We're BACK!

We're back from our fabulous holiday in South Africa and is was more than we could ever have hoped for.

The tour company (34 South) were beyond fantastic. Their guides were knowledgeable, relaxed, informativeand extremely entertaining and the cars they used were better than I drive myself! I wouldn't hestitate in recommending them to anyone.

The hotels and guesthouses were fabulous. Clean, comforatble, cosy, welcoming, the staff were friendly and helpful. And the food.... oh my goodness, the food. It was just amazing!

I'll tell you all about each day and include a selection of photographs. We'll start with Day 1 tomorrow!

I'm leaving on a jet plane...

..... but I know when I'll be back again!

I can't believe it's come round so soon! This time tomorrow we'll be en-route to South Africa. I'll share all the details when we get back - but it's promised to be a truly amazing trip!

My First Tutorial...

I had a double baby shower to go to a couple of weekends ago. I LOVE making and crafting so any excuse is jumped upon! I decided to have a go at one of these.

I made do with what I had to hand and created something similar. Here's what I did;

First of all you want to make the part that rattles. I used a pin tub filled with some plastic beads.

Next we need to make it child proof. It shouldn't come apart but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Take 2 cheap cusions. Cut them open, remove and keep the stuffing (we'll be using lots of this come Christmas time!).

Draw and cut 2 circles

Cut 2 more circles from fusible interfacing and iron on

Next we want to add some ribbon. DON'T do it like I did first (if you do it this way all you're ribbon will end up inside);

This is how you want to do it. Loop your ribbon and pin it between the layers of fabric (right sides together) - loops inside and the ends sticking out - like so

Now you can sew it together. Be sure to leave an opening (I left approx 1in).

Next, clip your seams so they sit better once it's stuffed.

We're almost there. You're ready to turn it the right way out.

If it looks like this (or similar) we're ready to stuff! Remember the cusion stuffing you removed earlier? You'll want some of that now. If you don't have that you can used soft toy stuffing (I can't get that where I am at the moment, so I had to improvise).

Don't forget to add the rattle! Try and make sure it's in between lots of the stuffing so there's no hard bits poking out

Continue stuffing until it's even and nice and soft and squishy!

Once you're done stuffing, slip stitch your circle closed and ouila! You're finished!

The one I made was a gift so I chose to embroider the baby's name on the rattle. 

I've also promised that when the baby is born I'll embroider her name and DOB on the other side.

Let me know if you make on and I'd love to see your pictures!

Sorry

I'm sorry for neglecting you! I have a few posts typed that just need pictures adding - I just need to find the time to shrink them!

Back soon....

Brunch!

What did you do last weekend? We went to Brunch at the Marriott and ate and drank more than any person should in one sitting! Here are some of the delights we sampled...

Choose your ingredients and they'll cook it for you!

Seafood galore....

What tasty morsels lie under these covers...?

Beautiful watermelon carvings

An ice sculpture! And actual real ice-sculpture!

Most of the food is laid on outside the restaurants and you can go and choose what you want to eat, but some of the rooms lay on food as well.

Anyone for Sushi?

How about some Salmon?

Or Indian?

Maybe you have a sweet tooth like I do - these puddings were heavenly. Truly.

Back to the sushi. My husband tried it, but raw fish is not really my thing...

I'd rather delight in these yummy things!!!

P.S. Look at that square dish in the last picture - isn't it lovely?! I want some of those!!



Museum of Islamic Art

As you know, we have a guest staying at the moment. Last weekend we dropped in at the Museum of Islamic Art on the Corniche here. I've visited a few times and never fail to be suprised that, although the temperature and lighting of the artifacts is controlled, they still permit flash photography. Anywhere else in the world and I'm fairly certain this would be prohibited. I can't say that a reflection of your flash on a glass case would give you the best picture anyway - but I'm sure you understand where I'm coming from.

Also unlike other museums elsewhere, there is very little information displayed about the artifact itself. I only found out this weekend (that despite the museum being open for over 2 years now) that if you want to learn more about the items you can actually pick up a headset and have it over audio. You'd think they'd inform you of this when you walk in right? Wrong....

Here are a few of my photos from our trip there. As I didn't find out about the headsets until AFTER this trip, I can't tell you any more about the items I'm afraid...

A bowl.... I particularly like the lighting on this piece.

Necklace of spinels.

