12 Days of Christmas Ta-Daah!

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:: A Partridge In A Pear Tree.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:: Two Turtle Doves

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:: Three French Hens

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:: Four Calling Birds

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:: Five Golden Rings

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:: Six Geese A Laying

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:: Seven Swans A Swimming

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:: Eight Maids A Milking

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:: Nine Ladies Dancing

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:: Ten Lords A Leaping

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:: Eleven Pipers Piping

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:: Twelve Drummers Drumming!!

This has been such a brilliant swap and such great fun! Each month got more and more challenging as I'm not very good at portraying people in my cards and had to kind of think around the box. Birds and objects I am totally fine with, but as you can see on the tenth and eleventh days, things got a little tricky and I had to change my usual stitched felts.
The best part was seeing what others had come up with to interpret each line of the song. Some lines everyone seemed to take exactly the same idea from ie: hens with French berets on, or buckets to portray the milk maids. But all in all, they are just plain pretty!

Handmade Wreath

I love making things at Christmas- in the last few years I have either bought or modified a wreath for the front door (like last years supermarket offering), but this year I thought I would go one step further and put together my own wreath!!

 I have been collecting pine cones for several weeks, saving nice ones I've come across in gardens or walking to and fro. In Hobbycraft I picked up the woven ring as the base of my wreath along with a little bag of bells. The spiky green foliage and the brown super spiky plant with cones on came from Sheffield Park (nothing was picked from the trees, it was all picked up from the floor), and the Ivy and Rosemary came from the garden. The ribbon was one I had lying around.

I wasn't entirely sure how to securely attach all of the pieces so stuck with what I knew best, tucking in the foliage stems and then stitching and tying from the back for extra security. Once all of the green bits were in place, I then wrapped thread around the base of the cones, pulling it under the 'scales' of the cone to secure it, then stitching through the wreath base and tying off the two ends. The bells were put on in a similar way.

To finish I made a bow at one end of the ribbon, stitching in down then wrapping it round the top of the wreath until I reached the other side where I made another bow and stitched that as well.

I'm so chuffed with this little wreath!! It's a little wonky and has too much ivy on one side but it smells delicious and now it's on the front door the little bells jangle when the door opens and closes.

We don't have the right sort of door for a wreath really, there is nothing to hang it off and we can't stick anything at the top as the door won't close. Our solution is to thread string through the letterbox and tie it all on. Hopefully anyone who knocks on the door will be impressed!

After all of that exertion, I treated myself to a very pretty gingerbread tree bought at the Winter Fair. It was very very yummy!

Sheffield Shrooms

Hello! Have you all had nice weekends? Mine was jam packed in the end, I did all sorts of things. Saturday morning The Sister and I were up reasonably early to go to the Winter Fair at Ardingly Showground. Considering it was quite a little fair and awful weather at that time of the morning, it was surprisingly busy- we managed to get a couple more Christmas presents, munch on a very tasty cheese straw and say hello to the two reindeer, Betty Bauble and Mary Mistletoe.

On the way back home, The Sister wanted to detour slightly to visit Sheffield Park. She just wanted to go around the shop but I was all for having a quick wander around the garden whilst we were there and off we trotted.

Elvis popped out to say hello to the ducks, non of which seemed to fancy going for a swim, they were all sat around the edges of the pond.

It turned into a bit of a mushroom/toadstool/fungi hunt in the end, there were loads of different types hiding in the grasses. (We were also on the hunt for fallen pine/fir cones for a project I was planning; more on that in a different post.)

And there were lots of these wicker wreath sculptures around the walks, this one seemed to encircle a perfect view of the waterfall.

Elvis was in absolute awe of some of these big gnarled old trees. What they must have seen in their time in the park! They must have some great stories to tell.

It has been very mild so far this winter (in comparison to previous winters- not that it isn't absolutely freezing and blowing a gale), and there are Daffodils beginning to poke up through the soil as well as blossom on the trees.

The above fungi was really cool. I thought it was a caterpillar until I walked a little closer.

Regardless of the weather it was a really lovely, unexpected detour. We managed to do a bit more Christmas shopping whilst exiting through the shop too.