An Autumn Friday Smile

My little grandees, the Curly Girlys, have returned to Brighton and as always the house is quiet and I miss them so much but they have left me some of their super artwork.

They delighted in running around in our garden trying to catch the Autumn leaves and bringing me those which they found extra fascinating. A spotty one, a red one, a yellow one, one with holes etc., and it was a joy to watch their happiness from such simple things of Nature.

 I gave them an old wooden platter to hold their favourites and they soon amassed a wondrous collection of leaves, pebbles and stones which they carefully placed under a plant stand and topped with a few flowers.

An unwitting shrine to the season!

 Tiny cat's eye ink pads helped produce some art for my wall.

I'm off in minutes to  Germany to visit the other half of my lovely family and to see again my 4 year old grand daughter and my new first grandson for the first time. 

I'm not smiling, I'm grinning.

I hope you have lots to smile about, but pop over to Annie's blog to see lots more reasons to get you started.

Crafty Time with Dolores

I'm not signing in with WOYWW this week as I won't be home enough to reply to comments and join in fully but here's the work desk where Dolores and I have been so busy.

But first, many thanks to everyone who kindly sent such lovely messages of congratulations on the birth of my fourth grandchild, the first boy in the family and a beautiful one at that.

 I am pleased to say that the new family are all really happy and doing fine.

I had a super visit with my lovely friend Dolores whilst she was staying with her DBF down in the South of England. We had lots of crafty fun and also managed a couple of lovely meals out and a few jaunts around the lovely Kent countryside.

Here, Dolores is showing some of the results of our first inky session after making a meander book.

We started by sponging and stencilling Distress Inks at random to make backgrounds which built up layer upon layer.

It still doesn't look too wonderful......

but finally Dolores produced this super background and made her meander book from the large square cut from an A2 sheet of heavy cartridge paper. 

She is going to finish it with stamping, pockets, tags, apertures, and other details and I can't wait to see the results.

One day when we were out and about we just couldn't find a country pub where we could have a meal but by chance came upon the Hawkenbury. 

It is in Staplehurst in the heart of the Weald of Kent. What a sight, so bright and quite kitch with all these murals.

There's Dolores below waving to me that it's OK to enter for our late lunch. All the meals are made using locally sourced produce, freshly cooked. If you look HERE on their website you can see the inn before it was so lavishly painted!

All this is soon to be painted over with new seasonal murals for Christmas!

We were so surprised to find oak beams and a thouroughly traditional pub inside and we were all pleased to enjoy such an excellent meal.

Back later to play a few 60's tunes on the Wurlitzer Juke Box. Great fun which brought back such memories and I do wish I had one.

Fantastic to see this and all the memorabilia in the hall of Dolores's DBF.

Thanks folks for such a fabulous few days of excellent hospitality. We enjoyed every minute.

More evidence of our play time and other jaunts soon.