On my Windowsill

Hello Lovelies,
Yesterday was grey and cold with almost constant rain. It scuppered plans I had to photograph a few things I wanted to share with you lovelies. I also need to take pictures of the pages of my Nature Notes book for my December post ....I've already uploaded the outdoor pictures of my own...Brrrrr...makes me cold looking at them.

So in the evening I decided to share something much more cozy, my kitchen windowsill :0) My little side kitchen only has a view of the wheely bins and next doors wall so the darkness is actually quite beneficial.

Can you see the bulbs...they are the things I really wanted to show you . My Amaryllis is finally getting close to flowering ........

It's later than last year but I am pleased and rather surprised it survived at all . It's been outdoors all summer and almost forgotten about completely ,but happily I noticed signs of life  at the end of October and brought it indoors. Here 's how it looked at the beginning of November.........

Hopefully it will look like this again soon :0)


Some more eagerly awaited bulbs are these little Narsissi (tete a tete ). I picked  them up for £1 in the supermarket yesterday and popped them straight into my rather lovely, buttermilk yellow,thrifted "woods wear" jug .
I do enjoy the anticipation of indoor bulbs so much . I think I would rather buy them and wait than buy flowers that are already at their best . It's just lovely walking into the room in the morning or after work and seeing them in bloom for the first time. Plus I can plant them out after they fade to look lovely in the garden next year...........

That was my intention , last winter , with these Hyacinths .I showed you these in my previous post but they are looking even better now. Somehow they also got forgotten but happily they are also flowering for a second year in the same pot. The flower heads are a bit smaller but they still smell fabulous..............

And the pale lilac flowers are so pretty....spring is still a long way away but there's a little taste of the delights to come on my kitchen windowsill :0).........

Hope you enjoy the last day of 2011. Thank you all for visiting this year...you are the best. Wishing you all a Happy ,Creative, 2012.
Jacquie x

This Christmas

Hello lovelies ,
What's your favourite part of Christmas? I think mine is Christmas eve, when all the decorations are looking lovely and the children's anticipation is infectious. This year I noticed the wonderful seasonal colours in the treats laid out on our coffee table... Quality Street are traditional in the BM household...they taste yummy and I just love the colours of the wrappers.
 I was very happy to pick up these clementines locally...I adore the fabulous shiny fruit in their cute little wooden box .
  Another tradition is nuts in shells...mostly because they remind me of my childhood Christmases .......

Over on the sofa  the Christmas cushion cover I made a couple of years ago was making me smile...it could be the robins slightly odd looking Santa hat ....never the less , I still love it .....it was inspired by a Christmas card brought home by one of my boys and simply appliqued onto a plain cover I already had.......

Sadly I didn't have much time to sit down as baking was required for our Christmas eve visitors. Along with mince pies and fairy cakes I decided to make a  cake .
Not your traditional Christmas cake (which I love, but the boys are not keen on) but yummy chocolate cake . I added some red,white and green sprinkles and my mums old cake decorations to make it look more festive......

I was thinking about cuckoos wonderful baking when I finished this ...that girl is an amazing cake decorator ( scroll down this post to see her beautiful cake )....mine looks so basic in comparison, but then I realised I could borrow something Id seen on her wonderful cake .......a fun banner...yes!! no cake decorating skill required:0)  
I literally threw this together in less that ten minutes. I love it when inspiration strikes and you end up with something similar to what popped into your minds eye with very little effort.......just a couple of kebab sticks, some yarn ,ready made pompoms,and some coloured paper. I was going to write the letters on the little triangles but came across a stars alphabet I printed  ages ago ( from here ) and they looked perfect .......

The pompoms were threaded onto the yarn with a large needle and the boys reminded me to add two dots above the E ......

                                                                            LOVE IT :0)


Something I'm also loving is my Pay-it-forward gift sent to me by ANDAMENTO. Isn't the wrapping lovely.............

I was very good and waited till Christmas day to open it, only to find lots of individually wrapped items...

Inside were these lovely things........

No less than three tree decorations , a pretty glass magnet, mulled wine sachet , chocolate coins , and a little red box containing this tiny  Nativity scene........

