Hope you Had A Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day!

He knows how much I like magazines and how hard I try to resist them!

Then he made me scrambled egg, grilled tomatoes and bacon for breakfast! Yum!

My name is Ellouise and I am addicted to making garlands! I was still making them this morning!


I put these beads on the bottom as Mad One is rather keen on penguins. I think I have had these beads ForEver. I remember playing with them as a child in my Mum's button bottle.


Yes, I know the gun's a bit weird but it's a family heirloom! I found my crochet hearts from last year and other bits and pieces that I have collected on a red theme.

Remember those little heart shaped silicone cases that I bought? I filled each of the six with different sweets. Lovehearts, of course

and some gobstoppers and heart shaped things and letter shaped things and sour things and more sour things.

We also had some Lindor chocolates in a little dish bought from Paperchase last year.

And not forgetting a bumble bee, synonymous with Valentine's Day of course - not sure where he came from!

Don't forget some sweet treats to eat!

I managed to save some of those ginger nuts I made yesterday.

And does anyone fancy a slice of chocolate cake?

Guess what, I forgot to take a picture of The Pie!!!!!!! Duh!

Baking Day

Do you like ginger biscuits?

I made one or two today.

Mad Child also made some 'fork cookies' or something like that. (I think that's what she said!!!) She looked up the recipe and did it all herself whilst I battled with the computer trying to put a Flickr montage onto my sidebar (I was unsuccessful!)

There's also a little chocolate something in the background for tomorrow!

I also started The Lemon Meringue Pie but didn't quite have time to do the topping, so I will have to do that in the morning! (So no pie in bed tomorrow morning!)

He was a little late home from work this evening(!!), so I think it's a good job I've at least started The Pie methinks.

It's really heart-warming to get nice comments, thanks a bundle people and so glad you like my witterings, Ramble Time- Reinvented!

Here's hoping you all have a WONDERFUL Valentine's Day, with lots of chocolate and flowers and kisses. That's what I am hoping for (oh and a little bit of Pie!)

See you soon

Valentine Presents

We go through this every year:

Him: "Do you want a Valentine's present?"

Me: "Not if I've got to ask for it!"

Not really known for his romantic inclinations, is my Marathon Runner. He is thoughtful sometimes, I'll give him that.

The trouble is, sometimes he surprises me and brings something home, even though he said he wouldn't.

So here is the dilemma; do I buy/make him something or not?

I did wonder about making one (or two) of these

but have left it a bit late. Perhaps I'll just do a bunch of these

or maybe I'll just make him his favourite Lemon Meringue Pie?

More Valentine Garlands

Hello Dear Hearts! (Didn't Ermintrude used to say that?)


(Apologies for the crappy photos! Didn't have as much time as planned today.)

Three and counting .... these are getting rather addictive! I started with the one on the left: do you notice that they are getting longer?



Well done, One Hour Craft for this one. It really is soooo easy and used up some of the papers I had lying around. Even though I am not much into paper craft as much as fabrics and yarns, I had still managed to collect rather a lot of them!

Some lovely purple, pink and orange ones.

Greens and pinks.

And the fluorescent ones for Scary, but I fancy the ones with the patterns look a bit better.

I am so taken with these that today I actually bought some more patterned papers to make some more! I did try and get some red paper today but the lady in the shop looked at me and said "but we sold all the red at Christmas!"

Honestly anyone would think it was Valentine's Day or something!

Is it just me?

Time for bed said Zebedee.

PS Are they still called garlands if they hang downwards rather than across?

Daylight and Knobs!

Finally get to see my garland in the (sort of) daylight. Not much sun today! If you look closely enough in the kitchen, you can see Mad Child has been baking coconut rocks. The recipe calls them coconut pyramids but we can never get them to stay in that shape, so they are either coconut rocks or, much to Scary's disgust, coconut knobs! I think her mind is on a different plain; she has never heard of a Dorset Knob (a spherical biscuity thing)!

I have been crafting again today (Marathon Runner will be wondering why tea is late again!) but the light is absolutely dreadful so cannot get any good pictures!

Anyway, better get that ham boiling ....

Valentine Garland

This all started when I received the latest newsletter from Kids Craft Weekly and they had some 'kiss cards' for Valentine's Day. They have some really good ideas, albeit sometimes for younger children.

I do love garlands. I look at the ones on flickr and make plans but never seem to get to it. It's all a bit superfluous I guess. Real Life gets in the way. That and the fact that our walls are harder than diamonds and putting them up requires industrial equipment and a very well bribed Marathon Runner!

So anyway, I digress ....

First find some red lipstick (you might have some in your handbag but I got mine from Boots, £1.99, as red isn't normally my colour) and get some willing (or bribed) volunteers:

Then proceed to snog some paper. I bought a big sheet of thick white paper from the stationers for 50p.

I decided to use some heart shaped biscuit cutters rather than circles; I had three sizes and did a selection.

Then Mad Child and I cut them out, being careful not to smudge the lipstick.

Then I laminated them. I managed to get quite a few into each laminating pouch, leaving spaces between but they were rather tricky to feed into the machine as they kept slipping about.

Unfortunately on the last sheet, the pouch went into the laminator but didn't come out. Oh joy!

So maybe we'll have some lunch. A little bit of leftover steak and ale pie, that will do. Calm the nerves.

Then, whilst teaching Mad Child a bit of Anglo Saxon, I took the laminator to pieces, unravelled the last sheet and put it all back together. If you want to make one of these garlands, you may not need to do this step!

Then we proceeded to cut them out again, this time with a border of laminate around the edge.

Now we had 20 hearts of various sizes.

The next step is to string them into a garland. But which ribbon to use?

Most votes seem to have been cast for the red rickrack.

By this time Marathon Runner is home from work and 'helping'! We wanted ours approximately 180cm long and we just randomly placed the different sized hearts roughly 5cm apart, leaving ends on the rickrack for pinning. It turned out that we only needed 12 of the hearts but I am sure the others will be used for something.

We started off gluing the rickrack onto the back of the hearts but it didn't stick quickly enough (we were in a hurry to finish at this point) so stuck a bit of sellotape on as well.

Yay, tis done!!!!!!!!!

Obviously, by this time it is dark!!!!!

Hope you like it!

Hearts

Some of my favourite hearts from Flickr:

Heart #1

makes you dream of summer days on the beach, doesn't it?

Heart #2

So simple and beautiful.

Heart #3

A girl can always dream that this will land on her mat on the 14th!

Still getting in the mood for Valentines Day but when you've been married for nearly 20 years, sometimes you have to dig a little deeper .......

Some of my hearts I made last year. I wonder where I put them?

Countdown to Luurrrve

Not sure what we are going to do for Valentines Day this year but I think it will feature these little silicone cups filled with something special! They were in Tescos and I couldn't resist them. Maybe some jelly beans?

(Psst - do you notice my new Cath Kidson tea towel in the background?)

I've had quite a day today, lurching from one crisis to the next, mostly involving children it has to be said! Never mind, nice cup of tea, homemade muffin and a bit of CSI will put me right!

See you soon ...

Pinch Punch First of the Month

The first of February already!

Where does the time go?