By Stephie, on Thursday 23rd December, 2010 at 10:55 am
Yes, we’re finally getting there. Well, that is, I’m finally getting there, Kim’s been in the mood for Christmas since last Christmas. He has his Christmas wish list sorted and lives in a state of hope and excitement every day. He’s looking forward to opening the box of Roses and stripping the tree bare of it’s chocolate decorations. He’s looking forward to seeing the look on his daddy’s face when he opens the present that he helped to make. He’s looking forward to lighting candles and making it look “really festive” – I’m worried he’s turning into a pyromaniac. Yes, two days to go and I’m finally getting there. Well, I think I’ll definitely be there when I finish making the Christmas presents…
 The tree's decorated at last! And that's Kim's half finished quilt from last Christmas...  Doing some Christmas baking  Oh my word these are tasty! The smells from the kitchen were wonderful! Kim found the recipe for the cookies on the BBC website. You can find it here. Be warned though, you won’t be able to help yourself and will certainly end up with half the amount of cookies that you actually baked!
 Stitching away on his daddy's Christmas present How about you, are you ready yet?
love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Saturday 7th August, 2010 at 10:05 am
Fancy a train journey? Do what we did last week and ride up to Lanhydrock House, when you get to Bodmin Parkway station (you can take a steam train journey from here) there’s the most beautiful level walk up to an old and quirky looking house. You can imagine yourself in a grand carriage rolling sedately up the long drive, or you can do what Kim does and nag to go in the modern day equivalent: the golf buggy! The lazy toad didn’t get his way and I forced him to walk! He had to walk yesterday too when we went to Trelissick Garden, which is only a few miles from home. To spare you from my rabbiting on, here’s a few photos from Trelissick.
 Panoramic views of the River Fal  A quick watercolour sketch of the River Fal. Kim would probably disagree with the word 'quick'!  Spot the strange flower in the grass!  A standing stone to mark the turning of the millennium  Colour in the flower borders. I enjoyed taking my watercolours out with me, must remember to take them next time. You never know I might even get better at it! I used to be really good with watercolours (get me!), but I’m a bit out of practice. It’s still my favourite painting medium though 
Right, I’m off now – got some things to list for From the Loft, my Etsy shop! May have a bowl of porridge first though.
See you later
love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Sunday 20th June, 2010 at 22:43 pm
Father’s day. Yep, like father like son, as they say. Zzzzzzzzzz… I’m that boring :0
 Is it me, or is she sending you to sleep too? Ok, I can take a hint. I’ll just sit here and take in the view for a while.
 which is stunning, but I can’t help it if that view also happens to include a hot looking bloke and his steed, can I? Pity I didn’t dress up for the occasion
 Riding on the beach? Yes please... Checking out the talent? Who me? Nah, I’m just looking at the jelly fish, mate.
 beautiful ones of course.
By Stephie, on Monday 24th May, 2010 at 23:43 pm
 Really, it's fine. I AM coping ... No, dear peeps, your eyes are not deceiving you. What you see below is a Christmas stocking. I’ve been making a batch of them this week. I know, what am I on, its not even October yet. I’m in panic mode, that’s what I’m on. Instead of focussing on the stuff that’s raising my anxiety levels sky high at the moment, I’m focussing on stuff that should be making me marginally anxious in 6 months time. Trust me, it’s easier this way. As you know I’m cash poor. I’m also asset poor, ha, ha! (I am however creatively rich, but that doesn’t help much!) I’ve been living close to the financial edge for some time now, but recently my finances have got a whole lot worse due to one 1400cc problem. My 10 year old car is not being very nice to me. Since the 16th of April it’s cost £825 to keep it roadworthy. And when it went for a mini service last week I was told it will need yet another £150 spent on it asap (“I wouldn’t advocate leaving it all, I’d do it now”). Not having nearly £1000 to hand has caused a slight raise in blood pressure it has to be said. I’ve weighed up the possibility of living without said wheels and quite frankly it would be impossible to get to the places I need to go without them. So it seems to me the best way to get through the crisis is to accept that my financial situation will only get worse come winter, due to extortionate heating bills, therefore the best thing I can do is make Christmas presents, to spread the cost you understand. I hope you’re following my logic so far! What I’m describing here is also known as a coping mechanism, albeit one with a productive outcome. That’s handy then isn’t it!
