Birthday Presents

As it was my birthday recently I thought I'd show off some of my lovely presents.

Here's Choccy the bear who is wondering what to do with a Cath Kidston sticker book and a reel of Liberty print bias binding.

Choccy has had a varied life. He was found in House of Fraser many years ago strapped to a box of chocolates (hence the name). Our son "adopted" him and gave him pride of place as favourite bedtime bear for many years. With a sad inevitability Choccy's popularity declined and he endured wilderness years in the attic.

A twist of fate brought about by a random watching of "Anthea Turner - Perfect Housewife"  revealed how manky old bears who are not blessed with being machine washable can be sponged and frozen back into respectable society. (The sponging removes the grime - the freezing kills off any dust mites, etc - yuk).

An antique / vintage silver tea set has been on my special wish list for some time. I really don't know why. Too many evenings spent watching Downton Abbey??

Anyway, these were a gift from my husband. They are in beautiful condition - which is just as well as I'd like to be able to use them on special occaisions. It's a silver plated tea and coffee pot, probably from the 1920's and they are stamped as "Garrard & Co, Regent Street, London". All I need now is a maid to polish them and make the tea!

Meet Rachel. It would seem convention that dress forms are named by their owners, so for me "Rachel" is the obvious choice. I have  been mistakenly called Rachel throughout my life - it seems people have a real problem with the Rebecca / Rachel thing - so what else to name my body double??

Rachel is made by "Lady Valet" , she is fully adjustable and she has a wooden stand so she won't look too industrial when hanging round the house. As you can probably tell, Rachel has had to have her bottom made a little more generous to match up to her human counterpart!

Here's Rachel looking decent in a top I made last summer but never got around to finishing.



I have high hopes to have less UFO's (Un-Finished Objects ) in future. Let's see what happens when the gardening season gets going properly.....

Lastly some flowers rescued from my garden.
The early daffodils didn't take kindly to the -6C we had earlier this week.

The dog was also put out to find her outside water bowl frozen solid again - a common theme since about mid November. She has a water bowl inside but apparently it just isn't the same.