Jane's Journal

The weather has turned bitterly cold for the last few days and for the first time this winter we lit our open fire.
Normally with our central heating running  it never really gets chilly enough to light the fire but the wintry weather gave us a great excuse to do so.
There is nothing like a real fire. It is so mesmerising to watch the flames. When we moved into our 1930s terraced house in 1983 I really had no real interest in these style of houses. It was just a good house, at a good price in a good location and we bought it. In the front room still stood the original 1930s tiled fire place and if I am really honest I didn't like it and fully intended that when we decorated it would be removed.

The front room when we bought out house was just about the only room which did not need redecorating. We decided just to buy new carpet and it was a very livable room for many years. As we are such slow decorators it took us years until the time arrived to decorate it. As the years passed by I became more and more interested in the style of our house. When we replaced the windows (horrible picture windows with louvres put in during the 1970s by the previous owners) we even went back to the original style with individual panes.

So when the time came to re decorate the front room I was really pleased that the original fire place still stood. It is one of the few left in our road which have not been pulled out. I love it and of course it suits the room as that is what it was made for it. I often think of what it must have been like when the house was built in 1935, in those days open fires were  the only form of heating.


The other project we undertook to restore the appearance of our house to that of the 1930s was to find a talented stained glass maker who reproduced for us the number window which every house would have had in their porch. There are only 2 remaining in our road and those owners kindly allowed us to photograph and measure up. We did slightly add to the design but it is pretty faithful to the original.






This is taken in the evening from inside the hall (and obviously the number is visible the correct way round from outside) but you can see how well the light streams through. On a sunny day the light dances about in colours on the walls and carpet.













And here is a close up showing the individual pieces of glass and the lovely colours. We spent a long time choosing them, even the clear glass is faithful to that used in the 1930s.

So this lovely new window see the house through may be another 100 years. The old has become "new!"




Now with that fortunate link I can show you my card challenge for today. It is actually for a New Baby. No there are no babies arriving yet in our family but I am often asked if I make these cards.  Up until I few weeks ago I did not own any New Baby Stamps but I decided to buy this very sweet set from my friend Kerry. They are really lovely and I had a play with some colouring...
I have also bought some sweet baby boy and baby girl papers. I decided to make my first card as a Baby Girl card and here she is






Rather than keeping to just pastel pink I decided to go for more bold colours, red and pink.  The backing paper also  has browns in it. I also added some "celebrate" worded paper which I matted with pink card.









I coloured the stamped image using my trusty Promarkers and added a little gem in the centre of the bow on the pram for a little bling.



















I finished off my card with a  piece of shiny brown satin polka dot ribbon, a red polka dot button and some red pearls.

I rather like this different colour way.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Passion for Promarkers Challenge 134 New Beginnings
Cupcake Craftroom Feb Challenge New Beginnings
Really Reasonable Ribbon challenge 41 pink and red
Divas by Design challenge 20, anything goes
Party Time Tuesday's challenge 53 anything goes
Just Tracey's Crafts Something for a female
Joanna Sheen's Feb challenge  Love is in the air



I am still on a lovely roll with my cards and found I won another challenge last week...have a look here. I really am doing a lot of happy dancing here. I will show you my winnings for my stash when they have all  arrived.

So it's fingers crossed for some Lady Luck again this week for my cards ;0) Thank you so much for all the lovely comments you leave about my cards. I am sure it is all your good wishes that have stirred the ether and made my cards into winners. I am proudly wearing my winner badges in my side bar of my blog.

The forecaster are saying we may well have snow here over the weekend but even if we do it should be short lived. We shall definitely be lighting our fire again. Keep snug wherever you are and have a lovely weekend.
If it snows then it is crafting and chocolate for me...!


Bye for now,

Jane x