A Mr Men Christmas

A couple of days ago I recieved two lovely ATC's from the Bubble December swap. The first was from Laura and goes nicely with the Dove one she sent me as part of our goody bag swap.

The second was from Roberta and is a lovely teacup design. 

In my last post I was attempting the impossible and making the children's stockings/sacks for Christmas. Well I can reveal that I did infact get them done even if it mean't I stayed up until almost 3am this morning stitching like a woman possessed. I cheated a bit this afternoon and used bondaweb to attach them to the hessian sacks I'd brought a couple of months ago when the idea struck me. The designs are from Cross Stitcher 205. I stitched them on 11ct Aida as they were more card sized designs and I wanted them to form pockets for the Mr Men books of the characters.

So there is Little Miss Christmas and Below is Mr Christmas. The children seem quite pleased with them, but I'm sure they will hold even more appeal in the morning after Father Christmas has visited.

Here they are with their books and our Mr Christmas soft toy too.

The rest of my Christmas Eve will be spent wrapping presents as I've not done one yet and dealing with my hyperactive children, Lottie has no idea why Thomas is so excited but is happy to join in the madness anyway, so they are charging round the house as I type. I may try and finish the biscornu I started for Mum too, but with all the wrapping and the Midnight service at Church to go to (me time) I think it will be a very tall order. There will be no 3am stitching miracles happening in this house tonight, for sure! Time to iron our clothes for Christmas day I think before we have a little walk round by us to deliver the last of the cards and look at the lights.

May you all be blessed this Christmas and have a wonderful time, whatever your plans.



Christmas post

I was very lucky today to receive 2 Christmas ornaments in the post yesterday. The first was the replacement ornament from Rae, from our bubble swap. Rae's first ornament went a wandering in the post, so she was very kind and sent me these very sweet Robins .

The second came completely as a surprise from Kayla, and was another little decoration for my tree. I was very excited to recieve this one and it's now on the tree along with Rae's one.

Decoration from Kayla (left) and Rae (right)

I'm working on stockings for the children of the Mr Men charaters Mr Christmas and Little Miss Christmas. Now bear in mind that it is 4 sleeps until the big day and I will only be starting the Little miss one tonight. They are fairly small designs but I want it to be a surprise for the children so I can only stitch in the evenings and sleep has been the last thing on the childrens mind the last few nights, so wish me luck with them, hopefully I can post the finished pics on Christmas Eve for you to see. 

Thanks for reading and Merry Christmas to you all if I don't get chance later in the week. xx

deja vu?

Hi Everyone,
I hope you are well on this wet and windy Tuesday. Now that Laura has recieved her goody parcel from the Craftbubble swap I can reveal the contents...

The parcel contained brads, a funky highlighter, buttons including 2 cool Union Jack ones, sewing stitckers, glow in the dark thread, ribbon, Mouseloft kits, Christmas fabric, Lindt choc and hot choc too.

As you can see I also made a few bits for it. Laura and I did an ATC swap and you can see the Noel ATC above. The design was from an old book called 2 hour country cross stitch and stitched on cream and gold lurex aida for a bit of Christmas sparkle. I used red seed beads for the berries on it. The backing papers are from an old Dovecraft pack, but I forget which one.  The fabric heart was also embelished with red seed beads on both sides.

The Angel biscornu was a pattern I'd made up myself using an angel blackwork design from the country cross stitch book too. It was stitched on navy aida and has gold seed beads round the edges. The bottom of it was stitched on the gold lurex aida again. Sometimes I feel the simplist things work well.

I loved making the kilt pin brooch too with the miracle beads. I'm having trouble uploading the pic but Laura has some love ones on her blog, hence the title of deja vu! I'm hoping to make one for me but I'm sure time will get away from me as I have 5 felt decorations to make for custom orders, 2 Christmas stockings for my children and a biscornu to finish. That is a fair bit to do in the next 11 days.

Finally the card I made, the design is a Mouseloft one, using gold card, Dovecraft backing papers from the Christmas blues range and on an embossed card blank from Lakeland.

Thanks for stopping by. x

The Giveaway goodies have arrived!!!

Hi Folks,
I hope none of you have that Monday morning feeling, but are getting into the Christmas spirit. I'm off to the Panto this afternoon with the School as a helper to see Jack and the Beanstalk. It'll be a laugh, I hope my group of charges behave themselves!

Today my giveaways arrived from Laura. The incredibly cute ladybird ami has been named Gloria! I love the biscornu, I do have a bit of a thing for them as you know and in my giveaway after Christmas there will be a rather lovely one I'm sure. (Keep watching this space).

So here is the front of the biscornu.

and the back, such a sweet sentiment and I love the ladybird button.

I finished a Handbag for my friend Sarah-Jane yesterday. It's a design from the Cath Kidston book 'Sew!' I've made this bag 3 times now and they are so easy to do. I even put a lining in this one, which isn't in the pattern so I made it up as I went along. I love the fabric and it feels very Cath Kidston-esque.

