Easter bunnies, another card and a box lid picture........

So it's ami swap time again being the end of the month and it finally happened!! We have been swapping for a couple of years now and we both love the same patterns so it was bound to happen one day that we would both make the same thing.......... The gorgeous bunny above is mine from Steph and the one below is Steph's from me, they look a bit different and I love mine so much!!! Thanks for another fab swap Steph my lovely bunny is so pretty :-)

Had a custom order for a card again. The request was for a flowery/gardening picture and blank for any occasion, thought this would fit the bill nicely! Love how it turned out and I've been having to stitch small things over the top of the new kittens as they're spending so much time on my knee :-)

Started this birdhouse design because I loved it, no idea what it was going to be used for and thought maybe a card. Then I realised it was the perfect size for the lid of my new wooden box so ta-da!! I love the bright colours and folky style and will stitch them separate for cards I think too, aren't they pretty :-)

Kitty baby pics!!

More kitten pictures, I admit I'm in love!! Daisy and Poppy are such fun to watch, they run around like mad and play all the time they are awake, then cuddle up and sleep together, usually on my knee :-) They have such a cute trick,  if they lose sight of each other then one will squeak (they're too little to meow yet) and the other comes running, so sweet!!

 
So here I am shamelessly showing the baby pictures, lol! This one's Daisy.....

and this one's Poppy and they're making us very happy :-)

A tale of two kitties........

Sooooo after all the awful stuff of the last few weeks with losing my beloved Bootsie to cancer after weeks of stress and pain I have been left feeling a big furry hole in my heart. After a couple of days of internal argument I realised that getting a kitten (or two) wouldn't be a bad thing to do and really wouldn't mean I'd forgotten about my Bootsie. Yesterday fate stepped in, I decided to have a look on Gumtree to see if there were any around and would you believe the first time I looked there was a litter of two boys and two girls that had just been listed a couple of hours before. A quick phonecall and the two girls were promised to me to collect today, so here they are!!! Meet Daisy and Poppy, Daisy is the lighter one. Nine weeks old today and just adorable, they arrived here a couple of hours ago and after a good investigate of their new home have curled up together to sleep and look adorable!  Exhausting this moving house thing.........

It's a knitty kitty :-)

Finished this at the weekend, a cute little puddy cat knitted from a pattern by Oliverboliver at
http://oliverboliver.typepad.com/blog/  Haven't come up with a name as of yet, any suggestions welcome :-)

Gorgeous flowers and another page of Cozy Night done :-)

How's about these for cheerful sunny flowers?! Went to the local Aldi for milk yesterday and these were just sitting there saying 'buy me, buy me....' So I did :-) Thought after the awful week last week it would be good to bring a little bit of colour and happiness in to the house and these certainly make me smile.

Late last night I finished pages 8 and 11 of Cozy Night too, YAY! Only one and a bit pages left now to finish her off, here she is then.....

Isn't she looking great? Today I've been knitting before starting the next page though, a very cute ami kitten, got the pattern a couple of weeks ago and I was waiting to knit it until I finished the page on Cozy. I do try to keep the number of projects on the go at once down to a (sort of) minimum, lol!

Goodbye to Bootsie, my lovely cat

Fourteen years ago a tiny little ball of fluff came into our life, called Bootsie she was our beautiful cat. She loved to sit in the sunshine and smell the flowers and was the most sweet natured cat you could imagine loving nothing more than curling up on my knee. She never stopped purring and wagging her tail like a dog, we were convinced she was half dog somehow as she would also come to you when you whistled!

Me and my best pal spent all day together and she loved to follow me around and play with all my crafty stuff, especially the wool! Here she is in one of her favourite sleepy places, and she did have a few, under my sewing machine table.