I have about eight of these on the go and six of them have planned recipients. That left two ‘spare’ (get me and the maths, whoa!). Then Kim saw them, so now I have one spare. He decided that he liked the Frosty the Snowman one best, but it had to have his name on. Well I’d done all the embroidery and there was no room left for even a three letter name like his. I had to come up with a solution, otherwise I would have one very disappointed 12 year old on my hands (one that would probably have forgotten all about it in six month’s time). Enter the wonky label. The wonky label is made up from the tiniest scraps of matching snowman fabric I could find, which accounts for some of its wonkiness (the rest is down to my sewning ) Kim seems rather pleased with it, although I think that might have more to do with his observation that “now I’ll have two stockings for Father Christmas to fill up!” (The other one being one I made for his first Christmas.) He should be so lucky 
 Just a wee bit early!  Frosty? Well not really, it's been full on sun here for days!  No doubt who this one's for I guess! That’s all for now my lovelies. See you in the morning.
love Stephie c]x
By Stephie, on Thursday 22nd April, 2010 at 23:36 pm
Want to see some drawings? After all the cushion pushing (ooh er missis!), I thought you might like a bit of a change before the winners are announced tomorrow. (Oh yes, we have 2 winners, but I’m not telling just yet!) I’ve done a few more ink sketches I thought I could show you. I even like some of them
 Here's a cow. It's a dairy cow.  I live on a dairy farm, so here's another cow!  And for a change, here's another self-portrait!  Self portrait number 2, well for the day  and here's the 3rd one for the day. I like this one. Don't know why, just do. I’m planning to put these and a few others into the #draw365 Flickr group over the next day or two. There are some great images there, it’s like a big drawing gallery, have a look and tell me what you think.
I’m also going to plug the group I administer Women’s Self Portraits. We’ve got 11 members now and new work is being added regularly. There’s quite a wide range of media from drawing and painting to photography and installation works. I was interested to see how we define self-portraits today; it’s not all drawings of the face, which make them much more interesting to me. This was kind of the area I was planning to research for a PhD thesis, but so much for that. Bloody stupid system made it impossible. But I won’t bore you with that. Maybe I should rephrase that: I won’t rant at you about that! Trust me, I can rant on that one for hours.
As an aside, actually completely unrelated, I’m sure my lovely child has given me NITS. I’m sitting here scratching the back of my head. It’s intense. And I’ve noticed Kim’s been scratching too. He hasn’t had nits since he was about 7. Why the bloody hell has he got them now?! And which lovely person passed them on to him? Come on, stand up and admit it, dammit it was you wasn’t it, you horrid little boy! Lets face it, it has to be a boy, he doesn’t fraternise with the girls. Well, apart from Georgina on the school bus… I wonder if they were transferred by whoever sat in the bus seat before Kim. How inconsiderate. Don’t they know that Kim and I have hugs and that the little monster was bound to pass them on to me? I can cope with Kim scratching, but I can’t cope with me scratching at all. It’s damn irritating. Especially when you’re trying to write something as riveting as this blog post surely is
Until tomorrow then, adieu.
love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Monday 29th March, 2010 at 13:31 pm
I think I may have sorted out the upside down picture problem for the time being. Well, I say that. I think iPhoto is the problem, it’s only allowing me to upload the original photo and not the ‘corrected’ versions (ie the ones where I’ve turned the pictures up the right way). That’s what I think. At the moment. The other irritating thing is that I can’t find a way of viewing the actual images, rather than just a list with the names. So annoying because all the files are numerical rather than descriptive and therefore it takes an inordinate amount of time to find the right one. Well, I’m sure you don’t want to hear me waffling on about software do you? I know I would have found something else to read by now!
Let’s have a look at some pretty pictures instead shall we?! It was Mother’s Day recently, a couple of weeks ago now wasn’t it? Well, I made this, not for me, but for my mum. She knits a fair amount and I thought a big bright bag to keep her projects in would be fun. I made up the design myself. Actually I just made it up as I went along, didn’t make a pattern first or anything. Didn’t even use a tape measure! I used 2 coordinating fabrics from Amy Butler’s new Love range and added a large pattern and needle pocket inside and a smaller pocket on the outside for bits and pieces like pencils.
 Mother's day present for my mum!  Rowan in the bag, of course!  Yep, I went a bit dotty with the polka dot theme! My mum seemed to like it. She said I was very clever, which made me smile like the cheshire cat (age 10). I don’t think she’s ever called me that before. Usually the complete opposite. So, things are looking up!!!
What did you do for Mother’s Day, anything nice? I hope all you mummies received something lovely, or put your feet up and were waited on for the day Well, we can live in hope! I was taken for a picnic on the cliffs at Chapel Porth, make hay whilst the sun shines as they say! It was such a beautiful day.
 Mother's Day picnic spot I was also very fortunate to receive a lovely book along with a box of Thornton’s Turkish Delight – which Kim said he’d been waiting all week for me to open, ha, ha!!!!! But I am a good mummy and I did share them! Here’s the book I was given: (click on the image to take you to the Amazon page).
It’s very good, even though I don’t have an allotment! I’ve been thinking about applying for one for ages – the trouble is they’re all at least a couple of miles away and I’m told that the further away they are the less likely you are to use them… Still, I’ve already got lots of tips from the book for my little salad/veg patch in the garden. I’ve been digging out there, when the weather’s been ok, and I have to say I feel that spring is definitely in the air! Well I did until I went out this morning and was almost blown over by a freezing cold wind and soaked through by pelting rain.
On that cheery note, I’m off to raid the cupboard or the fridge, or both. It’s lunchtime and I’m soooo hungry!
Catch you later.
love Stephie x
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I'm running a 28 mile marathon in memory of Josie this February. Come and find out why.
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