Fabric Flowers

It was my lovely friend Gemma's Birthday last week so I wanted to make her something special, I used some of the fabric I had bought to make a fabric flower.  I styled it on a hair clip I bought a while ago from Miss Selfridge's (I blogged about it here) and cut out the fabric using pinking shears so that I din't have to seal the edges by burning them.  I really loved the final result and almost didn't ant to give it away but I know she will love it and I can always make another.

I also bought her a voucher for Hobbycraft so treated her to a day out on Saturday, when there was a 20% sale off of everything in store.  We got all the bits we needed to paint her cushions and also picked up a few extra crafty things to decorate her house.  I managed to spend a whopping £50 (reduced to £40) but I did buy a gorgeous cross stitch by Valerie Pfeiffer of six little blue tits on a branch called Chrous Line.  I have seen this design before but it was a bit pricey, but I decided to treat myself (especially with the discount).  I have been doing that quite a lot recently, really must stop spending money, but look how cute it is!!

We also visited Dunelm Mill to find some plain cushion covers but couldn't find anything we liked so in the end bought fabric to make them.  We have decided that next weekend will be our craft weekend; food, wine, good company and crafting, life couldn't get much better!!

A quick update on the fire, it rained lots over the weekend which has helped a lot. The fire is completely out and the fire crews are now working to drench the area in water to stop any of it catching alight again.  Some of the roads reopened this morning which helped my journey to work, and hopefully the rest will be opening soon as well.  Dad and I plan to go into the forest to inspect the damage later this week so I will keep you posted.

Hoping For Rain

It's not often in the UK that we pray for rain, but after having the driest and hottest April on record we are. Over Easter the beautiful Swinley Forest behind my house caught fire, whether it was an accident or malicious we just don't know but it has now been burning for over a week and some believe it has been burning for even longer under the ground.  All the roads between Bracknell and Crowthorne are closed (which has caused a bit of mayhem getting to work) and fire crews are working around the clock to keep the flames and heat at bay. These are photos from getbracknell.

When we first heard about it we were initially worried, bearing in mind there is only a road, dirt track and a row of houses between us and the forest.  Fortunately for us, but sadly not for others the wind is blowing the fire away from us towards Crowthorne.  A lot of people in that direction have been evacuated from their homes for their own safety, I just hope the fire brigade can get it under control and they can go home soon.

It seems really weird having a massive forest fire just down the road.  I know the forest like the back of my hand and have ridden and walked there all my life, to see it plastered all over the news is quite shocking.  On Monday I took a walk down Nine Mile Ride (the road down the back of house which is closed) with Mum to see what was going on and although we didn't see any flames we saw an awful lot of smoke.  We didn't get too far down the road before the police stopped us so we headed to Ceasers Camp (a high plateau in the forest) instead to see if we could spot anything, this s the view we got, it is pretty much the same from my bedroom window too.

On Wednesday Dad took a ride into the forest and somehow managed to bypass all the police to speak to the firebrigade.  This a photo he took of the huge tractor used to dig up the ground and prevent the fire from spreading.

They also said that even though the flames are out the peat on the ground is still burning and a small gust of wind will push it onto the brush and set alight again.  I heard the news this evening that they have finally surrounded the fire so can now deal with cooling everything down.  Another photo of my Dad's below of the smouldering forest floor.

Big thanks go out to all the fire crew from around the South who are working around the clock.  It's forecasted to rain tonight it would really help them out, so lets keep our fingers crossed.

Birch Hill and Hanworth Community Website

Today the website I designed for the Birch Hill and Hanworth community went live Yay!! I'm really pleased how it turned out and need to extend a big thank you to my brother Chris for taking the time to make it, even though he had insane amounts of Uni work to finish.  The link is below so if you live in the area or just want to find out what is going on take a look.

www.birchhillandhanworth.co.uk

The ladies who commissioned the website are currently working on the first release of the Birch Hill and Hanworth newsletter so sign up if you would like to receive it.

I've also been working on some designs for other websites, one was for Chris' new profile page Redesigning the Web.  This is part of his coursework and Chris designed the theme (old and new), the layout and the main globe and I just helped with some of the graphics.  I had a lot of fun with this, instead of several pages it is made up of one continuous page that scrolls up to space and down into the ground.  Chris let me go a bit mad and then he put loads of cool effects in afterwards.  It's not completely finished but we have lots more ideas so will work on it more later in the year.

There are quite a few surprises on this website, there are lots of links hidden around the page, so get clicking to find everything!!