Cupcake Anyone?

Hello. What a weekend! (weather wise) Yesterday it rained all day. Not just drippy droppy rain, but gusty, not fit to send the dog out, rain. In fact it rained so much child #2 was unable to go to a friends house for a sleep over, as the roads were flooded and the house was cut off. I did the only sensible thing and hibernated in front of the fire all day with some crocheting.

Then today, the total opposite. Glorious autumn sunshine. We were outside like a shot! A little jaunt to take these embroidered hearts to the Fatsheep shop.

Off we headed over the hills

And we weren't disappointed.

The views were breathtaking.

Glorious views!

Talking of making 'stuff '.

This week I've been experimenting with cupcakes.

Not real ones. NO, these are much better, they're totally calorie free!


It has nothing to do with the fact that I start my diet on Monday.


HONESTLY!

The reason I've made them is that I have a lovely cake plate in the the kitchen that's just calling out for cupcakes.

I've also got a rather grand, glass domed, cake plate...hmm...maybe I'll have to make a big cake for that one.

A Very Special Day.

Today is a very special day.

Today my wonderful man and I celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.

I know what you're thinking and yes I was a child bride! (well almost)

I am so lucky to have found such a wonderful man to share my life with. I have two friends who have recently lost their partners. Both similar age to me, one who's husband tragically died a few weeks ago leaving 3 children and the other who's partner of many years ended the relationship a few months ago. I think of these two lovely ladies and I am sooo thankful for what I have.

We're sat here together on the sofa while he works from home today. He with his laptop and me with mine in companionable silence. Manky cat is curled up in front of the fire, sneaky dog is woofing in her sleep, paws twitching back and forth. Five more minutes and the children will come bursting through the front door from school.

I am so happy.

I found this little passage to write in the card I gave him. They're not my words but they squeezed my heart when I read them, so I figured that was the next best thing.

Whenever I look into your eyes I see all that love has to give: passion, peace, compassion, desire, trust and respect. You are always within me where ever I go. Forever soul mates for life, husband and wife.

Thank you Darling for sharing your life with me. x

A little of what you fancy

Don't they say 'a little of what you fancy does you good!' or did I just make that up? Anyway it sounds good.

I was perusing the latest Cath Kidston brochure when I spotted these beeeeeaaaautiful pyjamas and dressing gown. My eyes twinkled, my heart gave a little jump and my mouth drooled, just a little. Then I spotted the price. My eyes watered, my heart nearly stopped and my mouth dropped down to my boots! But it was too late, I was already hopelessly in love.

Now usually a purchase of this financial amount takes me weeks of umming and aaahing, much proing and conning, but before I knew it my little fingers had tippy tapped on the computer and hey presto, I was the proud owner of not just a dressing gown and pyjamas, but my fingers had also managed to order a couple of metres of Rose Sprig cotton duck too! (naughty fingers!)

They are so soft and cosy and the pj bottoms are unusually long (which is great for me as they usually look like they've been cropped!) lets hope they don't shrink. Each item came prettily tied up with yards of CK tape, which I eagerly gathered up, mind racing 'what can I use this for?' Well I soon had an answer. I had to make a hanging loop for the dressing gown with it, as CK neglected to provided one. Thinking about it, she probably does it on purpose so that people like me feel they've got a use for their yardage of tape! Yep. That'll be it.

The rose sprig fabric is just scrummy, but I must admit my ignorance here. I didn't know what cotton duck was and now I have it, it's a lot heavier than I was expecting. So I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it. I tried it as a table cloth on the kitchen table, but it didn't look right. All suggestions would be welcome.

Time to get ready for bed now. Oh the pleasure, I've never looked so co-ordinated at bedtime! Just incase my wonderful man drops in... they sell matching red slippers (size 6).

night, night. x

Wedding Castle

It's 8:43am. I'm trying to write this before I go to work, because when I write my blog in an evening I'm sooo darn tired; and that means, quite frankly, you're not getting the best of me. When I go back and read some of my old posts, it makes me realise how concise, short and to the point they are. Not that I want to waffle you understand, but I want you to get to know me, my personality. This is a double edge sword of course, you may not like me deep down, but I feel I'm not being true to myself. Gosh, that's all starting to sound very deep. (and deep I'm not) I'm tempted to go back and delete this whole paragraph now. Nope, I'm gonna be brave.

So here's to the new me or the real me anyway ( I'll try my best)

Now I must tell you all, of my fantastic weekend. On Saturday morning wonderful man and I said goodbye to our children (my lovely parents had travelled up 120 miles to look after them for us) and set off for Scotland.

Neither of us have ever been to Scotland before and to be honest I wasn't sure we were going to get there this time as either, as the destination wonderful man had typed into the computer was only the nearest large town, not the remote castle we were headed for! But hey ho, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the scenery was fabulous. WM was in a good mood, which was surprising really as we were late setting off and I hadn't zipped up the suitcase in the hall way. Yep you guessed it, he picked it up and every thing fell out! Whoops! (yes he really is a wonderful man)

Two hours and several text messages requesting directions later and we arrived here

This is Comlongon Castle near Dumfries. The venue for the wedding of my best friends sister.

Isn't it beautiful? This is the view from the grounds at the back. The weather behaved itself beautifully. Just as well really, as the wedding ceremony took place in the garden under a lovely old tree.

Yep. That's me. In THE dress. You know the one, the dress that was impossible to find matching accessories for!!!

