Thursday 14 June 2012

Package Pals Part 2




Yesterday I shared with you the lovely parcel I received from Kathy, the lady I was paired off with at Jamie's Package Pals Party.  Well now I have received a very excited e-mail from Kathy to say she collected her package from the Post Office so I can now share with you what I made for her.  Kathy doesn't have a blog, although I am working on that one, so we agreed I would do a post about both packages and link them back to Jamie at C.R.A.F.T.

Well my little bit of Inspector Clouseau detective work revealed that Kathy is mad about crochet and that her hubby calls her The Happy Hooker!  Her favorite colors are; lime green, red and orange.  Her lounge accented with the former and her kitchen colors the latter two.  Kathy also loves to send handwritten notes to people and, like me, loves to go to yard sales and thrift shops whenever she gets a chance.

So this is the package I made up for her: A fabric covered ring binder to keep all her patterns neat and tidy, with a personal touch,  two hanging hand towels for the kitchen, a pretty throw pillow for the lounge, a tote bag to bring home all her thrifting goodies and finally a set of four hand made note cards all done in her favorite colors!




We both really enjoyed the challenge of making something 'tailor made' and we were both so happy with our surprise parcels.  Thanks again to Jamie over at C.R.A.F.T. for hosting and roll on November for the next round of exchanges!

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Package Pals - Part 1


Recently I signed up for my first ever Handmade Gift swap.  Lovely Jamie over at C.R.A.F.T. hosted Package Pals and I was paired off with a lady called Kathy, and would you believe she lives just five hours down the road from me!  So of course that means we may actually get to meet in real life at some point very soon!  The minute we were 'paired up' we immediately started talking, first via e-mail and then via Facebook!  Kathy and I have a lot in common it seems, thrifting, making new stuff from old and all sorts of stuff!  Anyhow Kathy is BIG on crochet... actually doing it that is, whilst I am big on buying anything crocheted.  I am currently trying to learn, but it is like knitting... small stuff that gets finished quick is good, bigger projects ... well they just don't grow fast enough and I get bored and give up.

So within a few days Kathy managed to weedle out of me my house color schemes, likes and dislikes and a whole host of other info, including the fact that a good friend of mine is expecting her first baby.  By Friday she announced she had been to the post office and posted my package!  That's when panic set in...  I had loads of ideas buzzing around in my head for her package but hadn't actually started any of them.  But I am glad to say I rose to the occasion and a parcel is winging it's way as we speak.

Now for my package!  Can you believe all these little flowers are crocheted?  Kathy knew I had a flowers and butterflies thing going on in my newly decorated guest room so she made this cute bouquet!  For my pregnant friend she made this adorable bonnet and bootie set!  A lovely set of 6 placemats and napkins with a crochet border... for my new table!  Some pretty little butterfly fridge magnets and some crocheted dish cloths.  Just look how cute they came... for a minute I almost thought they were another little gift for my friend!  Thank you Kathy!  And Thank you too, to Jamie for hosting the Package Pals Party



Thursday 7 June 2012

Confessions of A Blogger!

Source Sailorettes.com

Hi my lovelies!  I have just read a hilarious post by my friend Kim from Tiara's & Bowties, read it that is after a few minutes of frantic panic and e-mailing.  You see I clicked on her link in my reading list and got a message to say her blog had been deleted!  Having immediately e-mailed her in panic (I have heard of several people recently whose blogs have literally just disappeared), Kim somehow managed to find out that dear old Blogger had 'found malicious activity on her blog" and deleted her!  If you have ever visited Kim at Tiara's & Bowties you will know that although she has made some revealing confessions she is far from 'malicious'!  Anyhow all's well that ends well and the blog was quickly re-activated so I was able to read her post!  And so it got me thinking... we've been talking a lot lately about 'being real' and being able to 'get to know' fellow bloggers for who they really are and not just because they can do an awesome furniture reno or masterpiece painting.  What better way than to share a few funny, even slightly risque, confessions?  So are you ready?  Well then here goes... oh and to the good folk at Blogger if you're reading this please don't delete me...I'm a nice girl, really I am!

4 Confessions of a non perfect (and slightly naughty) blogger!

I once attended a whole day of fire training and yet that night, when my pork chop caught fire under the broiler (because I dozed off in the chair) I put it under the tap!  Of course the flames leaped up to the ceiling (I did say I just woke up!)  anyhow I opened the back door and threw it out onto the patio and threw some more water on it.  However, I realised at this point that I had absolutely nothing else defrosted that fussy eater ex husband (notice the word EX here) would eat.  In a panic I picked up the pork chop, rinsed it under a hot tap, dabbed it with paper towel and served it up anyhow!

When my son was small (it was just me and him) I packed him off to his granny's house for the weekend.  Whilst he was gone his beloved Russian Hamster, Smartie, selfishly unfortunately died.  I went out and purchased another the next morning in the hope that No.1 son wouldn't notice!

I refuse to put gas in the car!  That, my dear friends, is a blue job.  As is locking the front door at bedtime, getting the glasses of water at bedtime and cleaning the oven!  In fact Lovely Man was called away to the UK recently and left me with the clapped out classic Landrover (his pride and joy) with about a quarter of a tank of gas in it.  So I found myself standing at the pump scratching my head and looking dumb helpless hoping that someone may take pity on me and do it for me.  They didn't!

I once had this desire to learn Burlesque Dancing and duly dragged set off with my friend Lucy for lessons.  The second to last lesson involved learning to tassle twirl (we are thinking Dita Von Tease here ladies)  So we all stood there with our tassles firmly taped to our nipples, in front of a large mirror.  The process involves doing little bounces, feet together, back straight, tiny quick bounces at the knee.  This makes your boobs jiggle sufficiently to make the tassles twirl!  And if that isn't exciting enough if you raise your arms slowly at the same time the tassles will start to twirl the other way when your outstretched arms get to shoulder height!  Impressive or what?  i must have been in front of that darned mirror for about twenty minutes totally awestruck at my new found talent!

Now before I get to the finale (doing the fan dance with those HUGE, gorgeous ostrich feather fans) I should explain that I was wearing dancers' tights underneath my panties and stockings for a smooth tanned look (as opposed to white and wobbly).  This meant that everything was very silky.  Anyhow there I was with these enormous fans twirling them around in front on me as seductively as I could when I felt something brush across my foot.  Now we were in the basement of a public house (bar) in deepest, darkest Portsmouth so I assumed it to be a mouse or worse.  With a shriek both fans went up in the air whilst I did a little more jiggling and prancing, nearly falling flat on my face.  You see all the previous bouncing about coupled with the silky smoothness of dancers tights had made my panties suddenly drop to my ankles! Mouse indeed!

So there you go, sorry Kim only 4 for me, but I think they made you all giggle!