Very big apologies – some good and bad news.

I am sorry I have not been on since March but unfortunately life events took over. Bad news - as stated on my last blog, my father in law was ill, sadly his illness took over and that we were very concerned about how long he had with us on this planet. He passed away at the beginning of June, we take comfort that his last days were made comfortable by the hospital and that he went peacefully and without pain. We had to be brave as the following day, his youngest grandson had his first communion. The last few weeks we have been slowly coming to terms with things and helping my wonderful mother in law deal with things. Good News – my husband and I are expecting our first baby between Christmas and New Year. To let you understand, we had been trying for a while and discovered last summer when my father in law took ill, that I would have problems in trying to have children. In order to get the necessary treatment I had to lose a lot of weight. In fact I lost over 2 ½ stones! I had been for some tests and was just waiting on getting to my required body mass index where I would then be offered fertility treatment, when we discovered that I had fallen pregnant naturally. Given all that we have been through it has been some kind of miracle. We found out six weeks before my father in law died. We took the decision to tell immediate family sooner rather than later as I had started to have very bad sickness, tiredness and exhaustion and given the severity of my father in law illness, we did not want to hide it from them. As you can imagine this made things very difficult for us to deal with, especially as we knew that his dad will never know his new grandchild but we hope he is watching. Four days after my father in law’s funeral, my husband and I went for our first scan. Little miracle is doing well, my edd is 29 December! My husband wants to call it Santa if it is a boy! Can’t understand why I object! Did not help that when we found out, I was celebrating my big 40th birthday, I got a bottle of pink fizzy wine from my brother in law, I then also won a bottle of Cava in a prize draw, have to leave them sitting on the kitchen worktop until Christmas :-(.

Fudge, Fudge and Fudge - found a wonderful recipe for fudge in the Craft Seller Magazine and have made it a couple of times, yummy. I did raspberry fudge with white chocolate drizzled on the top (sorry no picture, got scoffed at work!!! Nearly managed it as a bribe to the HEO!) I made Strawberry Fudge topped with milk chocolate. Ymmmmmmmmmm , although at that time I was aware of being pregnant and could not stand the smell of it and had to give it away at work! I got some free fabric squares with Sew magazine and made a pin cushion very quickly, slowly discovering my love of sewing again. This is what I used to make a banner for the business.

I made this flower background using Craft Artist, and it is for sale on my new website, made it by accident while experimenting with the Craft Artist and very impress with how it turned out. I have also been knitting some snoods and done various colours, they will be up on the website shortly.

Here are a couple of archive pictures

I have made some changes to the shop, for the time being I will only accept payments through Paypal, but you are able to make payments without having to register for an account. I am offering free shipping to launch the store. Will be back soon, honest! Kay (and bump!)

Cake Pops

Is this the new trend?  I think it is. The Pension Centre where I work recently celebrated 10 years of being opening, which is quite scary as I will have worked there for 10 years in October!  Anyway, we held some celebrations and I made some cake pops for the buffet.  The theme was countries and we did Greece as a team.  I picked up lollisticks from Hobbycraft as well as blue chocolate, yes blue!  I had treated myself to a proper cake pop machine to make a proper cake rather than getting cake and using frosting or cream cheese to bind together, mainly because I have to restrict my dairy intake.  I then used icing to make the Greek flag.

I have been doing a lot of knitting recently and especially scarves.  I found this simple pattern in the Create and Craft magazine, and have managed to find lots of colours to do it in.  The picture below is in a purple which has strips of gold thread running through it.

I got the new Paintbox Poppets from Crafters Companion, and do adore it, the images are fantastic, I also got it in time to make my cards for mother’s day

Her e is the card I made for my father in law’s 75^th birthday last month.  I used Docrafts Forever Friends Retro CD. I had taken out a subscription for a digital magazine and that was the free gift.

I entered a card into a Nitwits completion that I saw using some of their digi kits, and must say found it extremely difficult to choose which kit I wanted!

Finally here are some cards from my archive.

Some other news, I have decided to change they way my shop will operate and will be in the process of changing things over, if you want me to make you anything then just contact me through the blog or email me at kcardsandcrafts@live.co.uk   Things are still hectic and my father in law is still very ill so if I don’t reply immediately please be patient.

Kay xxxx