An Amazing Day

Hello, well yesterday turned out to be a totally special day .
It did not involve the family.
It did not involve any craft activity.Nor any shopping or travel,but it will stay in my memory for many years.
I wasn't planning to blog about this as there are many areas of our daily lives we never mention here.But it turned out to be such a great day I just had to give it a mention.
Back in January one of our bosses at work announced his plan to stage a concert to raise money for a teenage cancer unit at our local hospital.
This received a mixed response!! However it was such a good cause we couldn't really say no.

Many rehearsals later we had a pretty decent version of this....
( if you're not familiar with this song ,keep watching....it gets better)......





....to add to the line-up of dance routines,comedy ,singing etc.

Well I'm glad to say all went well.I'm not a natural performer but it was not too daunting to be in a big group.The lighting meant you couldn't even see the 600+ audience.

Here's me in my habit,trying not to look nervous.....



I don't think I will be getting up on the stage again any time soon ,but sharing all our nerves made it an an amazing team building event.And a great buzz when it was over.Not to mention the £6,000 raised for such a good cause.
Jacquie x

Crochet Cushion

Hello,
Hope you are enjoying the fabulous long,sunny days we have at the moment.
Here are some pictures taken on Monday evening ,whilst at the park.
It was about 7 o'clock and still blissfully warm.........


The boys enjoyed a kick around in the clover ,and I did a little hooking............


Then the goalie decided to play around with my camera and snap a few close ups of flowers.........



I'm loving the wonky ones with his brothers blurry legs in the background.

Fast forward to today and while the boys are at school I've been trying to finish my cushion. I'm actually making two as I thought a pair would be nice .
To speed things up (and cheat a little ) I picked these cushions up in my local charity shop.........


I'm going to attach my crochet to the front,I'm leaving the original crochet underneath as the edging goes really well with my colours.Here is the first one pinned in place.........



Ummmm, not sure about this now.What do you think?
Jacquie x

World Cup Crochet

Hello,
hope you had a great weekend,despite the disappointing football result.
The BM family spent Sunday afternoon round at our friends ,to watch the match and have a BBQ.
I'm not much of a football fan so at the last minute I decided to be brave and take a bag of crochet supplies.This is what I made during the match (and post match postmortem).......


I couldn't take my granny stripe as it was too flippin' hot to sit with anything over my knees,so I decided to start a couple of cushion covers in Cath Kidston colours.I'm using Lucy's summer garden square again as I love this little motif.
I'm so glad I decide to take it along.If I had to sit for a couple of hours pretending to be interested in the football I would have been so frustrated at wasting creative time!!
Sorry to all you footy fans.

Changing the subject a little ,I had a nice surprise in the post on Saturday....




A Thank you card from my lovely bloggy friend Sue.
Back in January this amazing Lady had the idea to use the crafty blog community to start a charity project.
The idea was simple but brilliant.Anyone can crochet (or Knit ) 6" squares and send them to her.She then crochets them together to make blankets for the elderly.

It's such a good cause and making them is great fun. I've only sent 8 squares myself,here are six of them ( forgot to take a pic of the other 2 )........




I mentioned these in my second ever blog post back in march .Sue became my first ever follower, and commenter, as well as giving me technical advise about blogging when I was struggling. So THANK YOU SUE ,you've done so much for ME.

So far Sue has made 15 Blankets,and she's still not fed up so if you want to join in here's the link.


The Picture at the top of this post is a little posy I picked from my garden.Some Lavender,alchemilla and the first of my sweet peas.The have such a strong ,beautiful scent,I wish we had smelly-net!!

Whilst out walking this morning ( before it got too hot to venture out!) I snapped some beautiful Roses which are at their best right now...........




And in my own garden a lovely iris (wonder how long this will last with my three boys kicking a football in the garden,at every opportunity.).........


It was also reassuring to see some busy bees.......


Right oh ,that seems a bit of a mixed up post but I've got to get busy myself now so ill say bye for now. Have a great week
Jacquie x

Crochet update

Hello,
Well my birthday has been and gone.
I'm pleased to say my baking went down well at work.But much more special to me were these lovely cards made by my 3 boys...........




Lots of flowers feature on all three,they know how I love them.But you may have noticed the one on the left (by my youngest) also has a picture of me sat at the computer.Hope he doesn't think I spend all day in blogland !!

I thought you might like an update on my granny stripe .Here it is in the garden today.........



I've done 50 stripes and it measures 56" wide by 45" deep.I'm sure when I last measured the width it was 48" !!I guess the weight of the thing must have made it stretch.
I think I'm over half way .I'm still enjoying it but haven't made as much progress this week as it's very warm to sit with a heavy blanket across your knees .
It's been super warm here today,which is great . I've been enjoying the garden as usual.

Today I noticed my first sweet pea flower,isn't this a gorgeous colour,and it smells divine ............


Also loving this Gazania flower,it's the first time I've tried these.........

Old favourites,busy Lizzie's and geraniums......

Edible goodness...........



And a cute bunny......


Hope you manage to enjoy the weekend,it's a great forecast for the U.K.
Jacquie x

I'll leave you with a couple more G.S.B. images.........

