NOT 99 Green Bottles - but 99 DAYS!!!!!!!!!

We have cracked under 100 days til Christmas, very very exciting for me.  I have already started (in fact nearly) finished the Christmas Shopping and thoughts turn soon to Christmas baking and gift making. The weather here has been a bit 'off' and quite wintry for mid September so if it holds up making the Plum Puddings at the end of the month should be quite good.    I recently had a fun day in the Midland region, visiting the Midland Railway Workshops for an open day and all the vintage stuff on show was terrific.  On the way my friend Lis and I stopped at the Farmers Market and I couldn't resist buying a large box of 'jamming' strawberries - 4.5kg for only $4.00!!  So that night some lovely Strawberry Coulis(thick yummy sauce) was under construction, slow cooker style.  The longest part was washing hulling and chopping the strawberries, but they were so sweet the aroma in the house was divine.  So cooked them on low all night, next morning added them to the pot with a 1kg of sugar, boiled them for 20 minutes then strained them and bottled them up - what can say? Yummo!  12 bottles of thick strawberry coulis for around $5, Bargain no?

mmm, blogging is back

June 2013, and I am back to the blog - I have thought about it often, but then thought no will do that later, and oops here we are.    Things are ticking along, can't really get my head around the fact that it is June, but on the plus side that means that there are less than 200 days to go to Christmas - YAYYY.

Now those of you who know me well, will understand that although I lurve papercrafts, cake decorating, quilting in fact most things crafty the one thing that does not light my fire so much is card making- I know I know that most of you get it but not me.  But this week I could not find a card suitable for a work friend celebrating her birthday so had to resort to making a card.  Did I still find it as stressful as ever?, hell yes. Did I enjoy it? a little maybe, but probably enjoyed the fact that I finished it more.  Did she like yet?  Yep!  The card is made from Bazzill Bling (Diamond) and the other papers are SO old from my stash that  I can't begin to remember, they are all quite textured so I suspect they are some of the handmades from a source when we first opened the store in 2002!  The little 'Harry Potter" is a digi stamp kindly let to me from a friend, thanks Gez, who does WAY more cards than me and does amazing things, so she was always going to be my Go To resource.   I coloured with copics, had to dig deep into memory recesses for that, used a bit of kindyglitz and it was done So here is the card, such as it is and whatever it is you have planned a little step outside your comfort zone is always good.