Catching up on Christmas crafts

It's Easter Sunday and after my my last mammoth post on finishing my quilt I figured I needed to catch up on some of the other stuff I have done since. 

It feels a bit untimely but oh well. 

This past Christmas was the first one that James and I spent on our own. Aside from the initial panic of having to do a Christmas dinner, which turned out awesome in the end, it was really great to have total freedom to do what we wanted when we wanted. 

We got up unpleasantly early to get our lamb shoulder in the slow cooker. 

We more or less followed this recipe - I stuck the shoulder with anchovies, garlic and rosemary and it turned out really great, the gravy was especially good. 

We rewarded ourselves for our early start with some bucks fizz with freshly squeezed orange juice and champagne. 

Check out our vintage juicer - I love it. 









This was our Christmas tree - bigger again than last year but due to all the felt ornaments I made last year it was pretty full. 

It did need some bigger ornaments though so I took some inspiration from a xmas decoration given to me by a friend a few years ago. 


These hearts were quick, easy and I really liked how they turned out, they looked great on the tree too. 

I cut out 2 heart shapes from some felt, used a basic backstitch to embroider a snowflake in a contrasting colour with embroidery floss on one of the hearts, used another colour for a blanket stitch to sew the hearts together, leaving a small hole to stuff the ornament so its a little plump, and then blanket stitched the hole closed.

I finished then up with some floss as a hanging loop adding a few sequins for decoration. I'll be making more of these for sure. 

 

Capture Real Life in 52 Weeks - catch up

It's been a while since my last post..... I haven't been immersed in papercutting, but I have been busy with the 'Capture Real Life in 52 weeks' course from A Beautiful Mess.

This course has been so fun. The weekly prompts make me think about different aspects of my daily life and take pictures of things that I wouldn't ordinarily. 

The first week was 'good morning, goodnight' and I posted about it here.

Here's a summary of the past few weeks: 

Week 2: Guilty pleasures - This was hard as I turns out that I don't actually feel that guilty about stuff like music, I love Bon Jovi but I am out and proud about that. But thinking of it, James and I go out for dinner, a lot. I feel guilty about it, and it's (usually) a pleasure! Also, I'm a sucker for a pub...especially this one, a boat with a view of Westminster!

Week 3: Nature - This was not hard at all. And awesomely coincided with James and I doing  a few walks... in particular an 8 mile walk from Richmond to Wimbledon, walking through Richmond Park which is one of the largest parks in London. 

It was pretty great how this theme coincided with the start of spring here. I moan about the weather in the UK pretty much all the time but there the spring flowers here are really the most beautiful thing.

Top left, daffs were at the Horniman Gardens, top right was the Pen Ponds at Richmond Park and left, I'm not quite sure...but these magnolias are all over the place. 










Week 4: Outtakes - Trying to catch the 'inbetween' moments. Fun as not something I haven't tried before. 
















This is by the garages behind our flat (where the foxes live). There is this old guy who goes out every morning at half seven to feed the seagulls. I think he thought I was a bit mad but I really love the way these pictures turned out. 

Week 5: Mini album - So each month there is a challenge to make an album with a different technique, the first one was stamps. I used this as a prompt to start scrapbooking some old stuff, starting with James and I's first holiday in Seville. After my first rocky start with scrapbooking I actually really enjoyed this and the stamps were really fun to use.

 I really liked the stamping made to look like the Seville oranges...














Four weeks done! It's been really fun. I have just finished week 6 so I'll post about that soon.

Worth noting that the course is still available and self-paced so you can still sign up for it...