Friday 30 November 2012

The colours of Autumn

Hi Everyone, 

So Autumn is coming to an end and winter is on its way. Although it seems to have mostly rained for the last few months, the sun in some of these photos reminds me that we have had some beautiful crisp Autumn days and I have been on some lovely walks, bike rides and blackberry picking trips. The colours have been especially beautiful this year so I have put together a few of my favourite Autumn snaps to share with you. 











I am looking forward to some cold sunny days in Winter... Most people hate winter but I really enjoy it until Christmas is over and then I get excited about summer again... Which is good because this year I am off to warmer climates in January to go travelling for 4 months! More on our travel plans later xxx

Tuesday 20 November 2012

Craft Fair

Hi, 

In my last post I mentioned that I was doing my first fair on Saturday. I made a few sales and we raised some money for children in need. It was good practice and I'm looking into a few more fairs I can do before christmas. Here are some photos of my table and my crafts:








Mike also contributed with his Pudsey Bear biscuits, which looked great, unfortunately I didn't get a photo of them after they had been decorated... which is a shame because I'm not sure Mike will ever be baking again. I could hear little exclamations coming from the kitchen during the baking, my favourite of which was "you stupid bear" followed by "oh, his head fell off". Not all of the biscuits made it to the fair (headless pudseys might scare children)  but the ones that did were very cute and yummy:


xxx

Friday 16 November 2012

Christmas stockings and last minute jobs for tomorrow's fair.

I have been making more patchwork stockings this week to sell at tomorrow's fair. Each stocking is individual, and whilst they are all embellished with ribbons, each has something different to make it special and unique, including freestyle machine embroidery, beads, buttons and one has a felt machine stitched Robbin. I have been debating for days on how much to charge, I usually only make things for family and friends so I have never sold any thing before. From a bit of online research there seems to be a huge variety in what people charge for handmade stockings, from £8-£30! I have settled on £12.50 which is probably realistic and reasonable, although because I am a bit slow and "faffy" when I sew these take a few hours to make so I'm probably only paying myself about £3 for each hours work. I do enjoy it though so it's not really work. Does anyone else have this dilemma?















I have also been finishing off some Christmas bunting for tomorrow's fair. I made some last year for my own flat and I like it so much it has been there all year... Luckily the fabric was less obviously Christmassy!






I am going to finish up a few last things for the fair tonight, I will let you know how it goes next week. And I apologise for the small pictures, when I upload them on the blogger app there seems to be no way to control the size...and the quality is a bit pants on my iPad... I must remember to take my camera to the fair!! Have a nice weekend everyone xxx