Easter is round the corner

Today I got round to putting up some Easter decorations.  I raided the contorted willow in our front garden, which was a bit of a struggle to do, as we had pruned it so severely a few months back there was very little to raid!

Some painted eggs, a whole load of mini-decorations that I got a few years back from Paperchase (they have similar ones this year, here), some wooden bunnies and lambs from Lidl and one of Miss Used-to-Bees' cast-off bunnies are all adorning the dining room table now.  

Shame my camera threw several hissy fits when I tried to get it to take snaps - it seemed to be exclaiming 'But where on earth do you want me to focus?'  So this is as good as it gets...

Earlier on, I had been out on one of those little rounds of errands, diving into various different shops and workplaces to tick all sorts of jobs off my 'To Do' list.  In amongst the errands, was a trip to the Post Office, to send off the last of the books I had piled up last week. (And a certain bunny - off to a new home for Easter!  Thanks Abby!)  

As I got out of the car, I found a sweet and rather forlorn little dog sniffing away at the side of the pavement, looking rather lost.  Having asked passers-by if she was theirs and received only a 'No',  I grabbed her and unscrewed her little identity tag.  Luckily, her address was on the adjacent road so I picked her up and found the number - in fact it was the corner house of the road we were parked on, actually right there where she was! 

I felt a bit of a numpty!

Maybe she wasn't lost after all, but she wasn't WITH anybody and she was close to the road, so I walked up to the front door and knocked.  Then the owner appeared from the garden, and told me that she is a regular escapee called Doris who can't see or hear very well and is frightened of his chickens, which were roaming happily in the garden!  

Anyway, I handed her over, a bit embarrassed and then went into the Post Office.  By the time I came out the nice gentleman was handing over a box of half-a-dozen still warm eggs as a thank you, to Mr U-t-B in the car.  How sweet!

Boiled eggs for tea!

Look at the lovely trug of Spring flowers my lovely sister gave me on Mothering Sunday!

Once they are finished indoors I will have to plant them out for next year - such pretty, frilly blooms!

Thanks for all the lovely comments on the bunnies and the Gladys Peto illustrations.  The bunnies are all gone now, but I did have fun making them!

Wishing you all a very Happy Easter

Bogged Down

The title is a pathetic attempt at a pun, given that we are STILL working on the bathroom across the road, and it is one of the many reasons I haven't been sitting down and blogging much lately.  It is so nearly there now - but not quite ready for the statutory 'Ta-dah!' moment of Blogland.

First of all I'd like to welcome new readers! I am really pleased to have several new followers over the last week or so and have really enjoyed reading lots of comments recently.  New followers and commenters mean new blogs discovered!  I so enjoy my daily catch-up with other people's blogs, which is getting longer day-by-day...

So what's been occuring at Used-to-Bees HQ?

Aside from work in the bathroom-from-hell, there's been a little trip to the local car boot, which produced this stamp album (for 50p!)...

Not many stamps, but I wanted it for the old maps inside, which will be appearing on fabric at a blog near you sometime soon (when I get round to ordering more ink for the printer).

There were two of these egg cups...

...which matched two I had already, which came from a charity shop.  All four have already been topped with an egg and bunny or hen cosy.

This brass pitcher, chosen by Mr U-t-B.  I love its shape.  And its aged patina.  Won't be ruining that with any polishing! ; )

And finally, a bit of 'King's Speech' memorabilia...

There was more sewing for Saturday's Spring Market.  Mostly little drawstring bags...

These were made from rescued traycloths, embroidered napkins and precious scraps of vintage feedsack and lined with other pretty fabrics - bits of old pillowcases, vintage remnants and some 1930s style reproductions.  I have finally come up with my best yet method for making them - will add this into my 'Makes' section soon, before I forget!  

I also came up with the 'brilliant' idea of buying some delightful old German lithograph eggs...

...and making little bunnies and bedding to put inside.  When Miss U-t-B was smaller she made a little bunny called Rabbit-y, and a bed for it in a tin, and loved to take it around with her.  So I thought my 'brilliant' egg idea would be a cute Easter pressie.

Well, that was before I spent an entire afternoon making this bunny.  

So maybe not such a brilliant idea!

I think I will call her 'Fleur'. She's made from some lovely fabric from 'Sal's Snippets'.  Small she may be, but even she has to curl her toes and ears slightly to fit inside the largest of the eggs I have, so I need to go smaller still!  Undeterred, I intend to have another go this afternoon - prototypes always take way longer than the next one along, so I am hoping the lessons learnt making Fleur will help me speed up!

Mr U-t-B and I have also been spring cleaning, or rather spring tidying, trying to reclaim our home from the chaos caused by nearly three months of neglect, whilst we worked on his daughter's flat.  He launched an assault on his tools (of which there are an enormous number), sorting them all into categorised boxes, and I tidied up my ribbon and lace hamper!  We dismantled an old divan bed that was in our spare bedroom and in true 'reduce, reuse, recycle' fashion, have kept some of the wood to help make new shelves to house my sewing stuff, which seems to have migrated to every corner of the house. Oops, sorry Mr U-t-B!


Anyway, there's a paintbrush with my name on it...time to crack on!

A spot of Spring sewing...

In the moments when I haven't been up to my eyes in tiling adhesive, my mind has been turning towards the need to create a few Easter-y items for the next two sales I am doing.  

The first, 'A Spring Market', is at Sherfield-on-Loddon Village Hall, near Basingstoke, on Saturday 26th March.  This will only be the third venue I have sold at, so fingers crossed!  The second is my regular stall at The Maltings in Farnham, but I really feel the need to get some new items onto my stall, as there are a lot of regular customers who come back every month, and I want their attention to be grabbed by something they haven't seen before!

Anyway...

A couple of years (and a bit) ago, when Miss U-t-B turned twelve, a crafty birthday party was held for about seven or eight guests.  We decided to create the following items...

A mini CD 'scrapbook' from the free CDs that used to get put through the letterbox.

Added later: Holes made with a Crop-a-dile punch! In case you were curious...

Miss U-t-B's one was based on the school production of The Wizard of Oz that she had been in at the end of Year 6 earlier that year.

 It was a nice memento of happy times with friends that she's not necessarily at school with anymore.

The second make for the party was another mini-scrapbook, this time a concertina to fit in a CD case.

For some reason I thought that the girls might run out of things to do, and not wanting them to be twiddling thumbs, I had spotted these...

...in Lidl, and purchased several so there'd be something to fall back on if they were super-fast with their mini-scrapbooks.

Of course, the mini-scrapbooks took up plenty of time, so the Scandinavian Christmas kits were all but unused.  And this week I remembered them, lurking in the back of a cupboard (the kits, not me!), and decided to put the thick felt that is included to use for something more my style than the star coasters featured in the illustration.

Little Easter baskets

Have you seen the new teeny-weeny sugar coated eggs (like Mini Eggs, only smaller)?  I think those would be perfect for these.

My other project has involved finding some vintage egg cups in local charity shops, popping a small egg inside (actually, I would like them to fit nicely - Lindor may be delicious but they are a bit on the small side for the egg cups!)...

...then topping them off with a felt and vintage fabric appliqued bunny!

What do you think?  Got to be better than bathroom decorating photos!