A Lovely Weekend

The weather continues to be cold here but at least we are having some sunshine which makes the days seems better in spite of the low temperatures, and of course the clocks went *back yesterday so we will have longer evenings :-)

No stitching to show this week, although I have been stitching I haven't taken any photos yet.  DH and I have been on a little trip to Derbyshire, we stayed in a nice hotel in the centre of Derby, did some shopping, had a couple of lovely meals out and of course our  visit to the beautiful Chatsworth House, so I thought I share some of the photos of the house and grounds with you today.

This was the view of the house as you drove through the estate to get there.  There is some renovation going on which is why you can see tarpaulin on the left of the photo.

And from the gardens

There was still lots of snow around which made for a very pretty setting

The waterfall

(Please excuse my DH, he always seems to get into photos without trying, lol)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is the top of the waterfall, can you see the one behind?

This lady must have been freezing!

One of the ponds, the majority of it still frozen

Another view of the house from the Canal

 This is the Serpent, the leaves are still quite dead but I think that makes for a better colour.

Some of the beautiful tapestries in the house

This one is huge, covering the whole of the back wall

The house from the gardens again

The Hall

And it's wonderfully elegant staircase

And beautifully painted ceiling

Loved the library with it's shelves and shelves books

(I tried for an arty farty photo, lol)

The many bedrooms with their canopied beds

The very grand dining room

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm of work for a week now, Yayyyyy.  I have some jobs to catch up on but mostly I plan on lying  in and taking it easy with some afternoons  settling my derrière on the sofa for some serious stitching sessions :-)

A few people wanted to see the bags I bought last week, I will show them next time, glad to know that I not alone in my bag obsession, lol.

Thank you for visiting me and leaving a comment, It's always lovely to hear from you, if you are a new follower (and i noticed there were a couple) please stop and say hello so I can visit you in return.

Have a fantastic week whatever you are up to!

xx

*Edited to add: 

Ops, as Linda has pointed out the clocks should have been put forward, not back, lol.  We did change them to the correct time, it was a typo...sorry if I confused anyone :-)

Snow Anyone?

We are back in the midst of winter again here in the Midlands, will we ever see the sunshine??

This is what it was like on Saturday morning as i set of for the Hobby Crafts show at the NEC

This farmland is about a 10 minute walk from where i live, the 'green space' in an otherwise industrial area.  It looks very pretty clothed in white.

The roads for once were fairly clear so I thought the drive would be OK to Birmingham, and It was, apart from the spray on the motorway it wasn't too bad, traffic wise.  I don't do much motorway driving  and was amazed considering the conditions of the many drivers who are tanking along and without any lights on! the spray was horrendous and the visibility not that great, yet they don't think to put lights on?, crazy, stupid crazy!

I arrived safely and had a lovely few hours browsing the stands.  There is always a display of some sorts, and this year it was the turn of Pride & Prejudice.

I bet you will all recognise this little number from the lake scene?

It wasn't a huge display, but it was nice to see the costumes.

I was a little disappointed with the show this year, not so many cross stitch stands this time, Jane Greenoff wasn't there and neither was another big suppler who is usually there.  I did come back with a few things, mostly trims though, I only bought one chart,  LHN My House.

I also bought a new magnifier with a light as the light on my old one was playing up, and I treated myself to two new handbags, a girl cant have too many hand bags :-)

No stitching to show this week instead there is a knitting finish, a little jacket for my favourite little man.

He came to visit this afternoon so we had a fitting, I've just got to get some buttons for it when I go out tomorrow.

If you follow THIS link you should get a little video of the man himself.  I've never tried to link a video before so I hope it works.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just enough of the evening left now to get a little stitching in, Mark has gone back off to work, the job was handed over on Friday so next week is snagging and we have a couple of Bank Holiday's coming up, so the next two weeks are only 4 day weeks.  We are going away for the Easter weekend, just a little break for a couple of nights in Derbyshire with a visit planned to Chatsworth house, then I have the whole of the next week off work, can't wait!

 

Until next time, thank you for your visits and comments, they are as always very much appreciated :-)

Have a great week

Still Christmas Here!

I've been away longer than I intended, again, but I'm here at last, with finishes and starts to share :-)

My ornament for the Christmas ornament SAL was this little freebie by Whispered by the Wind, stitched on a scrap of light blue linen with white DMC.

The weather obliged me with a sprinkling of snow the day I took the photo.

My new start is a Shepherds Bush Christmas Stocking 'Thomas's Stocking'  re-named Oliver's Stocking for the little man in my life :-)

I'll be working on this every Friday night along with Julie, Catherine, Linda, and Riona.

I'm still waiting for some of the threads to come that's the reason for the skipping about with the stitches at the moment. 

