The last fungi from yesterday has.....

..... grown and changed its shape. This is how the fungi in yesterdays last photo now looks, it has started to open up and has gone lighter in colour.

It's been a while since I last took a photo of Charlie the chick, well he/she is nearly as big as his mum now and getting adult feathers. Charlie still follows mum around and sleeps beside her in a nestbox, we always know where Charlie is as he/she still goes about cheeping all the time.

While I was taking photos of Charlie one of the wellsummers hens was wanting her photo taken

Then the sun shone down on her and made the colours of her feathers shine like gold.

and look who was out front of the croft this morning, Bertie Buzzard. He is becoming a regular visitor now and we see him just about every day.

He seems to have chosen part of the lane and the fields either side as his territory. Quite often when I go out in the car he swoops down off the telegraph pole and flies in front of the car and then up onto another pole. I'd love to be able to get a photo of him flying, with his wings open he is so big.

Well not much crafting has been going on so far today but I'm feeling creative so hopefully I will create something today which I will show you the next time I blog :-)

Winter is most.....

..... definitely here! It's been cold frosty damp wet and windy, so far the snow has decided not to make an appearance just yet, but I'm sure it's on it's way. Something that is on it's way is Christmas, I can't believe how quick the days are passing and how disorganised I am this year. I haven't bought any presents yet or even wrote out my Christmas card list. I think I better get a move on and make a start.
I had been hoping to have the whole house decorated by Christmas, but I can't see that happening now. We have been putting off decorating as there was a chance we would be moving, but it looks like we are staying here for now so I need to get the paint and brushes out and get this place brightened and freshened up. Thanks to Gumtree, 2 men and a van I now have a very nice storage solution for a lot of my art and craft supplies, which won't look out of place when I need to use this room as a dining room.

I haven't been feeling very creative over the last few days, but yesterday I made a small felt Christmas tree decoration. I think I will pop this in with the next wee letter I write to my grandsons.Hopefully this coming week will be more of a creative one, I have so many ideas that I want to get making. I did make a start on another Christmas decoration yesterday, which I am going to put up a small tutorial about. This has had to be put on hold for now as I was using my laminator and it's broke so got to get a new one. So tutorial will be up as soon as new laminator is settled into my craft room :)

I was out feeding the chickens this morning and noticed these fungi growing on the log pile that's waiting to be sawn up for the winter fires. They are just calling for a fairy to appear, so I might have to have a wee play in Photoshop later :)

Today is the Official Opening of...

...my Etsy shop. The virtual ribbon has been cut and Ainjewelz is now open for business. There is going to be a little bit of everything creative that I do in the shop and to start with there are some Christmas printable downloads and a few photographic greeting cards. As the weeks go by a variety of creations will be added to my shop. The printable downloads are linked to a Quick How To video, which is not my best bit of filming, the light was quite bad (enviromentally friendly light bulb). After quite a bit of editing a 45 minute film is now only 7 minutes, but I think the important bits are still there and I've speeded it up a wee bit :-)



In celebration of Ainjewelz opening I am giving away a FREE download for you to print off. Click on the image below to enlarge and then 'save image as' to save to your computer and print off on card add some glitter and ribbon and you have 3 festive gift tags :-)

Chance of a spur of the moment....

..... visit to Fife happened on Thursday evening. Did I want to go visit my family on Friday or not? A free lift there on Friday morning if I was in Aberdeen for 8am and a lift back on Monday. I haven't seen my kids and grandkids for a couple of months so I really didn't have to give this much thought. So on Friday morning I was off to Dunfermline to start my visit. I had a great weekend seeing family and friends, even found time to pop into Carnegie College for a quick visit with a couple of my ex-tutors. I loved catching up with all my grandkids, they all seem to be growing up so fast. On Saturday evening we went along to Dunfermline Glen to watch the firework display, which for once was on a dry mild evening and was quite spectacular. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. It was great to see everyone and quite tiring so I was glad to get home again on Monday evening.



All work on getting my Etsy shop up and running was put on hold while I've been away so now I have to get myself motivated and get back to work. I have so many ideas but so few hours in the day. Today has just seemed to fly by, went for a drive and posted some Ebay stuff, but mainly to try and get used to the car. Caught up with emails, read a few interesting blogs by local creative ladies that had been at the Vintage and Craft Fair in Aberdeen at the weekend, put my fireworks video on Youtube and turned my craft room upside down looking for my vanishing cutting mat, which has still not been found.......might need to go and buy a new one tomorrow :)