...... well I'm still planning on starting that but am now taking a little detour on the way.

I have a bit of an OCD thing when it comes to my cross stitch. I can't make myself start a piece until I have absolutely all of the threads I need. Yes, I know this is a bit silly, most of these designs have plenty of colours so it's not like I couldn't get started but somehow I just get all antsy and it makes me uncomfortable if I'm not fully prepared, lol. I have to pick up two colours for the wildflower stitch and I haven't had the opportunity to get to the local craft store yet.

So in a change from the scheduled program I'm going to occupy myself with a little something from the Subversive Stitches book.  Here is the beginning of the border.

I've been playing around with colour.  I'm changing the colours from the ones in the book as I want this to go in my bedroom when it's done.  I started off with the dark blue on the right but decided after stitching a few hearts that it was just too dark and switched to the medium blue at the bottom which I'm much happier with.

The dark blue will get unpicked and then I'll be on my way with this one.  I'm pretty sure that it will only take a few evenings to get done and by that time I'll hopefully have been somewhere to get the threads I need for 'Wildflower'

Happy Days

I'm back, did you miss me?  What a wonderful week I've had in the company of family and friends.  Just what I needed after a tough few weeks at work ...... I'm feeling relaxed and renewed again.

I'm sure I'll be adding more posts about our wonderful week at some point but for now here is a little snap shot.

We spent a fabulous spring day in the Cathedral town of Wells, check out the beautiful blue skies.

I dusted off my Wii and we had some great competitive fun, so so many laughs.  I'd forgotten how much fun a bit of Wii bowling could be!

We spent an amazing day wandering round Oxford seeing the sights, so many beautiful buildings.  I can't wait to go back and explore some more.

We took a trip to Avebury for a wander round the stones and had a fabulous Sunday lunch in the pub there too.

 

Speaking of food .... well we ate far too much of the good stuff over the last week, good job I joined the gym again recently I think :)

And on the evening before James' parents left my Dad also came for a visit and we all spent a wonderful evening at the most fabulous local eaterie ....... a wonderful way to end a perfect few days.

After all that excitement I think a nice quiet weekend in is order.  I'm looking forward to dinner and the movies this evening with my wonderful man but apart from that plenty of rest and relaxation.

Whatever you're up too, hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Cross Stitch loveliness

Blogging might be a bit sporadic from me over the next week. James' parents have come down from Yorkshire to stay with us for a few days so we'll be spending time out and about visiting some local places, eating out and generally having a lovely time :)

In the meantime I'm going to leave you with a quick picture of the lovely cross stitch charts that Kate gifted me recently

The blue notecard was lovely too, I'm thinking that might end up in a little frame on my bedroom wall as it will look lovely in my blue bedroom :)

The Wildflower picture is going to be the next one I work on.  So I need to get busy and get all my threads and fabric together.

I love this part of a project, mostly because I inherited all of my Mum's DMC threads when she passed away so when I have to go rummaging in these boxes it always makes me think of her and the time she used to spend in her chair in the evenings in front of the TV stitching away  ..... happy, special memories.

Love at first sight

Are you all getting tired of me harping on about my thrifting finds yet?

Apologies if you are but I did warn you this is turning in to my new obsession!!  I have two things to show you today.  Check out this coffee table that I picked up.  I spotted it the week before last pay day and had to wait to see if it was still in the shop when I got paid.  It was only £15 but at the end of last month having had 6 weeks of mortage to pay out of my wages I didn't even have £5 to my name let alone £15 :)

Look at all that needlepoint goodness imagine all of the work that went in that piece of stitching.

When you flip the table over you can see that the panel is by Anchor

I hate the colour that the frame has been stained though so I was thinking I'd strip it back and then paint and distress it in maybe grey or white ...... at least that was the original plan.

I couldn't get the glass panel out as it has been nailed in tight and I'm afraid of breaking the glass or the frame of the table so I'm just working on it as is.  Now I'm sanding it back though the wood underneath is looking lovely.  I think I will hold off on the painting and wait until my living room is decorated and then see whether it fits in.

