This weeks makes.

A friend of mine is about to become a Grandma for the first time, we are all very excited and can't wait for a cuddle of the new arrival.

She had a Moses basket but wasn't happy with the lining so asked if I could help her out.

Not one to shy away from a sewing challenge I said yes of course.

Liner made and detachable bows added.

The Hood was next .

Then to finish it off a little quilted topper. This basket will stay at Grandma's house so she got to choose the colours.

I also finished off the baby blanket that I was knitting. Having seen the colours of the new babies nursery I chose wool that had the same tones in it. As we don't yet know if the baby is a boy or a girl  I thought I would be safe with these colours. 

Just waiting for this tiny blessing to arrive,  two weeks til due date so not to long to wait.

God Bless your day.x

Old Skool versus New Skool

I have to confess to a few addictions. Books and Pretty china are just a couple to start with. Yes on those two tops shelves there are books stacked in front of books! A big issue for all of you neat freaks I know.

On the opposite side to the couch you can just see in the previous picture we have another book case this one stores ' the special things'  Old books, a whole shelf of Bibles ,old ones,new ones and foreign ones. Some homemade blankets and a few just a few tea sets,  well not even tea sets more like pretty cups and saucers and odd plates. 

It doesn't end there either, in our bedroom there are an abundance of books too. In the Mum cave, OK it's not quite a cave more of a chair and footstool that has a tray full of books on it! It does sit in front of a window so when then sun is shining it is quite nice to sit there with a book and a cup of tea and sit in peace and read for a time.

Then we have beside the bed another stack. Oh my goodness I can see a Indian takeaway menu sticking out of the stack!!

Mr J being a neat freak thinks he has found the perfect solution to my addiction!! The Kindle!! what a genius piece of kit. It goes with me everywhere and with the ability to store three and a half thousand books on it you would think I was cured. We will have to wait and see. I plan on going through my book collection and maybe passing some on to friends or donating them to our local bookshop or even setting up a book swap at our church.

Must dash as looking at these picture really has made me think I need to sort out those shelves. Although  it may have to wait as I have painting and sewing jobs that need to be finished first and I can't see that the book shelves will be a quick task as all you book lovers will know that I will have to  read a few pages from each one of those books that is going just to remind me of the time we spent together.

An edible work of art.

 It always gets messy in the Johnson household when there is some cooking to be done.
 Ariane needed to come up with a novelty cake idea for her cookery class at school.

When you spend your spare time looking at blogs you get to see ideas that just seem to stick in your mind!

Any ideas what we did yet?? Maybe a look at the rest of the ingredients will help.

Did you get it? We did a bucket of popcorn! We made a sponge cake with buttercream for the centre of the cake, Icing for the bucket sides and some fresh cooked popcorn and peanut M&Ms for the topping.

This was just a practice one. Ariane then had to make it by herself in the cookery class.

Arianes turned out so well that the teacher of the class still uses pictures of the cake when he is showing examples to his other classes. 

YUM YUM!

Old and New Made by Hand.

Lots of pictures but not many words in this post! A few things I have re purposed and a few things I have made myself.

Bought at a charity shop for a few pounds. Knew it had potential.

A few coats of paint and a scrap of wallpaper as a new topper and a few coats of PVA to seal the top. Job done.

You have to love it that DIY shops in the UK don't mind you taking a few bits of wall paper samples to try at home. My samples always seem to get reused in one way or another.

Laura Ashley wallpaper samples framed and a cross stitch i did nearly 20 years ago! Amazing how the 'Voice of the Shepherd' was calling me even back then.

The same Laura Ashley pattern but as a fabric this time. 1m of fabric can make 2 of these simple blinds. Mr J has just asked me where is that blind in our house??  He actually passes it every time he goes up the stairs!

Art work created by my son for some school projects.

Aynsley loves stenciling and he mixes different stencils to make some of his art pieces,as below.

We seem to have quite a few unusable skateboards  lying around our garage so Aynsley following in my footsteps sees a re purpose use for them, artwork . I'm thinking of mounting them on his wall and using them as shelves.

This cross stitch I started just before we actually got married. It took a little longer than I expected to finish,2 years!!

