It's Only Forever update

Firstly I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.  We saw all the family over the festive period and even managed to get dad over to our house for Christmas dinner which a major achievement.  I was a very lucky girl and received lots of gorgeous presents.  

I have even managed to find some time for stitching too and I am pleased to report another page finish on It's Only Forever.   I had set myself the target of getting this page completed before the end of 2017 and I've done that with a day to spare.

This page contained 1,438 stitches so total stitch count at the moment stands at 14,033.  I'm  now going to be working on the owls face and thankfully there is far less confetti stitching on this page so fingers crossed for another page finish in January.

This will be my last post for 2017 so I will take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy New Year and wish you all the best for 2018.

Looking for snowflakes in Plymouth

No snow fell this week in Plymouth but there is another snowflake trail for us to take part in this year.  We had already decided to catch the bus out to Elvira's cafe and have a hearty breakfast before walking round Royal William Yard and then onto The Barbican in search of the snowflakes.

The sun was shining brightly most of the time as we walked around and found all but two of the snowflakes.  We found this one which was at Valenti's Gelato-Artisan.

There is a competition you can enter and there are quite a few prizes to be won.  This was not our intention though, we just wanted to get out and enjoy a nice walk with Max but with more of a purpose.  It also gives me something to scrapbook about at a later date.

This one was found in the National Marine Aquarium.  

We had to walk all the way round Sutton Harbour to get to this one as the gate which you can normally walk across from The Barbican was still closed.  It was worth the extra steps though.  As you can see it was starting to cloud over by this point and we managed to get on the bus to get back home before it started to rain too hard.

We knew we wouldn't get all the snowflakes in this visit as for one of them you need to catch the river boat over to Mount Batten.  We could have done but this wasn't on agenda for today.  The other snowflake we missed we have since found out its location and so will go back for that one when we go over to Mount Batten which needs to be on or before the 7th January.

Just finished and current read

I have just finished Sue Graftons book M is for Malice.  As with all the others in the series it was an easy and good book to read.

I am currently reading Christmas at the Cornish cafe by Phillips Ashley at work.  Another light hearted read which I am enjoying very much.

I now need to choose another one to read at home.

Beginners card class cards

I'm not sure where the past week went.  Is it just me or does this time of year appear to go faster than any other time in the year?  Anyway today was my monthly beginners card class at Scrapbook Magic and I had six ladies this time. The four ladies from last month returned (good to know I didn't frighten them off last month) and two new absolute beginners.  As I promised last week here are the cards they made.

This month we worked with busy patterned papers and cut apart papers and I wanted to show them how to use them in a variety of creative ways.

We also used some cut apart images from the Bo Bunny Tis the Season paper range.

And also the Prima Marketing paper range A Victorian Christmas

While it was quite intense I am hoping they all enjoyed the class and learnt something from it.  More importantly I hope they will return again in 2018.

Page 4 complete

I've managed another page finish on It's Only Forever today fingers crossed I can get another one done before the end of the year.

Stitches so far 12,575

Christmas cake

I finally got round to baking our Christmas cake yesterday.  The recipe is from a book I bought a couple of years ago called Ultimate Christmas by Parragon publishing.  Not sure if I bought it from Tesco or a garden centre but it's not just a cook book it also contains crafting. 

While the cake was baking we had the pleasure of Harlee-Jays company for a few hours - he loves playing with the Thomas train track which we first bought years ago for Connor so that set was definitely worth the investment.

In the evening I finished prepping the cards for next week's beginners card class at Scrapbook Magic.   Fingers crossed they will enjoy making them as much as last month - I will share those ones with you next week.

Advent calendars

I made hubby his own advent calendar this year with a die I bought from Joanna Sheen.  Simple decoration of the boxes was in the form of stickers which I had left over from last year and I had purchased from Lidl.  Inside is a chocolate coin (Paw Patrol - the only ones I could find at the time to fit)

My own calendar is from Kelloggs and has 24 bowls of cereal until Christmas.

Normally we don't have advent calendars but I thought they were both a little different and would add a fun element to the run up to the big day.