Sunday 26 November 2017

A Cold and Frosty Morning...

Yesterday was a crisp, cold clear morning. I had a long list of things to do, but we took time out for a walk in the park and thoroughly enjoyed it.










A couple of things got pushed on to today, such as the pears with ginger which we were out of stock of, and starting work on a Christmas gift never got started at all - but it was still worth taking the time to enjoy the scenery.

Tuesday 21 November 2017

January in November

I'm not a big fan of digital stamps because I enjoy the process of stamping. But I love Chinese Lanterns, and I've been looking for a long time for a rubber stamp with a spray of them...there are a couple out there but not any that grabbed me. So rather than order a full set of photopolymer stamps from Power Poppy and pay carriage when I really only wanted one, I bought a digital set and had fun making this card for my aunt. My current crop of Chinese Lanterns in the garden come from her, although in our previous house I very (too) successfully grew some from seed. Thankfully I haven't found them as invasive here, maybe the soil doesn't suit them so well. I grew honesty, both the purple and white flowers from seed back then too - maybe I need to acquire more of those from my aunt again because I love the silver pennies.



I'm also adding a photo of an oil painting by a friend of my grandmother's which hung in my bedroom when I was a teen, and which now is in our spare bedroom. I've always loved it. For a sense of scale, the canvas is about 18" x 15".


Editing the post to add a couple of photos I took with my phone - some lovely Halloween floral decor using Chinese Lanterns.




Sunday 19 November 2017

For the birds...

We were dog-sitting for my aunt for a week, and took a short walk in the East Coast Nature Reserve.
Not many photos because, as a couple we met leaving one of the hides said, "There's not a feather stirring out there." Not quite true - we saw a bird of prey circle when we arrived, perhaps a kite or hen harrier, and C really enjoyed seeing (and hearing) a flight of swans go overhead. And there were plenty of geese grazing. But also a couple of my photos seem to have been corrupted, and then the card became unreadable, so while the preview thumbnails looks great, I can't open them. A shame, because there was one of the reeds looking beautifully golden yellow in the sunshine.




Oh - and here's the dog we were "sitting". Waiting hopefully (and in vain) for scraps at the table.


Wednesday 1 November 2017

October Favourites...

My favourite cards from this month. It feels harder to be creative with the shorter dark evenings, but that's what we have! Birds seem to feature heavily! I was delighted to see a redpoll on the feeders last week, and even more surprised to see a pied wagtail on the back wall, as I think of them as real "street" birds, and don't think I've ever seen one in the garden before. 

The first project fits inside the matchbox suitcase which I posted a while back.