the great cake eating competition.

I had lots of fun baking for Friday's fundraiser, and I chose all your recipes so it felt like you were there with me.

my friend baked these two incredible cakes.

 and it turned from coffee morning into cake eating competition! 

today

today I'm;

Loving the bright autumn sunshine, the crisp frost on the grass and the blue skies

Planning what to do with the 7lbs of blackberries we picked over the weekend.  Well Mr Driftwood and I picked them, Miss K impatiently wanted to know when the crumble would be ready, and J carried around several large sticks.

listing things on folksy and etsy.

sketching thistles and cow parsley and alliums which I want to embroider onto linens for some new designs of cards.

wondering what's for dinner.

what are you doing today? I hope you have some autumn sunshine. x

standing up and cutting out arrows

This week I have mostly been cutting out arrows and blowing up balloons - for a window display for the local Cancer Research shop for the Stand up to Cancer campaign.

 

It is amazing just how long it takes to cut out some arrows and find black balloons.



 

Mr Driftwood has been doing a science demo, "a meet the scientist", or what the university likes to refer to as "engagement with the public".

I'm more at home with scissors and selotape.
and cake. I can bake cakes. which I will be doing for a coffee morning I seem to have offered to hold. Please excuse me for the next two weeks if I panic about cake. and having enough tea cups.

looking back on five years of photos

quilt roll

 

Our camera is not working at the moment, and I've been feeling a little like I can't blog without it.
I realised that so much of what I write about it is because of something I've seen, or want to capture, or when I can't find the right words, I'll use a picture.

snowy birdhouse

Today is the 5th birthday of my blog, and I was going to take some celebration photographs, but instead I found myself pouring over the photo archives.

driftwood

which told me a huge amount about my blogging over the years,

roses

there are a lot of pictures of roses, of quilts and of cake

footprints in the sand
 

of exploring

tissue lantern

and celebrating

socks

and crafting that I've been inspired to make.

friends

but none of it would be there if it weren't for all of you.

thank you.

 

deep blue sea quilt

down at the bottom of the deep blue sea

catching fishes for my tea. 1, 2, 3, wheeeee.

my children used to love that nursery rhyme when they were babies, and when I needed to make a quilt for a friend's new baby it popped right into my head and wouldn't leave, so I made a deep blue sea quilt and I hope he has lots of fun playing on, in and under it!

retracing my footsteps

The children are both back to school, (thankfully the poorly one was better by Monday, thanks for the get well wishes) and the professorial house guest has left (having had a lovely time at the pub and learnt all about English beers!), and so with a little quiet time and by mentally retracing my footsteps I have managed to account for some of the lost time of the last few weeks.

At the end of the summer I was lucky enough to meet up with some blog friends. Lisa wrote the most delightful post about her trip to Alnmouth, I feel like I've been reading Lisa's blogs for ever and it was lovely to finally meet her, and her boys, who I recognised immediately. Lisa had come to meet Thimbleanna, who stopped off on her tour of England in Barter Books, which is the perfect place to sit, and chat, and feed your children giant cookies. It was a real pleasure to meet them both, and the time flew by far too fast. I was treated to the cutest ever bunny - who is inexplicably upside down! and a charm pack of gorgeously festive fabrics, must start planning a little project.

The plan for the next meet up was hatched over a glass of bubbly at Kew Gardens,  and after what seemed like months of planning The Coffee Lady and her lattes came to play. Realising we hadn't taken any photos we had a  "workshop" photoshoot,

which in reality was more like several days of tea, laughter, lego, fairies, food, wine

 fabric, cat worshipping, mahoosive scones, and even the odd cup of coffee!

Now I've found those 3 weeks, I'd really quite like to go and relive them all over again.....

next year perhaps....

last 3 weeks

if anyone knows what happened to the last 3 weeks of the holidays please let me know.
I lost them somewhere.

I thought things would return to normal when school started,
but I had an ill child at home all day today.

we have a visiting Professor from Chicago staying with us.

he has been taken to the pub quiz.

apparently this will be an important introduction to English culture.

I think it is a very thinly veiled excuse to go and drink beer.............

not that I would want to go, there is paralympics on tv. It is truly the most inspiring viewing, I am in awe.