Something To Make You Smile

This is me.

At 7 months old.

Sporting the "my mum just cut my fringe" look.

1969.

I hope you've had a corker of a weekend.  

I've had a gorgeous time with Steve, friends and lots of delicious food.

Favourite Thing On A Friday - The Real Deal

So here it is, my first "Favourite Thing On A Friday"!

I posted yesterday about a new idea I've had.

To post each Friday about my favourite thing for the week.  I decided to call it Favourite Thing On A Friday.  Punchy.

I also decided I'd love to see what other people have been enjoying and wanted to give people the option to join in.  Thus was Favourite Thing On a Friday born.

  You can read all about it by clicking HERE .

If you want to join in, link up by entering your blog name and URL address in the link tool at the bottom of this post, that way, a link to your blog will show up here letting people know you're joining in, so they can come and visit.  Then write a blog post about your Favourite Thing On A Friday with a link back to Mimi and Tilly, letting your readers know what you're linking up with.  There may be some teething problems with this as I've not done a link up like this before.  (Who am I kidding?  This might be a little bit of car-crash blogging happening right here, right now.)  If there are problems, let me know and I'll sort them out as soon as I've figured out what in the David Dickenson I'm doing.

There's also a little blog button that I sat making until 2am this morning.  When I get an idea...

If you'd like to, you're very welcome to put this button in your sidebar with a link back to this post letting people know they can join in with Favourite Thing On A Friday.

So here goes....

My

Favourite Thing On A Friday

is....



My glass pendant from the royal palace in Monaco.  Which I thought I'd lost.

I bought this pendant years ago from a jeweller's situated in the grounds of the royal palace in Monaco.  I know that sounds a little bit weird but it's true.  At the top of the hill in Monaco, the royal palace is surrounded by little cobbled streets that have a range of different boutiques along them.  I managed to sniff out the jeweller's at twenty paces (being able to do that is a skill I'm very proud of) and went inside and found this pendant.  When my significant other (Steve) and I went round Ireland with friends, I wore it every day.  This pendant and I  have been places together.  Cannes, Dublin, Sligo, Dingle Bay to say hello to Fungie the dolphin, London, Liverpool, a hot tub in a field.  I was so sad when I couldn't find it.

But...

I found this beauty again this week having not been able to lay my hands on it for a good few months.

Oh happy day!

I sat in the garden and gave it a good buff up with my polishing cloth.  The sun shone all over it making the colours glisten.

It reminded me of these...

Jewellery and Jelly Tots.

My Favourite Thing On A Friday.

What's yours?

Favourite Thing On A Friday

Brace yourselves.  I've had an idea.

I've decided to start a new tradition on Fridays.  Called...

"Favourite Thing On A Friday."

(Can you see where I'm going with this?)

Basically it involves me taking oodles of pictures of one of my favourite things each week and wantonly posting about it here on my blog each Friday.

Each week while I'm going about my business, I usually spy something I love in a shop window.  Or find a forgotten piece of jewellery.  Or eat a new favourite piece of cake.  In my mind it becomes my favourite thing that week.  I get all excited and want to share it with you.  And then something else happens, I get caught up in life, and I forget to post about the little thing that came into my week and brightened my day.

Trivial.  Not earth-shattering.  But something I've found beautiful.  That's made me smile a big wide smile. Or made me snort laughing until I've had to change my undercrackers.

I'm of the mind that being aware of the loveliness all around me and celebrating that loveliness is worth doing.

Frankly something that makes me have to change my kecks is going to get a mention. 

So I'm doing it here on my blog.  

Each Friday. 

I fancy I'll make a blog button and place it in my sidebar so that if you are so inclined, you can join in, post about your Favourite Thing On A Friday, and link back with me here.

What do you think, do you fancy it?

So even though it's Thursday, I'm taking the bull by the horns and posting a photo of my all time favourite things this week.  Right here, right now.

'Cos that's how I swing.

www.weheartit.com


Sending glitter and smiles,

My Little Slice Of Paradise

I've always loved the book "The Secret Garden", ever since  since I first read it as a child.

When I moved into my home ten years ago, I decided I wanted to plant up a garden that I could hide in.  Full of ivy, and roses.  I didn't have a garden design in mind.  I had a simple but cunning plan.  I went to the garden centres in the area each month and bought one of whatever was in bloom. I figured that would mean I'd have something doing something for each month of the year.

It worked.

My garden is very small but I love it.

And to enjoy all of this, I sit under this...

It's not tacky.  It's tiki.

Do you have a garden?

P.S.  Oddly enough, my garden is the one part of my home where I don't have any bunting...  What-a-mistake-a-to-make-a.

Beautiful Blankets

A couple of days ago, I took myself off to the village near where I live to post a letter.  I know.  I'm veritably flying by the seat of my pants.  After having a wee chat with the lady at the post office, (no mean feat as the lovely woman clearly wasn't happy in her work) I decided to do a bit of jay-walking and make my way to the very tired looking but very friendly charity shop across the street.

I love this charity shop.  It is staffed by two lovely older ladies who take great pleasure in putting absolutely everything that is donated to the shop out on the shelves, in no particular order.  Yesterday when  I went in, there was a solitary green shoe on display on the shoe rack.  No sign of the other shoe to match it.  Alongside a woolly bobble hat.  I don't go in very often, but the last time I was there was around Easter-time and the shop had a slew of Christmas cards on display.  It's the best charity shop ever.