This is 3 Friday nights worth of stitching, yeah, I know, not a lot!

I'm going to try and keep this a secret and give it to Jenny on December 1st when she puts up her Christmas decorations.

The cake baking continues, and I'm beginning to think pledging 200 cakes was a little ambitious, I'm just over half way there though, hopefully over the next two weeks I will reach  my target.

Last week was Chocolate Brownies and m&m cookies, they were mostly gone by lunch time :-)

And earlier in the week I made some muffins, but they were a bit disappointing, they tasted OK but didn't have muffin tops :-(  

If anyone can share a tried and tested muffin recipe please tell me.

That's all for now, I want to thank you for all the lovely comments on my ornament finishes in my last post, as someone who finds finishing a bit of a challenge your encouragement really made my day :-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~

This weekend is the Hobby Crafts Show at the NEC in Birmingham,     so that's what I'll be doing this coming Saturday, I've got my wish list ready and money saved so I can treat myself, can't wait!

Until next time x

Catching up for February

I seem to have dropped out there for a while, but at least while I've been MIA I've been productive stitching and finishing ornaments.

Here are all my finishes for February.

Ribbon Reindeer

free design from Daffycat

I used the stitching fabric for the backing on this one (my preferred method for finishing) and repeated the boarder on the reverse.

I love these little reindeer's, Sharon kindly sent me the charts for her little creations and I will definitely be stitching them all before Christmas.

Yuletide Greetings

free design from Oakhaven Designs

My own colour choice - DMC 782 and White

Christmas Eve Flight

free design from The Sampler Girl

Again, my own colour choice but I forgot to make a note of them!

And the last one is a Lizzie Kate

This Lizzie Kate one has been waiting to be finish finished for well over 12 months, I came across it when I was having a sort out, I'd forgotten all about it!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've also been doing lots of baking.

I have pledged 200 cakes to this years Heart Radio appeal, they are supporting 3 children's charities this year with their Bake a Wish, you can read all about what they are doing here.  So I've been inflicting my baking on work colleagues for the last two weeks and demanding asking them to donate 50p per cake .

here is what they have had to endure so far:

Chocolate fudge cake & carrot cake cupcakes

Raspberry and coconut slices & a Lemon drizzle cake

Sultana cake (very similar to Manor House Cake)

I'm happy to say that I haven't poisoned anyone....yet (grin) and they are going down a storm so far.

I'm heading off to our stitching group tonight and I've made a Victoria sponge to take for when we have our cuppa :-)

I appreciate you stopping by today and leaving a comment, 
see you soon x

No stitching photos, but I have got some of my beautiful Grandson I thought I would share with you.

The first two were taken about 3 weeks ago.

He's already got a cheeky grin :-)

These other 3 were taken just this past weekend, how much he seems to have grown in such a short time

I just love being a Nanna, and Grandad is just as besotted with this precious little boy :-)

Merry Christmas Deer, It's Snowing!

So, the weather men predict that we are to have at least 6 inches of snow tomorrow, at the moment it's snowing but only a light covering, it's supposed to get heavier from  4am.  If it happens as they say I will be getting public transport to work tomorrow, sigh, I HATE public transport but my house is in a cul-de-sac on a hill, I've got no chance of getting my car out of the street if we have much snow, getting it back up the hill is virtually impossible.  

So, my wellies are at the ready, lol.

I finished my January ornament for the SAL this week

Merry Christmas Deer

Free Design from The little Stitcher

Fabric unknown

Threads - 1089 Threadworx

It's only a diddy one, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not a lot else going on this week, I did go to the cinema last night with Joanne to see Les Miserables.   Can't say that I was that impressed, it was OK, the singing of every line can get a bit much after a while.   It may be different on the stage, I don't know, but for me It not worth all the hype.

There is one more film I would like to see next week, The Life of Pi.  I'm reading it at the moment, on my kindle, It's good and I'm interested to see how it works on film.

Until next time x

Happy New Year!

I hope that 2013 is everything you hope it will be.

I know many people make resolutions at this time of year, a time for new starts etc.   Personally I haven't made resolutions for a long time, and I'm not going to this year.  There are a few things I would like to do though, like visit more places and get out more at the weekends, read more and try to be a happier person.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I've set my reading goal to 50 books this year again (on Goodreads), Although I didn't reach my goal of 50 books last year It seems like a nice round number to go with, If I don't reach it again that's OK.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I've joined in with Elaine's 2013 Christmas Ornament SAL for the first time and have been searching for freebies to stitch, I've found a few that fit the bill and look as though they will be quite quick to stitch, just need to sort out some fabric.

My first outing of 2013 is going to be the cinema today, I'm going to see 'The Impossible' this afternoon, just me, a bottle of coke and large cheesy nachos, lol.

Until next time x