Last weekend Wallingford in Oxfordshire had their annual Carnival and Parade. The small town itself is not too far from TAF Benson where my daughter lives.
On this occasion she was helping on of her friends out who runs the Guides at RAF Benson they were taking part in the parade which is also a competition for the best themed.
The theme was Rock n Roll so they were all dressed in clouding the adults in rock type clothing, fake tattoos, and inflatable guitars.
To their surprise they actually won to the delight of everyone.
Well, couldnt let this one pass without sharing it! The latest post box topper that, we see on our dog walk, celebrates the 2026 World Cup. My husband is currently glued to the TV, so it was a real treat to see this fantastic topper.
It features the three lions, the England flag, the words Come on England, and, optimistically, a nod to the World Cup!Also, my end-of-month SALE starts tomorrow, June 27, with 20% off all my designs!
My daughter has always loved art, but she doesnt have a lot of free time, so she often goes a long while without picking up a paintbrush or pencil.
A few months ago, she joined a small art class held in a ladys home, where they explore a different subject each week.
Kelly really enjoyed the class and loved being given a theme to follow. It has reignited her creativity, and now she has her art supplies out all the time, painting little miniature pictures whenever she can.
What a lovely surprise it was when I opened my birthday card from her and her family to find that she had hand-painted it especially for me!
Ive probably mentioned before but we love bees in our house. They are vital for pollination and thus helping to preserve life. They are in decline so we like to do our part to help them.
Last year we got some bee friendly flower seeds and scattered them in a little patch outside our front door.
The seeds were a mix of all kinds of bee friendly flowers so we didnt know what to expect. We cared for them and watched them grow and we had an amazing array of flowers which the bees loved.
We did get some more to scatter again this year, but not where we originally planted because the bees and the seeds that fell did the job for us.
We are delighted to watch the bees enjoying these flowers once again this year.
Losing a loved member of the family is hard on everyone and there is usually a lot of pictures and cards, flowers and memories.
When we lose a beloved pet there isnt as much to keep them out there to remember them by so when friends and family lose a beloved furbaby, no matter how big or small, I like to do these memory verses with a picture so they can be printed out and framed.
I change the verses to suit.
The last one I did was for a beautiful boy who for the first 10 years of his life went from home to home till he was abandoned at 10 years of age when someone took him in and gave him a whole lot of love and spoilt him big time for the last 5 years of his life.
These are just some that I have done recently. It is a good feeling to know I can help keep their memories alive. My designs this week are two more of my recent floral verse designs.
As you may know I do a fair bit of watercolour painting, some of these artworks I use in my card designs, but I also like to draw.
Drawing is a sort of meditation, it is so easy to relax while gently shading in areas of your subject matter.
I like to draw all sorts of things, but my favourite is people and Anthropomorphic animals, which are really fun to do.
Today Im going to show you one of my people drawings I did just recently.
My husband has been very industrious of late, a bit like a mad scientist experimenting with making different types of bread in the bread machine.
He seems to have the baking bug, so when we came across the complete Mary Berry cook book for one pound in our local charity shop he was thrilled to bits.
One of his first makes was these beautiful cheese scones, the batch was supposed to make six but he chose a larger scone cutter so we only got four.
For his first attempt I think he did great and they tasted lovely too.
On Sunday, we will celebrate our granddaughter Jessicas 18th birthday. Where has the time gone? It feels like just yesterday that I was sharing pictures of her as a toddler, crafting and cooking with me.
Now, she is nearly finished with her A Levels.
We plan to give her money for her birthday since she will soon be heading off to university, so I made her this small purse to hold it today.
It was my birthday on the 1st June which is the first day of winter here. I hate winter! However it has been very mild so far with only about four days getting down to 4 deg C overnight.
But my family make sure I celebrate regardless of what the weather is doing and I had two celebrations this year.
