Bristol Harbour Festival

This weekend was the annual Bristol Harbour Festival.  It's a fab free event which has something for everyone whatever your age.

This year my dad expressed an interest in coming along as he had never been before, so the pair of us caught the bus into town for our day out!

The buses were packed and so was the motorway leading into the city.  When we got into town, the centre of Bristol was filled with people.  The water fountains in the city centre had an orange dye in them and were full of children!!

We started off by walking down one side of the harbour and went by numerous food stalls selling every kind of food you could think of!  We then crossed over to Queens Square where there was a French Market all around the square with more food stalls and on the green a large stage was set up with a band playing.  The grass area was full of people sitting down watching the band.  I don't think we could have found a space if we'd wanted to!!!!  There were more food and drink stalls set up around the green and the atmosphere was great.

We decided then to cross over the harbour to the opposite side but at the trumpet style bridge, they were only allowing people to cross from the other side so we had to walk back to where we had started. The other side was shady and cool and the pubs lining the waterside were packed!  We stopped off for a quick drink in Wetherspoons and then wandered around the little market that was there.  We heard some fantastic, lively music coming from a stage and made our way to it.  The group that were playing were called 'The Carny Villains' and they were brilliant.  They had so much energy and enthusiasm and the crowd loved them.  Both dad and I enjoyed the music and bought a cd from them afterwards.  If you want to hear how good they are here's one of their fab tracks

There was so much going on and such a nice community spirit.  There were people of all ages and all were having a great time.

The old Matthew ship was there and we were just in time to see it sailing off down the river.

Dad and I had a lovely day out and it was nice to spend time together as well!  I'd recommend this Festival as a 'must see' if you are in the Bristol area for next year's event!

Fab Fabric Giveaway at It's All About The Fabric!!

Just wanted to let you know about a fantastic fabric giveaway over on It's All About the Fabric.  It's to celebrate Emma's new website - The Fabric Market Place so head on over to It's All About the Fabric and enter!!

A Few New Makes

I've not been very good at blogging recently.  I just don't seem to get time to blog and I am very behind on commenting on other people's blogs as well! 

I've been making some bit of jewellery which are on my Facebook page and on Folksy.  I've also been trying to get start an Etsy shop and get to grips with Twitter - still can't see what all the fuss is about with Twitter I'm afraid and get bored as people just seem to mostly retweet about competitions that they've entered which I don't really want to know about!!! 

Anyway - I've made some memory wire bracelets which I think always look nice.  I never use seed beads to fill the wires so hopefully should have a nice selection of glass/lampwork beads on the ones that I make.  Here are a few for you to see

and have made a few things with glass tiles

and I've done some sock monkeys which will be going onto Folksy later today

I'm working on a mini sock cat at the moment as I had a bundle of baby socks to do something with - it is looking really cute and I'll blog it once it's totally finished!!

Hope you are all keeping busy despite the awful weather we have been having.  It's difficult to plan anything in the UK, but I am planning a day out in London for my niece as her birthday present.  We plan to take an open top bus around the city and do a river cruise and go on the London Eye.  Although I've been to London many times and stayed with friends for several days in the past, I have never done the tourist spots!!  It should be a great day out and hopefully the weather will be nicer in August - I said hopefullly!!!

Bye for now!

Another Newspaper Style Card

It was my niece's 10th Birthday recently and she is a big fan of JLS.  I decided I would do a newspaper style card with a JLS theme for her.

I used alot of purple as this is her favorite colour.  I have put stickles on the 'JLS' logo.  I was pleased with the way it came out and she was pleased when she opened the card!!

Fabric Bargains!

Well the sun was shining today and as I've been home most of this week, I thought I'd venture out into town which means a trip to Fabricland of course!!!  It would be rude not to go and have a look as my bus stops right outside of the the door!  Also Friday's is a day when they get their delivery of FQ in!!!!

I managed to get a few bargain remnants today.  Some nice thick cream cotton fabric which will be great for the back of a cushion, this was about a metres worth for just 50p!!  I also got some gorgeous blue gingham piece that is about a metre and a half and this was £1.20 - it's a lovely shade of blue and would make a great tablecloth!  I think this is a poly cotton mix.  They also had a table full of FQ's and I found a lovely bundle of rose ones, I like it so much I bought 2 bundles of the sames fabrics!!!!  The FQ bundles at Fabricland are great value for money at just £3.33 for 4 FQ's!!!!

Here are a few pics of the FQ's and the gingham

Superdrug had my current favorite face cream on offer for just £2 instead of the normal £5 - what a bargain and I got a free cotton Nivea shopping bag and a hand massage as the Nivea ladies were instore!!!  I've read that Kate Middleton is using the same face cream and was seen stocking up in Boots before her honeymoon!!!

Have a great weekend folks!!!

Gorillas in Bristol!

