Gorgeous gifts and goodies!

Oh, I love a bit of alliteration!

I finally plucked uo the courage and sent my camper van swap to Clare, Summerfete, on Monday and very excitedely received mine from Clare on Wednesday.

Isn't it wonderful?

Firstly this is what I received from Clare all wrapped up in the beautiful hand embroidered ribbon shown at the top of this post. Now I thought this was machine embroidery it's so neat. Once inside there was a lovely card and this gorgeous canvas, made from wonderful fabrics including a couple of my favourite Cath Kidston prints .

Much to Lily's delight there was also a packet of sweets with her own embroidered name label complete with camper van on the back, it certainly took the pout of her face as she sat there thinking that I had a present and she didn't! She started to jump around shouting it's my present, it's my sweeties. I'm so pleased that Clare was my partner for the swap as not only was it the first blog swap for both of us but she is the sweetest person and has a really delightful blog.

Thanks Clare.

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Now this is what I sent, it took me ages to decide what to make I was going to make a canvas but in the end decided on a little cushion. Clare always has lovely photos of flowers on her blog so I used some vintage flowered fabric, some flower trim and also crocheted some. The St. Ives sign post is because that is where she goes in her real life camper van, which also happens to be orange hence the orange camper key ring.

So now I have to concentrate on Indigo Blue's Christmas decoration swap and say Hi to Monique at thymeandlavenderblogspot.com in the Netherlands, my brain is ticking away! I've also got the shabbychiccafe October swap with a pink theme to do.

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Which brings me to two awards given to me this week one from the lovely Andrea from Indigo bluedesigns.

And the other from the lovely Mary from marypoppins.

I will get back to nominating these awards as soon as poss. Thankyou both of you.

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So now a few random bits firstly I found another shaving mug with roses on for my bathroom, it is so pretty and the photo really does not do it justice.

I've been making cake this time a carrot cake with an orange frosting, I found this recipe on attic24 and it is truly delicious. Along with a sticky lemon cake, which used lemon curd and very tasty too!

We went and collected some conkers and placed them in a bowl to ward off spiders, after reading about it at prettyshabby.blogspot.com So far so good, touching lots of wood here, I don't want to jinx it lol.

My kitchen is finally coming together and I'm starting to unpack some of my bits and pieces but more importantly I have my plate rack up and have threaded some clear fairy lights through it and across the tops of my units.
Here they are without the flash.

And with the flash on.

This is my sneaky way of having fairy lights up all year as my OH says I'm not allowed any more Xmas lights this year but there's always ways around these things lol.

I haven't quite worked out how they're going to stay in place yet at the moment it's taped up but they keep slipping!

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I've spent the morning cutting and machine sewing lots of things from the Tilda Crafting Christmas Gifts so I'll be doing the hand sewing this evening and will hopefully have some pics next week.

Have a good weekend everyone and thanks for all the lovely comments on my last post.