Its here!

A big thank you to all who have been following my blog

and leaving lovely comments over the last year.

I been really enjoying posting and hope continue doing so throughout 2010!

I'm signing off now to relax and celebrate Christmas and the new year with my loved ones!

Hope you all have a great festive break!

take care and best wishes

pretty pictures....

Such lovely work on a recent post by stylist Polly Rawlings.

This is a shoot she worked on with photographer Sussie Bell

Well Christmas is very nearly here!

I'm braving the supermarket tonight...

thank goodness for 24 hour Tesco!

3 days to go!!!!!

nicola pearson

Here's some gorgeous illustrations from Nicola Pearson. Check out her blog here

This little band is part of some artwork that

she created for the Creative Northants website.

She really is such a talent!

excitement has kicked in!

I've awoke with pure Christmas excitement today!

Its time to get completely swept up by the build up....

there's snow on the ground, every other song on the radio is a christmassy one

and I'm off for a christmas meal and get-together this afternoon!

Hoorah!!!

A snow day!

well only a little snow so far today...

wouldn't it be lovely if for once here in England we had a blanket of snow on christmas day!

Recipe recommendations!

This is the first year we have hosted Christmas, we have guests on both Christmas Day and Boxing day. We're really looking forward to creating some feasts!

I love cooking so have been thinking about all this food for a while!

I still have to decide on what stuffing to do with the turkey...any recommendations are welcome!

Here's some of my recipe tips: Nigella's Bread Sauce, Red Cabbage with Cider and Apple, Cranberry Sauce (I didn't realise how fast it was to make!) and Brussels Sprouts

10 days to go!

oh Christmas is coming round fast now! I cannot wait!

I'm planning to take 10 days off to relax, enjoy, eat, eat, eat

and spend time with lots of family and friends! Hoorah for Christmas!

thank you Dee Puddy!

I spent what felt like hours yesterday wrapping presents last night while watching a very long winded X-Factor final! The present wrapping was the fun bit!

Its all thanks to Dee Puddy that my presents look so lovely....I bought these cute gift bags, just perfect toput smaller presents in and decorate with a little parcel paper tag and ribbon!

a festive activity for the weekend!

Look at this lovely post from Poppytalk.

A great suggestion for something to do over your weekends!

Hopefully I can find some time next week to make some snowflakes...I hope so!

have a great weekend everyone!

christmas cards...tick

This week has gone far too fast with not enough ticked off my to do list.

Though one thing that I have done is to get my christmas cards sent off which is pleasing.

I'm always a fan of Paperchase cards,

but I used the designs below to send out to the people

I've had the pleasure of working with over the last year!

I though it was best to make the most of my back catalogue of Christmas designs!

our tree is UP!!

we had a lovely evening last night putting our tree up!

We bought it from the Thompson Brothers grocers around the corner...

its a little bigger than expected so we had to do some cropping!

We love it!

I wanted a strictly white and silver theme but a touch of red was forced!

But begrudingly I agree it was the right decision!

Decorations are from B&Q, Dee Puddy and RE

next job....present wrapping!

A little gift guide from me!

I've still got some shopping to do for Christmas but most presents have been bought!

I'm very proud of myself this year...

with 32 friends and family to buy for I think I've done quite well!

I've done a lot of my shopping online...here's some website tips from me that will hopefully be of some use to last minute shoppers.....

Eclectic Eccentricity is a lovely website with a beautiful range of jewellery at reasonable prices. The delivery is always prompt and beautifully packaged.

These are some of my favourite picks shown above...Light as a Feather bracelet,

Cecilia vintage earrings and sing a little song for me necklace

I've been a big fan of RE for a while, they have such great products which are more often than not made of re-found and recycled objects.

I've bought the paper snowflakes ready to decorate our home, and we already have a couple of the picture frames shown above made from old tins. They would make a great present...complete with a little personal photo in!

Think a cardboard stag head would make a super gift for a man of any age!

I love todryfor! Their range of teatowels is fantastic! I've bought a few for gifts this year and plan to make some of them into cushions, perfect for friends or family who have recently moved into a new home or are planning to decorate!

Above are some of my favourites...

City skyline by Snowdon Flood, Teatime by talented Gemma Correll and Ice cream lollies by

Mr. PS

I love these crayon mugs from Gift Republic, they come in such a large range of fun colours...check them out here. Great price of £5.99 too!

So those are my favourite online shopping tips....along with amazon of course!

How did we ever survive without the ease of Amazon shopping!

Blue Christmas!

Another Christmas design from me...I was really pleased with these colours! Muted blues with turquoise and silver. I'm a very big fan of all tones of blue!

time for giving...

I braved the shops and bought my Mr a lovely new jacket for Christmas yesterday!

Now I wonder what I'll get...I'd like an atlas please!!

Megan Hess

I had a lovely day in London yesterday, it was a brilliantly jam packed day! I will share some of my purchases with you soon...though a lot of the day was spent nattering with friends and family with a sprinkling of shopping of course.

It was great to go to the Lets Play Exhibition...great to see the variety of artists that The Art Group work with.

Megan Hess was one of the artists that caught my eye in the exhibition. Such great style to her artwork which has been used for fashion and interior publications as well as book covers. Recently Megan has been working closely with Bloomingdales to create a signature look...can certainly see why they picked Megan!

Lets Play Exhibition

I'm off on my way to London for the day today! Can't wait! Hoping to squeeze in seeing some shops for inspiration and shopping (including Anthropologie, Paperchase and Selfridges) as well as catching up with a super friend, brother and sister in law.

I've recently been doing some work for The Art Group, they are such an exciting company with lots of new projects. One being their Lets Play exhibition which is running this week....can't wait to have a look this afternoon.

Certainly be worth checking out this exhibition if you're in London over the next few days.

Christmas is coming! Hooray!

I'm really excited about Christmas this year...

we're having lots of guest and I'm already getting busy deciding

how to decorate our table and house!

There's even a suggestion of the christmas tree going up this weekend!!

These excited snowmen have been bought already

to go on a christmas card for christmas 2011!

a lovely new blog!

its always exciting to discover a new blog....

this blog from surface pattern designer and aspiring stylist Polly Rawlings is pretty new

and already has some really great things posted for us to see.

She is a lovely friend of mine and it sounds like she has some very exciting projects in the pipeline so certainly watch this space!