So where was Mr Duck basking???

Does this picture help you anymore? Yep, well done Diane for correctly guessing the Roman Baths in Bath. This is a shot with the fabulous Bath Abbey in the background.

Below is a larger picture of the main baths.

And just to remind you, here again is Mr. Duck enjoying his little sunbathing session. Not sure he paid an admission fee...

Finally here is a picture of the main stained glass window in the Abbey. Isn't it fabulous. They had a lot of art exhibits on display when we were there. Not sure if that's a regular occurrence or not.

So congratulations Diane, such a shame more people didn't hazard a guess but hey! ho!

Your goodies will be in the post tomorrow, x

52 weeks of Happy - 16/52

Happy Sunday everyone. I hope its not too wet where you are. We had a beautiful day here in Cheshire yesterday but today its been persistently catting and dogging.....

Anyway, my 4 pieces of Happy are a little difficult to share this week as if I include a certain something then it will give the game away for my Giveaway. Check out my previous post to see what that's all about.

So, instead I'm sharing with you yet another piccie of yet more daffs which will lead me into:-

1. My tomato plants, loving the greenhouse effect of my dining room bay window and growing very rapidly

2. A lovely girlie trip out yesterday with my Son's partner and my grand-daughter to watch the British Horse Eventing held just 5 minutes down the road from us. Beautiful morning and a hot cuppa and yummy cupcake enjoyed sitting on a hay bale rounded it off

3. Getting the remainder of my 1st early potatoes in the garden along with creating lots of colourful pots for the garden.

4. At last, seeing my daffs opening out in the front border.

Hope you've had a good weekend and I'll be back later with the winner (maybe) of my giveaway, x

GIVEAWAY reminder and a little tempting....

Evening peeps.

Just a little taste of what will be in the winning envie of the person who correctly guesses where the duck is basking. If you're not sure what I'm on about, check out my previous post.

Come on bloggers, there's not many guesses been made. You need to place a comment on the original GIVEAWAY post, and if you have a preferred craft please let me know in your comment.

Off to find more goodies for the envie.

TTFN, x

My first GIVEAWAY, a duck and fairies...

Happy Thursday everyone, and Happy Anniversary to me.....Mr. CB forgot!!! He's been grovelling all day, bless him. So as its our Anniversary I thought I would take the opportunity to do a giveaway. We have just had an overnight stay in a very beautiful place and I was tickled by this duck getting in on the tourist attraction without a care in the world. Just him, on his own, basking in the sun. So....If you can correctly guess where this photo was taken I will post to you a jiffy envie full of crafting goodies. I've not organised the goodies yet but the envie is 9" x 12". It would love it if you were a follower of my blog, but its not essential, and if you can indicate your preferred craft I will try and tailor the goodies in that direction. If there is more than one correct answer I will get Mr. CB to do something useful and pick a winning name out of a hat on Sunday evening.

So are we all clear..... guess where the duck is and post me a comment to include your preferred craft.

....and guess what appeared while we were away.....

Yep! a little fairy door on our grassy bank. No idea how it arrived or where the fairy is hiding but she has left a note hanging on the door saying 'shh! fairy sleeping'. Of course we all know that fairies only come to life during our sleeping hours but who knows what may turn up next.....

Don't forget my giveaway and good luck, x

52 Weeks of Happy - 15/52

The highlight of our week was going to the Red Kite Centre near Aberystwyth (on the A44 9 miles outside of the town) to see the Red Kites being fed. Such an amazing sight and truly magnificent birds.

Above you can see the actual feeding frenzy and hopefully you will be able to click on the following 2 pictures to enable you to see the colours of these birds in more detail.

So difficult to photograph with my run of the mill point and click camera.

Here's a picture of the little lady trying to get to grips with Grandad's binoculars with me fretting that she may just drop them in the lake.

Aw bless. She managed to get a half decent photo of the old folks. It was a tad chilly that day.

 Before the Red Kite Centre we had popped into Aberystwyth and caught sight of these guys out surfing on the waves. Hopefully you can spot the one who is currently upright.

These beautiful flowers were a gift from my friend Jo of JoZart, who with her husband came to tea at the Hobbit House. As you can see Jo, they did survive the fall and car journey and live on in a bigger pot. Thank You.

So my 4 things of happy for this week are:-

1 - Watching the Red Kites being fed

2 - Enjoying a lovely evening with Jo and her hubby

3 - Making a Birthday card which I showed in my last post

4 - A little bit of sun and warmth meandering into my week.

Hope you've had a good weekend, x

Ta Dah! A Card....

Happy Saturday everyone. Just a very quick blog to show you a card I made last weekend. Yes!!! I  made a card, at my house, all by myself.....Very simple but all the same it was made. I couldn't show you before as I needed to make sure it had been received.

