Tree time and a Christmas birthday

My Mum just celebrated her birthday. I  know that she sometimes takes a peep at my blog so I have waited until  today to show you the card I made for her. 

I do love this Lili of the Valley image called Dandelion clock. I stamped the image onto a die cut blank and coloured it with my Promarkers. I decided to have a nice bright red, white and blue theme to cheer up the dark days at this time of the year.

Here she is in close up. I added some glitter to her wings. My Mum loves fairies! I also added some glamour dust to the dandelion heads. 

I machine stitched around the border of the backing paper with red thread and added a big bright spray of mulberry flowers in reds and blues.

I also punch cut some leaves and added some wire tendrils.

I finished the card off with some pearls and a red butterfly. I stamped my birthday greetings onto a round sentiment and added a piece of bright spotty ribbon.

I am entering this card into a couple of card challenges ;

Lili of the Valley Challenge 123 Anything but a Christmas card

Penny Black December Challenge, Happy Birthday

Totally Gorjuss Sketch

Paper Sundae Challenge 98 2 of 4 toppings! I have used all 4 of the toppings; i.e red, stripes, die cuts and stitching.

I  Did It Creations Challenge blog Challenge 84, Flowers

Thanks for looking at my card ;0)

I had a wonderful weekend as it was that special first weekend in December when we purchase "The Christmas Trees". Yes we have 2 as one is the "Chocolate Tree". Last year we were in the middle of decorating so we only had the main one but all that is now finished we were able to get back to normal. 

It is always important for us to chose them so we trotted off to our local nursery.

This very patient lad unwrapped lots of trees until we found our Perfect 2. One is a 7 footer the other a small potted tree.

They were both delivered this afternoon and we got busy decorating them.

I love sorting through our decorations and remembering where different ones have been bought from.

This gorgeous glass Father Christmas is a limited edition and we bought him at the Nuremberg Christmas market in 2008 

Along with this super Nutcracker.

After over an hour of bauble hanging the main tree was finished and here she is in all her glory. We have so many lovely baubles. 

And here is the chocolate tree by the front door during the day...........

And then this evening as darkness falls...............

I also had great fun making mince pies with my darling daughter. I shall upload those photos later and be back really soon with another Countdown to Christmas post. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend too, perhaps also getting your trees up? 

Meanwhile can you imagine what Billy was doing during all this ................................................................

Shhhhh don't shout too loud...but there are now only 21 days left until Christmas ..... back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane (and a very sleepy Billy) xx