Flower Power

My room has always been full of flowers whether it be artificial or living, so when I heard a customer talking about trellis as you do I had a eureka moment and decided to buy some trellis for my room, I've painted it green so it looks more cheerful and threaded my artificial flowers through the diamond gaps and you know what I think it looks really cute better then the blutac idea and masking tape which just took the paint off. Anyways here's some photos of my new feature, darling :-)

I've also been making up this felt heart pack that I picked up at John Lewis's, which I think would make lovely Christmas pressies for my friends at work. It really brightens up small places.

My lovely sister Beeky has been busy knitting up teddies for me her first creation is Claude who now sits on my chair that I upholstered a few months ago . He's a very happy panda with a floppy head.

Lovely Pieces of China

Last Saturday I went to York with the parents to test drive my gorgeous new car. I love shopping in York because they have shops that aren't all main stream so you can find some brilliant buys at nice small prices. In this one shop I found this square plate with flowers round the edges for £1.50 so I had to have that, it's so unusual.

As always when in York you have to visit Cath Kidston and I went a bit crazy and bought the red floral mules, a flour shaker, two mugs and I also applied for a job there so fingers and toes crossed.

I have also become a fan of Dunelm its like an Aladdin's cave, there were so many things I wanted to buy so its lucky I had a pad and pen with me so I have nearly sorted out my Christmas list :-) One of the things I did convince myself to buy was the pink cup and saucer which sits on top of the square plate.

I also forgot to put on my last entry about these two plates that used to be my Nana's, I think my Grandad brought them back from Egypt when he was fighting in the war, I love sentimental pieces that have stories behind them it makes it more special.

Lots Of Cute Stuff

I've recently received quite a lot of cute furniture that used to belong to my lovely Nana who passed away earlier this year. The sale of the house has finally gone through so all of her beautiful old furniture was needing a new home, now I don't like to see gorgeous old furniture being pulverised or miss treated so I did the honorable thing and tried to shove the bulk of it in my bedroom which is already bursting at the seams. The first thing I got was my grandads old tall boy wardrobe which was a lot smaller than my Nana's wardrobe which I also wanted but we wouldn't have got it up the first step because of its size.

The other item I'm looking after is the phone table and chair it looks a little bit like a chaise lounge but with a table section. Very beautiful piece. The parents got Nana's side board and also the wall unit which is sat in our garage because it is huge and doesn't like turning corners, typical.

Summer Holiday

The last couple of weeks or more like the past month has been pretty busy.

In September me and my sister Beeky (also pinky the hippo and mini minnie the bunny) went away on holiday to Rhodes and it was gorgeous, the sun was always out unlike un-sunny Stockton and I was with my big sis, no interruptions just the two of us having fun, bliss.

This years holiday was meant to be a relaxing one unlike our last holiday to Rome which saw us walking all over the place, it was a brilliant holiday but very busy and Rhodes was meant to be a relax from the stresses of work however that didn't happen, well it did but we were still pooped by the end of the week.

While in Rhodes I found this cute little shop tucked away in Lindos (the three tier cake) that sold beautiful pottery with so much detail on them, I took a few shots of the shop it was too cute to pass plus I bought a little purple bowl which sits on my grandads tall boy.

I made a couple of friends while away, there was Ruddy the cockerel who went off at 6.30am every morning without fail, even on our first night there (we arrived at the hotel at 5am) hence the name Ruddy. And then there was NooNoo the fly yes I know I shouldn't like them and normally I don't but NooNoo was very well behaved, he would sit quietly while we had our dinner and on the last night he found our room and came to visit, he left not long after as Beeky did threaten to kill him (mean).

In Rhodes town the old section I brought back two tiles which will hopefully fit in with our new kitchen (we're in the middle of decorating so everything's a mess).

Also in Rhodes town we found the cutest dog ever it had the face of a King Charles and this huge body definitely a mix breed so cute.

In Kalithea Springs we both decided to beat our fear of swimming in the sea and jumped in, well climbed in slowly and swam out a little way. It was a very funny paddle because Beeky did a little squeal and I thought she was being eaten by a shark so I squealed and well it ended up being a big slimy rock that cut and bruised my leg. I did try to pass it of as a shark attack but well I still had two legs so it didn't work.

The architecture was stunning everything was made with such detail the floors are mosaics and the buildings are like mini master pieces.

On the day we were meant to be leaving Rhodes to come back home our plane decided to die on us so we ended up in a 5 star hotel I know how awful. Our room was lovely lots of freebies :-) and the food was delicious.

Once home I missed my original train and ended up in York instead of Darlington so the lovely parents drove down to pick me up and then the holiday was over. I was to tired to be sad but the next day I missed my sister, and the wake up calls from Ruddy and little NooNoo. But I did print out the 300+ photos to make a scrap book that only fits 50 photos in, DOH.

New Sewing Project

A while back I told you about Carol at work who asked me to make her an apron for her mum, well two weeks ago she asked me to make a replica of a skirt she already had and loved. This was no straightforward skirt there was four pieces to it and none of them were the same. I also had to make a pattern of the original which was a task in its self, but I was glad of the distraction from the very quiet house, (who would have thought a rabbit that said nothing except the occasional sneeze would leave a house feeling so quiet) :-(

Once I got going with making the pattern out of old fabric I got into a stride with it and had the skirt complete within 3 days, this came as a shock to Carol who is over the moon with it.

Here's a front and back photo of the said skirt modelled by my mum who is also called Carol.

Tribute To My Fluffy Bunny

On Tuesday my worst nightmare happened and my beautiful bunny rabbit Minnie died.

I've decided to pay a tribute to Minnie who gave me 6 years of love, laughter and too much heart ache.

