A Count up for a Competition to help me Celebrate.....

I have so much to celebrate....

• My first born child was 28 on Saturday.  You will know her as M, Michelle or Shell, and a beautiful new mum of two gorgeous babies. She has had 12 months of extreme highs and lows as you know but has thankfully survived and has sooooo much to celebrate.  

Here you can see her with her gorgeous 'husband to be' on Friday night with another wonderful birthday cake made by my very talented son and his girlfriend. They get married in July so we have lots of exciting planning going on between now and then.

• I have now posted over 500 posts here on my blog and would like to thank all that have encouraged and supported me.
• I reached 200 followers over the Christmas break but life got in the way and I was unable to celebrate it.
• I have just been asked to make another Mr Tumble doll. You will be able to watch him develop here over the next couple of weeks.
• We are having a sale over in our blog shop so do pop over here to grab a bargain.
• I have made 91 little dresses for the 'Dress a Girl' charity and would like to thank all that have donated the fabric to make this possible.  I mention this because it is an ongoing challenge for Jo and I and this Saturday was spent cutting out more dresses.....which leads me to the competition.

The Competition

Jo and I had taken a short break from making the little dresses for the charity we support over the last few weeks because Christmas, New Year, hospital admissions and life just generally got in the way and alas there are still only 24 hours in every day.  We had been kindly given very many sheets, quilt covers and gorgeous pieces of material by so many people that I was struggling to store the huge mountain that they made.  This Saturday our men left us for the day and travelled north to watch their footy team play in the cup [alas they lost 1-0] so we were foot loose and fancy free for a whole 12 hours!  

So? What do two sewing sisters do for 12 hours?....

Answer .....we cut out dresses  :-) :-) :-) :-)

Here you can see all the little dresses that we managed to cut out.  What I am asking you to do is to guess how many we managed to bag up.  We have cut out the dresses plus bias strips and pockets and trims for each dress and bagged them up ready for sewing.  Do note that there is more than one dress kit in each bag.

Rules to enter the competition

1. Guess how many dress packs we cut out on Saturday and leave your guess in a comment below
2. Be a follower of here and in our blog shop and you can have another guess
3. Pop a link to our blog shop on your blog and you can have a third guess

There will be a prize [or two] for the nearest guess and you will have a whole week to get there  :-) :-)
I will be having a count up and will post the answer with the name of the winner next Monday.
.....and I'm not telling you what you will win yet.....cos I haven't decided  :-)

I do hope you will join in the fun and help me celebrate.

2 years of blogging....

I took the plunge on 3rd July 2009 to start up a blog....the idea was to write it to record life here at Sewing by Annie's [a bit like a diary] and along the way to put a few smiles on the faces of the folk who just might stumble on my blog.

So what has changed since then?........

• I still aim to record a little of what is going on here but I now have 169 followers and many of those drop in regularly to leave wonderful comments.  Many of then I would now call friends although only a very few of them I have actually met in person.
• Back then I just had 800 or so customers that visited me for sewing alterations etc and now I have over 1090 and my sewing business has gone from strength to strength.....I love it.
• Towards the end of summer 2009 I found a very special blog called Stamping Ground...it was written by, 'The Queen of snoop', Julia and she had started up a group of crafting bloggers who on Wednesday every week were taking pictures of their crafting spaces and 'exposing all' on their blogs.  I took the plunge and joined in the fun and have been completely hooked ever since.  There are some really talented, creative people out there and the world seems a much smaller place to be.
•  Early 2010 I joined a group started by the wonderful Fi over at MarmaladeRose.  Fi encouraged us all to spend 20 minutes of our day crafting of some sort.  It could be sewing, knitting, crocheting etc and, I know I spend my days sewing for work, I started also putting aside at least 20 minutes for creative crafting for fun.  Of course there have been the odd days when I haven't managed it but mostly I still do at least 20 minutes every day and still love it.
• In Jan 2010 Twiglet [my much older sister  :-) ] and I were encouraged to open up our blog shop and since then we have been given a lot of positive encouragement in filling the shelves with wonderful crafty creations [we have even sold some of it too  :-) ].
• I now have 2 wonderful little granddaughters and have another granddaughter and 2 grandsons on the way.....I feel very proud to say we are filling our little bit of the world with lovely young people.

What a lot I have to celebrate.  Please join me in raising a glass to the next 2 years.  Thank you to all who call by here.  Please leave me a comment if only to say hello.

Cheers!

Time to celebrate....

We have a lot to celebrate here.

After many weeks of worry and anxiety over our dear neighbour on Friday we managed to get her transferred to a really lovely care home near by.  She broke her leg back on 9th July and was taken into hospital to recover.  The shock and all the changing circumstances caused a lot of confusion and because of this when her leg had recovered sufficiently she was still unable to look after herself home alone and was admitted to a local care home for convalescence.  During her recovery it became more and more obvious that she was suffering from dementia and although she was brought home for several trial visits it was very obvious to those who knew and loved her that she would not be able to managed at home even with the maximum care team available as it would still mean long periods of her being home alone.  I was called to her last Wednesday night as she had become very confused and agitated.  Thankfully I was able to calm her down [I'm a bit like a comfort blanket  :-)  ] and reassure her she was safe and helped to settle her down in bed before leaving her.  It became very obvious to me that if the social services didn't act very quickly to move her to a more suitable home then the situation could get quickly out of hand so I spent Thursday and Friday working hard on her behalf to get her moved.The hard work all paid off and on Friday afternoon she was transferred to a really lovely care home close by.

It was her 82nd Birthday yesterday so we paid her a visit and although I'm sure it will take time for her to get used to the routine  I'm certain she will be well looked after in her new home.  Happy Birthday B for yesterday.

Yesterday afternoon was our Knit and Natter afternoon at Shrewsbury Theatre and soon after we arrived I had a really exciting text and then visit from our eldest daughter to show us an engagement ring.  We are all really thrilled with their news and would like to wish them huge congratulations...... We of course now have a Wedding to plan now but think 2012 is the most likely time  :-)

Good news often comes in 3s and our next celebrations will be on Tuesday cos it's Twiglet's Birthday.  It's just a number sis  :-)

October is a great month for us as we have lots of Birthdays and celebrations.  Our youngest Granddaughter is being Christened on 10th October too  :-)