A close up of the beading along the bottom of the brides dress.

Jasmine is convinced that this is her!

I picked this up at a charity shop just a few weeks ago. This is an after shot as i got carried away and forgot to take any before shots. It was a dirty old brass lamp stand with a stained cream lampshade. Painted the base in Annie Sloan 'old white' chalk paint and made a rag shade for the top. Easiest revamp ever.

Have been working on some more projects over the last week or so and will hopefully get round to posting about them soon.xx

Take time to look!

Mr J and I went for lunch in our local town Chippenham today, nothing unusual there i hear you say. Mr J decided we would park in a different carpark to usual and walk through the park to get into town. Well with a huff from me we parked up.

What a Fabulous idea Mr J!  We would have missed these wonderful views of Chippenham had we parked in our usual spot.

Sometimes you forget how beautiful the area you live in really is as you continue on with the day to day things of life. I urge you to STOP and take a look around you wherever you may be today and look at what God has placed before you.

Hope the people who live here didn't mind me peering over their wall on my tippy toes to get this shot!

Lunch was taken at La Taberna in Chippenham an authentic Tapas bar where we got to practice our Spanish and reminisce about our years of living in Madrid.

Praising God for a fantastic day.

makes and re-makes

Okay not sure how this will look when it's finished as my computer whizz (Jasmine) is not here with me to check I am doing this right!! Not blogged in ages as I have been busy working and ' making and re-making' stuff.  Have tried to upload some pictures of  before and afters as we all know that Blog world loves a bit of before and after. Here goes!!

Jasmine has a handmade bag company www.shambags.com so we always have an abundance of fabric in the house so i decided with summer here i wanted to brighten up our living room. Chose some blue pieces i liked and made some cushions and lamp shades (no pictures of the lamp shades as of yet).

Loving Annie Sloan Chalk paint I used Louis Blue on a few items in the room to pick up the blue .In the background you can just see a plant stand that I painted this colour. The coffee table has also gone from pine to painted!

This old piece of furniture is from a charity shop but i thought it would look fabulous painted and would work well in Jasmines new room when she moves at the end of September to start at university.

This is the colour she chose, Annie Sloan's 'Henrietta'.  We are blessed to have a supplier just a 10 min drive from home. At a fabulous shop called The Beehive in Devizes.  www.thebeehivelifestyle.com

After a thinned colour wash of the paint and then a thicker coat this is how the beauty looks now. Of course a little sanding was required once she was dry and then a fine coat of wax. If you have never used AS paint before 'where have you been?' no sanding required and you can virtually paint onto any kind of surface I have just finished painting a huge brass lamp base in the same pink.

She looks very pale pink in this picture but it is actually a much more vivid pink as in the previous picture. Have just bought a fab old dressing table for her room but undecided as to whether I should  paint it pink or old white, what are your thoughts?

This has to be one of the most pointless pieces of furniture we have ever bought!! Quite a few years back we needed an extra CD rack and as our last ones were bought in Spain when we lived there we couldn't get one to match those so we got something that was a similar style. Well so we thought when we bought it, it has never matched anything we own so has always been relegated to the study and  now has software bits and wires and cables in it. When we decorated the study a few months back it was a case of do we keep  or do we throw??  Decided to paint and sand it and then see how i felt about it.

As we painted the room our favourite colour at the moment dulux ' perfectly taupe' a soft grey that depending on how the light is in the room seems to have shades of lilac in it the newly painted piece seemed to work just right. Reprieve , well for the moment anyway.

We spent some time in Cornwall over the summer,as always with Cornwall in summer the weather was a real mix of high winds, blue skies, grey clouds, lots of rain and of course mizzle (that's mist and drizzle all rolled into one). Every year for the last 8 years ,even when we have lived overseas we have travelled to either Devon or Cornwall to attend Creationfest,a Christian music festival. As always it did not disappoint. Great Worship,teaching,fellowship and time with God. Not forgetting great live music every night also.

Can you tell she likes pink?

Look at the concentration on Aynsley's face!

Arianes mission for the week was to collect as many wristbands as she could. Doing well so far.

And as for Mr J, still a child at heart. Yes that is him and the kite is so high it's not in the shot!