She started having problems a few weeks ago with stomach problems that had her running to the toilet and vomiting a lot. So the last four weeks have been spent going backwards and forwards to the vet and trying different antibiotics, medicines and finally steroids. None of these did any good and  I spent a lot of nights sitting up with her as she was in pain and upset. Yesterday I took her back to the vets and she was sedated and given x-rays where it was discovered that the poor old lady had a big tumour in her upper bowel and one of her kidneys had died. With no hope or options left I made the awful decision to have her put to sleep. So now I feel like I've lost my best friend and I'm a bit of a mess. Even though it's the right decision and she was in a lot of pain it doesn't make it any easier.

So goodbye and thank you to my lovely Bootsie for giving us fourteen great years together. We're really missing you but you live on in our hearts.   xxxxx

Wonderful day at the Wetlands Centre :-)

What a wonderful weekend this has been, sunshine and wonderfully warm too :-) Today I went to the local Wetlands Centre with my Boyfriend and my Dad to make the most of the sun. This view over one of the ponds looked gorgeous with all the daffodils out looking lovely. Love the black swans, all swans are beautiful regal looking birds but I do love black ones. This fella was drifting around the pond while his lady was perched on her nest, kept a safe distance from her as didn't fancy getting chased!

Bumped into a couple of Red Breasted Geese, which is a very fitting name :-) They are really tame and are happy to eat seed from your hand very gently. Love the way they look too.

Saw this lady Ne-Ne which is a Hawaiian Goose sitting in a little house on her nest, doesn't she look comfy!

And these are baby Ne-Ne's! Aren't they sweet? These little ones were in the nursery and were born on the 22nd of March so are  about two weeks old.... so cute!!

So it was a gorgeous day out in the spring sunshine, feel like we walked for miles and I'm really tired but it was a great way to spend the afternoon. According to the weather forecast we get rain tomorrow and it starts to get colder again, typical!

Is it a triffid??

Bought this at Asda this week as it looked a bit mad and exotic. Have to say I didn't realise it would be quite this mad and this big until I took off the plastic around it as it was holding everything in quite a lot but it looks fabulously over the top and I love it! 

Another page(s) finished on the Haed and three more cards....

This is what she looks like now! I finished page 7 yesterday and when I looked through the rest of the chart pages I realised that pages 10, 11 and 12 were really tiny with only 9 rows of stitching on each to finish off the bottom of the picture. So I carried on and this is pages 7 and 10 finished! Means that I only have two-ish pages left as two of the four are just as tiny so I'm not counting them, lol!

Also finished off three more cards today. The ruby wedding and the birthday card underneath are a custom order, I like the way they worked out and hope  they are loved :-)

This little boat one is another one for my card stash made from a magazine freebie I've had for ages, loved the charms! So I've been busy as you can see (nothing changes there then!)

Two more cards, piles of ribbons and a fabulous box.............

Don't they look gorgeous? While making some of the cards up this week I realised my ribbon tin was looking a bit short on different colours so yesterday while in the town I thought a trip to the market was needed! I got 8 different colours and 2 metres of each so they will last a while.......well maybe not, I do love to use ribbon and it does go quickly! Anyway I thought they looked just lovely all piled up together when I took them out the bag :-) 

Finished another two cards off this morning, the 60th birthday mini above is for my boyfriend's Dad. He loves cars and I wanted one with '60' on it but couldn't find one so I used the mini chart that was in Cross Stitcher magazine on the Hippy Holidays cushion this month and charted a 60 on the suitcase on the roof. I'm pleased with how this turned out! 

This little poppy card was a free kit on Card Shop magazine a while ago, another spare card for future occasions. I've got three more cards stitched up but need some iron on interfacing before I can make them up so they'll be finished later this week.

 I took out a subscription for Cross Stitch Crazy this month, mainly for the free gift when you did I admit, lol! Anyway the free wooden box arrived this week and it's gorgeous! See how lovely it is? The pookies seem to be amazed by it looking at the photo below, lol! Inside is thirty skeins of DMC thread and a free chart to stitch to put in the lid. I'm not keen on the free chart and plan to find something else to stitch for this. It's going to be lined with fabric as it's bare wood inside and then it'll be my posh sewing box for keeping all my bits and bobs in :-) Just need to decide on a chart now.......