Nonnie

More adventures of George the Bear

As you may have noticed I've been slightly absent lately as George and I have been pretty busy. The collar bone is mending nicely but it will be up to eight weeks for it to be totally fixed. Hence I've been doing a little more around the house than usual and have become the full time driver on our various trips around the country. Last weekend saw is in Salisbury, Cardiff, back to Salisbury, down to London then back home to London! So you will forgive me for feeling rather exhausted to be crafting or blog writing.

I think we perhaps bit of more than we could chew last weekend so I'm glad to say we're staying at home in London this weekend. We have a Christening to go to at St Pauls no less on Saturday! I believe it's in the Crypt rather than the main Cathedral, but it will be interesting none the less. So Sunday will be a day for unwinding and starting to give the flat a jolly good sort out. I think it must be the Spring in the air, but we're about to embark on a major Spring clean/de-clutter. We're going to buy some new pieces of furniture for storage and basically change the way the flat is organised. It's going to be something we work on over the next couple of months but I'm really looking forward to the finised result as I think it will make life a lot simpler.

So while we've been busy mending broken bones, George the Bear has been left in charge of the boat. As you can see he's doing an excellent job. Here he is just finishing off mooring the boat. He's a very clever little bear. We both feel totally confident knowing the boat is in his capable little paws for the next few weeks.

Hopefully I'll be back to normal service in a week or two. In the mean time I'll write a quick post when I can. I am reading you all but am struggling to find time to comment but I'll be back again soon. I also wanted to say thank you all for the comments on Milly Molly Mandy. It was lovely to hear that so many of you thought so fondly of MMM as I did. I'm sorry I haven't replied to any of your comments but I will slowly get round to it I hope.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend dear blogging friends. xxx

Favourite Books

The little girl in this little book was one of my favourite people when I was growing up. If I could have jumped inside the pages to be her best friend I would have done. But she already had a best friend called Susan, otherwise known as 'little friend Susan'.

Her other friend was Billy Blunt who's Father was the village Blacksmith and who she had lots of great adventures with like the time they went fishing together

One of my favourite parts of the Milly Molly Mandy books was the map of the village at the beginning of the book. I believe it's because of this map that I now am totally facinated by maps and can spend hours looking at them when we're going on a trip and even when we get back from a trip to see where we've been. I would look endlessly at MMM's village map, tracing routes with my fingers and remembering the various stories and where on the map they took place.

I should point out that this is a vintage copy that Mum bought me a couple of years ago and it seems the previous owner decided to do a spot of colouring on the map!

I think the reason I loved my Milly Molly Mandy books so much was because they depicted a lovely innocent English Country Life. She lived in the kind of pretty English village that I still long to live in. I like to imagine that somewhere out there there's still a little girl in a red and white stripey frock living in a little cottage with a thatched roof, camping in a home made tent in the field, fishing for tadpoles in the brook and having dolls tea parties on the lawn with her little friend Susan.

x

A break.

I seem to have been unintentionally taking a little blogging break just lately but I'm hoping to be back to normal again this week. I don't know where the last week or two have gone really. But somehow life has been getting in the way of both writing and reading blogs. So apologies if I've not dropped by recently. I've been missing you all.

Last week was very hectic with the day job, then I had a couple of days off at the end of the week and went and joined George down at his brothers on Hayling Island. The boat has now been moved to just around the corner from where his Brother lives so we'll be down there a lot this summer. George and I had a pleasant little trip out on the boat on Thursday although the sails didn't go up as I need to get my confidence up a bit first! We travelled back to London on Friday, me in a very noisy car as my exhaust had gone so part of the afternoon was spent at Kwik Fit getting it fixed. I then whizzed on the train up to Islington to pop into the Country Living Spring Fair. The lovely Samantha of Plump Pudding had very kindly given me a complimentary ticket to the fair as she was exhibiting there for the first time. Samantha's stand looked really lovely and seemed deservedly to be getting a lot of attention while I was stood chatting to her. I have to say though, that apart from hers and a few other stands, the fair was generally a little disappointing. I've only visited the Spring Fair once before as I normally go to the Christmas one. Usually as you walk through the double doors into the centre there is a real 'wow factor' but this time that seemed to be a little missing. I really hope that Country Living are not getting complacent. I love the magazine, but I have to say I'm even getting a little disappointed with it lately. I've just been reading what Niki has to say on the subject so I know I'm not the only one. I'm hoping that Samantha did well at the Fair and wasn't affected by the lack of atmosphere and inspiration, as I know she worked really hard and her stand was lovely. At least the Scottish Fair will have 'wow factor' as I believe Jane's stand is to be in front of the main doors, complete with her gorgeous little green van. Both Jane and Lisa have stands at the Scottish Fair and I wish them both lots of luck.

