Beading Mad!

Morning all,

Well life carries on in it's typical railcrash fashion, bouncing from one thing to the next. Work is busy (for all we have a serious lack of visitors) and we've gone from one event - William Murdoch's Birthday Picnic -and heading on full steam to the next - Napoleonic Day [bank holiday monday] and then we'll bounce over the hill of a weekend on to the 3 days of heritage open weekend! Tiring? oh yes!

Nevermind. It wouldn't be so bad if free time wasn't currently split between visiting my nan in hospital - where the only change in her condition is the fact she's developed kidney stone! *sigh* and when i'm not there i'm busy job hunting! As unemployment is rapidly looming. If I can't get work soon I was thinking I may try and sell some of the things I make but I'm just not sure anyone would buy them..... must get my thinking cap on.

But my latest project isn't for sale - this one was all about me. I recently visited the spellbound bead company in lichfield for some findings, for various projects i've been doing for the church bizzare. But whilst I was there I fell in love with some of their projects. Now as i've never beaded in the sense of making jewellery with beads I thought i'd start with something middle of the road and choose a really sweet brooch pattern. I finally got around to making it up on monday and 4 hours later I was left with this:

I was really pleased with it and as i've got enough beads to make a second one (I think) i'll be making another one up just as soon as i've got the pin and larger beads for the centre of the design. Not sure what I'll do with the second one yet - most likely it will end up being a present though.

Hope you all like it and I promise I'll try and get round to making some cards soon!

Take care and happy crafting

Glove Puppets

Evening all!

Just a flying visit as i've not been making cards recently (see previous post) but given the number of hours i've been sat in the hospital or unable to access my card supplies has meant i've been getting a whole series of cross-stitch projects for mum out of the way. More on those another time.

Talking of mother dearest, I thought i'd share her latest project as they're sooooooo cute! Every two years, our church and other in the diocese send out teachers to our sister church's in Malawi, where they run a 4 week programme with local teachers there. The aim is to help them improve their teaching (as most of them are volunteers) and provide them with the materials they need to improve the children's lives. This year, we were asked for supplies for primary school children - amongst the plee was the request for glove puppets. And so 20 of the following designs are on their way to a new home and we're making more to send out in the container shipment in the new year.

That's all for now, hope you like them as much as we do. For those who have been asking after my grandmother, there's no real change and we're looking at weeks before there is any improvement. Thanks for all your messages and i'll be back soon I hope x

Diamond Wedding Anniversary Party + Update

Morning all, I'm so sorry that I haven't done this post until now, I really did mean to but life's been a bit hectic recently.

So anyway! on Sunday 24th August we celebrated my Grandparent's Diamond Wedding Anniversary with a 3 course dinner for 50. Mum and I did the cooking, the decorations, the inviations..... yeah the whole lot - with the exception of the flowers which my godmother (and mums cousin) came to help us with.

We were given the use of the church hall for free and as it has a catering standard kitchen we were well away. We started to set up on the Saturday with the flowers. It was a hoot - my godmother did the 4 massive arrangements in the same time mum and I made 7 table centres.....LOL! oops.

There were 3 of these in total in each of the window spaces

My Godmothers stunning arrangements - the pictures don't do them justice

After that mum and I went to get some balloons we had ordered and arranged the tables and chairs. Afterwards it was onwards to the shopping for all the vegetables and ingredients for the deserts. We spent Saturday afternoon baking castle sponges, making a huge lemon cheesecake, prepping all the vegetables and getting the raw ingredients for the soup starter ready.

Sunday rolled round and at 7:30 mum was at the church hall, heating the oven up for the beef. At 8:30 I arrived with dad to do everything else. I laid the tables with their centrepieces, diamond scatters, menus and the blasted favour boxes!

Now I've made these bird boxes many times before, but these were the bain of my existence. My grandparent's wanted them to look like green finches..... eek! so to start with sourcing the card was a nightmare. Then I had to cut them all out, emboss them and stick them together..... only they wouldn't stick! extra strong double sided tape, didn't stick! superglue, also failed to stick - in the end I had to resort to a hot glue gun and still some of them were looking a tad dubious when I laid the tables! I was not a happy bunny.

 Top table

 Table from my grandfather's seat and the nightmare bird boxes

The centrepieces and diamond scatters

The whole hall

After this it was just the work of cooking! eeek.... well actually it went really well and the menu was:

Salmon and Prawn medley or Minestrone Soup to start, Roast Beef or Chicken in a white wine and dill sauce with all the trimmings and seasonal vegetables, followed by desserts, cheese and crackers and coffee/tea and biscuits.

And then, if that wasn't enough - mum had made her parents a rich fruit cake to cut and people still ate slices of that too..... (where they found the room I will never know).

The roses on the flower are sugarpaste and not that you can see them very well but there are further diamonds studded into the sides of the cake.

All in all it was a wonderful affair, although given I spent the whole thing serving people and running round like a headless chicken it didn't feel like it at the time! LOL!

So that's the end of that, sadly though on the wednesday after this event my grandmother suffered another massive stroke and has been in hospital ever since (hence the lack of any blog updates). She's stable but as this is at least her 7th stroke (actually I think it's her 9th according to her records) the affects are horrific and its a waiting game to see how things play out.

Now that you're all up to speed I hope you don't mind if my blog updates are few and far between over the next few weeks. There's not much I can do, but I do feel that I should visit her or at least run errands for my grandfather in my free time, so that's what i'm doing.

I hope to have some crafting to share with you soon, but please be patient!

Thanks for stopping by and happy crafting!