Birthday time again!

It was my birthday yesterday ~ another year has zoomed by at a most alarming rate and here I am another year older and I'd like to think that I was another year wiser too ~ but probably not! And although I know that it's said that age is just a number I have to say that I would like that number to be ever so slightly less than what it is just now ~ but Onwards and Upwards is the only way to go!

I had a very nice day and was thoroughly spoilt by my lovely husband who took the day off work especially to wait on me hand and foot and to make sure my day was extra special. I do absolutely love him to bits ~ He is the best!!

I got lots of lovely cards and flowers and of course there was also chocolates and cakes served with large amounts of tea.


Amongst my favourite birthday things was this lovely card drawn for me by my little boy and a little stitched picture made for me by my daughter, who has obviously been watching me stitch away over the past couple of days.


And talking about stitching, here is where I'm at just now with my Quilty Hearts needlepoint ~ I'm almost finished with only a couple more hearts to stitch.

Of course when I've not been stitching I have been hooking away and making progress with my colourful Rico cotton stripes too.

Hope that you all enjoy the rest of your week ~ have a wonderful weekend and I'll see you soon :O)xxx

Valentine Hearts

Hello ~ I hope that you are all having a very lovely and Happy Valentines Day.



I thought that today would be a very appropriate day to show you all how I am progressing with the contents of my Jolly Red Bag that I treated myself to a couple of weeks ago.


As you can see I have now completed the middle panel of Quilty Hearts and I'd love to be able to tell you that it has all been plain sailing ~ I really would! But........... unfortunately it didn't quite start out that way at the beginning!


This needlepoint malarkey might look like it would be easy ~ but to be honest, I did have one or two false starts with it and had to do quite a little bit of unpicking of stitches before I actually got into the swing of things. But now I'm happy to say that I have finally got the hang of tent stitch and am enjoying myself immensely.


This week it's half term up here in our part of the world ~ although it doesn't really seem all that long since the last school holidays. However, I'm not complaining. It will still be lovely to have the children at home and we are all looking forward to the lack of routine with some long lies and lazy days thrown into the mix. And me? Well I am also hoping to find some crafty, hooky, stitchy time in there too!

Enjoy the rest of your day and see you all soon :O) xx

Jolly Red ~ in the bag

Last Saturday I headed into Edinburgh for a little bit of Girly retail therapy with my best friend and my little girl.

We had a really lovely day out. And as much as we really do love our boys it was nice to spend sometime together ~ just us girls.

We started off with a very unhealthy breakfast in McDonalds, and then at lunch time we had a very yummy lunch in a lovely little family run Italian restaurant. In between times we had plenty of time to browse around and do a lot of window shopping. As usual we didn't have much money to spend but I did have lots of Christmas vouchers instead ~ mostly for John Lewis. And we all know that the best department in John Lewis is the crafty one ~ don't we?


After taking our time to look at all the lovely things I decided to splash out on this little Jolly Red Needlepoint Kit. Back in my much younger days I used to do a lot of cross stitch, but unfortunately I've now reached that sort of dodgy age where your eyes start to go a bit funny when you are looking at things close up! And although I've never attempted to do any needlepoint before I figured that the holes on the canvas and the thicker tapestry wool should make this a little easier on my dodgy old eyes than cross stitch.

The needlepoint I chose is called Quilt Hearts by Jolly Red and it all comes packed up in this dinky little red bag.

Would you like to see what is in the bag?...........

Of course you do!


There is a colour printed canvas, lots of lovely coloured wool, charts and instructions, a needle and a needle threader ~ which may come in handy when I try to thread the needle with my dodgy old eyes!

I can't wait to get started on this and it goes without saying that I will let you see how I get on with it too.

I hope that you all have a lovely weekend ~ See you all next week :O) xx