Various glass items.

Doing the tourist thaaang

This weekend we picked up our guest from the airport, and because we unfortunately don't have the time to take off work, we did the tourist thing over the weekend. There's not much to see here, and even less to do, so it didn't really take that much time!

The first day we managed a drive around town, then a trip to The Pearl and (Thank Goodness there was somewhere open!) drank a lemon granita, before heading back into town, getting some lunch, walking around the park and getting in a food shop! Home and time to start making a fruit salad and it was back out for me.

The second day of our friend's visit was not quite as jam packed, but still enough walking and site seeing to have me completely exhausted and ready for an early night when we got home!

Here are some of the things we saw - enjoy!

No time for hobbies...

I sat at my desk this morning, thinking about what lay ahead for the week and naturally my thoughts drifted to the weekend. It dawned on me that we don't have a completely free weekend until almost the end of May! It's not even March 1st yet!

Between holidays, showers (baby and bridal), birthdays and visitors I can see time for stitching and creating fast flying out of the window before I can catch hold of it!

The only consolation I suppose it that the camera will see plenty of action on our trip to South Africa! When those pictures will make it on to the computer I can't say just yet, and whether they will make it as far as this blog remains to be seen.

I will do my very best to share with you some of those images and hopefully some stories. There should be plenty of animals, buildings, food and drink - not to mention a blushing bride and groom!

Until then, please make me jealous and tell me all the lovely things you're able to get up to!

Sharing your living space with a cat

I debated the title of this post for quite some time (oh ok, just a few minutes, but still).... I considered something along the lines of 'The perils of being cat owner', but anyone who has ever 'had' a cat knows that cats do not have owners, they have slaves. I thought about calling it something along the lines of 'A cat's slave' but that wasn't really appropriate to the rest of the post. I'm still not entirely happy with the title, but it will have to do for now.

What I wanted to share with you was this; I sat down last night hoping to design a quilt. I have the rough ideas in my head, but I'm struggling to formulate them at the moment. I hoped that sitting, with my fabrics in front of me, with a pad of graph paper and my coloured pencils might helped me to work out what I actually wanted to do (and whether I had enough fabric to do it before I started. If not I can use it for other things!).

My husband took some photos to show you, but for some reason I can't post them. I've tried from 2 different computers with no joy. If anyone has any idea what might be wrong, please message me!

Anyway, as soon as I got my paper and pencils out, our little cat jumped up and started biting the ends of the pencil. If you've ever tried using a writing implement with a cat attached at one end you'll know it's not so easy.... Deciding that biting the pencil wasn't ... 'helping'... enough, she settled herself on my pad. Right where I was drawing. Thankyou cat.

If I ever manage to get the photos to upload I'll share it with you, in the mean time, use your imaginations!

What did you get for Valentine's Day?

I left home yesterday morning, having forgotten to bring home my husband's Valentine's card from where it was hiding in my desk at work. It was pretty uneventful here. No bunches of flowers arriving, no balloons floating around the office....

I got home in the evening to find a HUGE purple box on the kitchen work-top waiting for me! I waited patiently until after dinner before ripping into the pretty shiny paper, and contained within was..... an Ice-cream maker!!! 2 x 0.7liter tubs with seperate switches so you can make one or two batches at a time - different flavours if you wanted to!

I love it - and I will be on a mission to make some ice-cream this weekend, so if anyone has any suggestions as to flavours, please feel free to message me!

Qatar Motorshow 2011

Last weekend was fairly quiet, but we did attend the motoshow in Doha. It was the last day and whilst I wasn't interested in the cars in the slightest, I went along with my husband and some friends and used it as a good excuse to get the camera out and not let the dust settle!

I'm pretty pleased with some of the results so I hope you won't mind if I share a few of them with you. You can find more of my work on http://www.flickr.com/photos/hannahwarne/.

I guess I've joined the world of blogging...

Somehow, on my lunchbreak today, I ended up creating this blog. I'm not sure quite how, but I figured what's the worst that could happen? I'll give it a go and see where it leads....

At the moment I'm not entirely sure what I'll write about. It could end up being cooking, it could be crafting or it might be photograhy (I might even have the cat write for me if I get writer's block...!). I'll have to take it one post at time and see how the mood strikes me when I sit in front of the screen.

Thankyou for stopping by and I will endeavour to write once a week if not slightly more!