We Make London - crafts and chat going bonkers!

What's that, I hear you ask - well, some very lovely talented Etsy ladies have got themselves organised and arranged a craft fair and there's loads of Etsy gals going to visit so between the sellers and all the Etsy visitors - it should be a very fun and noisy, chatty day. Most of us chat regularly over on the Etsy forums so we all feel like we know each other. I think the most fun thing will be the names - given some of our online nicknames and how we abbreviate them online, how are we going to remember everyones' real name?

On a marketing note, I've designed some bookmarks to add to the promo goody bags and I'm actually quite pleased with them. I wasn't expecting them to turn out so well in that format - I'm not a trained designer after all so I didn't really know what I was doing. What do you think?

Green Thumb Sunday - The Sun Came Out!

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Yesterday was the warmest day of the year so far - it hit 22 degrees centigrade on our north facing verandah so it must have been much warmer in the actual sunshine. I actually managed to move my butt, pick up my camera and wander over to Mum's garden (only about 30 yards away tho') to take some photos.

Why Mum's garden, I hear you ask. Well I'm not much of a gardener really - I know loads of flower/plant names and even quite a few of the latin ones but that's just because I bought loads of gardening magazines a few years back when we were trying to design our garden. It never came to much but I did get to know quite a few plants! Mum on the other hand could probably spend all day, everyday pottering in her garden and mine as well now that hers is so full! She can never remember names though so between us, we make a good team!

One of her favourite flowers is the auricula family. She has about 20-30 different varieties in her little patch - some special named varieties in individual pots and the more common ones grouped in larger planters and troughs. These two photos are the best of the batch but once she's home from holiday and can supervise me moving the special ones around for better lighting, I'm going to do some more.


In my garden, my hostas are just beginning to show through and my darling acer (japanese maple) is doing really well. He's called Arnie 'cos he's grown from little more than a stick into a beautiful example of treehood! I used to name my special plants - Terry Triffid got eaten by our cockatiel and Sam the spider plant died of over watering. I've learnt much since then but still manage to kill houseplants on a regular basis.

Garden plants tend to fare a bit better - I only 'look after' them for the first few weeks to help them settle in - after that, they're on their own. I think that's probably a good thing given my past record, don't you?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.