Birthday treat and the giveaway

Its giveaway day!  And the winner is.........Annie from A Saucerful of Secrets.  E was charmed by your memory and could imagine the scene, cold night, golden light and biscuits!  So this little bunny is on his way to you when I can get your address.  Thankyou for all your memories it was lovely reading them.  I have lots of treasured memories of christmas, coming from a large family, I have three brothers and three sisters, christmas was always a very jolly time with lots going on and usually a house stuffed full of family and friends.  One of my warmest memories is when I got my first 'hard' doll (I had only had soft toys till then) I named her Sarah and my mum had knitted her a load of clothes and better still she came in a pram, an old fashioned (I think my dad had got it second hand) type that had a hood at both ends!  I had to share this with my little sister and mum had made all the bedding for that too. 

Birthday Outing.

It was E's birthday yesterday and for his treat he wanted to go to the zoo!  He is only 48 you know.  We went to Newquay Zoo and although it is only tiny we were very impressed. I must admit that I do not like seeing animals in cages but as E says they are safer there than in the wild nowadays. As it wasn't a very nice day there were hardly any other people there it was almost like our own private zoo.  We saw the penguins fed and the lion, the penguins weren't fed to the lion I might add.  

The meercats were so sweet there was a little one following the older ones around, even though they are safe in a zoo there was always one on lookout!  This Lynx was gorgeous and I could have reached over and touched it, it was so close.  The animals that totally charmed me were the marmoset's at the top who had an island on a pond to live on they were so cute and again there was a baby that must have only been about 10 inches long (never stayed still enough for me to get a pic) they chirped like birds and I could have stayed and watched them all day. It was a lovely day we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and we will go back soon I think.

Here are Bunny bracelet and some Noddy necklaces that I tried to put on the last post, aren't they fun!

Fanfare please....It's my first giveaway! Yipeeeeeee!!!!! and other things.

This week I have had great fun making christmas decorations and some jewellery.  I cant show you the jewellery as I dont seem to be able to get any more photos on this post without making others disappear, very strange!  I am now high on soldering fumes and my fingers are black from the flux but is it worth it what do you all think??  

It has all made me feel very christmassy and nostalgic, I remember as a child we always seemed to have snow in the winter, staying out to long till your fingers and toes froze in wet mittens and wellies then rushing in to thaw your hands out under the hot tap, the burning warmth as feeling returned in them.  I love snow and now we live in the least likely place to get snow in the UK, sigh!  

I used some lovely old glass buttons to adorn some of these hanging dainties with chandelier drops and mother of pearl buttons to0.

Do di do di do do dooooo!!!!!!! (My go at typing a fanfare!)

Here is the give away.  This little chap has been sat on my desk watching me work all week and is now waiting to pack up his little bag of goodies and head for a new home.   But I do want you to do something for him, so if you post me a comment telling me about a treasured childhood christmas memory I will get E to choose one and they will get this little boy.  Look forward to hearing from you.  I will tell who has one in my next post on Tuesday 11th so you have a bit of time.  

A prize, a day out and some new work.

The other day I had a lovely surprise in the post when my prize from the blog Dadas place arrived it is a sweet little painting of a girl and her doggie.  I was lucky enough to be the person chosen on her give away.   Thank you Dragana I love it!

Our Friday out this week was to Cadgwith Cove, we had never been there before, its a tiny village with thatched cottages and a little harbour.  We spent some time wandering about enjoying the sunshine then went on to St Keverne for tea at Roskilly's icecream farm sitting by an open fire where the farm cats come in for a warm and to say hello to all the customers, they did not settle down till they had done the round of all the tables, very sociable poods. Wish I had taken some pics of them.

This cottage is such a diddy little thing it should be made of gingerbread and have a witch living in it!

  I spent last week making assemblages of which here is a couple. As you can see I have used the cow toy I bought a few weeks ago for one of them and pieces of an old jigsaw too.  I love wooden jigsaws, hate the new cardboard ones, they have no soul!  This was one I got on ebay and it had a few pieces missing so I did not feel to guilty using bits of it here.  I do have another farm one that is complete and it has lots of animals that you can play with as they stand up on there own.  I will be scouring ebay soon for my yearly fix of puzzles to do over christmas.  Luckily I now have a friend, Sara, who is also a jigsaw junky and we have a lovely jigsaw day where we just do puzzles, drink lemonade and eat biscuits!  Looking forward to that again soon Sara!  Well it was a productive week and I now have quite a stock of boxed bits for the show so I am now onto making jewellery and christmas decorations.  The decorations are in the prototype stage at the moment but I think they will work out OK will put some on the next post.

 

Another picture of Cadgwith for some reason it got put at the bottom and I cant move it.

Attention blog readers!  If you come back and look at my next blog, number 20, I will be doing a give away and I think you will like it!  I know I have not been blogging for long and I probably dont have many people who read it but I thought it would be nice to show my appreciation of you out there by giving one of you a little gift so do hop back soon and see me (bit of a clue there!)

Sunday Treat

The only other people who live down our lane are a lovely family who keep horses.  They have two Fresian stallions that are beautiful called Volmer and Vector (I think thats how you spell their names) they are carriage horses and used to work for Harrods before they 'retired' to Bob and Julia's.  They do not work so hard these days just little trips round the lanes and its lovely to see them trundling past our house.  I have been out a couple of times with them before and sometimes go and plat up their manes if they are going anywhere special, I love doing that!  On Sunday Julia asked if I wanted to go out for a little ride, they would stop and pick me up.  So when I heard Julia blowing the horn (Bob and his son Ben play the carriage horn at shows and Julia is learning) I skipped out the door and managed to get a shot of them trotting up toward me.

It wasn't a very sunny day but what a lovely thing to do on a Sunday morning, you can see so much more from a carriage over all the hedges seeing views I never saw before.  At first its a bit disconcerting being so high up behind two big black bottoms when you are more used to being on horses backs!  The carriage sways and moves about more than you think it would, it is so much part of the horses and Bob is wonderful with them, he obviously loves them and they respond to the sound of his voice and much as the reins.

Here we are back home again, a real treat and I learn something new every time I go out with them.  Bob is a well known carriage driver and teaches and helps others with their own horses.  He is always away at some show or other in demand to drive other peoples horses, even the Queens!  

Angels

The last few days I have been working on these angels. They are acrylic on canvas.  I quite like the cake angel and might have this one as a print and cards.  I am building up a small range of my own cards that at the moment I sell to galleries but soon they will be on my etsy shop.  Yes I know, I have had the etsy shop coming soon notice on this blog for ages but Ive only got to work out all the postages and I can start listing stuff, must get my **** in gear and get that done soon!

I thought this one would make a nice christmas card and tags maybe.  I am going to do a few more angels for the V&H fair so my stand looks quite festive.                     

We went to Polperro yesterday and Im afraid to say that we were a bit disappointed with the place, so we stopped at Lostwithiel on the way home. It is a sweet little town and one of the few places in Cornwall that you can find antique shops.  My favourite is one called Deja-vu, they always have lovely stuff in there. At the moment I have fallen in love with a dresser that would be perfect for our front kitchen.  Will have to review the dwindling finances and see if we can justify spending quite a lot of money!  Im hoping that the owner might be interested in some of our stuff we need to get rid of and do a part exchange.  Well while I was in there I spotted these lovely animals on wheels and the bunny who sits just right in the toy chair I found in Christine's last year.  I will be using the animals in some assemblages although Im not sure if I will be able to part with the little cat!