I also bought this lovely mirror. 

I was wandering along in town and one of the charity shops that I like to visit had a big sign saying it was last day of trading :(  Second hand shopping was not on the agenda that day but I went in and the mirror caught my eye.  It was priced up at just £10 so I knew it was coming home with me, when I got to the till to pay the lady behind the desk said 'I'm going to give you that for £5'  she said 'you're the first person that has taken money out of your purse to pay without asking whether things are on discount as we're closing so I'd like to take some money off for you'.  Wow super bargain ... though I did also empty all the change out of my purse into the collection box so I probably gave about £8 in the end. 

The mirror is now hanging in my hallway, which is the darkest space in my flat.  I'm going to paint the surround orange (once I've finished working on the coffee table) I'm hoping that a nice lovely orange flower hanging up just inside the door will brighten the hallway up a bit :)

Play day

On Sunday I had a nice lazy day in front of the TV with my yarn and hook. You might remember back here that I said I want to make some tie-backs for the curtains in my living room.

So I figured it was high time that I got round to playing. I had a bunch of magazines and patterns for inspiration and just sat down and hooked.

The results of my play time ... a whole bunch of flowers, leaves and butterfly shapes.

A while a go I had picked out some wall paper that I wanted to use on a feature wall in the room which was mainly green in pattern, but I found something else recently in the Laura Ashley sale that worked out a while bunch cheaper and I really loved too.  You can see it here.  It has a fair bit of pink in it so I thought I might go with pink butterflies.

By the end of Sunday I thought I had it all worked out.  I'd go with some pink butterflies from a pattern in one of the magazines and some leaves and flowers from these tutorials on Attic24 blog.  All attached to a nice green chord something like this .....

But looking at it again today I'm now not so sure.  I like the flowers and leaves made in that thrift store yarn that I bought a few weeks ago, I think they look nice against the green, but I'm unsure about the pink butterflies.  Or maybe it's the butterflies I like against the green chord and not the leave and flower........ I think I've got that thing, you know when you've been looking at something for so long you can't figure out what's right anymore, lol.  Maybe I need some more playtime.................

Not everything is cheaper online

I was out and about in town yesterday and wandered in to the local bookstore. On their shelves I found this book

I'm sure many of you have seen or heard about this online, I certainly had and had found the concept quite amusing.  So I picked it up and thought about buying it as a little Easter treat to myself.  It's a small hardback book and was priced up at £8.99.  Not a huge amount of money but not a total bargain either so I put it back on the shelf thinking I'd take a look online as it was likely to be a few pounds cheaper.

So got home and went on Amazon to find that the cheapest secondhand price for this book was £25, and there were sellers listing it as new for £90.  I nearly fell off the chair!  So straight back down to the bookshop I went (I'm only 10 minutes walk away) and promptly picked it off the shelf again.

Moral of the story I will never ever again assume that things will always be cheaper on line, research will be done before making future purchases when buying new!!

Preparing for a lazy day

The clocks changed last night so we're now in British Summertime and actually the sun is shining out there for a change, though it is still bitterly cold. I had a nice lovely lie in this morning so I'm only just up and functioning, but I'm not planning on doing a lot just settling down for a lovely lazy day.

There will be chocolate consumption a plenty. I showed you the little Easter treat that I put together for James in my post on Friday, this is the lovely chocolateness that I received in return.

Some chocolate romance

And I love the beautiful decoration on the egg, it's going to be a shame to break that up and eat it .... but I'm sure I'll manage.

James is going to make me a nice roast dinner too, so you'll mostly find me snuggled on the sofa watching some TV, catching up on some blog reading and there will be some crochet thrown in there for good measure too.

Hope you all have a wonderful, peaceful Sunday xx

'Cor blimey it's cold in the Cotswolds

The week before last James and I had the chance to spend a lovely day out in the Cotswolds. We're very lucky to live on the edge of such a beautiful part of the country.

