a swap, a "ta daa" and a work in progress .....

..... I took part in the Summer Swap that Becki organised and on Wednesday my parcel from Buttonz  arrived:

you'll see that Otis is in the background, he likes a bloggy swap almost as much as me :-)

inside were lots of brown paper packages ..... which contained:

a window transfer ..... it's a camper van with "are we there yet" underneath .....

a beautiful heart (now hanging on the mirror in my downstairs toilet!) .....

a sundae glass and scoop .....

a packet of butterflies .....

some cupcake ribbon (the prefect reason to dig out the cupcake rubber stamps I haven't used yet!) .....

and a lovely "gone to the beach" sign which is now hanging in my craft room .....

how lucky am I?  thank you Jodi for a lovely, lovely swap :-)

On Tuesday I got a call from the framers to tell me that my cross stitch was (finally) ready, it's now hanging in my hall .... so here is the "ta daa":

 

And, finally, this week after what seems like months of waiting my living room and dining room floor were finally finished .... here is a quick shot of the living room just after it was finished:

now, just need to get everything back in place! :-)

button up .....

..... button swap goodies!

I took part in the Button Swap over at Lemonade Kitty's place and this week Vintage Vicki and I managed to get our swap goodies delivered on the same day ....

Otis helped me unwrap (I suspect this was down to the chocolate inside .....)

inside we found this beautiful box:

with lots of lovely parcels inside:

a hand embroidered linen button bag (*sigh*):

with green and pink buttons inside:

 a green and pink corsage:

the cutest lavender bag:

carded buttons (another *sigh*):

  
a trinket box:

and chocolate buttons .... squirrelled quickly away before Otis helped with those too!

So, big THANKS to Vicki for my lovely parcel and a big THANKS to Lemonade Kitty for organising such a lovely swap .....

Spring .....

..... makes me sing.  Well, those of you who have heard me actually sing will be relieved to know that it doesn't really but that I entered the Spring Makes Me Sing swap.

My swap partner was Gill from Dosie Rosie and here are the lovely, lovely goodies that she sent me:

 A chicken .... cute eh?  now hanging next to the bird house by my craft room window.

Ribbon and trimming .... I've got just the project for the pink lace edging.

Fabrics .... love them.  I think I shall be saving these for something special.

Buttons ..... I especially love the dog ones, I feel another Stanley coming on!

A tray cloth with appliqued bunting ..... too nice to use! 

There was chocoate too ..... but you know how it is, it didn't hang around long enough for the photo shoot.  And I'm sorry I can't show you how beautifully wrapped this was but I was having some work done upstairs and I couldn't get to my camera so given the choice of waiting and unwrapping, I choose unwrapping!

Thank you Gill :-)  I really do love it all!!

how lucky ....

.... am I?

We had a stash swap on MISI .... the lovely Sprinks sent me some fab goodies and I am absolutely thrilled with them! I'm also very impressed that I had the strength of will to take a photo BEFORE I ripped open the pink tissue wrapping paper! (doesn't tissue paper make a parcel that extra bit special?)


So - Sprinks knows me very well indeed. My lovely goods included lots of jewellery findings:


Lots of lovely glass beads (check out that fantastic blue spotty pendant!):

And some great pink, blue and lilac spotty felt:

My fingers are itching to get making ..... I just need to decide where to start!!

A little bit of ....

.... wonderful thriftiness.

I found this lovely pot holder at one of my local thrift shops this weekend. I'm not sure what I am going to do with it just yet, but I'm almost certain it won't involve plants. I love the old-fashionedness of it .... and I especially love the £1.20 price tag.

I also managed to snag some baby themed bargains at the Pound Shop for a project that I've been dreaming of for a while. I love the idea of making gift sets, a decorated container, a small book and some appropriate gifts .... perhaps completed by a matching card and gift tag.


I'm hoping make some more themed sets over the next week or so .... all of my recent "makes" have gone off to a friend who is having a craft sale and I have a craft fair in less than four weeks so I really, really do need to knuckle down and get making. My immediate "to do" list consists of:

• pages for a swap for my favourite Yahoo group
• the remaining 20 of 90 wedding invitations
• a baby themed bag book to celebrate the birth of twins
• a formal album for a work colleague
• make stock, stock and more stock for the next craft fair and my MISI shop

I was lucky enough to take part in a wonderful MISI swap this month, the idea was to make items that reflected your swap partners name. I received Martin the Monster and some Handwarms (MMH for Magic Making Hands - clever eh?) from the very clever Sharnemainiaknits. Martin the Monster was immediately adopted by my 20 year old son .... what better compliment is there than that?