Winter Wonderland Already!

It snowed a little yesterday but during the night we got a proper fall! It's heavy and wet and putting a strain on the trees and shrubs which still have many of their leaves - the rose arch down to the garden has all but collapsed - I think it will need replacing :( It tripped the electricity also during the night which has blown the pump on our central heating system, luckily the 2 foot stone walls keep the heat in but not forever and we'll need to get that checked out asap as we have friends coming to stay over tomorrow night!!
Apart from that it's beautiful! I took these photos about 8.00 am this morning.




the collapsed rose arch!!!


view from kitchen window

Good Morning :)

The last couple of days we've been shrouded in cloud which has made it totally impossible for me to take pictures of my glass the way I like to. (I know lightboxes and all that but It's not the same - trust me). On Wednesday we had surreal dawn light - the glowing pinky orange light on the autumn leaves was awesome. I let Mr Lawrence out the door and felt I'd just opened the page of a fairytale ....by the time I thought of my camera and went back outside the best was over...and I did not want just half the memory. That day we were in total cloud - a real pea souper. Driving on mountain roads covered in slippy wet leaves in bad visibility is no fun when there are no barriers to stop you plummeting over the edge!

Today I'm more hopeful that I can take a few pictures. The cloud/fog is down below us in the valley. Sometimes when we get cloud like this it's so smooth you'd think the cloud was a lake, this mornings it's a little lumpy but still a great sight to behold.

Pretty Packages

Just some of the little giftwrapped packages that I mailed out today.

Epidemic!!

There's a nasty dose of blog tagging going around at the moment - I've tried to ignore it but another tag last night means I have to take action :)

I think it's fair that my tag list from last year is still valid - except for the passing of little Missy last year, everything is still true :) Everybody seems to be tagged already so I'm not passing the tag on....and I have my fingers x'd behind my back so I can't get tagged anymore NAA NAAAA :P

I was tagged by Marie (aka Malam) Patrick (aka French Landscapes), Kreativlink , and Meltem

click here for my 7 facts!!

I love Autumn

It's my fav time of year. The last week or so has been warm enough to sit outside and have afternoon coffee, the crickets are still singing, if a little quieter, and the countryside is gorgeous! But the cold spell at the begining of Autumn has meant the the grapes never sweetened up enough for us to pick and so we are just enjoying watching the birds, line up on Quincy the quincy tree before launching themselves into the grape vine. The photo above was taken last week in early morning from the french windows in my atelier.

This little chap sat for about 20mins on a teasel picking at the seeds, Aaron took the picture through the livingroom window with a zoom lens but he still spotted the camera. So bold, he carried on eating anyway.

Our garden is organic and 'wild' and very steep - this is the 'flat' piece at the bottom, beside the road into the hamlet. There is always so much to chop and prune back now but when the weather is good it's not too much of a chore. Behind Aaron you can see our huge walnut tree. Nothing worth picking there either this year, just enough for the squirrels!

A Corner of my Atelier

This is the area where I solder and assemble my glassy goodies. It's not normally this tidy - usually it's impossible to see the worktop :)

The wooden tray holds findings and some of my cabochons. A row of dandy birds hangs above- many of them have homes to go to already - but they stay out of mischief if I hang them up when finished :)

On the table is work in various stages of completion and a big pile of ribbon that I purchased yesterday and intend to use in garlands over the next couple of weeks.

I wouldn't keep the rolls of ribbon tidy even if I could because I love the cascade of colour.

On the shelf I keep glass cookie jars and containers full of ribbons, glass and lucite beads, antique keys, buttons, sequins, glitter, spools of embroidery silks, and paper and fabric flowers.

A Cute Challenge

Every week, a bunch of european Etsy sellers (the marvelous European Street Team) have a challenge to make an item loosely based on a theme. The theme is picked by the previous week's 'winner' and this weeks theme is CUTE (blame Artmind!). Now I don't enter the challenge every time because usually I'm playing catch up with life in general. But this week I decided to turn up the Little Dandy Bird cute-o-meter and make use of the jar of pompoms I've had for awhile.

So here is my challenge entry.....not so much cute as high camp... so if you have a gay best friend and you're stuck to find a christmas pressie - look no further...because he won't have one of these!



You can find the rest of the challenge entries on Artmind's blog here

The Chateau at Azay-Le-Rideau

We fell in love with the town of Azay-Le-Rideau - and this is currently where we're looking at what's available to buy. We plan another trip in the springtime to a different area so all that may change :)



I loved this shop - full of pretty things from Comptoir de Famille and craft pieces. I adore the delicate ironwork on the building too, painted soft grey with gilt highlights.


The chateau in the town is totally gorgeous. It's open to the public all year round and has a steady stream of tourists from around the world, so perfect for my business too!







Part of the games room


We passed several wildflower fields in the the area - little patches of early summer colours in autumn - so pretty :)



You can find some historical info here