First stop Bourton-on-the-water.  Such a pretty little village with river running through.

I can tell you it was freezing cold out so after a good wander round the village looking at all of the lovely buildings it was time to warm up with a cup of tea and a slice of cake. I so need to get myself a teapot and some sugar lumps so I can recreate this yummy senario in my home every day :)

Refuelled on cake we decided to go to one of the visitor attractions in the village, Birdland  We had such a fabulous time trying to speak to the birds, oh my we laughed until frozen tears rolled down our faces.

These Kookaburras were just amazing. 

There was a little sign on their enclosure, suggesting that if you whistle they might just start calling to you.  So a whistling James went ....

And oh boy was a racket these guys made, it was the strangest sound, just as though they were laughing with (or most likely at) us!

We decided to try and pose with the penguins ..... well we managed to get us but the penguins are just little blobs in the background which wasn't quite the plan!  I love this shot of us together though cold but happy.

Of course there were many more gorgeous feathered friends to enjoy...

Snowy Owl

Flamingos ....

They were all necks, beaks and legs :)

A golden phesant, giving me the evil eye for pointing the lens in his direction!

The Pelicans had different techniques for trying to combat the cold..... a bit of hiding

or the puff the feathers out technique :)

More lovely owls

And we couldn't resist going back to the penguins

After all the wandering in the cold we decided to go along to another village Moreton-In-Marsh in search of some warmth.  My darling man treated me to a fabulous lunch in front of the fire ..... the perfect way to end our adventure before heading home.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter weekend you guys!

Here in the UK we have a nice long weekend off work, so no work for me now until Tuesday. Happy Days.  I don't have any particular plans, after another terrible week at work I think I'm going to be mooching around the flat reading and stitching and generally having a nice chilled out time.

Do you like my little knitted Easter chicks?  You might remember I mentioned back here that I'd picked up the knitting needles again.  These guys came together so quickly and I just smiled all the way through knitting them up.  I was going to provide you with a link as they were a free pattern on the Deramores website but they seem to have taken the link down, or at least I couldn't find it :(  If you are a knit or crochet fan though I would recommend their facebook page as they have links to lots of cool free patterns of all kinds.

Did you notice the lovely chocolatey goodness in the photos too?  This is my bit of Easter fun for James.  I decide that a chocolate egg in a box was just a bit too boring, so I picked up a really cheap glass dish at one of the charity shops, you know the kind you use to put nibbles in, they have lots of different compartments.  I then raided the Lindt shop at the local outlet village and filled up the dish with eggs, chicks, rabbits and carrots all of the chocolate kind.  I hope he likes it!

Before I go I'm just going to share with you a picture of my absolute favourite thrift shop find, my dresser.  You might have noticed glimpses of it in recent photos here.  This was the first piece of furniture I bought after getting the keys to my flat.  James thinks I'm crazy .... I still don't have a proper bed, washing machine, table ..... the list goes on, but I'm so in love with this piece that I don't care if there are more practical things I should have bought first.

I paid £80 for this at a local charity shop.  It's in amazing condition.  My original plan was to paint it, but this colour has really grown on me and when I decorate the living room it will be quite light colours so I think a bit of dark wood in the corner will look really nice.  I guess I'll make my final decision when the decorating is done.

Vintage Loveliness

I was having a little rummage around in one of the local charity shops this weekend and imagine how my heart skipped a beat when I found this lovely piece of vintage embroidery tucked away in a basket of pictures and frames.

Isn't it just adorable?  It's stitched on linen.  The linen has a few stains, but I'm hoping that I might be able to find some help online which will advise me on a way to get it cleaned up without doing too much damage.  Any one of my lovely blog readers have any tips?

The majority of the picture is made up of cross stitch with a few long stitches on the cute little blue birds.  It's been shoved in a clip frame but hopefully I can get it cleaned up and put in something a bit grander.

At the same shop I picked up these two unusual box frames.

I'm planning on removing the dried flower arrangements, and probably painting them and then I'm thinking I might work on a couple of new embroidery pieces of my own to fill them up with.

