What A Surprise

I was sat here quietly reading through all your lovely blog posts tonight when to my surprise and delight I saw that I had made the Top 5 in the the Allsorts Challenge this week. It was my first attempt at entering so I cannot say how thrilled I am. What a lovely start to the weekend.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to wish Brenda well. She set the Wings challenge and has been very under the weather this week so Get Well Soon Brenda. I'm sending this photo of my favourite red lilies, which have just come into flower, to you.

Although it's been a lovely week and the garden has called and I have been sidetracked by the tennis, I have surprisingly managed to do quite a lot of crafting. There's been quite a lot of late nights involved!!!!

Anyway, I thought I'd show you the last layout I've just finished. During the May bank holiday weekend when the weather was so glorious, we had three days without a cloud in the sky and I sat in my favourite spot reading and looked at this beautiful rose against the bluest sky everyday. In the end I just had to get my camera and take a photo of it. It's a climbing rose called Handel and is very special because my Mum and Dad bought us it when we first moved into this house over 12 years ago now and it was one of the first things I put into the garden, which consisted of 6ft high grass and nothing else when we arrived.

I've kept the layout quite simple. It was done on the reverse of a double-sided paper which already had a layout on the other side and all the other papers came from my leftovers box, so I was very thrifty. The journalling tags were taken from a free digital kit from 2 peas in a bucket. I typed them using photoshop elements, resized, printed and cut them out and was quite pleased with how well they worked. A bit of Hybrid scrapping there!!

I inked up a strip of white Bazzill Just the Edge cardstock strips with blue whispers ink and set eylets in all the holes and added a few bits of ribbon and some gems to finish things off.

Thank you for looking and I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Beautiful Sunshine

Well after all the rain, wind and cold we've had here in Yorkshire over the last few weeks, today has been totally glorious and hot and we had a rare day with nothing to do but enjoy it.

Freya had her paddling pool out and we had to drag her in for her tea. She's a real water baby and has spent the whole day jumping and splashing about. Oh to be young again!

I actually managed to get my summer bedding planted up and out of the greenhouse, which was fit to burst. Normally I am far more organised and pots are planted up ready just to be lifted out into their summer places, but this year everything was still in plugs getting very over grown and desperate to be replanted. It was a bit warm to be working but I'm so pleased it's all done and we can now sit back and let them do their thing and hopefully give us glorious colour all summer, if the sun continues to shine that is.

Because it has been such a lovely day and the flowers have sung out I thought I'd just show you some of the lovely things I have flowering in the garden at the moment. As you will see, the trend is blue although that is completely unintentional.

My favourite flowers of spring are Aqueligas, of which I have many, most of them blue!!


And for scent you can't beat Wisterias. I have a standard one which is truly beautiful and all day you get wisps of it's beautiful smell. We also have one over an arch but that is not at it's best yet.


The delicate Brunnera has done so well this year and has been flowering for over two months with it's little forget me not flowers. I have just bought a white one and I hope it will do as well.


These seed heads were from a very early flowering clematis which was fabulous this year and these heads give a second season of interest and last for ages.

The Alliums are just getting to their best.


Just to ring in the changes, I have lots of maples,can't get enough of them although they can be a bit difficult sometimes. This golden one has been lime green and is now tinged with red, just beautiful.


I hope it has been as good for you. Lets hope this is the start of a lovely summer!