Big Baking Day

Hello,
well on the longest day of the year ,and a particularly nice warm one too ,I have indeed been in the kitchen baking.
Don't feel sorry for me,I wouldn't have wanted to miss it.Don't you just love all the ingredients and equipment in the picture above.
You see ,I do love baking when the mood takes me and today I had a good reason to spend a pleasant afternoon alone in my little kitchen.
Later this week it is my Birthday ( couldn't possibly tell you how old I am,but here's a clue-"Droopy Drawers" !!)
Last week I promised to bring homemade cakes into work tomorrow ,so I'm glad I won't need to disappoint.

I decided to make some Butterfly cakes after seeing Lucys version last week.
Basic sponge cake used to be a big problem for me.They would always turn out flat or dry ,or both!!

That was until a friend gave me her Recipe for "Can't go Wrong Cake".
I've made it a few times now,and it certainly seems to live up to it's name.
So with high hopes for continued success I donned my favourite apron.........





And set to work...Here's how it's done.

1.First warm up your oven.Mines an electric fan and I set it to 180 degrees C.
190 C electric or gas mark 5.

2.Next is the clever bit.Weigh 3 large eggs in their shells.Mine were 200 grams.

3.Weigh out the same amount of margarine,caster sugar,and self raising flour.

4.Break the eggs into a small bowl and whisk with a fork.

5.Using an electric hand whisk,mix the margarine and sugar till light and creamy...



6.Next add half of the egg and a tablespoon of flour.Whisk slowly with the mixer till just Incorporated.



7.Add the rest of the egg and a table spoon of flour and repeat. It may look a little curdled at this stage but don't panic.....



8.Sieve in the rest of the flour and mix in gently with a metal spoon....




9.Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of milk to the mix and fold in.

10.you can now put the mix in 2 round tins and cook for about 25 minutes for a sandwich cake.But today I put a large teaspoon of mix into each paper case .....



11.Put in the oven and check after 10 minutes.Mine took 15 minutes today but it's worth checking regularly so you catch them when they are just golden and spring back when pushed.I'm loving the colourful paper cases in this image....





12.Cool on a wire rack.

You can then decorate as desired or eat plain.I made 52 !! ( that was 2 mixes) so there were plenty for work and home. Here's the finished result......


I followed Lucys instructions for the butterfly bit.
Whilst mine were cooling I actually made some flapjack too.In case anyone doesn't like butterfly cakes.

Here's the recipe.........

Loving the look of the ingredients for these too..........



Especially the golden syrup.I hope they never change this packaging.It' so nostalgic.....



Here's the finished produce cooling nicely........



It's now 5pm and the cakes have been quality tested by 5 boys,mine plus two friends.They have been given the thumbs up.
Suppose I better go back in the kitchen and start their evening meal !!

Have a great week
Jacquie x

Friday Flowers

Hello and Thank you......
Thank you for all your amazing comments on my last post.I was thinking maybe you lovely lot were getting a little fed up of looking at my Granny stripe.
I'm seriously loving this project,as I'm sure you've noticed.It's now up to 40 stripes (yay). Being able to share progress reports here and also on flickr and Ravelry is so great.
All the encouragement we give each other certainly helps me keep up momentum.

Anyway enough about GSB.

As some of you know ,today is my (humongous) shopping day. Morrisons is my closest supermarket and they very cleverly have their cut flower display right at the entrance.I don't usually buy cut flowers during the summer months as it seems a bit extravegant when the garden is looking so lovely.

However.........today some gorgeous Sweet Williams caught my eye.
My late father in law used to grow these in his garden, and cut stems for myself and my two sisters in law.So they are a nice reminder of him.They were so reasonable too.........




Yes £1.80 got me all these beauties.........




As you can see there's no sun here today,just rain. So I really enjoyed playing around arranging these .There were plenty to fill 3 vases. I think they look so happy ..........



The colors are amazing close up.........




You may have noticed a little crochet in these pictures.One of my vases is just a plastic juice bottle I crocheted a cover for last spring.........



I was inspired by Lucy's Jar Jackets.
Another pretty purchase made during my shop was these............



I have a big baking day planned for Monday( barring any more broken bones!!) and a Recipe to share with you.So I hope you have a great weekend ,see you Monday.
Jacquie x

A quick update

Hello,
Just popping by with a quick update.
Things have been a bit up and down in our neck of the woods since I last posted.
On Saturday my Mum in law broke her wrist. So there have been a couple of hospital visits already.
Today I have been helping on a school trip with my youngest. Luckily it was quite local and we were back by 2pm.
Just enough time to enjoy a little hooky time, al fresco.I found a shady spot and made a nice cup of tea ,accompanied by a coconut cake . Bliss..........



After a hectic morning with my group of six and seven year olds ( who were actually very well behaved...phew ) it was so nice to sit under a tree and do some quiet crochet...




It's so relaxing to look at the garden,which is looking lovely at the moment......



And photograph my granny stripe for the umpteenth time.....



Yes it's so pleasant out here I can almost forget about the mountain of housework that I should be doing!!
Jacquie x