Finally a proud mummy moment. My son aged 6 won the pupil of the week award at school and here is the pic of his certificate and trophy. SOOOOOO Proud. Unfortunatly he only gets to keep the trophy for a week.

Well thats all from me today. Hopefully Laura will recieve her goodie bag today and I can share the pictures tomorrow. Thanks for all your uplifting comments you leave me. I love reading them. xx

Christmas ATC's and a bargain book

Hi folks,

Well two weeks today my two will be in a present unwrapping frenzy so I'm really starting to build up to it now. I've done most of my Christmas shopping, just the cards to do now. I don't usually wrap my presents until Christmas Eve, accompanied by some festive music. We start with all the christmas social activites this week too, Tuesday is our Mum and Baby group Christmas Party followed by a leaders lunch, Wednesday we have Thom's School play - 'Bethlehem's Buzzin'. He plays Traveller 2, a pivitol part!!! I'm looking forward to Friday Evening when we Hubby and I get to have an evening out to friends for Christmas drinks.

And on to the makes...

I joined in the Bubble ATC swap this month and here are my two. I used the theme Christmas Carols, and I love the little Bethlehem one.

I popped into my local charity shop Friday and found this book. It was only published last year and is in imaculate condition. There are several projects in there I'd love to try out so after Christmas I shall be getting stuck in.

Well folks that's all for today, you might see me back tomorrow with pic's of my win from Laura's blog of the ladybird set, she's having another little  giveaway too - a Christmas one,  so get over there and have a go. CuteCrochetedCreations Giveaway. Cucki is also having a  Christmas giveaway so try that one too Cucki's Giveaway. Good luck!!!

Goodies Galore!

Hi Everyone,

I've been blessed this week with some fab crafty post so this will be somewhat of a picture heavy post. At the beginning of this week I recieved my giveaway prize from MsStitcher - a lovely little knitted bag with a little pocket inside. My Daughter is 19 months old and has a bit of a handbag obsession, so needless to say she was very excited to claim another. Ms Stitcher's blog is here

The Postie brought me another parcel today for the Craftbubble Christmas goodies swap. My swap partner was Laura and her blog is here. I love doing these types of swap, they are lots of fun to gather all the little bits for. So here are the goodies I recieved.

I'm very excited to get stuck in and making with all that. There was also this fab little bag of buttons and charms. Laura knows I'm a little obsessed with them. I love the green Christmas tree buttons, they're my favourites.

Along with the crocheted sweets in the main pic, Laura also made me these cute little Angel earrings in this lovely little pouch. 



Laura and I also had a little ATC swap too.

Lastly, Here's the card Laura stitched for me too. I posted Laura's parcel today so hopefully tomorrow I can share with you what I sent to her.

We at home finally entered into the Christmas spirit and put our tree and decorations up. I have a few more odds and ends to put up but on the whole we are done.

Our tree is an eclectic mix of handmade decorations and anything we like and is pretty. I love to add little bits to it every year. I can remember where most of the decorations came from or when they were made. I love the idea that it has a history to it all, even though it's only 9 years worth of gathering so far. One of my new additions this year is a 'Mr Christmas' soft toy sat in the fireplace. I picked him up in a charity shop a few weeks ago and paid 49p. I'm rather fond of the Mr Men so he was a good find.

Last week I said I'd give you a few crafty facts from all my making for the fayres. So, as you know there were 480 buttons used but here are the rest:

10 Skeins of stranded cotton (8m each)

20m of Ribbon

56 sequins

96 beads and charms

15 A4 sheets of felt

Well time for bed for me I think. I have my voluntary work tomorrow so a busy day. I need to write my Christmas cards at some point... a task I'm not that fond of really, but that will have to wait for tomorrow. I expect I'll read in bed, at the moment I'm reading 'A Cotswold Mystery' by Rebecca Tope. I've read a few of these now and really enjoy them.

Thank you for reading my rather long post today. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. xxx

bah humbug!

Well not quite Bah Humbug but I did finish a gorgeous humbug design last night for the ornament exchange on Bubble. The design is one I've wanted to stitch since I saw it at the beginning of the year. It's my first attemp at a humbug, but like the biscornu, very addictive. The design is one of 7 different humbug designs (including Bah!) on the Kincavel Krosses site and is called Holly Jolly.

So here it is before I sewed it up. It was stitched on 14ct gold/cream lurex aida with DMC threads 700 (green) and 666 (red) and finished off with pearl seed beads and Mill Hill antique glass beads 03048 (lustred red).

So here come the pictures from all sides.

I'm completly in love with this design and I hope my exchange partner does too. Just to add to the mountain of christmas stitching I already have to do, I would love to stitch a few of these for my tree too.

Well thats all folks for today, bit of backstitch and a biscornu awaits me tonight. Hope you're having a good day. x