This month Bristol Zoo is celebrating it's 175th Birthday and to do this they have placed 60 brightly decorated, life size gorilla sculptures all around the city and at local tourist spots.  You can download a map showing the locations of the gorillas and get more info here

The project is called Wow! Gorillas and will be displayed around the city until mid September when they will be auctioned off to raise money for the zoo's gorilla conservation projects and for Wallace and Gromit's Grand Appeal which raises money for the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children

I spotted several over the weekend and they look fab!!!  Will need to stop and take photos of them!

Here is a little video of 6 of the gorillas arriving in Bristol by boat

There is also a Facebook page which you can find here

Twitter!

Hey everyone!  Just a quick post from me to say I've finally taken the plunge and set up Bumble Bee on Twitter!!!  If any of you are over there do come and follow me as I'm feeling very lonely at the moment!!  You can find me here

Thanks alot!

Lazy Sunday at the Beach!!

Well yesterday I had a fabulous day touring around the beautiful Dorset coastline with my friend Shayne.  It was my birthday day out and I chose to go to the beach!!  It was a stonking hot day so we were able to whizz around in the Aston with the roof down for the whole day!!

Dorset brings back lot of childhood memories and it's been a long time since I was able to visit it again properly.

We started off at Lulworth Cove - I spent many family holidays here.  I remember when there were rowing boats for hire and my dad took my brother and I out in one.  You could take it to the edge of the cove, it was lovely!!  Sadly the rowing boats have gone now and have been replaced by Kayaks which really aren't my cup of tea!!!  The beach at Lulworth is mainly large pebbles which are a nightmare to walk on and not so comfortable to sit on! 

It's really the scenary that I like there and the fact that the water is very calm and safe.  It is surrounded by white cliffs that seem to reflect the sun onto you, it's a real suntrap!!

We stayed for a few hours but it was just too hot!!!  We then decided to drive to Swanage.  We passed Corfe Castle on the way.  Not much left of it now but it looks quite something perched upon the hill.

Swanage has some lovely scenic views as well.  We didn't stop but just drove around for abit and I took a few photos.

From here we drove to Studland to catch the car ferry across to Sandbanks.  Look at the lovely view from the road that we had

The queue for the ferry was long so I reclined my seat and sunbathed!!  We got to nearly the front of the queue and the ferry was full again so we had to wait for it to come back.  My mad friend got hot and fed up and decided to go for a swim on the lovely Studland beach at the side of us!  We left the car in the queue and whilst he swam I took a few pics!!

Here's Shayne having a quick swim!!!

We then got on the car ferry over to Sandbanks.

There are some fabulous houses at Sandbanks. It's a beautiful place to live and if you have a beachfront property the views would be fantastic!

We didn't stop here though, just drove through and made our way to Poole where we stopped for some chips.  Shayne bought a little tub of cockles to eat after his chips and he put them on the back seat of the car - now bearing in mind we had the roof down and there were lots of seagulls showing an interest in the car, I'm sure you can imagine what happened!!  Yep - we got back to the car after eating our chips to find the complete tub had disappeared and seagull footprints on the back of the car! 

We then drove to Bournemouth and then onto Boscombe.  Boscombe has a fab beach and we will be going back to spend the whole day on this beach.  I didn't take any photos of this beach but I will do when we go back!!!

We finished off by driving back along the coast and up to Crewekerne where we popped in to see Greg, a very old friend of mine.

We drove back to Bristol with the roof still down but I was abit cold so had my jacket hood up and the seat heating on full!!!  The sunset very late and the sky was a beautiful colour.

  I had a fantastic day and a perfect end to my birthday weekend!!!

Birthday Tea!!

It was my birthday on Saturday and I had a lovely day.  I received some nice gifts from my family and a gorgeous bouquet of flowers from a friend which were delivered on the day.

Here are the flowers - they were gorgeous

My 2 nieces made me a card each - I think the 3 year old had a little help though!!  Here are their cards

This is from Issy who is nearly 10 - she has got really good at making cards, I think it's brilliant!

and this is from Lily aged 3

I also received a lovely card and a Survival Kit from Caroline over at Caroline's Crafty Corner. I was really touched to receive it and the survival kit is brilliant and alot of thought went into it.  Thank you Caroline - hope you got my email!!!

Here is Caroline's card

and the lovely Survival Kit which was wrapped up in red tissue paper  

 with a lovely worded tag on it

Isn't it fab!!!!

I decided to have a little teaparty in the late afternoon so I got up and baked some fresh scones

and my sister made a lovely Victoria Sandwich with buttercream and strawberries on the top to finish it off

and some cupcakes with homemade lemon curd piped inside of them and lemon icing drizzled over them

I made the little flags to decorate each cake!!

Here was my little table of food

I also made up some Pimms to wash it all down!

I was really pleased with how it all come out and my family seemed to enjoy it as well which made it worthwhile.  We were able to take our plates out to sit in the garden even though it was a little overcast!!!

Later in the evening - my friend Rhian picked me up and we went to her house and cracked open a bottle of champagne!  What a perfect ending to my birthday!!!!