Hope you like it and I'll be back tomorrow, x

52 Weeks of Happy - 14/52

Hello Everyone, sorry it's been yet another week before I could get back here to talk to you all.

Its been a busy old week here at Hobbit House. Loads of work and then taking advantage of some milder weather to get some gardening done, but here I am now. 

My #1 of happy for this week is this fabulous book by a new author Joanna Gray. If you have children or grandchildren I recommend you go buy it. My copy arrived this week, for keeping here for when Little Lady visits, and I immediately set to to order a further 2 copies for our Scottish contingents in the Grandchild field.

I urge you to give it a try.

My #2 of Happy is the fact I was able to get loads of gardening done this weekend, even after working part of yesterday. Below is the upper tier prepared ready for the seed potatoes. I had to laugh when I realised hubby's work had created what looked like a burial ground.

#3 is the fantastic find I discovered after removing loads of dead and overgrown foliage from the far top of the garden.

Now, personally I think this could be a fairy's den but I didn't want to pry to far just in case I disturbed one.....

But then..... how about this space??? Defo a fairy tunnel. This is just the opening but it goes far deeper than I wanted to take my camera for fear of scaring the little fairies. I also found quite a few pieces of broken china. Now am I right in thinking that fairies like to collect bright, shiny things???

Well of course opening up this area brought the birds in to investigate which meant that we at last had a huge selection of beautiful birds feeding from our bird feeder and my new bird table. No photos yet but watch this space.

Also, watch this space for any fairy developments. Next door has a little fairy guarding their front garden and I'm sure she moves when she thinks no-one is looking.....

Finally, #4 of Happy has to be the yummy Bara Brith I made this morning and got great satisfaction in eating a modest slice. I think it was well deserved after all the gardening. For the eagle eyed amongst you, there is also another fresh loaf of bread.

Just to give you a brief summary of what's growing/planted/sown (on the eating front) in the garden at the moment...we have potatoes, onions, leeks, carrots, gooseberries, blackberries, rhubarb, herbs, broad beans, tomatoes, and yellow peppers. I will keep you up to date with progress.

For now I'm off to do some fairy research, x

52 Weeks of Happy - 13/52

Happy Easter Everyone. I hope the weekend is a little warmer for you all. My 4 photos of Happy for this week are:-
Above (1) - the beautifully scented hyacinths that have now bloomed from my Mothers' Day basket;
Below (2) - These fabulously vibrant tulips that I treated myself to with the backdrop of a snow covered garden;

3 - My fast growing tomato plants which are due for repotting this weekend while I have my #2 Son staying (he works in a Garden Centre);

4 - Difficult to spot for you, but perched on the tree you can just make out one of our local SparrowHawks.

Finally on a sad note, when I was coming home from Bradford yesterday having collected #2 Son,  we passed by the tragic scene of the collision on the M62. I believe there was a 90 year old fatality. My thoughts and prayers go to her family at this sad time. A tragedy at any time but especially when this weekend usually signals a time for family get togethers.

Until next time, x

Hang out the Bunting...Another Card

Good Evening Peeps.

Well what can I say, here is yet another card I made.....although to be honest it was the 3rd of the three I made when staying with my crafting buddy the other weekend. I couldn't show it before because the lovely lady it was going to only had her birthday at the weekend.

Unfortunately I can't tell you much about its creation because I was using my pal's goodies but I hope you like it.

TTFN. x

Introducing Mr and Mrs Snowman

What else can you do when you've got 8" of snow to shift.... and of course every snow couple needs a dog.

So that my little helper wouldn't get cold hands, Grandma had to quickly knit up a pair of mitts as she'd left her gloves at school....duh!

These were knitted in Sirdar Crofter DK and are fabulously soft and just the job for building snowmen. Although she didn't.....Oh no. She spent her time in the garden making snowballs round the back of the house and then stomping through to the front to throw them at Grandad who was again trying to dig my car out.....

And here are a couple of cards I wanted to share with you that were given to me by two crafting gals. The top one from my crafting buddy in Perth and the bottom one from Cath of Inky Fingers blog. Thanks ladies.

See you all soon, x

Some cards at last.....

 I heard last weekend when I was away that one of my crafting 'Sisters' and her family are going through a rough time at the moment and set about, with my Perth Pal's crafting persuasion, to make some cards. I'm not sure if my MoJo has returned but I enjoyed making the cards and hope they've cheered some lovely ladies up.

Finally, here's a photo of my car this morning having already been cleared of snow yesterday!!! I couldn't even get it back up our drive yesterday when I got home, although I guess I was lucky to get it home at all, seeing as we live on top of a hill.

Anyway, hubby has done a sterling job of digging an escape route so now we are going to give it a try and see if we can get over to pick our grandee up for the weekend.

