St Patrick's Day 2024

 

Hello everyone,

I visited a doll house show with D and my hubby this week. It has been a while since I worked on my own miniature house, and the show has given me new inspiration. I chatted to a lovely lady who exhibits at the show and whom I have met several times. She encouraged me to progress with my own house, and I returned home with renewed enthusiasm, along with a few purchases. D and I will report the progress and show pictures soon.

At the beginning of March we celebrated St David Day, the patron saint of Wales. Today, 17th March, it was the turn of Ireland to celebrate. St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. 

In Birmingham city centre, which is about 9 miles away from us, there has been the annual St Patrick's Day parade which has taken place for many years. This year the theme was Irish myths and legends.

Many people will have been enjoying the festivities, traditions and cultures of Ireland this weekend and while others may have been  dancing , drinking, wearing green or a shamrock, here is my contribution to the day. This little knitted leprechaun stands about 15cm tall and is clearly keeping a check on his pot of gold. He is made from some scraps of yarn and I used this pattern.

Here he is, joining the other decorations under my tree.

Whether you have been celebrating today or not I hope you have had a great weekend and the week ahead is also a good one x.

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Last night I tried very hard to add a few pictures of the current state of the doll house but they were very grainy and I have had better luck this morning. Now I just need to get on with more decorating 😊

Enjoy the rest of today x 

Mothering Sunday 2024

Hello everyone.

If you live in the UK, D and I wish you a very Happy Mother's Day.

Yesterday, I made these small 'mum' decorations for our tree. It is a way to remember our own family members who are no longer with us. 

I decorated the card flowers with acrylic paint, peel-off stickers and added a ribbon to join them together to make the word 'MUM'.

Here they are after being added to our tree.

This next week I will be staying indoors as the weather continues to be soggy. Whatever the weather is like in your part of the world, both D and I wish you a great week.

B and D 😊

March Has Arrived!

 

Hello everyone.

It is great to be back, and thank you for all your good wishes last week when I was not feeling well. Unfortunately, it is D's turn to feel under the weather now. Hopefully, after a few day's rest, she will be up and about again.

Today, I had a lovely lunch with my hubby, son and his fiancée at a local restaurant to celebrate my birthday. It was a shame D couldn't be with us, but we promised to go out together again when she felt better. 

We have started the third month of 2024, which will be a busy month here. Already, we have celebrated St David's Day, and although I don't have any Welsh relatives, I enjoyed making this miniature knitted daffodil to add to my twiggy tree. The daffodil is the national flower of Wales.

This week I'm continuing to work on my cross stitch and starting to sow a few more seeds for the garden. D and I finished reading part 2 and 3 of Shakespeare's Henry VI plays and are deciding what to read next. We also enjoyed watching the 'Hollow Crown'.

Looking a long way ahead, we already have something to look forward to next year. D was fortunate enough to see Torvil and Dean when they were involved with the 'Dancing on Ice shows, and we have some tickets for their final show in April 2025 before they retire. We are all very excited.

I'm hoping for some dry weather this week, but the rain clouds continue to dominate the skies. However, spring is slowly arriving with longer days and some intermittent rays of sunshine.

Wherever you are I hope you all keep well and have a lovely week.

B x

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I forgot to say that the daffodil pattern was from here . It was a free pattern if anyone wants to try it x

A Little Stitching Progress

Hello everyone.

D here again. Mum feels a little unwell, so this week's blog post will be brief. 

She has been working on her cross-stitching project, which she started a few weeks ago. It is an abstract design with a worded message. As you can see, the first word is 'happiness..."

I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out. 

The daffodils that Mum is growing in the greenhouse also look lovely.

Whatever your plans are for the coming week, we hope you enjoy them.

Have a good week as we head into March.

D x

Queen of Hearts

Hello everyone. How has your week been?

In our small corner, last week was a half-term holiday from work for D, and we had a fun week together.

As we celebrated St Valentine's Day this week, we had a ready-made theme for the first part of the week. After D's very yummy heart cake, she made red velvet brownies from her favourite cookbook. Only three pieces are left now, which is a miracle, and they will be gone by the end of the day!

While the flour, sugar and butter were still close to hand, D also made some shortbread for us to munch. We still had some of the red fondant icing from her cake and used this to cut out hearts to decorate the tops of the shortbread. Hence, this week's blog title is 'Queen of Hearts'.

Continuing the theme of love, I made some small felt envelopes with added hearts to decorate the twiggy branched tree in our living room. They have joined the felt and fabric hearts I made last year.

As you can see, I have made more progress on the cross-stitch project, but I'm still keeping the design under wraps for now.

D and I have been continuing our reading of Shakespeare plays, have almost finished Henry VI Part 2, and are ready to watch the rest of the 'Hollow Crown' film version. 

While we had a lot of fun together this week, we also met up with our friends. I had lunch with my best friend from school, and we had a lovely chatty time together. 

Look what D got up to—afternoon tea with her friend. There was no doubt lots of chatting there as well as the tea and cake!

We both wish you all a lovely week ahead and the weather is kind to us all.

Take care.

B and D 

xx

Hearts and Cake

Hello everyone!

D here today, and I would like to share with you some things I have been up to this week.

On Friday, we had a staff challenge where we had to work in teams and bake a cake based on a chosen theme, and you all know how much I enjoy baking!

Since Valentine's Day is coming next week, I suggested my team do a Valentine's Day-themed cake. We went with a Red Velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and decorated it with red and white fondant hearts. Unfortunately, the frosting was a bit too runny, but overall, I was delighted with our team cake.

It certainly tasted wonderful!

I have also been planting some garlic in my little garden patch. As a cook, I often use garlic, and it felt like an excellent idea to grow it myself. I also intend to grow spring onions, radishes and beetroot here.

Mum and I have also started to chit some potatoes ready for planting in a few weeks time.

It is half term next week, so Mum and I will be up to mischief, no doubt. 😊

Whatever your plans are for next week, I hope you enjoy it.

D x

All About the Fruit

Hello to you all.

I hope you have had a good week and the weather has been kind wherever you are. It has been warm enough at times this week for me to get outside in the garden, which is one of my favourite things to do. 

I found this lovely small clump of snowdrops just poking their heads above the ground early in the week. Unfortunately, when I looked a few days later, all the pretty white heads had gone - nibbled away. When I looked on Mr Google, I was surprised to learn that snowdrops are high in sugar, so maybe a night-time critter had a sweet tooth for them this year.

Or it could just be slugs, of course.

This week has been about the fruit in my garden, preparing the ground and pots for the season ahead. I pruned our apple tree to keep it manageable and planted some rooted gooseberry and black currant plants into pots. We also had two more large gooseberry and black currant bushes that had been taking up a great deal of space in raised beds, which we have replanted in pots with fresh compost.  

The last fruit that found a new home this week was the rhubarb: the wooden raised bed it was growing in had disintegrated over time, so a new place to grow had become essential. I split the plants and discarded the oldest parts before replanting them in a larger plot.

I have several other jobs I want to get done in the garden this month. Still, if the weather is unkind, I can continue to work in the greenhouse preparing for seed sowing time.

Meanwhile, indoors, I have started a new cross-stitch project. It was the final item currently in my craft box. I shall be working on this over the next few weeks, but I thought you would like to see the start and keep you guessing as to what it will be.

Have a great week ahead, both inside and outdoors.

See you next week 

B xx