Chocolatey Goodness

I volunteered to go to the Cadbury factory to buy chocolates for the work place fundraising shop, it seemed fair to have a look at the 'loot'.

Right?

"Just Looking No Touching" was the request from me.

"Ok, we won't" came the reply......with a very toothy mischievous grin.

Guess who didn't adhere to the initial request?

Natural Wooden Play Blocks

What do you do with a branch that has decided to fall off it's tree?

The grain of the wood was too beautiful to mulch.

It definitely was not destined for fire wood - there was potential, but what?

I 'ever so kindly' asked the Mr to use the drop saw to cut the branch into cross sections of varying widths - which he did.

Much sanding coarse through to fine was enough to induce a mighty sore set of muscles on my right arm.

A hearty application of Bees wax with Lavender polish......

The result...

The best play blocks in town!

Wool Felt House

Once I was at Winterwood and saw a gorgeous toadstool/mushroom house made from wool felt. I was so impressed I decided to try my hand at making one.

I bought some beautiful 5 mm thick wool-felt, cut it to size & hand stitched it.

I needle/dry felted the roof with base wool then, once it was the right shape I needled it again with a beautiful bright red corriedale wool.

This was my first attempt at needle/dry felting ever! It was a semi-painful but fun learning experience (a bit like using my new computer).

My friend Yvette asked me to make her one for her daughter, so I did.

I made the 'roof' a different shape and colour to my first attempt.

And these are the people who live there!

I am currently making a 'big' house so that a few hands can get in and play at the same time..

Watch this space....

Maggie's Blanket

I bought an ace red blanket from Savers with the intention of making something for my daughter- but what?

I unexpectedly found myself having sometime to sew (as opposed to the usual and never ceasing household duties) as my daughter and I were at "sleep school" AGAIN..

I wanted to combine something of mine (scrap pieces of material from past sewing endeavours that had too much potential to throw out), something of hers (I cut out a butterfly shape from one of her old-washed flannelette nappies) and something new (the savers blanket). Then off I went arranging the bits of material as I wanted them and then blanket stitching them in place.

Once the butterfly was done, I sewed it into place on the rug but, it looked a bit lonely and lost.

Flowers! go with butterflies, so on they went too.

I am still pretty pleased with it visually and emotionally it gave me a different focus than my screaming non sleeping child doing her second stint of sleep school.