Wonderful Willowpool

I'm sorry to have gone quiet for a few days after I was feeling a bit down in my last post. Things have taken a strange turn with my car, but for now I have a courtesy car, so at least I am mobile.

This morning we visited Willowpool Garden and Antique Centre in Lymm (http://www.willowpool.co.uk/) for coffee and a wander.

 It is an amazing place full of nooks and crannies, where you stumble on many unusual and often rusty reclaimed articles.

 I would love my garden to look like this place.

It would be a great place for a special party.

The food in the cafe is lovely and you can sit outside in little thatched huts or heated fairground stalls.

Not sure who this chap is, but he has a kind face and an air of contenetment about him.

I was tempted to trade my car in for one of these bikes!!!! (Ecxept it has been stolen from the garage while it was in for repair)

I'll show you some radiant rust tomorrow. :)

Wheels Keep on Turning

I've been feeling low the last few days. Sometimes life just feels too hard and this week it has been compounded by my car breaking down for the third time in the month I have had it, so I have had to cancel some of the "nurturing" things I had planned. I have to remind myself that there are worse things happening in the world, and with children to feed and ferry around and a dog to walk and play with, somehow the wheels keep on turning.

Taking time to water my garden slowly with a watering can instead of a hose is incredibly soothing.

And of course, there are moments like this to raise a smile.

Final Total

I have collected all the sponsor money from the Midnight Walk, ready to send to St Ann's Hospice. I am very pleased that our total amount is £186.

Rain Damage

The last couple of days have been blustery, grey and we've had lots of heavy rain. I went into the garden to check how everything is doing and have restaked the tomato plants that had been blown over. A few other things are looking a bit battered.
I was surprised to find this lovely nest had been blown out of the leylandii at the bottom of the garden.

The little egg was on the ground and sadly, stone cold! My dog was delighted to find another, broken egg nearby.

Some plants are thriving from having a good soaking.

 Montbretia

Tiny little lupins

A big fat courgette

Hilarious in Hindsight

Yesterday evening I sat down with my rapidly growing children to look through some of their childhood photos. We found lots of pictures of Birthday cakes that I made for them over the years. At the time, I was really proud of my creative efforts, asking what they would like their cake to be, buying coloured icing and sometimes spending days sculpting wonderful culinary feats. Looking back at them, they are so hilariously awful that we laughed until we had tears streaming down our faces and we could hardly sit up!!!:-D

I must point out that they always tasted delicious, but why oh why did nobody take me aside and gently suggest that Marks and Spencers sell perfectly nice party cakes and that I would not fail my duties as a mother if I chose not to get elbow deep in roll-out icing?!

I'll start with one I am STILL quite proud of, but feel free to chuckle at the rest.

The next one is downright scarey.

This one took me days to make. I had to stick icing around swiss rolls and ice cream cornets for the turrets. At the party one of the Dads asked me if it was a car!

                                                       (It's a castle, if you're struggling!)

This next one was made on a very hot July day for my son's second birthday and the butter icing was almost sliding off the cake. For the first two and a bit years his day (and consequently MY day) started between 4.30 and 5a.m. so I was exhausted when I made this. I even went to the trouble of using green food colouring to colour some sugar to look like(!?) grass.

                                            (It's a tractor.....)

Needless to say when my mother-in-law asked me to make an anniversary cake, I made it and gladly paid a friend to ice it for me. Hope they made you laugh too. x

Raspberry Ripple

I finally managed to finish crocheting my circle scarf in beautiful shades of pink that remind me of a big bowl of crushed raspberries and ice cream!

 You can find out more about it in my Etsy shop (www.DottyBlueBird.etsy.com)

Afternoon Tea

After a lovely morning mooching around the Vintage Market in Stockport (http://www.vintagevillagestockportmarket.co.uk/ ), we went for a family treat to celebrate a joint birthday- my son and I share our birthday.

To complete my day I am going to sit in the evening sunshine with a margarita!

The Air Was Blue....

....almost. And my hair is pinky purple!!!

This is my new colour called "Virgin Rose" which is actually a much darker shade of purple in real life.

I nearly didn't make it to the hairdresser as my car decided to break down at the bottom of my road with warning bells and lights flashing. I managed to coax it back into my driveway, just as a lovely neighbour was passing and she very kindly dropped me off to get my hair done. She correctly thought that flicking through OK magazine was what I needed at that moment after the week we've had! Another lovely friend picked me up afterwards and brought me home.

I'm praying for a very boring, uneventful week next week!!

What are your plans for the coming week?

Away With The Fairies Again

Although he is still not out of the woods, my boy is beginning to heal- from the wounds and the shock!
Thank you for your kind words.

Last week I finished machine quilting my latest art quilt,so I thought I'd let you peep at a little more of it. I'd love to show the whole piece, but I feel I ought to hold a bit back until it has been exhibited in November. You can see that it has much more texture now-as do my shoulders which get really knotted when I'm free-motion quilting!

When I feel more settled about my boy I'll start on the third quilt.

Sticks and Stones

I'm finding it very difficult to write this today as I'm feeling pretty shell shocked! I packed my 13year old son off to scout camp on Friday night, but before midnight the phone woke us up  and we found out he was heading to hospital, having been hit in the eye with a rock that had been thrown from the nearby path, in pitch darkness.

He has had lots of tests and has to go back to hospital for more in a couple of days. He has a lump on his head, a very sore graze under his eye and a scratched cornea, all of which should heal quickly. We are not sure if there is any lasting damage to the inside of his eye and for the next 6 weeks there is a risk that his retina could become detached, so he will have to take things slowly, which is not in the nature of teenaged boys!

The police, the scout leaders and victim support have all been very helpful and his friends are absolutely brilliant. I just hope that whoever did it will learn to think a little before acting, as things could have been a lot worse.

He is due to go camping again in a few weeks. It will be really hard to let him go and I may have to quilt him a thickly padded suit before he goes!!!

I don't want to show you a photo of his injury so I've selected a nice calming image instead:)