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Had parents, sis and gran over today for afternoon tea. So decked the house with an Easter tree:
I brought in the daffodils from the back garden (they just opened) and popped some Cadbury’s Mini Eggs in the rabbit dish Tom’s folks gave us for Christmas. Plus we bought some Peeps in the US last year so I had them out:
Looking forward this evening to torturing the brightly coloured mallow in some hot chocolate 
I haven’t just been reading, oh no. I also picked up a needle and thread and tried some embroidery. Now this is my first attempt (I know I should have done a traditional sampler but I just wasn’t inspired). 
It’s a picture of one of my rats – Wheeler. I tried to do a range of different stitches but found that as I wasn’t doing flowers things like daisy chains and similar didn’t really have a place. Guess I’ll have to make a needle case or similar to try them out. I’m most proud of my broccoli – 1hour to do the French knots! 
Tom felt I hadn’t made a bear for a while (he’s right it’s been an age) so to get me back into it he bought me a ‘Make your Own Bear’ kit. Now this consisted of a bear skin (complete with Velcro back), a jumper, and everything you need to make the bear.
Gyles was stitched up on Boxing day complete with a gnome and flowers embroidered on his jumper. I didn’t change anything else save for the nose. I gave him a proper embroidered black nose rather than the pink fabric one he started with.
Today was a snow day. A proper school cancelled due to amazing snow! Even better I didn’t even try and get to work so missed out on being stuck on a motor way or back roads (all of which became closed by the back of 8am). So after a lazy morning -mostly spent catching up on blog posts – we walked down into the village and I made a Snow Rat on the lawn.
Now I love the festive season and any excuse the decorate the library so I opted this year for a Christ-moose (or a Merry Moose-mas?)
The baubles hanging from the antlers are book wishes from staff – the poor moose became quite heavily laden by the end.
I also made a wreath for the door out of paper. (You cut a circle out of cardboard the size you want the wreath to be then cut out the middle so you have wreath shape. Next staple holly shaped bits of green paper onto it – work round the circle in the same direction. To finish cut some circles out of red, group into threes and spread amongst the holly).
The pupils decorated the tree and then I wheeled out the paper snowman making. I’ve done this before and giving pupils three increasing sized circles, a orange triangle and paper sticks always results in fun. This year I had a bunch wearing hats, smoking pipes and even one throwing a snowball. However I also had a pupil who reminded me of Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) who made a Siamese twin snowman and another snowman holding a firework who was going to blow them apart plus a snowman on fire who was melting. Free reign of ideas is worth thinking about carefully!
Anyway his somewhat worrying snowmen inspired me to replicate the Calvin and Hobbes snowmen that I love so much (see last years tree decorations). So the main notice board got the bowling snowman and the rest were scattered in amongst the pupils creations.
I love a holiday and even though we don’t get Thanksgiving here I still like the idea. So for the first time in years I had people round for the big day itself so I decided to mark the occasion with some themed cupcakes (that and I found a source of Candy Corn!). I found the idea on the Disney Family Fun site but had to adapt it slightly since it called for Keebler Sandies Right Bites Shortbread which isn’t something i can pick up in Tesco.
So instead I sliced the top off a cupcake and cut into quarters. I put two on for wings and used one for the head. I used decorating gel to finish off the features and the afore mentioned candy corn for the tail. 
Camp blankets and badges are serious things in the world of Guiding and Scouts. Despite my involvement for the past twenty years it’s only in the last two that I’ve made the camp blanket (hand sewn of course).
I was asked about what badge is my favourite – this one is
I’d love it to be deep an meaningful but a lion eating an oreo is really all it is (well the cookie says ’78 and that is when I appeared on the earth).
I went to the centenary launch today was was modelling my Shrink Plastic charm bracelet
. Simple to do just trace promise badges onto shrink plastic, cut them out, punch holes in them and shrink!
For a Senior Section craft I was making a charm bracelet using Shrink Plastic.
I had some spare so I decided to make myself a pair of jigsaw earrings to wear at Capital Jig in October.
I used 2mm link chain. I picture makes them look much darker than they really are – I used crayola metalic pens to colour in the jigsaw peices.
Now I love myths and legends, especially mythic creatures. I think this might be my new favourite.
It’s a Grave Guardian Beast (Zhenmu Shou) from China (480-221BC) and is made of wood with polychrome pigments and lacquer horns.
As you’d expect with any archaeological item such as this they don’t really know what they were for. They have found a number of these antlered figures with long tongues in tombs of this time. Best guess is that since they are found at the head of the coffin they might be to protect the dead from evil. Apparently they can also come with a double head.
I was also very fond of this fat dog from Mexico.
As seen at the Art Institute of Chicago