ATCs, homemade pickles and even a few cards

After a holiday in Devon (since when did a holiday in this country become a 'staycation' we always had holidays in this country as kids, we couldnt afford anything else, it was just known as a holiday, surely a 'staycation' is when you stay at home, in your home town or do day trips? ). Anyway, back home and I had a nice surpise, I forgot that the CB Forum ATC swap was due on the theme of 'No White', and I received 3 great ATC's from 2Belle, Cleene and Catherine Harper, thanks ladies they are lovely.

My return home saw lots of chilli's on my plants, so I have now pickled them! Lovely, sweet pickled chillis-blow your head off but great with cheese.

We had some good news when we were away, my brother-in-law and his wife completed on their first home! Congratulations to you both. To celebrate I made a selection of homemade goodies: Elderflower cordial, pickled chillis, pickled nasturtium, spicy rhubarb chutney and spiced sugar to welcome them to their new home.

I also managed to get some time card making, a leaving card for a Nightmare Before Christmas fan:

I also made a couple of girly cards and a shaker card.

I also finally took out a subscription to Craft Stamper magazine. I have been waiting until they had a subscription gift i liked-this time some goodies from Paper Artsy, a great company with a full angel policy-so I am off to buy some U-mount and get stamping with my new stamps-watch this space!

Happy Crafting

Li'l Pidge

Rhubarb...ooh, its spicy

Some of you may know we get our veggies delivered from an organic box scheme, so we need to be pretty inventive with our meals some weeks! The last 2 boxes had rhubarb included. Now, I love and grow this myself, so really dont need even more! But, my dad had a great recipe for a spicy rhubarb chutney. So, I decided to give it a go, but soon realised I had no cayenne pepper so as this is a hot spice decided dried whole chillies would be a good substitute-but how many? Well I can tell you -5 is possibly one too many!!!!but boy it's god with some sharp cheddar and oat cakes! Yum! The idea was to make lots and put it away to form the contents of Food Hampers for Christmas pressies, but there is NO way there is going to be any of this left after August, let alone December!

Now, nourished by the chutney I finally managed to make another skirt. This time from some wonderful Amy Butler fabric I bought a few weeks ago. The first skirt took 15 hours to make, but this only took about 6 hours (mainly as I had a bit more of a clue what to do-though zips are a pain) and I was so pleased I wore it out for my best buds, Julie, birthday Karaoke afternoon (OMG, what a scream!).

Amongst a few other bits and bobs, I also made Julie one of my gel collage art pendant necklaces, but decided to have a go at my first exploding box-I hope you like it.
In the words of Bob Marley "the sun is shining and the weather is sweet yeah" so I need to go and top up my Vit. D levels for a bit before hitting the cutting mat to make a leaving card for someone at work.

I have also found a great blog with blogcandy giveaway over at little pricess cards (link is on the righthanbd panel)-check it out, some great stuff.
Happy crafting

Li'l Pidge x