The bride was radiant, the groom very handsome in his kilt, the vicar was funny

and the bridesmaids look gorgeous in their purple gowns. Here I am with my best friend. We've been best friends since the age of 13 and practically lived in each others pocket through our teenage years. Consequently I feel like one of the family and have always been treated that way. I feel truly privileged to have been part of their special celebration, and I love them all deeply.

Here's the bride flashing the garter I made for her. Saucy minx!

And here are the shoes I had to dye and the bag I made. By the early hours of the morning my stockings had a lovely greeny blue tinge to them, but by then nobody cared, least of all me.

No, I had a smashing time.

So wonderful man and I would just like to wish the bride and groom a future full love and happiness. Oh! and we also wish they would book the castle for their first wedding anniversary, and invite all their guests back again to celebrate it with them... I'll be the first there!

I must just tell you all, that its now 8:15pm; So much for my early morning blogging, needless to say, I was late for work!

I'll finish with some pics of the castle.

Fi x

WM's choice of subject matter, 3 mummified cats found walled up, when they were doing renovation work to the castle.

Wedding Accessorise Finished at Last!

Hi all! Gosh it's been a busy few days, but I'm not going to whinge about work etc on my lovely blog. No, blog land is somewhere to escape to, where everything is bright and colourful, shimmery and shiny. Bloggers are kind and caring, funny and inspiring, creative and crafty. And I love it here!

To bring you up to date on my preparations for the wedding we've been invited to at the weekend... I have a floaty dress, I have a wrap, I have shoes, and now... TA,DAA!!!

I have a bag too.

I spent Sunday making myself a bag to match my wedding outfit. It was a bit of a suck it and see creation. I had a rough idea of what shape and style I wanted the bag to be, but no pattern. So it was pretty much stick a pin in there and stitch that bit to there and see what happens.

I made a few simple sketches in my sketch book. I find it really useful to have a sketch book, we were encouraged to keep one at college, somewhere to empty your head! Although right from being a teenager I've always had a book where I would doodle and roughly plan the items that I made. It's quite nice to look back through it and remember all the things that I've made over the years, as quite often items are made for someone else or given away. It's also good to look back with a critical eye, and think, well actually that was quite good, or actually I should have made that this way instead. All in all, sketchbooks can only be a good thing, there's never a wrong doodle, or an incorrect sketch, after all it's a private place for me to empty my creative thoughts and ideas!

The bag is made from silk dupion that I dyed myself (as you've seen in the last few posts!) I machine embroidered the silk onto a stiff iron on interfacing, to create a rigid top that the rest of the bag would hopefully drape down from, in scrunchy crinkles. I also needed to attach a magnetic fastener. (unfortunately I didn't take a photo of that, cos I was too busy swearing at it!)

This is the lining, made from an old curtain sample I picked up in a charity shop years ago. I needed something quite firm and strong on the inside as the silk is quite soft and floppy, and I need it to hold my camera and mobile phone. I didn't want it to look like a wet sock with a brick in it!

Here's the lining with the silk outer fabric stitched on to it. I got the silk to crinkle by wetting it and then twisting it up and leaving it to dry. The silk hangs down about an inch longer than the lining at the bottom. (to avoid the brick in a wet sock effect!)

The hardest part was trying to fit the crinkly gathered up part into the embroidered top piece. (There were a few choice words, I can tell you.) At the same time trying to insert both ends of a little secret wrist strap (for those moments when you need to carry your bag, a wine glass and shake hands with someone)

The finishing touch is a large green fabric flower that I cut off a hair band and stitched onto a brooch back, and then pinned to the front of the bag.

All in all, I'm rather pleased with the finished ensemble, and I would just like to say thank you for all the encouragement you've given me with the fabric dyeing over the last few posts. It makes all the difference having a little bit of feed back from some crafty friends. Especially when you're short of time and you don't really know what you're doing!!!

Living in the Clouds.

I love being a mum. As far as I'm concerned it's the best job in the world! In fact, if I could stop my children getting any older I would have stopped them at about 4 years old. Don't get me wrong, I think my children are fab, and I love every moment I spend with them (on the whole), and those moments are becoming more and more precious as they are now 15 and 13. I know they are nowhere near adults and still need me to take care of them, but I also know that I won't be at the centre of their world forever and that time is approaching faster than I want it to.

That's why I love these jam jars full of caterpillars. Child number 2 has them lined up on the back porch windowsill. They simply shout childhood to me, how many adults do you know who would collect Caterpillar eggs from the cabbage patch and then religiously feed them every day, spending hours recapturing them when they escape. We no longer have toy ponies and paddling pools in our garden but I'm very glad we have cabbages.



I took this picture from the attic at the end of last week. I often remark to my husband how living here is like living in a cloud. We often can't see the tops of the hills, it's as if someone has taken an eraser and rubbed out the top of the picture. Well here are the clouds, peeping over the horizon, just waiting to sneak up on us!

Wedding Shoes, Another Part!

I know I said I wasn't going to put any more dye on my shoes, but I just couldn't resist having one more go.

And I'm so glad I did! They're now much darker (more like the dress) although the photo further down doesn't really show this, but I'm sure you'll take my word for it!

While I had the dye mixed I thought I'd better dye some fabric to make a matching handbag. The photos are courtesy of child number 2.

I used a piece of cream silk I had left over from making the wedding garter. I got this far painting the dye on, when it suddenly occurred to me that, maybe I should have washed it first to get the 'dressing'out of the fabric and make it accept the dye better. Oh well, too late now!