Christmas gift exchange.

Twice a year, Linda at Craftaholics anonymous hosts a gift exchange. Once again I took part in the Christmas gift exchange and it was so much fun!

 

This year my partner was a very sweet girl called Lisa. We chatted back and forth a couple of times , via email, and then set to work.

I received the sweetest gift through the post!

A crochet mug cosy!

I am so so excited. I have wanted one of these for such a long time and I love anything that is crochet.

And it is red. Be still my heart.

(Please excuse the ropy pics, my favourite new camera is needing batteries and I have been housebound for the past couple of days!  So the old faithful has to do)

I adore the purple heart on the front

and the super cute co-ordinating button on the back.

Love.

Thank you so so much to Lisa for my wonderful gift! I can't believe you are only just learning to crochet! You are a pro already!

And as always thanks to Linda for hosting the giveaway. It is lovely to meet new people and to enjoy exchanging something handmade and yummy!

Merry Christmas everyone! xx

Giveaway.

I think I briefly mentioned a while back that I was starting to branch out slightly with my handmade goods. I will probably only offer up a few things, at a time, on Folksy but figured it wouldn't hurt to have a facebook page too.

To celebrate reaching my first 50 followers I am hosting a giveaway over on my Polka dot sweetheart facebook page.

If anyone would like to follow along on facebook and possibly win some handmade goodness, then follow this link and leave me a comment to let me know what you would like if you won!

Link for a polka dot giveaway!

Hope to see you all there x

I've been pottering.

No I haven't bought myself a heap of clay and a potters wheel, I have been pottering around with my blog, changing up the template and background. I don't think I have it just right yet, so be sure to be ready for some more "dust" settling as the maintenance continues.

It all started when I decided to start a new seperate blog. I have been toying with the idea of trying to sell some handmade goodies, locally. The jury is out , for now, on an online shop. I'm just not sure my sewing is of a good enough standard. Although I have registered with folksy. Maybe I should buy something to compare? Hmm. That's a thought.
Anyhoo, I figured that it is always handy to have a website of some sort when selling anything and so the new blog was born. At the moment it will just be a "showcase"  of some crafty things I have been busy with.

And so, I can now also be found at http://www.polkadotsweetheart.blogspot.com/

I spent a while playing with the template etc and ended up liking it better than this blog. That will never do!! So an overhaul was called for and I stole all of the things I loved from the new blog and put them here, ha! Then changed things up a little over here.

Oh and while I was looking through pics, I found all of the pics from my birthday! I also found a good few pics of the delicious not so baby joe! How did they go un - blogged?? Must put that right!

What do you think? Is the font too hard on the eyes? Is the backgropund too weird? Too busy? Or does it work? gimme your worst ;-) x

I sent mail.

As I mentioned in a previous post  I once again took part in the handmade gift exchange hosted by Linda at Craftaholics anonymous. I was matched up with a fellow Brit blogger (who knew there was more than me!? ;-) )  My partner was Steph , who has a very sweet blog called southern fairy designs.

We chatted back and forth via email and asked a few questions, a few things I took from our conversations was that Steph liked colour, she enjoyed making and wearing jewellery/pins etc. I also found out that she had a little point and shoot camera , like myself, and after a little stalking  research on her pinterest boards, I noticed that she didn't have a case for her camera.

I made her a couple of little brooches/ pins. I used floral and gingham fabric.

The frst one had two little fabric rosettes with some pearls tucked in, it is ridiculously difficult to photograph as it was slightly rounded.

This fabric flower was made using a tutorial I found on the fab ruffles and stuff blog, but be warned - they are super duper addictive to make!!

I also made Steph a little pouch for her camera, I have used the tutorial before when making one for myself and noticed Steph had pinned the same tutorial.  I hesitated before making it though as I was a little worried that Steph really wanted to enjoy the process of the " making" . In the end I figured she was probably like me and could use more than one gadget pouch and there was also the scope for her to make one as a gift too!!

Lined with polks dot fabric, of course.

Thanks to Linda and Steph, once again I thoroughly enjoyed the gift exchange , can't wait until November and we can do it again!!

Unplugged.

Good morning everyone! It is a cool but nice morning here, at least the crazy winds have passed for a bit. You would not believe the mess our poor plants and trees are in because of the wind, the leaves are all burnt!

Just a quick post this morning , I have decided to unplug, just a little, just for a while. No big reason as to why. I will still definitely be blogging though as I like to use this space to remember things that happen. And I use it as a time line, we often check the blog to see the dates of things etc.

But I just wanted to say that I may not be stopping by your blogs and commenting for a while and will not be about on facebook. I'm only talking a few weeks really.

We have a busy time coming up , Fraser has a show this week and we are now into the winding down weeks before the Summer holidays begin.

My head is ful lto the brim of chores, ideas and projects. But before I can accomplish them all, I need to finish up the things I have already started.

I need to start getting myself more organised in the morning as we will be having a massive change to our schedule after summer. I am wholly unprepared for this!! We WILL be able to make it to the school for 9am! eek!

It will be all change on the work front in the summer too, one of the littles that I care for is moving , very far away. So I will have a space to fill, advertising to organise and hopefully a new little soul to settle in to our days.

See my head is full! I must sit down this afternoon to write the mother of all to do lists!!

I have around 5 weeks left of having my girly here with me , alone, in the mornings. I intend to enjoy every moment.

We are going to take lots of time out. We are going to read and walk on the beach, play at the park and bake together. Camp out in the living room and have picnic lunches. I am going to enjoy the last few weeks of our lives as we know them right now. Before the big changes.

I am going to turn the TV off more and set a good example by having less "screen time" myself. I'm not online often in the daytime really, as I am working, but I do enjoy my snatched moments here and there.

Even if it is just for these few weeks. I can look back and remember that I made every moment count. I did not spend an hour in the morning reading about other peoples lives when I will look back and miss the life we are living. That hour needs to be spent soaking up my girl.

 I need to have no regrets! They tend to eat me up. A lot.

*sigh*

I think our laptop is dead :-(
it is really old and was second hand when we got it.
I haven't backed up yet, this month,and I think I'm going to lose some stuff :-(
we can't afford to buy a new one, hoping that a friend of my Dad may be able to save the old dinosaur.

I will hopefully be back soon x

Virus threat?

I've just had a call from my sister to say that a virus threat popped up while she was viewing my blog. Apparently it said it had something to do with my cutest blog on the block background. I am off on a google hunt and will try to remove this background and hope that helps.

Has anyone else experienced this?? I would hate for my blog to be harming your computers!!

Looky what I did!!

  I made my own button!   I wont tell you how long it took me! it is a little embarassing lol and I KNOW there would have been an easier way. But,  I am proud none the less!

Does anyone know how to help me centre the scroll box underneath??? I have followed the instructions exactly but it is still to the side!

It is free for the taking if you would like it! xx