So back to my crazy week. On Saturday we travelled to Bath where George was playing rugby. I unfortunately missed the start of the match as I went for a little drive after dropping George off, but when I started watching I had the feeling that George wasn't playing with his usual confidence and enthusiasm. As the match ended he was holding his shoulder and admitted that he'd had a hard tackle and that it was hurting a lot. As we drove back to the Salisbury to the club house, the pain got worse and his shoulder looked pretty swollen. He put ice on it during the evening and even went to sleep on Saturday night with a back of frozen peas clamped to his shoulder! Yesterday morning the pain was worse and the shape of his right shoulder was totally different from the left so we decided a trip to A and E was needed. Two and a half hours and one xray later, a broken collar bone was diagnosed! So my poor love is in a great deal of pain and now faces up to six weeks of healing. He very bravely still sat in the car for a couple of hours each way to go visit my Mum yesterday. I know it must have been very unpleasant for him. This morning I had to remember how to tie a tie (back to front) and am going to have to learn how to do his hair the way he likes it! He was very nervous about taking the tube for fear of being knocked into, as his arm is just in a sling and not at all protected, and I know he was worrying about how he would manage at work with just one arm. I really hope for his sake that it heals quickly as I think he will probably go crazy very quickly if he doesn't get to go on his little boat for six weeks. I think I'm going to have to be extra specially patient and loving in the coming weeks. Wish us both luck!

So it's been an eventful week. I have managed to be just a little bit creative as you'll see from the pictures. These Easter pots are going to be in the shop and are available with yellow or pink dots. Perfect for displaying those little chocolate eggs. I have to admit that the eggs in the picture are long gone. Chocolate is the only thing when things get a little stressful.

If the Country Living Fair was good for one thing, it was as a push to make me go in a slightly different direction style wise. I've just signed up to two Fairs in the Cotswolds during the summer and I hope to add more, so now I need to get my creative thinking cap on to produce some new things. I have a few seeds of ideas in my head. Now I've just got to get them growing. Of course I will share them with you once they're properly germinated! Have a lovely week and I promise I'll be writing and visiting more this week than last. x

Easter Eggs!

I've finally finished another Easter decoration which I'll be putting in the shop later. They're salt dough eggs decorated with spots and stripes in pink and yellow and have green, pink or yellow ribbon to hang from branches. I'll be selling them individually or in sets of 5.

know it's a month until Easter but I think I'll be looking for some lovely Spring branches in the next few days to decorate using these little eggs. The sun is shining here today and I really feel that Spring is in the air. Hope you're having a lovely sunny day where ever you are today. x

Inspiration?

It's been one of those weeks were your brain turns to mush and blogging inspiration is lacking. Actually any kind of creative inspiration is lacking. Poor George has been off work with flu all week, my dear little nephew has been in hospital with a very nasty eye infection (luckily at home and doing well now) and now I'm coming down with cold. Yuck and double yuck! A week to forget I think. So the Easter treats are only half finished and I've nothing exciting to say at all. But I just wanted to pop in and say hello and wish all my lovely bloggy friends a very happy weekend. I'll be back again on Monday with a little more enthusiasm! xxx

'Easter Treats Part 1'

Introducing the first of my Easter designs which are in the shop today!

Easter cards for posting to loved ones or popping under their eggs at the breakfast table on Easter morning. As you see, each card has a pretty pink gingham background with a white felt egg attached by a spring coloured button. Choose from green, pink or yellow button. I'm selling the cards individually or in packs of four at a special price. Look here for details. Please do email me if you'd like some.