The first day I laid eyes on Minnie I knew he would be trouble, his face was so cute and he had this little pose he would pull when he knew he had done something wrong... Trouble.

When we went to pick him up we were told he was chocolate with a hint of cream in fact he was more cream with a hint of chocolate so dad and I came to the conclusion that the original had been sold and he was Mr Replacement.

Once home, he became curious and started looking around bobbing his head like a car accessory which was really cute. It didn't take him long to settle in. Now his original name was Mr Tinkles but after nodding to the approval of the name Minnie we decided to name him Mr Minnie Tinkles now I know Minnie is a girls name but it just fit.

As you can see he was a very fluffy bunny although this didn't last long once Mimi got her teeth on him, she later got the name Sweeney Todd. This is Sweeney:

There are a lot of stories to tell about Minnie so this is kind of a short version of his life.

One of the funniest memories are all the Christmas mornings spent together. We would all leggit down stairs to the living room to open our presents, Minnie in tow who would help pick which presents to open next and run round all of us to see what we had got then he would jump into to all the discarded wrapping paper and start playing hide and seek, this made for a perfect photo opportunity which Minnie would never say no too as he was a great poser.

Another Christmas favourite of mine is buying him an accessory and running around the house trying to put it on him to see how cute he looks I know that's mean but just look at how cute he looks:

awwww.

Another of my favourites was when my dear Nana (who also died this year) would tell people at the centre she would go to that her granddaughters bunny could play the piano, now being in her 90s they just thought she was losing her marbles until she produced this photo of Minnie sat on a piano stole playing the piano. I would have loved to have seen their faces.

My Nana adored Minnie which surprised us all because nan has always run away from anything with four legs and fur.

Another quirky past time of Minnie's was sticking his head in cereal box for the scraps at the bottom, sometimes his head would get stuck and sometimes Mimi the pig would join in. Here's a few shots of the cereal monster.

He also enjoyed teacakes, soldiers (as in eggs and soldiers not the people), crunchy granola bars, raisin wheat's, tea bags and many more none rabbit foods.

There is a very funny story about Minnie and tea bags which happened a few weeks ago. One of mum's friends Joyce came over to borrow some tea bags now unbeknown to Joyce, Minnie was routing through her big bag searching for the tea and the little menace found them, ate four and then for the rest of the night was literally bouncing of the walls it was so funny to watch I wish I had got it on film.

There are so many more stories about Minnie to be told which is why its so sad and hard to have lost him at such a young age. He will always be in our hearts and will never be replaced.

I hope you enjoyed learning more about the funnest bunny on the planet: Mr Minnie Tinkles

The flower room

On Wednesday I went to my mums friends house to do the flower painting for her daughter Jessica's bedroom. It was so much fun. It took me 4 and a half hours to finish painting which was a lot quicker than I thought it would take, I think I painted about 50 flowers that day so I'm all flowered out.
When I arrived at Eileen's house Jessica had already thought of some new designs that I had not done stencils for so that freaked me out a bit but then when I started painting it ended up just being a nice change to be doing something different. I am not a fan of my job (don't get me wrong I love all the fabric its just the customers can be really snotty with you for no reason and that just ruins the job plus the pays not great) but that's nothing to do with chintzy. Anywho Jessica's parents and Jessica love the finished room and I was really pleased with myself for putting myself out there and doing something I don't normally have the guts for.
I promise I'll get some photos taken of the room, I didn't have my head screwed on on Wednesday so I totally forgot my camera plus i still have to put the photos of my dress on. I'll get it done some scouts honor and all that :-)

My first commission

I've been extremely busy over the last few weeks, yesterday the dreaded stock take finally took place and thank goodness I was off. I've been measuring mtr after mtr of fabric with 760 rolls of fabric to get through and now its all over with YEAH, I'm so happy especially as its a once a year thing.

Some better news I have finally finished the dress I started about a month ago and for once I made no mistakes even did a bit of hand stitching go me :-)
I'll put a photo of the dress on at a later date.

Wednesday is my birthday and I'm going to have loads of fun at work :-( but my lovely big sis is meeting me in Manchester for a weekend shopping trip so I'll keep my eyes open for some cute chintzy shops.

I've been commissioned to decorate my mum's friends child's bedroom (bit of a mouth full). Jessica has always been a fan of my chintzy room and loved the flowers on the wall so sometime next week I'll be hand painting hippy flowers all over the walls. I'm looking forward to this, I get times were all i want to do is decorate I'm dieing for my mum to say yes to decorating her kitchen its very 80s not good.

Anyhoo I'll try and get some photos of the dress put on soon.

Spoiling you

Its been a while since my last blog update but I've been a busy beaver, can't quite remember what I've been upto but thats just my dippy memory for you.

Anyways I'm spoiling you with todays update with lots of piccies, the first are of tops I've been making they're a simple design but are flattering to my not so flattering body so here they are:

The next lot of photos are of the two new buys I just treated my room too, its a cute door pig who has the cutest face ever, and a sign that says sweet dreams they are both very me:

I've been doing my usual rummaging through sales stock and finding some very cool stuff like these Easter badges with funny looking bunnies on they have totally changed the look of to kind of boring cushion into really cute looking cushions so here they are:

And finally I was meant to go on holiday last week to see my dear OLD sister Beeky who lives down in wales but on the Saturday that we were all set to leave my lovely fluffy bunny Minnie became ill (he wasn't pooing) I know you all really wanted to know that :-) . Anywho cut a long story short he started pooing again on Wednesday but by that time it was to late to join the rest of the family down in Wales so I stayed with the devious bunny rabbit whose plot to keep me home all week worked brilliantly. Heres some very cute pictures of him sleeping on Wednesday. Enjoy: