What’s on your Worktop Wednesday?

Actually what I am going to show you is ‘what was on my worktop’!  Here’s a few Christmas cards I’ve made this year:

This is a lovely tri-folded card with the middle section folded the other way, and a little dangly snowflake.  It’s from a Stamping Up class by Zoe.  I’ve made several of these for my scrapbooking mates (don’t think they look at my blog, so I’m able to show you!) The snowflake on the front of this one is taken from one of last year’s cards I received.

These are tiny little cards from papermania, only 3” square!  I loved amking these, and have used my Promarkers (which don’t see the light of day very often) to colour in my stamps, plus a liberal sprinkling of glitter.

Garden Party Quilt

Woohoo!  I finished this quilt!  It’s a bit of a story – I bought the fabric in June 2010 at the Sandown Quilt show.  I fancied sewing something pretty so purchased these fat quarters:

And then at the sewing class I used to go to, they ran a class based on this quilt using the gorgeous garden party by Moda

http://fatquartershop.blogspot.com/2010/02/garden-party-moda-quilt-kit-flower.html

Here’s a picture of the original:

 

My background is a little cream pattern on cream, and I have used 3 different patterns.

The buds of the flowers are a clever little foldy thing:

I decided to use green for my sashing, here it is without the final cream border:

I rather like the green sashing, makes it look like trellis don’t you think?

I am a hand quilter not a machine quilter (though it’s on my list of things to learn to do in 2012!), so I decided to quilt flowers around the edge, and then more in the final border.  I did machine quilt ‘in the ditch’ around the sashing.  It looks fabulous on the back!

Some green binding and I’ve called it done!

Here’s the final quilt:

I’m giving it to my Mum for Christmas, shhh don’t tell her!

Feeling Christmassy!

Nothing like a day out to Bath for the Christmas Market to make us feel Christmassy!  We drive along the A27 past Southampton – then up to Salisbury, where we like to stop at the ‘Bacon Bus’ for breakfast. (it’s an old bus converted to cook bacon and eggs that sits in a lay-by just the other side of Salisbury.)  It’s quite a feature of our trips to Bath now!

A slightly blurry picture of Nicholas with Maurice, in front of some of the Christmas market stalls.

All the little huts are beautifully decorated by the stall holders.  You can buy all sorts of gifts, jewellery, sweets, gifts, decorations, cheese, specialist wines and ports, toys and clothes.

There is lots of street music.

and a huge carousel in the main shopping street:

We went in the abbey for a ‘shoppers Christmas carol concert’ which was well attended and great fun to belt out those well known carols!

A well earned rest for a mulled wine!

 

And all too soon the day was over and we were driving back past Southampton on our way home!

Thankful

www.peanuts.com

I really love the idea of the celebration of Thanksgiving that they have in USA.  I wish we had something similar in the UK.  One of my American friends made the point that it is so good to have a moment to reflect on gratitude just before the greed of Christmas.  I love the big family gatherings, and giving thanks for the harvest! 

One year I wrote a gratitude diary every day in November.  Right now I am thinking yet again how grateful I am to be able to lead the life I do!Here’s 10 things I am grateful for right now (in no particular order)

1. My husband, best friend and soul mate
2. My kids, I am so proud of them both!
3. Friday morning coffee with friends
4. That I have a wide variety of friends
5. That I have time and space to create
6. My dog who brings me such joy every single day
7. Good Health of close family
8. The internet to help me feel connected all around the world!
9. Good food and warmth
10. living by the sea, it changes and looks different every day.

What are you grateful for right now?

Shimelle’s Christmas challenges

Over at www.shimelle.com, there has been a whole weekend of Christmas challenges.  Here are some that I had a go at:

Weaving with strips of paper. Thanks to Melissa Mann, I was inspired to make 2 cards and a page for my Christmas Journal.

Cute tags from Mindy Millar.  Think I’ll be making a whole batch of these!

A Merry Christmas banner, inspired by this post by Corrie Jones.  I used up a few old Basic Grey tags I had and made some more!

 

Final challenges on Pretty paper Party included ‘show us your favourite scrapbook project’.  Thought you might like to see this.  I made it quite a few years ago now, when I first started scrapbooking and was researching my Grandad’s world war 1 record.  This LO tells his story.  I love it because of the story it tells, but also because of all the ephemera on it.  I scanned and distressed his attestation paper and a map of Mespotamia (today’s Iraq) where he served his time, as part of the Royal Leicestershire Regiment.  Looking at it now, I overdid it a bit on the distressing!  I think I used tea and coffee!!!  The photos were taken at his training camp at Rugeley in the West Midlands before they sailed to Mespotamia.

And now my thoughts are with my Christmas Journal for 2011.  Last year I made this 7 x 5 album with a kit from Cocoa Daisy.  This year I am going for a 8.5 x 11 album.  More about it later….

Surf’s Up!

It was a brilliant sunny day yesterday, so we walked down to the beach.  The tide was high and the waves were crashing on the breakwaters:

Lyme Regis

We’ve just had a few days holiday down in Dorset, Lyme Regis to be exact.  What a lovely place, even in November!  It is our dream to retire here, we love the coast here and the little towns and the space!

We stayed in a cottage towards the back of the town and followed a lovely walk down the river to the seafront

Looking east from the Cobb:

The beach to the west is where you might find fossils if you are lucky, it’s called the Jurassic Coast.

And here’s what the harbour or Cobb looks like from above:

The book ‘The French Lieutenants Woman’ by John Fowles is set here and I believe was filmed here.  This road leading down to the cobb is named after him.

We visited my friend Cynthia in Bridport and she took us up to Golden Cap, the highest place along the South Coast of England

Here’s Cynthia with her mad dog Millie, who is just adorable at 10 months!  Merlin seemed a little bemused by her bounciness!

Another thing we did was to follow the South Coast path west of Lyme Regis towards Seaton.  It was quite an arduous walk, with small higgledy piggledy paths, lots of ups and downs, tree roots everywhere and steep steps!  Luckily the walk was under trees and we were sheltered from the strong winds.

And finally here’s the sun setting over Charmouth beach.  It was unbelievably early!  Fancy going on holiday after the clocks have gone back!  But we had quite good weather for November really, it wasn’t cold and we saw a fair bit of sunshine.  And I still love Lyme Regis even in November, so it must be the right place for us to retire to!