FAREWELL SUMMER

Hi everyone

Summer seems to have disappeared rather quickly, although (ever the optimist) I am still confident we will have a few more sunny days before the bad weather sets in.  Perhaps we will have a warm autumn.  The forecast for today is pretty grim, although at the moment (early morning) it looks lovely outside.  Cool, but very sunny - hope it lasts longer than predicted.

This week has been full of bag-decorating, card-making, list producing (for what I need to get ready for Christmas events), an 84th-birthday supper, collecting kittens that I am fostering and, despite the frequent soggy weather, gardening.  It seems to be a bit of a rush to get things tidied up in the the garden for winter now that the weather has changed.

The working week began with decorating bags with my cake-making friend, Linda.  We made some lovely cupcakes (sadly not edible ones), which we lightly padded and then fixed them to the jute bags.  I forgot to take photographs (what's new?), but will do next time we meet up - they do look good and I hope they will be popular.

Decorating jute bags seems to be a popular activity at the moment and it is interesting to see the variety of methods that are being used: ironing on pictures, material, etc, making things, ie cupcakes, to fix to the bag, as well as printing - not sure how this is done, although I know you can buy pre-printed ones using your own design.  Here are a couple of photographs of ones I have decorated this week:

This was produced using a panel of fashion and sewing pictures that I found.  I have cut the small pictures up and using Bondaweb, fixed them to the bag.  A slow process really, lots of cutting, trimming and ironing.

This is a work-in-progress as I want to add glittery mini-butterflies to the design.  I used a similar process to the above bag, good old Bondaweb.

Last week I promised that I would post pictures of some of the beautiful Heucheras I bought from the Wisley Plant Fair and here are some of them:

The colours are so gorgeous.  The first flower bed nearest to the back door into our garden was turned into a Heuchera bed last year and the plan for this year is to move the table and chairs on the patio well over to the left so that when we look out onto the dark, grim and grey winter days we will see these beautiful plants and the weather will not seem so grim and grey.

Many years ago we purchased two geese (no, not real ones).  We put them in various places around the garden and have to anchor them to the ground because various members of the Pie Five like to jump on them or knock them over!  Here is a rare photograph of them upright.  We, unimaginatively we know, named them Goosey and Gander:

Final picture for this week is of my two new foster kittens - I was able to name them and in keeping with my love of plants I called them Rosie and Violet.  They are 9 weeks old and, as you can imagine, very small.  On day one (Thursday) they were nervous, Violet more so - she is on the right hand side of the photograph.  Three days later they are bundles of adventurous inquisitive fun.  You can find out more information about them on the Woking Cats Protection website

Last but by no means least, don't forget to visit this week's Handmade Monday blog posts.  I love to see the variety of work the contributors to this event make - everyone is so talented.

Thank you to everyone who visited my blog post last week - I love to read your comments and the feedback and help is always appreciated.

My Friday Guest Blogger spot is 'open' if anyone would like to join in.  I have some lovely bloggers signed up already and I am looking forward to getting things up and running again.  If you would like to be a guest blogger, do get in touch: christmaspiecrafts@virginmedia.com.

Have a great week everyone - 'see' you next weekend.

Jill