I may be sometime, but if we make it home there's the promise of a snowman family.

Watch this space, x

52 Weeks of Happy - 12/52

Well, what can I say??? I missed a whole week of blogging. However I have a really good excuse...I was busy being a Grandma, a GodMa and a Midwife.... Yes, and I know I missed week 11 of 52 weeks of Happy but I didn't miss out on any happy things as you will see.

I could really say that all 4 of my happy things can be attributed to my 4 Scottish grandchildren. It was so lovely to see them all, the first time since Christmas. This is a picture of the youngest who was 1 last weekend. She's just decided that dressing up might be fun and thought kitchen roll made a good substitute for a hat, such a cutie. Her big brother is growing fast too and next time we go up he will be celebrating his 3rd birthday. Oh boy! where does the time go?

After visiting our Edinburgh brood we travelled on up to Perth to spend a lovely weekend with a crafting pal of mine and her hubby. It was so lovely to see them both and I even managed to make 3 cards. More of that later.

After stopping off in Fife on the way home to see our other 2 grandees, we then made a tea-time stop to visit my little God-Daughter. Isn't she just a beauty. We were greeted to huge smiles when we arrived and she just soaked up all her God-Mother cuddles.



Unfortunately we cut our visit a little short as the snow had started falling thick and fast and we needed to get home. We heard later that the road we had been on was closed due to the snow!!!

 Then came my chance to play Midwife, well not literally. You may remember last year I shared some photos with you of the chicks that are incubated at my Mum's nursing home every Easter. Well, I've never seen any of them hatch, they're all yellow and fluffy by the time I get in there. However, this week there was still one waiting to appear and low and behold he/she made an entrance while I waited patiently with my camera poised. I took several photos of the process and this is the moment of delivery, overseen by big sister. Poor little thing looked absolutely exhausted.

Proof of this is in the next photo, where one of the older chicks had just fallen asleep where he fell. Look at that cute little leg.....ah!!!

So lots of happy things there to make up for missing a week but finally I have just made my first Bara Brith (Welsh fruit loaf) and if it tastes as good as it looks I may share a photo with you.

Have a good weekend and keep warm, x

52 Weeks of Happy 10/52

Happy Mothers' Day to all those Mummies out there. This is the first of my '4' Happy things including the beautiful cards I received from both my lads even if one did say 'From Both of Us', and he's single. I did laugh. I laughed even more when he phoned to wish me Happy Valentine's Day because Dad had told him to call. Hilarious.....For those of you who know Mark you will understand. Number 1 Son came round with the goodies above and cooked me a lovely dinner. We had a lovely day.

#2 - A rare night out at the flicks with Hubby on Wednesday with a Pizza beforehand. Got to take advantage of those Orange Wednesday bargains.

#3 - Visiting for the first time my Hubby's older cousin (he's 82) and sampling his homemade Bara Brith. Fantastic.

#4 - These beauties who were taking up the lane when I was working on Thursday. Hilarious. The big brown Mama even 'faced' up to the car as if to challenge me for being on her lane.....

Hope you've all had a good week and I'll try and post some crafting next time, x

At last, some Paper Crafting

Hurray! Some paper crafting at last, although I have to say my enthusiasm still isn't there. But I struggled on, and in between several hours of gardening today, I managed to finish it.

 I started it yesterday under the watchful, but very talented, eye of Ann Bletcher who was leading our crafting workshop this month. I coloured the 2 Tilda's today and stuck them to the pages and added the brads/bellies and then backed all the pages with co-ordinating papers.

I didn't put much other detail on, although that may change in the next couple of weeks before I need to give it.

Basically its for our youngest grand-daughter's 1st birthday on the 16th.

 So, Happy Birthday Faye on being 1.

TTFN, x

52 Weeks of Happy - 9/52

Happy Sunday everyone. I struggled this week with my 4 things of happy and then realised it was a WHOLE week since I last blogged, The reason for my struggle was due to dealing with a very difficult family incident which I can't go into on here at the moment. But there is always brightness at the end of the tunnel which the freesias above reminded me of. I just love them.

Then, yesterday evening I went all out and had a mega baking session as I'll be unable to bake for a couple of weeks so decided to plan ahead and pop some in the freezer.
This time it's 2 fruit cakes, chocolate brownies and ginger biscuits, although the latter still aren't as good as my Easter biscuits.

This morning we awoke to newly baked bread fresh from the bread machine. I like to prep it at night and put it on timer. Mmmm! Nothing better.

Finally......Some paper crafting thanks to my monthly crafting workshop and this month the talented Ann Bletcher who showed us how to make a word book.

More of this in my next posting but there's my 4 things of happy for this week.

Back soon, x