I love it all , thank you :0)
I now have a year to make three parcels of my own to pass onto any lovely bloggers who are willing to do the same.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I do love it ,but I will admit to being ever so slightly relieved  when it's over . Still, the decorations will be staying till new year and I've found another spot for my impromptu cake banner...it's now an impromptu hyacinth banner ......

Jacquie x

A Christmas Mouse and Some Luxury Yarn

Hello Lovelies,
Hope you are feeling prepared for Christmas....I am...ish !! still some wrapping to do , one or two prezzies to buy , a food shop and lots of housework to do.....sigh.
Still , I know we are very lucky to have extended family close by  to visit , and who visit us ,over the Christmas period.

 As well as foodie goodies I like to take a small lasting gift when visiting , I generally   crochet an ornament for their tree. I posted about last years here. The year before that ( pre blog ) I made this cute reindeer.Both such great patterns  I was struggling to come up with something as cute this year.
 Thankfully spotting Dawns sweet little mouse , with a link to the free pattern , gave me this years ornament, Here he is, temporarily living on my little conservatory  tree.........

Like last year, the dark weather has forced me to take him into the garden to get a clear photo.......

I think his face turned out O.K. ....always the trickiest bit........

He has a cute tail and in his little paw he is carrying a thank you message ......

I love having a stash of yarn in just about every colour so that I can easily complete a little project like this without having to venture out to the shops.Indeed I have LOADS  of yarn around the house. There's all kinds of Acrylic yarn...some nicer than others . I am so grateful for the quality  acrylic yarn that makes my hobby so affordable.
 I also have quite a bit of cotton which I love ,but I don't have any "luxury" yarn. By luxury I mean cashmere or merino wool .

 I have always been put off by the price but I loved Heather's idea of building a stash slowly. Buying the odd ball or two as a treat or asking for some as a gift at Christmas or Birthday times. Yes , this could be a way for me to build a stash ...to be used for an ,as yet undecided, special  project.
Ooooh what a looooverly thought :0)     2012 could be the year of my first "Luxury " project !!

I'm excited to tell you lovelies that yesterday I made a start on that stash building ...yipee.
 Outside my LYS I spotted some luxury yarns reduced to £2 a ball . A luxury bargain.....what a great way to start. It will made further purchases at full price a little easier to smile about :0)...........

The yarn I got was mostly Sirdar Sublime . It's a  gorgeously soft  blend of merino, silk and cashmere. I also ended up with one ball of Rowan  Cashsoft Baby DK which is merino, micro fibre and cashmere.
Being new to using these blends I'm hoping it will be O.K. to combine then in one project but I'd love some advice from you lovelies on this subject .

Thank you all for your comments on my latest makes ...they really make my day:0) and in case I don't get time to post again before Christmas day....here's wishing you all a very HAPPY CHRISTMAS 
Jacquie x

Little Red Beads

Hello Lovelies,
a couple of weeks ago I picked up these little red wooden beads....aren't they gorgeous. There were loads of larger beads to choose from in the craft shop but I knew which lovely project I needed these for.......berries to go with some Attic 24 Holly leaves I wanted to make using Lucy's tutorial.......

I was not sure what I was going to do with crochet holly at that point, but inspiration usually strikes at some stage.
Once I got the beads home and looked at them again I realised they were actually a tad on the large side .......

Ummmmmmmmm         11mm ...ooops. Never mind . I thought if I made the holly leaves using double knitting yarn they would hopefully turn out big enough to look ok with my giant berries......thankfully I think they just about do.............

And , also thankfully, inspiration did strike about what to do with that fab holly.......

put it on top of a crochet Christmas pudding decoration to hang on the tree :0) Weeeeeeee, pretty cute and festive don't you think ?

The only problem was those big holly leaves , caused by the big "berries" , needed a similarly large pudding to sit on ......so I didn't follow a pattern , just guestimated the size and made up the pattern as I went along. I'm really pleased with how it came out , especially the way the brandy sauce is running down the sides . The only problem being it turned out even bigger than I planned......

What a whopper , here it is next to a standard sized bauble ......

Huuuuge !! It does look a bit ridiculously  large but that just makes me chuckle and wonder how many other Christmas trees have an almost life size pudding hanging from their branches ........

And I still love those beads with Lucy's fab Holly, thanks so much for the wonderful tutorial Lucy......

