Woohoo, SUMMER !!!

Yep, summer has finally arrived here in our little corner of Burgundy, France. Its been a long time coming, but at long last we have sunshine, and warmth, and we can spend time outside. I just had to take a few pics of the cottage -

I know a lot of you have already seen tons of very similar pics, lol, but those lovely new followers are a good excuse to post some new ones.

The crickets are out in full force, their evening concerts are quite deafening at times, but it can also be quite a soothing sound. Look at these two, jumping about on the old barn door -

I am so glad that most of the veggies and potted flowers survived the really bad weather and especially the wicked hailstorm while we were still in England. We have harvested peas, mange tout, french beans, radishes, lettuce, courgettes, broad beans are almost ready and the butternut squash plants are doing well.

Peas growing against the sun drenched wall of the four au pain ( bread oven ) -

It is so nice to be able to eat outside again, either at this table near the house, under trees

or just above the lower field at the little table, because we can see the little valley right below us as well as the large valley with our village -

We were sitting at that little table the other day, having lunch and drinking some absolutely delicious non alcoholic sparkling cider. It had come all the way from the States, via Germany, courtesy of a wonderful lady called Lanette. She started out a customer and soon turned into a lovely dear friend, who sent me two bottles of this gorgeous stuff ( and other little treasures ). She and her family own a cider making company in the States, Sheffield Cider. Darn, that stuff tastes good -

And after lunch, we were finally able to spend a little while in our loungers, soaking up the warm sunshine and reading for a bit -

Hector insists on having his very own lounger of course, lol. He is a funny thing, he loves climbing up on stuff, he often sits on top of the wooden picnic table and bench.

You know that I love wild flowers, and always pick a big bunch for the table in the garden. I always have them in a VERY heavy big old crystal glass vase - 

The last couple of days it has been incredibly windy up here on our hill top. The wind knocked this really vase right off the table. The washing was flapping about so much, I thought the line would break and my washing would end up in the top field, lol -

It was much too windy to take photographs of my latest brocante finds outside, and the cottage is too dark really to take decent photos of them. I hope that by tomorrow the winds will have calmed down and then I can get on with taking pics. Fingers crossed.

Thats all for now. Toodlepip xxx

Little works of art in the mail

I received the swap ATCs from Kimberly's June MERMAID swap today. How exciting! Kimberly is a fabulous swap hostess, she always packages them beautifully. Have a look at how gorgeously wrapped they arrived -

See? The perfect colours for the swap theme and a lovely personalised tag ( L for Liz ).

And here are the beautiful ATCs I received, just in the order I took them out of the package -

This little beauty is from Amy Bauer, who doesn't have a blog ( yet, but we should make her have one, lol ). I have never ever seen seashells as small as the ones she has used on her ATC, I am utterly amazed. I love everything about the ATC, the gorgeous shimmery fabric  used for the water, the amazing mermaid's tail stitched over with metallic thread, and as I have already mentioned, those tiny seashells.


Next up is this cute as pie ATC - 

 from Saucy Chick Cherry. Such a gorgeous whimsical ATC and don't you just love her bikini top made from little sequins? And of course I love the glitter on the seaweed and the handsome fish. 


And then I was thrilled to bits to find an ATC made by our hostess Kimberly -

Incredibly detailed, beautifully made. Perfect, isn't it? Gorgeous image, fabulous background and those embellishments are totally droolworthy.


AND............. I was also one of the lucky girls to receive an extra ATC made by Sabrina. Apparently she had so much fun creating for the swap, she made some extra ATCs and Kimberly randomly put them in some of the swap packages.


My July swap ATCs are on the way to Kimberly, and I can't wait to see what the other girls are going to make for the July theme A LOVELY DAY AT THE BEACH. You can probably tell I am having oodles of fun with these swaps.


You know, the weather here is crazy at the moment, yesterday we had a gorgeous summer day, 30C during the day, lovely mild evening, and although the weather forecast promised sun sun sun for the next few days, it is cold, grey and overcast and drizzly again. Poo to that. We are supposed to be going to the Thursday evening vide grenier tonight, I just hope that they don't cancel it, or that no stall holders turn up. Keep your fingers crossed. 


Toodlepip xxx

French Holy Communion Whites

For this week's WHITE WEDNESDAY post, I wanted to show you some recent French brocante finds, which I absolutely adore. I was so lucky to find this oh so beautiful little communion wreath made with wax flower buds, which a young girl would have worn for her First Holy Communion many decades ago. It is so perfect, none of the delicate little wax buds are missing, and even the leaves are undamaged. The separate, large flower was probably worn as a pin on the dress, I don't think it was attached to the wreath. And to go with it, I found this gorgeous mother-of-pearl child's rosary with a beautiful silver cross. So small, so delicate, and so moving.

I am linking this post to the fabulous WHITE WEDNESDAY linky party at the Faded Charm blog. Hop on over there if you want to immerse yourself in more WHITE treasures.


Toodlepip xxx

Tag Tuesday challenge - Sea birds

Our home in the UK is in beautiful 1066 country, Sussex, not far from the sea at all. Sea gulls everywhere, and although they are lovely to watch when they are in flight over the sea, they are a menace. Incredibly bold, dangerous, greedy, and creators of the biggest mess when they raid rubbish bins etc. But they are part of life by the sea.