Before I go I'm going to tell you how much I spend on these 3 lovelies .... you might want to sit down for this......... they set me back a grand total of £1.50.  Can you believe I got that embroidery piece for 50p, unbelievable really when you consider how many hours work will have gone in to it.

What a contrary being am I

When I was a kid I spent a whole lot of my time wishing I could be a grown up. There seemed to be so many things that I couldn't do because I wasn't old enough, clever enough or didn't have my own money. Now I'm grown up I seem to be spending a lot of time hankering after my childhood. What a contrary being I am.

Take my kitchen for example ... I've spent the last few weeks collecting this set of soup bowls while browsing the local second hand stores.

We had a set of these when I was growing up and they immediately make me think of my childhood.  It took me a little while to collect the set, for some reason the onion soup and scotch broth bowls were everywhere but the others were more tricky to come by.  I'm thinking that maybe onion soup and scotch broth weren't so popular as the other soups, therefore got used less and avoided getting broken and chipped.

Now the soup bowls have been collected I'm going to be on the hunt for something else.  We had this fabulous and funky set of plates in our house when I was a kid.

So far I haven't been lucky enough to come across any.  An online search has helped me find out that this is a set by Washington pottery called 'beefeater'  I've seen a few on online auction sites but generally they are being listed at around £10 a plate which is just too steep for me at the moment.  I'll keep hanging on in there for now in the hope that I might come across a plate here and there ... we'll see.

The same company also made a set of fish themed plates 'aquarius' they're called so I might have to keep an eye out for those too.  Let's hope I get some luck and find some soon :)

Take Time finished

The tea cups cross stitch is finished :)

Not the best picture I'll grant you, we've had snow again this weekend and the skies are very grey and the light is very dull.

I really enjoyed stitching this one up.  It had a nice variety of stitches so a bit more varied than the average cross stitch and a bit of beading thrown in for good measure too.

Now all that's left to do is find the perfect frame.  I have an idea in my head of what I think that it, but I'm going to try and pick up a frame thrifting so it could be a while before I find the perfect thing .... but that's ok I don't mind waiting.

If you're in snowy climes this weekend, I hope you're managing to keep nice and warm x

Handmade accents

So I'm sure you've probably got the gist that I am mostly going to be kitting out my new home with second hand bits and pieces. This is a conscious choice as I think it's great to recycle and give unwanted things a new home, and the added bonus is it helps a lot when you are trying to do things on a budget.

But of course I'm as passionate about handmade as I am recycled, so when I have a few spare pennies or I feel like a treat I will be splashing out on some handmade pieces here and there. So I thought I might share the few things that I've bought in recent weeks.

First off this lovely handmade ceramic salt pig for my kitchen.

Every Sunday there is a farmers market at the Swindon Outlet Village.  A few weeks ago I was stood admiring the wares of a local potter and fell in love with the cute little salt pigs he had on display.  I didn't like the colours of the ones he had but I liked another range in lovely blue shades, and he offered to make me exactly what I wanted.  Fast forward a couple of weeks and voila the lovely piece above now sits pride of place on my kitchen work top.

Next up a beautiful stitched wall hanging that I fell in love with over at Terri's page

I've know Terri via blogging pretty much since I started blogging which is many moons ago now.  Her work is always so lovely, and I just knew this little bird had to fly over the pond and come live on my bedroom wall.  My photo does not do this piece justice as I took it at night so the light was crummy, but I'm sure if you have a look around Terri's blog you'll find a better picture.

Finally another piece of wall art.  Unfortunately I have no idea who the maker is, this was one of my thrifting finds.

This gorgeous needlepoint piece is huge.  It's been well framed in this gorgeous heavy wood frame.  I couldn't believe it when I came across this in a charity shop for just £5 what an amazing bargain for all that hand stitched loveliness.  Trees and the colour orange are two of my favourite things so there was no way I was leaving the shop without it.

How about you?  Have you bought anything handmade recently, what was it and what made you fall in love with it?  :)