Sweet Mary

Just a few pics around our house on Christmas Eve in New Zealand... We have had this nativity scene since the children were little and still like to put it out each year and remind ourselves what our Christmas celebrations are truly about. We have family staying so lots of fun and extra presents under the tree. Candles to light when it gets dark. Stockings up, ready for you know who to fill. Merry Christmas to all our family and friends - and to my blogging friends also! xxx

The night before I left for a few days in Auckland I ran another Sweet Mary stall at Black Barn. It was a twilight market running from 5.30pm to 8.30pm. Most of the stalls were food stalls but it was good to be there and chat to customers and visitors and I sold more than enough to cover costs. Looking out from my stall in to the centre of the market - its a permanent stucture of about 20 stalls in a circle surrounded by trees and the lovely landscape around Black Barn. We returned from our very busy but fun trip up to Auckland to find the sweet peas in the garden desparately needed picking - they smell so good. I did a spot of fabric shopping for my Sweet Mary business while up there and also came home with a nice little stash of presents from the family.

I am away for a few days - leaving in an hour but thought I would just put these couple of photos up on my blog for family overseas to look at. Hi everyone! The lounge has the real tree and the living/dining has the fake tree. These photos were taken early in the morning even the house one - it looks great in the early light I think. Hope you are all getting in the Christmas spirit!

Now, if you had so many roses blooming in your garden that you were picking a huge bucket full each morning you would be thinking what to do with them all. After filling the house with vases of roses, giving rose bunches away to friends there is only one thing left to do and that is make rose potpourri. So, for weeks now I have had baskets of rose petals balanced on the shelves in the airing cupboard slowing drying out enough to go into the "master mix" with dried lavender and a few other pretty things from the garden. Here is a large bowl full below - being bagged up for sale on my next stall and through my FELT site ( left of this post, click on Felt - online).

I made these beautiful lavender filled doves especially for Redcurrent in Havelock North. They looked so pretty I really did want to keep them for myself to decorate my small tree - as opposed to my big tree which always has everything but the kitchen sink on it. It really should be called a memory tree as most of the decorations have a story attached to them.