A busy- ish week

My Mum has been to stay with us this week and it has been lovely. I have just been to the train station to drop her off, she's always a bit torn about going home. She's happy to get home to see my Dad, but always a bit sad to be leaving us. Hopefully she had a good time while she was here.
We started off her visit with a trip to London to the Country Living Christmas Fair. Mum hasn't been to that fair before and she really enjoyed herself. We managed to look at all the stalls in relative ease before it got too crowded. I made a bee-line to see the lovely Julia from Red hen originals who makes fantastic bird and animal pictures by using potatoes! - yes you read correctly. This owl is my recent purchase, how fantastic is he? ( ignore the dates on the photos it's my sons camera and I don't know how to turn the date off  And it's three years out, I don't know what he does to it)

You would never guess her painting medium would you? I bought my first two paintings from her in March at the spring fair and I have just fallen in love with her work. These are my original pictures.

I must apologise for my terrible photos they really don't do the paintings justice, but I'm hoping Santa is going to bring me a better camera for christmas, if they are still terrible then it will be the fault of the operator. I need to get my owl framed and then I think I will hang him in the bedroom.

I also had my eye on this bag from Susie Watson, it's supposed to be a toybag but I'm going to use it as a bag to carry my laundry out to the washing line, I've been meaning to get a new one for ages and I think this will do perfectly, it will certainly brighten up the washing chore, what do you think? It's very jaunty isn't it? 

So we had a great time in London and even managed to squeeze in a visit to Loop where I bought another skein of Madeline Tosh sock wool, but I haven't got a photo to show you, maybe next time.

The rest of the weekend was spent chilling, I carried on with my ripple blanket , Mum played with Little T and on her DS and Hubby painted his teeny tiny soldiers. I will take a photo one day of our Sunday afternoon crafting sessions. 

Yesterday we went for a jaunt to beautiful Southwell in Nottinghamshire, mainly to visit the wool shop as I had run out of a colour I needed for my ripple blanket, only to find that it was closed. Never mind we had a nice time anyway even though it seemed to be monday closing for most of the other shops as well ! So today I decided after dropping Mum off at Newark I would whizz back to the wool shop for a second attempt, guess what ? it was shut today as well . Hmmph.