November Favourites

...not too many. Life has been busy, and then we were away dog-sitting for a week. But there are a few.

I wasn't sure about that little bird at first. I thought the division between the purple and the head was too severe, and I should have softened it more. Especially as I added some soft "feathering" to his head with a white gel pen. But then I decided I quite liked it, as if he was peeking out of a cocoon of some sort. So I've left it as it as, though C thinks I need to stamp a sentiment on the base.

 This month's blog header is a photo from last December in Paris - Parc Monceau

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.

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.

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.