I'll be adding a few more Easter decorations over the next week or two. My work table is currently covered in little eggs ready to decorate Spring branches but they're not fully dressed yet and ready to show themselves to you all. Maybe by the end of the week. x

Lazy Sunday

We should have spent Saturday night and Sunday on a very nice yacht sailing around the Solent but on Thursday George came down with the flu so we had to turn down the invitation and were confined to the flat for the weekend. Much as it was disappointing not to get to go on such a lovely boat, we did have a lovely relaxing weekend and I managed to do some of the things I've been dreaming of for the last few weeks. The first is pictured above. I've been seeing pictures of cupcakes all over the place and I've had a huge urge to get baking myself.

I made a mixture of chocolate cupcakes iced with coffee butter cream and plain vanilla cakes iced with pink vanilla butter cream. I really enjoyed playing, but having seen Cherry's Post on Friday, I'm now thinking I need an icing bag to really get creative with my cakes. We ate about half of them over the weekend but I suspect they may all be gone by the end of today as I've left George at home, still suffering and I think he may need them for flu fighting purposes!

As yesterday was such a horrid, grey and miserable day here in London we decided it was a day of PJs and not leaving the house. I spent the entire day on the sitting room floor getting on with a little project I've been wanting to do for ages.

I love my magazines, but I can't bear for them to build up too much and I like to have all the inspirational items close at hand. So I've always kept files of images, articles and ideas. But I decided I wanted to arrange them differently. At the moment they're all in pockets in clear files from Muji and that's fine when it's a whole article I've cut and where I like all the images. But I realised I had a lot of articles where there was perhaps just a number of pictures I liked.

This not only seemed like a waste of storage space, but it also didn't seem like the best way to see those pictures.

So I decided to stick those images into scap books where the inspiration can be better appreciated. At the same time, I thought it was a good opportunity to re-organise the inspiration as it was all muddled up. So now there will be four different categories ~ home and furniture, seasonal inspiration, projects and food.

Here are a couple of my pages.

Up to a couple of years ago I used to cut up every magazine I bought as I didn't really have the space to keep them. But since then I've got rather precious about my Country Living magazines. I just can't bring myself to cut them but yet I feel I don't really make the best of them while they're still whole. After all, most of what is sitting there is pages of advertising and some articles I wouldn't read again, and I don't look at them as often as I look at my inspiration files. But I think for now they're going to be staying whole as I really don't think I can bring myself to cut. Plus I think I have enough cuttings to organise without them.

Well, another week is ahead of us and it's bright and sunny here so I'm full of energy. Tomorrow I will be introducing the first of my Easter products with four more to come over the next couple of weeks. I hope you're going to like them.

I've got lots to do but I think I may need another cupcake to help me along.
See you tomorrow. x

Spring is in the air!

Despite the fact that I was running very late this morning I had to stop on my way to the bus stop to get a photo of these gorgeous daffodils and crocus. They're a smaller variety of daffodil and they make me smile every time I see them because they remind me of lots of little faces smiling up at me!

It's beautifully sunny here today so I'm definitely feeling in the mood for Spring. I couldn't help but buy the latest copy of 'Country Homes and Interiors' yesterday as I was tempted by the notes on the front talking of Easter inspiration. As I mentioned yesterday, I am rather fond of Easter. I know that it's not such a big thing as Christmas but then I think that's a lot of why I like it. I love the fact that everything associated with Easter is pretty and fresh and quite 'girly' really. While Christmas is at a time for snuggling down and getting cosy, Easter is a time for getting out and about, for feeling the sun for the first time and for renewal. I love it. I thought I'd share with you a few of the lovely images from the Easter inspiration pages.

I think this cake looks delicious!

What could be cuter than pink hyacinths and the sweetest little fluffy sheep!

I had the loveliest evening last night. I sat working away on the first of my Easter creations, sipping a glass of limoncello and watching Grand Designs that featured the most amazing restoration of a beautiful castle in North Yorkshire. Blissful. I have the first design finished and may start work on the next this evening. For now I'll leave you with a sneaky peek of 'Easter by Nonnie' which I'm hoping to put in the shop towards the end of next week. Have a lovely sunny March day. X