Memo, Mail & Me: It's Monday November 13th

I have been meaning to post more regularly on my blog for a while, and what better motivator than joining in with Memo, Mail & Me on Patio Postcards blog.

Christmas preparations are well under way here.  I like to be as organised as possible before December starts.  So far, I have started to make some gifts for friends (more on these later), and have bought my Christmas cake ingredients.  Then yesterday we went to a big Marks and Spence store nearby and bought a few gifts.

In the mail I received these cute vintage children's patterns.  I am intending to frame some of them and sell them on my Etsy shop.  I have been procrastinating on this and am therefore sadly a bit late for this Christmas!

  

This morning I have been out for a walk around some local gardens and coffee with my oldest friend (that is, the friend I have known for the longest time, not that she is old!).  We met at high school, so have known each other over 40 years!  She is a really keen photographer, so we wandered around slowly and took loads of photos.  There is still a little bit of autumn colour around, although it has not been wonderful this year.

  

1970s!

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Yesterday was our wedding anniversary - 39 years!  So, appropriately as we were married in the 1970s we went to see a concert with 1970s popstars!  'Legends Live 2017' at the Brighton Centre was fantastic. 

First was Hot Chocolate - it is surprising how many hits they had!  Their 'new' lead singer was very good and sounded like Errol Brown. The whole audience got on their feet when they sang 'You Sexy Thing'! 

Then the Osmonds - just Merrill, Jay and Jimmy. Pleased to see Jimmy as he is very well known over here. They came on blasting out 'Crazy Horses', brilliant! Their performance was perhaps a little clinical, they might slightly overdo the professionalism, but still very enjoyable.  I must admit that the Osmonds were not really my cup of tea back in the 1970s, so I was surprised to find myself seeing them play live!

After an interval David Essex came on. He is 70 now but can still sing! (A lot of the ladies were there for him, when he sang 'Do you want to be my wife?' all the ladies in the audience shouted YES!) His best song was 'Oh What A Circus' from Evita. He is a brilliant musical singer! 

The finale was Suzi Quatro. She wore her tight fitting leather suit, and belted out her songs for all she was worth! She did have to work hard to get audience participation, maybe a lot of people were there for the Osmonds and David Essex really.

We have spent the year going to live music events from as many different genres as we can find, more on this in a later blog post.  This event was a lot of fun, but maybe not the best musically speaking!

Me Made May

I participated in Me Made May again this year .  I wore Me Made clothes each day and shared pictures of myself on Instagram.

I am a bit late, but here are my thoughts on a fantastic month of wearing, photographing, Instagramming my me-made clothes.

I love using the selfie timer on my phone!  I staged my photos in several venues:

my bedroom

outside in the garden

in the kitchen

I wore mostly different clothes each day, really because I wanted to try everything I have made rather than that be my normal routine.  There were things I wore more than once (Cleo pinafore dress and brown shorts), and there were things I didn't wear at all.


I made lots of connections on Instagram.  I am now following lots of 'new-to-me' sewists, and have new followers myself.  I love Instagram!

May is a great month to choose for a 'Me-Made' month as the weather usually improves through the month, and here in the UK we are putting away our Winter clothes getting out our Summer wardrobe by the end of the month.


Looking at me 'Me Made Wardrobe' I realise that I sew with lovely colourful patterned fabric.  I am really happy when I open my wardrobe doors now and see the colour in there.  But... if I want to wear all 'Me-Made' I should sew some plain coloured basics, eg jeans, skirts, t-shirts to go with it all.   I know that I am not alone in this - I see this in most reviews I have read!




I have had jeans on my to-sew list for a while, in fact, the brown shorts are a toile for a good fit.


I show cased my most recent makes, my second Tiramisu dress from Cake Patterns , and a maxi dress from New Look 6280



I also wore some refashioned and pre-owned items, such as these brown trousers (bought from a charity shop and altered to fit) and this corduroy jacket from eBay.

I can't wait until next year!

Take Three Thursday

Linking up with Patio Postcards for a photography meme.  The idea is to take 3 photographs that are linked in some way.  Here's 3 I took on my dog walk yesterday up to Highdown Hill.  I love walking along paths through trees in the Spring with the dappled sunlight and bright fresh greens

Making cards with 'One Page Wonder'

Have you seen this method of cardmaking?  You take one sheet of double sided paper and cut it up as per a template, and use the pieces to make lots of cards.  Here it is on Pinterest.

We tried it at our Christmas crop with a 6 x 6 paper, and each made 4 cards, which we then gave to each other.  This template gave sketches for placement of the pieces of paper.  You can then add your own embellishments and sentiments.

We really enjoyed that, so we decided to big things up a bit and go for a 12 x 12 sheet of paper, and we used this template.

 I used a sheet from a stack of papers from Studio Calico, called Sundrifter.  This sheet is Pocahontas.   It has feathers on one side and is pink with polka dots on the other.  You can see that I favoured the feather side!   I loved the look of the cards where the papers had been matted, so found a pack of coloured papers that I had bought from the Range, which as it happened looked beautiful with this paper!  I made 16 cards this time.

 I borrowed a feather die, and cut several feathers from the plain papers.  Some have a 'Happy Birthday' sentiment, some I left plain so I can use them for another occasion.

I love how they turned out!  I haven't made any cards for a long time, so now I have a nice pile to choose from when I need one.  I think I will do this at Christmas - just got to find a nice double sided Christmas paper.

New Camera, New Inspiration!

Two posts in a week!  Can you believe it!!

I am back to report that I have a new camera, and I am all inspired to take more photos again!  My old Nikon SLR is over 10 years old now, (and it was an old model when we bought it!), and is so heavy to lug around over my shoulder.   I wanted a lighter camera that was a bit better than a 'point and shoot'. My new phone has a fairly decent camera for that.  So we went into Jessops, and had a really lovely assistant who spent ages with us looking at the small mirrorless cameras.  I chose the Panasonic LX100, as it has a decent size sensor, and lots of dials and buttons for manual adjustment.  It looks a bit retro in the silver too!

It has its first outing up to London on my birthday on a really sunny Sunday in March.  We  were headed for lunch in the Shard!  Here's some photos:

The Shard is the tallest building in London.  We were headed for the 32nd floor for the restaurant, about half way up.

We were so lucky with the weather!  Bright, sunny and clear.  Here's a view towards the financial district with the 'walkie talkie' and the 'gherkin', other iconic buildings.

Looking to the East, with Tower Bridge in the foreground, and Canary Wharf in the background.

That is St Paul's Cathedral in the centre of the photo.

We had a lovely lunch, lovely food, well presented and brilliant service.   I thoroughly recommend the restaurant.  It was so lovely to spend the day with my family on a day out!

From left ro right, Danny (Lucy's boyfriend), Lucy, Nicholas and Maurice.

Finally, here's me and Maurice by Tower Bridge.  

So now I am all inspired again, can you suggest photo memes or challenges that I can join in and post on  my blog?