Sunday was Coffee and Cake in the afternoon with hubby, my daughter, her partner and kids. My daughter put candles on the brownies (with ice cream and chocolate sauce) that didnt put my age or Happy Birthday.....they said Dont Ask!
After that we went straight up to the skate rink to watch my daughter play inline hockey. They won 5-2. Then Monday night (1st) was up to the local pub for dinner with son and his wife and grand daughter and her partner oh and hubby of course.
So double the celebrations.
Wonderful time both days but I cant but think about my birth mother and how she kept her secret for 70 years.
Birthdays now hold a whole new bunch of thoughts. So glad we got to meet each other and have each other in our lives now. Todays designs are both floral verse designs that were recently uploaded.
I as some of you know am a watercolour artist, recently, just for fun ,I decided to paint my interpretation of a song, what the music and lyrics inspired in me in order to come up with a composition that represented that.
The song I chose was Bicycle Race by the band Queen. Particularly the lines I want to ride my bicycle etc..... I hope what I came up with makes you smile.
Last week, the weather was so lovely that I spent most of my time in the garden. I finished potting all the seedlings that my husband had grown in his greenhouse. We have dahlias, nasturtiums, Livingstone daisies, calendulas, lobelias, and cosmos. The cosmos are already starting to flower.
I have read about them and realised that I should have pinched out the main stem before they flowered to help them become bushier and produce new stems and buds.
However, I didnt want to ruin the lovely flowers, so I only pinched some of them. I will pinch the others as each flower fades. I am loving the colours, they look so dainty. I cant wait for the rest of them to bloom!
Last Saturday was my youngest grandsons ninth birthday. His gifts were all very sporting themed. He is a massive Manchester City fan so he was thrilled with the latest football strip.
Most of his gifts were football related, with the exception of a fancy pair of boxing boots as like his big brother he also boxes.
When asked what he wanted to do for his birthday he said he wanted to go to the golfing range.
So thats where they went and he had a great time.
Well weve had a few warm days, particularly Monday and Tuesday when temperatures rose into the thirties, which in this country we are not used to.
On Tuesday early evening we had a strange yellow orange light so I popped outside to have a look and took a couple of pictures of how low the clouds were in the sky and the formation of them which I thought were quite beautiful.
It was eerily quiet with not a sound from the birds. I then sent the pictures to my daughter describing the strange lighting and the cloud formation. She immediately sent me a photo, now on first glance it could be mistaken for a beautiful sunset on the plains of Africa.
I imagined the silhouettes or giraffes strolling along. However, it was indeed the stunning sunset from my daughters house at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire. I think her photo definitely trumps mine.
I decided to join a bag-making challenge on Facebook just for fun. The bag was made in stages, with the template released on the first day, along with a live video tutorial for the first part of the bag.
There was a new live video every day, and then we all shared our completed bags in the group. The pattern wasnt released for us to refer to, as we were all making it together. It was a simple project, but it felt strange not having a pattern to guide me.
The bag included reverse appliqué, which I had never tried before.Unfortunately, the fabric I chose wrinkled easily, and when I was cutting out the center of the heart shape, I accidentally cut through the main panel.
At that moment, I wanted to give up, but I decided to cut out a new outer panel and keep going.
Im quite happy with the final result, and it was fun to sew alongside both experienced and new bag makers.
Plus, there are prizes up for grabs!
Recently it was Mothers Day and I always create a digital card or two to put up on Facebook or to send to people individually with wishes on them.
My daughter has discovered ChatGPt and different apps to put together stories or videos.
So on Mothers Day I fired up the computer and found these photos. A lovely mix of love, memories with a touch of humour.
The first one is of my birth mother, the next is me and her brother when we went down to the snow (was on my bucket list to build a snowman) and some random icy person, the next: My daughter and I taken in January this year when we went to see my mum and the last one is at her new house when I told her she needed to remove a tree before it does root damage to her house.
I just think it was so clever/cool to make it up like a magazine issue. This weeks designs are both from my floral swirl series. Check them all out.