This is going to be my new craft room!

We live in a bungalow but we have one space upstairs in our "attic" which at the moment is a bit of a dumping ground.

As you can see it is piled high at the moment with "stuff".

Come back tomorrow to see what it will look like when it becomes my new craft room!

A big bean bag to sit on and crochet, my sewing machine all set up with my fabrics and button tins, a big clear space to lay things out and work properly, and my "inspirational stuff" all to hand, including my ENORMOUS collection of Martha Stewart magazines dating back to 2001!

I love magazines and hoard my favourites, mainly CL, Living and Real Simple. Just last night I was re-reading all my Christmas editions for inspiration for things to make this year, I got lots of ideas, so I will be busy in my new craft room!

I've got tickets!

I started trying to get tickets at 9am on Friday morning....

After frantically typing in hard to decipher code words about 482 times, getting countless messages saying no tickets were yet available for Birmingham, much panicking and cursing, after 1 hour 45 minutes of trying, I finally got tickets to see....

Near the front!!!!!! OMG!!! Can't wait ;-) Is anybody else going?! and as excited as me!

Right now I am...

looking forward to cosying up tonight in my new rosebud pyjamas and cream knitted slippers (purchased from Primark this morning)... A pretty (but not blow the budget) treat to me!

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

Crafting Again!

This Sunday I went on a fab workshop called "A Christmas Home -Decorate your house with everything vintage at Christmas, transform woollen blankets, luxury fabrics and rich prints into all things Noel. Hand crafted stockings, swags and tree decorations will give you the perfect festive look".

Doesn't it sound great! The lovely lady who runs the course is an avid collector and treasure hunter and her workshop is an aladdins cave of vintage and salvaged materials, beads, sparkly buttons, lace and buckles. Just being surrounded by all these lovely things makes you confident you can create something beautiful!

This is her lovely workshop.

These were examples of the things that we could make.

We had a lovely time and over copious cups of tea and pieces of homemade carrot cake I put together a Christmas garland of gingerbread men, christmas trees and hearts, and a Shaker Angel. I didn't quite get to finishing both of them there, I had to do the final finishing at home. I've just finished my Angel, would you like to see her?

I've not tackled anything like this before, some of her I even tackled on a sewing machine without too many disasters(!), and I'm very pleased with how she has turned out. You might notice though, that she's missing one thing, her face! I'm still practicing drawing faces, before drawing hers on for real, but none of them have looked right yet. Does any one have any tips?!

My christmas garland is still being finished, I'll show that soon!

Getting in the Harvest

All of our local farmers have been so busy over the last few weeks gathering the harvest in the fields surrounding our house. Yesterday we had our school harvest festival at our church.

Today we took the opportunity of the gorgeous Autumnal sunshine to get our own little harvest in.

I think squashes and pumpkins are one of our favourite vegetables for eating and for decoration. We have arranged them on a rack (so that air can circulate but the rain is kept off), just by our front door so that we can look at them every day.

FINISHED!!!

Yey! I did it! I ran the Great North Run yesterday to raise funds for Breast Cancer Care. It was a brilliant event, super atmosphere, 54,000 runners, so many people raising money for good causes. The sun shone and the weather was beautiful, but crikey was it a hot run! Luckily there was lots of water enroute, and water tunnels to run through, and the atmosphere and buzz from the other runners really carried me along up and down all the hills.

The views of the blue sky and the sea that greet you when you run down the final hill and turn the corner towards the homeward straight really spurred me on for the final push to the finish and I finished the run in under two hours (which is what I was aiming for so I was very pleased!).

Once crossing the line the red arrows did an FANTASTIC display and I headed over to the charity village to the Breast Cancer Care tent to meet fellow runners and have a much appreciated complimentary post run leg massage!

My legs are a little stiff today - hence the comedy walk I seem to have developed!

Thanks to everyone who sponsored me I managed to raise £225.20 for Breast Cancer Care.

Sal xx

An Evening of Relaxation and Complementary Therapies

I feel like I've been away a while and need to catch up a bit with all on all the things I've been doing. First of all we have had our annual Women's Institute Open Evening where we hosted an evening of Relaxation & Complementary Therapies (plus local food) for anyone who wanted to come along. We had lovely ladies doing reflexology treatments, hopi ear candles, indian head massages, a homeopath, organic vegetable box schemes, lots of local organic food and drink producers, beautiful natural beauty products and wonderful homemade cakes. I put together some bouquets of flowers for our Recycle Table and made some Apple Cake using the apples from our garden for a healthy nibble whilst people were looking round the stalls.

I really enjoy the process of growing flowers, picking them and making them up into something pretty. I find it very relaxing being out in the garden in the fresh air, listening to the bees, snipping away..

Bringing it all inside, laying it all out, all the lovely colours and fragrances, deciding which ones I'm going to put together,

And making them into lovely bouquets.

Here they are finished on our Recycle Table.

It really was a great evening, and one of our exhibitors, a lovely lady homepath

kindly gave me some Arnica Tablets which she recommended that I take training for my Great North Run and after the run itself to help my body recover. Her sons who both run marathons swear by it, so hopefully it will do good things to me! Not long to go now, the run is this Sunday! So I've been resting from running this until the big day.

Oh and I nearly forgot, my winning entry for that week's competition "A Posy of Relaxation"!

Tomorrow I'll share our local village show... enjoy your day :-)