Say Hello & Wave Goodbye

Happy New Year! I hope you have a fantastic evening whatever your plans and where ever you may be saying goodbye to 2010 and celebrating the start of 2011.

Wishing everyone a fabulous evening and hoping you have a wonderful, exciting and invigorating new year ahead! xx

A Little Christmas Cheer

Christmas is fast approaching and I tend to fall on the 'running around like I'm on a sugar high' end of the scale when it comes to the festive season. I love lots of sparkly, shiny things around the place. When my sister Letitia (from The White Shed) and I were growing up, we used to drive my mum nuts with the fake snow - but we did also make a lot of decorations that my mum still displays with pride. Go to our folks house and the wreaths on the door are ones that my sister and I made.




This week, I've started making some Christmas decorations for my house here in England, because unfortunately I'm not going to be heading home as I hoped. I'm a huge Kirstie Alsop fan and as such, I'm determined to do a 'Homemade Christmas'. For any Aussie readers who don't know who she is, one of Kirstie's TV shows is about home decorating, restoring furniture and lots of lovley handmade goodness. As you can imagine, I just adore this show. This week the Christmas specials of her show have been on so I'm trying to find time to make as many of my own things as possible. It's still a work in progress and my decorations aren't quite ready to be revealed to the world yet (read - I haven't got around to taking photos of them) but I thought I'd share some of the photos that have inspired me along the way.




















Are you are ready weeks in advance or do you tend to throw a few decorations up at the last moment?

Hope you're having a wonderful week xx

A Friday Flower - Crafty Style

This week I've started taking part in the December Elves challenge on Folksy. I've followed a lot of other crafty bloggers who make things who've taken part in some of the other listings challenges in the past. The basic idea of it is to list one new item on Folksy everyday for a month. I've always felt in the past that making something new everyday just for my Folksy shop was more than I could probably manage to take on.

This month however, I've decided that I'd take the plunge and do it. What made up my mind was when I prepared loads of stuff for a local fair, only to have snow arrive just in time to cut everyone off! Suffice to say sales were a bit slow as a result of the weather turning cold. The UK has been covered in one great big layer of heavy and somewhat disruptive white snow ever since. So armed with plenty of crochet scarves, hats and baby stuff looking of a new home, I'm taking part in this months challenge.

I feel like I've crocheted about 100 flowers in the last 2 weeks - so my crafty Friday Flower for this week is of the crochet kind. I'm dedicating these flowers to all my other December Elves to wish them all good luck with their sales challenge in the lead up to Christmas.

Here are some of my new items that I've started the month off with (click on the photos to view online)....

I hope you have a wonderful weekend - don't forget to pop by and join up with Melissa at Miss Sew & So and Laura at A Place for Tea. xx

Winter Wonderland

Firstly, a big hello to everyone and thank you for all the comments. I have been visiting and reading lots of blogs, but I've been so busy this last week and I must confess I've been a little bit lazy about leaving comments. When it finally reached the weekend and I was ready to make ammends, my internet promptly crashed. And well, I'm so glad that I have such a great IP provider - I'm so pleased that they make the effort to open for a few hours on the weekend and that they don't go to peices at the first sign of snow.... (Yep, that's my sarcastic comment for the day!)



Anyhoo... As everyone in the UK has undoubtedly noticed by now - it's a wee bit chilly over here! (See my local forecast courtesy of the BBC below). I thought this would give all my fellow Aussies back home a bit of an idea of the kind of weather we're geting over here. As you can see, snow, snow and more snow - with a maximum temp of 0C for the whole week! I have to admit however, I do just love the snow. This is my fourth winter in Europe and being a born and bred Aussie, snow has yet to loose the novelty factor for me. I suppose it doesn't hurt that I work from home, so I get all the good bits and can just stay rugged up indoors when it gets too cold.



After chatting with my mum and hearing about the 36C temps in Australia, I thought I should do some exploring of the wintry landscape over here, so here are a few snapshots to share from this snowy side of the world.

Hope you're having a lovely week - whether soaking up the sun in Oz or surrounded by snow in England! xx

Fleurs and Flowers

I absolutely adore the look of a beautiful old jug filled with fresh flowers! I chose these images, because to me, these capture one of my favourite looks - country style home decorating.

Have a wonderful week! xx

A Friday Flower

Todays Friday Flower is for one of my close friends who lost her Dad just recently to cancer. I chose daffodils as this flower is a symbol of cancer support both here in the UK and back home in Australia. I love the idea of this sunny flower representing hope.



Of course, it's completely the wrong time of year here for dafs, but this is a bunch I picked earlier this year when these beautiful flowers were in full bloom.

For more lovely Friday Flowers, don't forget to pop by and visit two of my very lovely bloggy friends, Laura at A Place for Tea and Melissa at Miss Sew & So.

I hope you're all looking forward to a lovely weekend! xx

A Winter Wish List - English Fashion Trends

The cold weather is definitely on the way and with the weather dropping to minus 3 tonight, I think it's definitely time to put together my winter wishlist....

In very English fashion, a pair of wellington boots...

A warm winter jacket...

A long fluffy one of these...

I'll wrap up in one of these...

And make sure that I snuggle in close to one of these....

Hope you're having a great week everyone, M xx

Wellington boot photo from Washington Post site

An Autumn Morning at Lowther Park

About 20 minutes or so down the road from where I live there's a beautiful parkland with lots of walking trails (and lots of sheep!). At the centre of this parkland lies the ruins of Lowther Park. I was fortunate enough this Halloween to spend the morning walking in the (slightly sodden) park and surrounding area.

I didn't do much else that was especially 'Halloweeny' - but I think you'll agree that the house is suitably spooky looking and the parkland is pretty amazing with all the Autumn colours (despite the obligatory English rain). Had to take these photos with my phone unfortunately, as I couldn't take my 'baby' (my Nikon SLR) with me - she wouldn't have stood up to several hours in the rain.

Happy (belated) Halloween! xx

Autumn Decorating

I've finally arrived home and it is nice to be back! I did hope to blog while I was away, but no such luck. However, a few weeks away gave me some much needed rest and I've come back itching to get started on some new projects (watch this space!)

I love being back in England for autumn. While there are always hints of autumn colours in Australia, it takes on a different meaning when you are surrounded by the vibrant and rich colours here in England and Europe. I love the changing seaons and I am fickle, because I always feel like whatever is new is my favourite in that moment.

I particularly love Autumn, because the colours are among my favourites - and I love the idea of bringing a bit of the outdoors into the home - whether it is a freshly picked bowl of apples, a branch laden with berries, chestnuts, pumpkins or any of the other beautiful autumn 'riches' that are 'ripe for the picking'.

Hope you're having a wonderful weekend xx

Pumpkin image - Good Housekeeping, Chestnuts - Gourmet.com, other images click photo for sources