Enjoy your Sunday lovelies
Jacquie x

Festive Colours

Hello Lovelies,
 on Friday I had an enforced day at home as one of my boys was off school poorly, so I decided to get the decorations out of the loft and get on with decorating the house. Master BM was able to help and we spend a pleasant morning building and trimming the tree.I love opening the boxes of decorations . This one really made me smile ....with it's mix of sentimental decorations . There are knitted characters, thrifted vintage baubles and even holiday souvenirs. But the most precious ones to me are those made  by the boys when they were very young ........

Other sentimental characters I'm pleased to get reacquainted with include this pair.......

My Nanna made these sweet Eskimos which always sit at the bottom of our tree......Nanna was a complete yarn addict and I've written about her before HERE.
We have so many decorations I have to be strict with myself and only add one more each year ( of the bought variety anyway ....hand made is fine :0)) . This year I treated myself to this colourful little sign. I love it's stripes and spots and touch of glitter..........

Something else with a touch of glitter that I'm loving is this cute piece of artwork done by my youngest. This is proudly displayed in my front room........

Another talented member of my family , apart from my Nanna and sons ,is my own lovely Mum. I have shared some of her beautiful paintings with you lovelies before. I really need to do a post dedicated to them as I'm lucky enough to have loads. Here is her latest gift to me ..........

Ooooh I love it , my favourite hog weed covered in pretty snow and the cutest Robin ....it's gorgeous ...THANK YOU mum :0)

I've just realised you can peek another of Mum's paintings ( a  portrait of our late cats " Henry and George") in this next shot of my wonderful candle bridge ...we have had this a few years and I love this too........

Last night when it was dark I played around trying to get a good shot of our tree, not easy . This one is O.K. I think....

Next I took a photo in macro to achieve this effect . It's not the best I've seen in blogland but I was pretty pleased with the result. It reminds me of when you screw up your eyes to see if the lights are evenly spaced...or is it just me who does this..........

I also tried the "firework " setting on my simple camera . The best results came from purposely moving the camera a little ........interesting effect.......

The boys thought this looked like fun and wanted to try.........this is what their scarily enthusiastic camera moving made..........

I actually REALLY like these :0)


Finally , I'm sorry this has turned into a rather long post, I've just got to show you my archway decoration. It goes over the doorway between our lounge and dining room. I bought this artificial greenery many years ago . It's been decorated in lots of  different ways but the last couple of years  it's just been red and white with white lights . I love this look. I've made quite a few of the decorations on here , like the crochet snowflakes and gingham hearts. There's also quite a few felt bit and bobs I made in red and white . .....

Hope you are keeping warm if you are in the U.K.
I'm glad to be staying indoors with the pretty lights and decorations
Jacquie x

November Nature Notes

Hello Lovelies ,
 here I am at my penultimate Nature notes post. If you are not familiar with these there's an explanation  when I started these posts back in January HERE  .

On dull day November can feel rather drab and boring. But I hope you will agree Edith's illustrations have a certain charm about them that is rather special and so does November. I do love the changing seasons and this year I have become rather fond of Autumn ....not something I have really  felt before.I'm sure writing these posts has helped open my eyes to the beautiful things this time of year has to offer.

Here are Edith's illustrations for the month of November..........

Seed heads of hog weed ....love this painting ......

Some interesting facts from the book .......

Here are my own images from last month.....I love the hog weed and the dock seed in the fore ground of this picture...........

These images were taken at the beginning of the month and you can see some trees were still green , there was also a very green crop growing in the field..........

I've included the picture as I love the gate, worn smooth by all the walkers passing through onto the foot path across the fields..........

Not many flowers to be seen this month but plenty of Fungi ..........

Rose hips ........

And Berries .....

Ducks on the lake.........

 I wonder why I've never noticed these conifers change colour before?  I was rather puzzled as I presumed all conifers were evergreen . Seems that they are not( took me a long time to realise this ...did anybody else think the same ? ) and I think these are Larch...........

Short days and low light levels can be rather depressing but I'm consoling myself that it's less that two weeks to the shortest day now ...........

Here are some pictures from the end of November..........

Some trees are bare but others were still looking gorgeous.........

Love the colour of this Beech hedge and the gentle , watery sun casting the faintest of shadows ........

Hope you enjoyed this belated Nature Notes post.

Have a great weekend .
Jacquie x