Spiced Apple Fabric Hearts

I’ve finally started using some of the lovely Joel Dewberry fabric strips I bought a few months ago. I’m using the pink and green complementary pieces first to make some hanging heart decorations.

I’m filling them with polyester fibre filling to make them soft along with a couple of spoonfuls of apple spiced aroma beads to give them a lovely christmassy scent. It smells really lovely around my workspace!

This summer I bought an old Imperial typewriter from a car boot sale for £5.  I’ve been using it to type ‘Spiced Apple’ onto pieces of calico to sew to the front of the hearts, just to make them a bit different – I quite like the effect.  I’m hoping to have a selection available for my next craft fair this weekend at Thatcham Catholic Hall – better get my skates on

Wobbly Baby Giraffe – one day old

This weekend we did a family day out to Marwell Wildlife in Hampshire (about 8 miles from Winchester).

One of the nicest parts of our visit this time was seeing the 1 day old wobbly little giraffe baby with its Mum Isabella – if you click the pic it will take you to my Flickr page where you can watch a very short video clip of it stumbling across to the hay basket (the keepers haven’t been able to identify if it’s a boy or a girl yet)

Click the pic to watch a mini clip on Flickr

Most of my photos didn’t come out too well but here are a handful of the better ones

Lounging ring-tailed lemurs

Ocelot having a nap

Thirsty Tiger

Wendy the hippo having a yawn

A cheeky little chipmunk

We booked the tickets on line which means you don’t have to queue at the gate and it also gets you a 5% discount. We took a giant picnic as there are lots of open areas and picnic tables throughout the park.

We’ve been to Marwell quite a few times now and it’s lovely -it’s set in 140-acres and is home to over 180 exotic and endangered species, in beautiful, landscaped surroundings. We arrived at about 10.30am and didn’t struggle to fill a whole day – we left at 6 o’clock closing time.  There are lots of friendly, helpful and knowledgeable volunteer staff at the park who will come and chat with visitors and share interesting snippets about the animals and various events happening throughout the day. I’d give it 10 out of 10 on the ‘good-day-out-ometer’.

Copy Cat!

Who’s copying who?

Just in case you were wondering, one of them isn’t real!

Knitted Sleepy Bear in a Bunny Suit

I spotted a picture on Pinterest last week of the cutest little knitted sleepy bear wearing a red knitted button up suit with big bunny ears.  I really couldn’t resist him, isn’t he lovely

The Folksy shop is called ‘Hand Knitted Bears’ and you can put an order in with Martha for any colour combination you like. She says to allow up to 7 days for your bear to be made but I had mine within 3 days of my order, which was super speedy. My little bear has moveable arms and legs so he can easily be posed in a sitting position.

Martha has lots of cute bears in different outfits to choose from so do go and have a look, they are amazing value too – after seeing the amount of work first hand, they’re definitely worth a higher price tag. Beautifully made, very good service and delivered wrapped in tissue paper tied up with a ribbon… HAND KNITTED BEARS

 

Blue Hyacinth

No story today, just wanted to share a couple of pics of my beautiful blue hyacinth that’s now in full bloom and smells glorious

Cooking for Birds

This week I’ve been cooking for the garden birds. They’re so greedy at the moment and really seem to love the fat based treats. I have a great little book called ‘Cooking for Birds’ full of very easy recipes to make tasty and nutritious birdy titbits.

I loosely based this on one of their suet mixtures but instead used a jar of saved up fat from oven roasts & sausage cooking. I melted the fat in a pan then took it off the heat to cool before mixing in the following ingredients until it was about the consistency of flapjack:

Crunchy Nut Cornflakes

A Weetabix biscuit

Coconut

Peanut Butter

Sultanas

An over-ripe banana

Stale breadcrumbs

A handful of mixed bird seed

A tablespoon of sugar (or honey)

You can use any kind of stale bread product (muffins, bagels etc.) but it’s best whizzed up into breadcrumbs to help the mixture bind. Most breakfast cereals or stale cake will work too, crumble them up a bit though. Any past it’s best fruit is good or dried fruit if you can spare it. Then I pressed the mixture into chinese takeaway plastic tubs and popped them in the freezer for about 20mins before chopping into chunks and scattering about the garden and on the feeders.

I also had a couple of pine cones that I’d collected earlier in the year which I tied some string to and then pushed some of the cooled mixture tightly between the hard ‘leaves’. All ready to hang from the bushes. The tit birds in particular are loving these.

I’ve had so many hungry visitors already this morning – noisy blackbirds, starlings, goldfinches, chaffinches, robin, all kinds of tits, a little bouncing dunnock – it’s been lovely. In our front garden we have a bird cherry tree and we were treated to a flock of red wings visiting. I don’t expect the berries will be there for long!

What little treats do you give to your garden birds?

Lazy Cat

Couldn’t resist posting a couple of recent pics of our cat Tog. He’s so lazy he couldn’t even be bothered to gather his leg and tail back on the chair when they dangled off the edge…

…and in this one he’s doing a great impression of a sausage with a cold nose!

Oh to be a cat

Violet & Rose Spotted Hungry Hippo

This was one of the ‘silly-but-fun’ Christmas pressies I gave to my sister this year. I saw this idea on Pinterest and fancied giving it a go. I bought a bag of cheap plastic zoo animals (the plantage was included in the pack) and used rose & violet acrylic paints for the lid and hippo and then superglued the bits to the lid. The jar (which used to have Tesco’s peanut butter in it) was filled with one of my sister’s favourite sweeties of choice – violet and rose cremes. RAAAR!

Fancy Fimo Buttons & Animals

Hello, just a quick post today. I wanted to show you one of my best Christmas presents. These lovely rainbow coloured Fimo buttons were handmade for me by my clever 8 year old god-daughter Lucy. Aren’t they fabulous!

And these brilliant little creatures are on display in our living room. You can see by my finger in the picture how small they are – I’m amazed at how much detail she’s managed. Mine is the lovely green frog with his own little present and Mr Sock is the the owner of the terrific tiger – who came with his own fimo cake!

Edible or poisonous?

This little pretty popped up under the apple tree at the bottom of our garden a couple of days ago. I think there are another couple about to follow suit.

Does anyone know what it is and can we eat it?