When I went in yesterday, I thought all my Christmases and Easters had come at once.

In the back of the shop, hanging on the "sale" rail was the most beautiful vintage wool blanket in the prettiest soft pink.  And mahoooosive enough to cover a king-size bed.  Reduced from £3.39 to £1.39.  (I even love the seemingly random prices these slightly bonkers ladies choose.  £3.39?)  The kind of woollen blanket you suffocate under because it pins you to the bed with its wonderful woolly weightiness.  I grappled the beauty home.

Fresh from being laundered in a very large vessel, it now has pride of place on my bed.

I wonder if the original owners of my blanket looked like this...

Image courtesy of www.johnsadverts.co.uk

I know it's July, but there's something really cosy about having your feet pinned to the mattress by the sheer weight of a woolly blanket.  Don't you think?

Bonkers for Bunting

I'm bonkers for bunting.

Image courtesy of sweetjessie on etsy.

I love the stuff.

Source

Those little flags never fail to bring a smile to my face.

Source



 Bunting reminds me of summer fairs when I was little.  Ice-cream, hot dogs, and bottle stalls.  I won a little bottle of parma violet perfume from a bottle stall when I was about 8.  It was a very happy day for me. There was bunting strung all over that summer fair, and so now whenever I see bunting I think of good times...

Source

Which would explain why my house is literally dripping in the stuff.  

  It all began last year when I added a swag of jaunty bunting to my shower rail in the bathroom, just to make me smile when I was soaking in my bubbly suds.

Then a few weeks ago I sat down to do a spot of sewing and found myself creating and adding raw silk bunting to my lounge so that I could smile to myself while watching a spot of tv.

My handmade bunting makes me smile.

Still smiling.

I tipped over the edge into a zone I will call "Possibly Just a Little Bit Too Much Bunting" last week when I took ahold of the granny squares I had been crocheting for a winter throw and fashioned them into yet more bunting.  Square bunting for crying out loud.  Not triangular bunting you understand.  Square.  I know.

 So these...

Is it going to be a throw?  Is it going to be square bunting?

...  Became this...

Square bunting it is then.

Yep.  Still smiling.

Every day is a summer fair day in my home.

Images courtesy of www.weheartit.com unless otherwise stated.

A Day in the Life Of Maru

This is Maru.  

He lives in Japan, and frankly, packs more into a day than I do.

Beautiful Words

I love reading.  I love that when you read you can find something that just hits your heart.

Here's something I read recently that I thought was really beautiful.  And something I need to remember...




"You may speak your truth, but soothe your words

with peace.



Tell your truth as soon as you know it.  Yet tell it gently,

kindly, and with compassion for the hearer.  Someone

needs to hear the truth from you today...  But that person

also needs your deep compassion as you speak it.



Seek to say what needs to be said with softness, and

with a wide open heart.  Remember, the truth can hurt...

But it hurts a lot less if you care how it feels while

saying it."

Neale Donald Walsch

  I hope your week is a fab one!

Sending smiles and glitter. 

Photograph courtesy of www.weheartit.com

I Have a Dream

I love making jewellery.

I love making jewellery a little bit more than is decent, I think. 

I love sitting quietly, doodling shapes and ideas, figuring out how to transform the doodles into the real thing.

 How will I reproduce this in metal?  Sheet metal or wire?  Where would I solder?  How would I attach the gemstones?  What kind of shapes and textures am I after?  How will it hang?  What kind of clothes will it work with?  How much impact will it have?  

And then when I've made the finished piece, I get so excited about giving it to the person I've made it for, or wearing it myself, if I've made it for me.  

And I never get bored of this process.

I usually get a wild idea in my head about a honking great ring, or a honking great pair of earrings.  And then find myself figuring out how to translate the idea into a piece of jewellery.  No matter how much I try to size them down, they always end up being mahooooosive.

One of my dreams is to have my own jewellery workshop where I can sit, dream about sparkle, doodle, dream some more and then make the sparkly dreams a reality.  

My dream workshop is covered with strings of fairy lights, with lots of pin boards full of pictures, doodles and photos of beautiful things.  There's a little tv so I can watch fab programmes as I work.  There's also a radio so that I can listen to radio 4.  And oodles of gemstones in all shapes and sizes.  Silver sheet, silver wire, copper sheet, copper wire.  Ribbons and beautiful little boxes to store everything in.  And my work-bench, with all my tools itching to be used.  

A grotto homage to jewellery making.

That would be my dream workshop.

Sigh.

It would look something like this...

 With a little bit of this...

         

  

 And this...

Quite alot of these...

Some more of these...

With areas that look like this...

 And oodles and oodles of these...

I could wake up in the morning, stagger across the landing, and plop down at work.  Cup of tea in hand.  A brain fizzing with sparkle and glitter.

Every day blissfully full of doing bad things with metal and gemstones.

Yep.  I have a dream.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if this dream came true? 

Do you have a dream?

All photographs courtesy of weheartit.com

And The Winner Is...

Thank you for entering my Mimi and Tilly Facebook page giveaway.

All the names went into the hat (which looked uncannily like a white bowl) and my Significant Other (Let's call him Steve.  Because that's his name.) picked the winner!

Drum roll please....

It's so exciting.

Congratulations Angela! 

Please send your postal details to me and I'll package up your earrings and get them to you.

Thank you to everyone who entered.