Fathers day giveaway!

Here it is, as we are approaching Fathers day, I thought I would kick off my new series of giveaways with a Dad theme, I am giving away a happy thought similar to the one pictured....all you have to do is leave a comment here about your Dad or your fave story about your Dad!...very easy this one!

A winner will be picked at random by my family on 10th June.....♥♥♥








Todays happy thought:Anyone can be a Father but it takes someone special to be a Daddy!

I need a holiday!

I know it's coming to the end of half term & I'm supposed to be chilled out by now, but I'm not, I still have a never ending pile of ironing, that if I'm honest, I've been avoiding for more than a fortnight now, I have endless outgrown clothes to put away things to file, clean, sort out & alter...phew, roll on August when we are going on our first family holiday!....to Portugal!
The children are so excited & so am I (although I am now a bit nervous of flying having not done so for 14yrs, can't let them know that though!)

Here is one of my latest creations inspired by family holidays when, as a little girl & the day at the beach was over, I used to need to be carried from the sea by my dad & put into my beach shoes, as I hated the feeling of sand in my shoes ♥♥♥♥

Will keep you updated on my preparations!

Todays happy thought: A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.

Off to Wembley...!

It's the Girls Aloud concert tonight & I'm taking my daughter, I'm looking forward to it, but the not the drive or the late night!....so I thought I'd post before I get stuck into cleaning up & getting ready!
These poppies are in our garden, I think they're a lovely colour, must paint them one day.
I still have some pictures to restore, my favourite fairy one for a start, perhaps I can do that at the weekend, I need to spend a bit of time promoting though, I've been a bit slow on that lately as I have been rather busy, I really need to get into some sort of routine so that promoting becomes like a second nature when I switch on the pc!....I wonder is there a tool that can update my twitter, facebook fan page, Deviant art etc all at once, will look into it, I haven't been on DA for ages, my facebook fan page is slowly picking up fans, to find me search itsy bitsy art by sam, & there I am........

I'm also aware that I haven't posted happy thoughts for a while........will get my brain in gear & start again next post!

Restoration work.

As I have a bright new shed to work in, thought I'd do some work yesterday, I have some clay pictures that I created for an exhibition, five years ago that needed a bit of repair from when we moved house, I thought that if I restore them I could hang them up in the shed & then sell them, ...they're not going to get sold being kept in the dark old garage are they?
So I repaired my Braintree dragon & my Garden of Eden & still have to reset the frames....I also put my old oil paint pallette to good use, & made a clock, now I have no excuse to forget the time down there!...........

My first proper dressmaking attempt.......

Here it is, my first proper dress with a pattern, my daughter went to see Hairspray with Guides on Saturday & had to dress up like the film, I couldn't find anything suitable in the local shops so I thought I'd give it a go....no I didn't find it easy! I think some patterns are incredibly hard to follow, & they leave big chunks of instructions out of it, so you have to use common logic to figure out what to do, I stil don't understand the language, this frustrates me-as it could be explained in regular english aaaaaagh......any way it's done now & she looked beautiful!...and by the way, that is my youngest behing her, hiding, thinking I don't know she's there!

Happy happy shed.....

I was up early yesterday completely emptying the shed ready to go, it took ages, I sorted drawers, chucking out rubbish(any materials that could have come into contact with a mouse or a dropping!) ...good job it stayed dry for as, as it all had to go on the garden!

Mr H put the boards on the walls & we filled up any holes we found as we went along....I'm determined to keep out the little critters!

With all the boarding done, at around....five ish, I had to put all the cupboards back in, knowing I had to do it all again in the morning!
I decided to paint it all white, mainly as thats all we had, but also to give the shed a brighter look, it's usually so dark & dismal down there, it's too far down the garden to have electricity so white it was.....I've even got a little window sill now & floor tiles are being laid as we speak!
must go....things to do...!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeuw !

Ok, thought I'd start with a prettier aspect of our garden before moving on to (not so) Happy shed.... I love the tulips Mr H planted..... so officially, emptying the shed is the start of the makeover, I had to be really brave & empty the cupboard that I have always been too scared to put my hand into knowing there was a whopping spider in there, so big it had boots on!

Anyway, there I was tipping things out, trying to ignore the cobwebs wondering why there was all bits of corn/wheat stuff laying around, then I found...a neat little nest in the corner...of a mouse nature...this whole episode is really testing my dedication to my craft, I must really want to do this to put up with this intrusion of my space. Now I need to continue with the emptying...but I'm too scared to look in the basket in the corner, irrational I know because before I found the mouse droppings last week, I had no problem with getting the basket down but now, no way!.....will keep you posted, we will be cracking on with it tomorrow!

Unbelievable!

Can you believe this, I decided it was again time to sort out the shed, there's no room to work in there, just store my stuff & I decided that as I would like to work in there over the summer, I needed to sort it out, ....so after an hour or so I noticed that my two miniature chocolate logs were broken, then I looked closer & saw that they weren't broken, they were missing from their little silver cake boards & crumbled everywhere .....then I noticed that the turkish delight box was empty.....then I saw them....mouse droppings...yuk, I was outta there faster than a speeding bullett I don't mind telling you!

I can't understand why they ate them though, the chocolate cakes had scent in them so maybe that's why, & I suppose the turkish delight was soft, -everything is now sealed in boxes & I will be moving out of happy shed & renovating it,(sealing all holes!) should be fun as I will be doing it on my own & haven't got a clue how to even work out what I need, will keep you posted!

I don't like mice or rats, I know they are in the garden & there they can stay & I wouldn't hurt them, but come into my house, shed, garage or anywhere else I deem a human only zone, it's up to them if they want to take their chances!

Hopefully it tasted so bad it won't come back!