Monday 30 May 2011

If You Are Not Embarrassing Your Children, Then You're Obviously Not Enjoying Yourself!


Yes, Crofters wool again - this time a pair of socks!  Done one and half-way through the second whilst drinking a pina colada and listening to the evening entertainment!  It's a wonder they still sit with me, isn't it?

Sunday 29 May 2011

Any Guesses?



I will give a prize if anyone gets the exact name of the town!

Saturday 28 May 2011

Can Anyone Guess Where I Am?


We speako the Spanish-io.


A siesta is a must for us English roses!




I've never seen so many fish.

I'll give you some better clues tomorrow!

Friday 27 May 2011

Glorious Holi-Holiday!


Saturday 7 May 2011

For Tea Lovers

OK, I'm a Coffee Person really but Scary and Weird God-Daughter love their tea and quite often try some of the fruit ones.  I saw a lovely idea on Pinterest a while ago and saved the link.  Well, by the time I got to actually doing it, something had gone wrong with the link so I made up my own version of a 'tea wreath'.



In the meantime, I have found it again and it can be found here on Kojo Designs, which at first sight seems to contain some brilliant inspiration and links.  Just on the first page, I think I have found three things that I want to have a go at!

So I hope that I have made it clear that this is really just my 'take' on Kojo Designs' fabulous idea.  I have done a couple of things slightly differently, simply because I couldn't find their tutorial when I was doing it, making use of the things that I had to hand and using my own ideas.

It all started with a pizza!  Surely that silly plastic base is useful for something, I thought; so I washed it and tucked it away for further cogitation.  It seemed to me that it was about the right size for the wreath so I used that instead of cutting out cardboard.


I also used some spotty paper, plastic pegs, bit of ribbon, glue and of course, the tea bags.



I cut out the centre of the pizza base thingy, making the diameter of the doughnut roughly the same as the length of the pegs (does that make sense?).  The small circle I marked into 18 (because I was using 18 pegs) which means a line every 20° - easy enough to mark out as long as one of your children hasn't stolen your protractor!  Hmmm.  I used this later.  The marked circle, that is, not the protractor.  (I wasted half an hour looking for said protractor.)  I also cut out the paper, making it approximately 1cm larger than the doughnut.



Using a glue stick I stuck the paper to the pizza plastic,



overlapping and snipping it on the back.



Adding to the original design, I decided to put a little teapot in the centre.  I found a picture of a pretty teapot
on the internet and, with some swearing, managed to print it out along with a mirror image and then stuck them together with a small length of invisible thread between them.  They were a bit of a pain to cut out but in the end I found a craft knife that was vaguely sharp.  I glued the other end of the invisible thread to the back of the doughnut, along with the two ends of the ribbon to be used for hanging it.

Then I cut out another ring which was exactly the same size as the doughnut (we are talking ring doughnut here, by the way, not cream ones!) and used it to sandwich the ribbon and thread, and cover the back of the wreath.


Now I used the middle bit with the lines on to position the pegs.  I think, on reflection, that the pegs fitted quite well and I could have judged it by eye but I didn't know that in the beginning and it certainly helped me with lining up the angle of the pegs.


I did use a glue gun (for the first time ever) to stick the pegs onto the paper.

Ta-da!  One birthday present for Weird God-Daughter made!

I think it would probably look really nice with more colourful tea packaging but I had to go with the finest Tesco could offer.


Phew, can I go to bed now?

Tuesday 3 May 2011

Anyone for Tea?





?

Monday 2 May 2011

Celebrating May Day

If you ever get the chance to visit Kingsbury May Festival (in Kingsbury Episcopy near Martock in Somerset) do go because I think it is one of the best May Day celebrations around.




Scary lived up to her name.


Lots of lovely things to see,

and do:


Hope you all had a lovely May Day!

Sunday 1 May 2011

May Fair


Boxes packed, car jammed full, coffee in flask and lunch in cool bag - off we go!

Starfish was none too pleased having to wake up early for a second morning in a row (yesterday we had to get students to the airport early)!


A little bit blowy, a few raindrops, but the sun peeped out in the end and a profit was made!  We remembered how the gayzebra went together (because of the good colour co-ordinated system the Runner has implemented) and we (well, I) didn't spend more than we made!

Yippee!