For this tag I used part of a photograph I took of beach huts in Bexhill, a piece of driftwood for the post, a cut out of a sea gull on top, holding some seaweed ( strands from a green tassel ), and of course Distress Stickles for the sand. This is a very 3dimensional tag. I hope that you are thoroughly impressed that I am actually posting the tag on the day its due, almost unheard of, lol, but I prepared a couple of tags before I left England for France and took the photos there ;-)

Toodlepip xxx

What I've been up to in the craftavan

I should have known that it would rain on a Sunday, sigh. No vide greniers to go to, so I spent a few hours in the craftavan instead. I needed to catch up on my inchies for the Every Inchie Monday challenge. I hadn't posted last week's, and the new one was due today. So let me show you those first. 


Last week's inchie challenge was MOUNTAIN. No idea why I went with fabrics, maybe because I had just unpacked  my craft suitcase and been fondling laces and fabrics, lol. I made the mountain out of a scrap of scrunched up grey sari ribbon, hoping that the scrunched bits would look like mountain ridges and crevices. For the snowy top I used a piece of very fine net and a few dabs from a white pen. The forest at the bottom of the mountain is a tiny scrap of a lovely green vintage French lace. Oh, and I stuck a bit of cotton wool in the sky for white and grey clouds -

This week's challenge is BLACK. Arrgghh, now photographing anything black really is a challenge. I used a scrap of very old watered silk ribbon for the background, a lovely old French button and a teeny bit of a black veil from an old hat -

I am also joining Kimberly's monthly ATC swap again. The theme this time round for July was A LOVELY DAY AT THE BEACH -

I also managed to take photographs of the few things I had bought at a vide greniers last week, as we had a beautifully sunny day today. Still not as warm as it should be this time of the year and the wind is very chilly, but hey, I take this over rain any day. I'll try and post the pics on the vintageland blog tomorrow.


Until then, toodlepip xxx

La Belle France

Yep, here I am again in La Belle France, at our sweet little cottage on top of the hill. We arrived on Tuesday. We had only been away for a month, but oh boy, did I get a shock when we got to the cottage - the acacia trees, which had been pollarded last year, had thrown up suckers everywhere and there were mini trees growing all over the garden. NOT what we wanted to see. It is just about impossible to get rid of the little rascals, all we can do is keep mowing them down as soon as they spring up. Unless of course we want to dig up the whole garden and take out all the roots. I couldn't believe how aggressively these things grow, you know, even the cut logs, LOGS!, were sprouting new stuff. But for now all the little ones are mowed down and we can move around in the garden again. Most of the veggies survived, we have had radishes, mange tout, lettuce, peas and green beans from the garden, the courgettes are growing, as are the beetroot, the only things which really suffered are the tomato plants. They got ruined in that horrible hail storm a couple of weeks ago.


We have been so busy clearing up the garden, I haven't had time to visit anybody's blog or answer emails, bad bad me. But now I have dug out the laptop, plugged everything in, and I am ready to go. Sort of, lol. Haven't got any France pics to show you yet, for today you will have to make do with pics of tags. Yep, more tags. 


I made a whole bunch of tags to go with Etsy orders, here are some of them -

I made these tags a while ago, but I don't think I have shown them before. If I have, well, blame it on old age -

I also made some of this month's tags for the Tag Tuesday challenges before we left for France, including this week's SWIMMING challenge. When we were kids, my brothers and I used to spend almost every day  at the lido. I have very fond memories of those days, so a Lido tag seemed the obvious choice -

I haven't even gotten round to unpacking my suitcase full of craft supplies, isn't that just terrible? I must head over to my craftavan this weekend and get unpacked and crafting as well. But one thing I did manage was go to a vide grenier, woohoo! During the summer we have a series of Thursday evening vide greniers in our area, in different villages within half hour's drive. And I did manage to find a couple of lovely new treasures at yesterday's. If the weather improves tomorrow ( today it is very drizzly ), I'll take photos and show you.


Must go and try and answer some of  your lovely emails now.  Big hugs to you from France, toodlepip xxx




Oh, I still have time to link this post to the wonderful White Wednesday linky party over at the Faded Charm blog. Great. If you have time, go visit and marvel at lots and lots of lovely whiteness.

Wishing you a Happy Fourth of July

Such an important day for all our American friends. Happy Fourth of July! I made a little tag in honour of the occasion. Well, its a good excuse to make yet another tag, lol. But my good wishes to you are heartfelt.

And while I was on a break from measuring and weighing and listing etc, I took the opportunity to make this week's Every Inchie Monday and Tag Tuesday challenges.


Every Inchie Monday's theme this week is BORDER.  I almost went with a flower border, but then somehow got sidetracked and ended up with tiny borders -

Tag Tuesday's challenge this week was SEASIDE. I am going to be lazy and copy what I wrote on the Tag Tuesday blog. 


I had a bit of trouble with this week's challenge, because all the themes for this month revolve around the seaside. I found it quite difficult to decide what to use for this tag and what to save for the others. Until I started going through some postcards I had bought in France a few weeks ago, that is. I found a photograph of these sweet little boys all dressed up in their sailor suits, no doubt ready to hit the French Riviera, lol.


I painted three different areas on a white tag, light brown for the beach, light blues for the sky and darker blues for the sea. Glued on the shell and this puffety stuff I found on the  beach after a storm last year, and then created the beach with different shades of Distress Stickles, Scattered Straw and Tarnished Brass. Cut out some small images of shells, and of course the darling boys and glued them on. Printed out the song title of a good old English seaside song ( which I now can't get out of my head, arrgghh ) and drew a few seagulls in the sky.

Toodlepip xxx