Focus on Life - week 3: Take Time

I'm a little late with my Focus on Life photo and post this week as I have been doing exactly as Sally's prompt told me to and taking some time out for me! Well, for me and T, as we have just had our first night away without children since before Ben was born, and those of you who have children will understand just how wonderful we found this weekend! Please don't get me wrong, we love our boys to the moon and back, but it was absolutely wonderful to stop being Mum and Dad for a weekend. It wouldn't have been possible without my parents though, as they not only had my boys to stay for the weekend but came and collected them and brought them back again so that T and I could have as much time as possible. They would have had the boys Friday night too, but the snow didn't allow that.

We went to the New Forest and spent Saturday night at the Cottage Lodge bed and breakfast in Brockenhurst in the New Forest. We are so lucky to have such a beautiful National Park right on our doorstep, and we really don't take advantage of it enough. Brockenhurst is a beautiful village, and the B&B was within walking distance of three pubs and some fantastic restaurants. Our weekend seemed to revolve around food - pub lunch on Saturday, then cream tea at Cottage Lodge after a long walk in the snow. Italian in the evening, and breakfast in bed (how luxurious is that!) on Sunday morning. After a visit to Lymington on Sunday we headed back to Southampton for lunch in a lounge bar I love - which is when I suddenly realised that although I had most definitely been taking time, I hadn't actually taken any photos of it! So, I just about managed to stop myself from eating my chocolate brownie long enough to a quick snap on my ipad!

If you are ever down this way, please do go and visit the New Forest. It is a wonderful area. Do watch out for the New Forest ponies though - they are a law onto themselves! And I really recommend a stay at the Cottage Lodge. The staff looked after us so well, and everything about the place was wonderful. We're already trying to plan our next visit!

Flap Your Wings - getting ready

If you read this post then you'll remember that Judy Glende lost her battle with cancer last month despite fighting with all the strength that she had. The "Flap Your Wings" challenge was set up by Tania of Moobie Grace Designs as a tribute to Judy, and the day to reveal what we all made is tomorrow. And after taking my design apart three times as it just wasn't right, it is finally finished! You'll obviously have to wait until tomorrow to see it, but I thought you might like a quick preview.....

We've just come back from spending a couple of days with T's Mum up in the Midlands. I'd more or less decided what I wanted to use in my design a couple of weeks ago but hadn't worked out quite how to put them all together, so I decided to take it all with me. Now, you have to remember that I'm used to being able to get a different box of beads out if the ones I've got on the workdesk are quite right, or being able to solder and hammer to make new findings and clasps, but all I could take with me was what you can see above, plus some silk ribbon and a secret ingredient that you'll see tomorrow, so it definitely was a challenge! My own mini bead soup!

Most of the people taking part in the challenge are donating their pieces to charity, either selling them on etsy or auctioning them off. I've decided to go down the auction route, so tomorrow I'll let you know the details of how that's going to work. I'm donating the money raised to the Wessex Cancer Trust, a wonderful charity who are based locally but do fantastic work all along the south coast here in the UK. They support cancer patients and their families wonderfully, including me and my family when I was fighting cancer last year.

Poppy Challenge Blog Hop

It's here! The date of the Poppy Challenge Blog Hop seemed ages away when I set it, but the last week has flown by! I planned out what I wanted to make early on, but I've come to realise that I'm the type of person who will plan and plan, sketch ideas out, work out how to do it in their heads and then, finally, make it just before the deadline. Which usually works out just fine as all that planning means that the making is usually quick, but with Jamie being ill I did start to worry that I was going to miss the deadline - which would have been embarrassing considering I set the challenge!

So, this is what I planned and planned and finally made on Sunday.....

The challenge was to make something lovely from two of my poppy headpins. I sent five pairs of headpins out to the people listed below, a mix of oxidised copper, oxidised silver and bright silver, and made a pair for me too. I had a pair of oxidised silver poppies, and I knew that I wanted to make a pendant rather than a pair of earrings. I twisted the stem of the poppies onto one of my large teardrops, making them sit slightly to one side. I liked that, but knew that I wanted a bit more movement and a little bit of colour so I used normal headpins to wind tiny faceted amethyst beads onto a smaller teardrop, and then used a jump ring to hang both teardrops together from a chain. It's got more of a romantic feel than most of the jewellery I've been making recently, but I really like it, and it's lovely and light to wear.

The other poppy challengers are

Marissa                Sea Flowers Studios

Molly Alexander               Beautifully Broken Me

Kristi      Curiosities by K

Fiona     TizDuster

Jennifer Cameron            Glass Addictions

I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone has made - please do go and look and join in the fun!

P.S. Thank you to those of you who left a comment/emailed/facebooked about Jamie - apart from being tireder than usual and not having his full appetite back he's back to his normal happy, smiling, crawling round the house at top speed self!