Thieving magpie and suncatcher

The magpie

Here is a little story that happened to me last week while I was photographing beads in the garden to make the most of a nice sunny day.

I set up all my equipment in the garden (background, camera on my tripod...) and displayed my first set of beads to be photographed on the background, a lovely Achreamie sunset little set which I was very proud of.

I then had to go back inside the house for a couple of minutes, came back out just in time to see a big magpie standing on my background.

It looked at me!!!!

I looked at it!!!...... and then in a split second it grabbed my set of beads and flew to the top of a Rowan tree in our garden.

I chased it and started climbing the first few branches of the tree while the snide bird was having a laugh looking at me...so I gave up and the thief flew far, far away in another garden with my beads.


The suncatcher

My children's wonderful teacher is retiring this year. I wanted to make something for her but she does not seem to be wearing very much jewellery...so I decided to make a suncatcher for her with some of my beads.


Below are a few pictures that I took yesterday (I did watch for the magpie!)

Stourbridge no more and tonnes of beads for sale on my website!

I have had to cancel my attendance at the Stourbridge Bead Fair!

I have mixed feelings about this! I was really looking forward to go there but I was getting quite stressed at the same time trying to juggle all my commitments in the summer.

As a result, I now have masses of beads for sale.
I loaded the first batch (23 sets!) on my website yesterday. Quite a few of them have sold already (which makes me very happy!) but I have many more coming up next week including a few orphans lots.

You are welcome to let me know (by commenting or email) which type of beads you would prefer to see on my website as I might not have time to load everything before my holiday in three weeks time.

Sports day and the winner is ...

Sports day:

It was the annual sports day at my kids school, last Wednesday.

The weather was sunny and warm, it was a lovely day!

Téo took part in various races and what a difference a tonsils and ears operation make in a boy!

Last year (and the year before), he did not seem to really care, daydreaming, missing the start of each race...

This year, however, he was much more focussed and had a competitiveness that I had not seen in him before...and It was nice because I think this is because he feels better.

Here's a picture of him doing the sack race.

and Juliette who had great fun doing the potato race (she laughed her head off each time she was dropping the potato).

I ran the mum's race! I love it! It's just like being back at school and I think all the mums should line up in the playground and race every week!

Now that I have bored you to death with my kiddies stories, let's move on to more exciting things:

The prize draw:

I have put all the names of the people who either left a comment or sent me an email in a hat and picked one out.

The winner is ...Sara!

I don't speak spanish so I have to trust the google translater on this one (and hope that I am not going to say something terribly rude!)

El ganador es...Sara!