Image of the day

I had a messy morning. One of those days when the train was late, there was drizzly rain, there was a hole in my coat pocket and I had to rescue my glove from the lining of the coat… I stopped on the way to work for a Starbucks.

I can’t resist the red Christmas cups and hot chocolate at home doesn’t taste right unless it’s in my ceramic red cup. I was most excited this morning to see teeny ceramic red cup tree decorations on sale. I’m off Christmas shopping tonight and some of those little cuties will be coming home with me. Until then, here’s another christmas tree trend that I’m loving this year – wooden and metal birds. They’d definitely fit with my country/gingham/gingerbread tree style.

Image of the day

I love autumn. I love the leaves, the colours, even just the words autumn and autumnal. I think of stomping through great piles of leaves in wellies, wearing mittens and fluffy hats and drinking hot chocolate by a roaring fire. I love autumn so much that our entire wedding had an autumn theme. It’s our anniversary this weekend so I’m remembering a few favourite autumn details from the day.

We’re off to wander around a local arboretum over the weekend, stomping around in lovely autumn clothes and photographing the changing leaves. Can’t wait.

Quilting

My Grandmother made incredible quilts, every single tiny stitch was done by hand. My Mum makes incredible quilts and is currently in love with a kaleidoscope pattern and her longarm quilter. My sister makes incredible quilts which nearly always feature polkadots and the colour green. My Mother-in-law has been working on the same quilt for 12 years and has almost finished.

My quilting isn’t quite so incredible! I love to design quilts, and choose fabrics, but I’ll admit that I prefer to work on shorter projects with more immediate results. I get distracted far too easily when quilting.

I need to focus more than ever now to finish off the vintage style french braid quilt started last March which is still in strips, and the americana buggy barn crazy quilt which isn’t even in blocks yet before allowing myself to start on the navy and white french china inspired quilt in my head.

We had a great day at the Hever Castle quilt show last weekend and I managed to only buy a few fat quarters despite  wanting to buy several jelly rolls and books. So annoyed with myself for driving several hundred miles and forgetting my camera, so we’ll have to make do with iPhone pictures.

Unfortunately I now want to make a lovely lighthouse picture quilt,  a sampler, the library quilt I saw a few weeks ago,  new Christmas decorations, a Christmas table runner and an advent calendar in addition to the projects already started and planned!

In other news, we’ve sold our house again. Fingers crossed everything goes through this time and maybe we’ll be in the new house by Christmas with all my unfinished new Christmas quiting projects!

Navy and white

Flipping through an issue of Ideal Home there was a photograph of a home office with the most incredible navy blue paint colour on the walls. I instantly needed to use this colour and after very little begging, was allowed to plan the bedroom for the new house around the colour.

Secretly my favourite thing about this board is the little bedside cabinet. It’s old fashioned but more importantly it looks like one of the naughty little cabinets in Mary Poppins that make adorable noises.

The wooden name sign was an etsy find and was my present to my husband on our wedding day. My next mission may be to visit a few junk shops to buy some old blue and white china as I continue to collect fabric for the navy and white quilt.

Image of the day

Oh how I love the Elm Creek books. Jennifer Chiaverini makes me want to be one of thos people who can actually finish a quilt in less than two years, but then she distracts me with new potential projects like this one. Surely every home office needs a library quilt?

teapot love

I drink a lot of tea. Probably an unhealthy amount of tea, but I never actually use a teapot. Despite this, I’m very tempted to start a teapot collection after seeing this lovely pot from Kate Hackett. I can just see this surrounded by other lovely teapots sitting on shelf in the kitchen…