Winter colour

First of all I wanted to thank you all for the amazing reception you gave my Christmas configurations book I showed in my last post. I am so touched by your kind comments. I gave it to my son on Tuesday and he loved it. It has pride of place on his mantelpiece in his living room.

We finally had our first frost of the season on Monday and it was fun to see the leaves with their icy layer in the the garden.

Now that some cooler weather has arrived the trees are at last releasing their leaves and there are piles of golden leaves beneath them. It almost looks as though they have stepped out of their clothes.

The "skeletons" of the trees have started to appear. I always think they look like lungs with branching bronchioles!

and also reveal some secret empty nests. 

Even though the trees are losing their colour there are still some pretty flowers to be seen.
Winter flowering jasmine.....

and berberis.

The pretty viburnum is coming into flower

and some of my favourite berries at this time of the year are ripe and ready to feed the wild life...

holly, in traditional red

and orange

Yes it is only a few weeks until the first day of winter and the nights are starting so early. It is now getting dark at nearly 4pm.
Thanks goodness we have Christmas to look forward to,  it's just 4 weeks today...a beacon of light for keeping our spirits up during these dark, dismal days.

I thought I would share a bright cheerful card today to bring a little sparkle to my post. I was inspired by holly and the red of the berries and went for a very sweet Lili of the Valley stamp for my card.

I love this stamp,here it is in close up.

I coloured it using my Promakers and highlighted with Prismacolor pencils. The holly leaves are Cheery Lynn and the candle die is by Marianne. The sentiment is also LOTV.
I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Lili of the Valley Merry Christmas
Crafty Hazelnut's patterned paper anything goes
The Artistic stamper Christmas is coming
Crafty Little Fairies not a square
Little Claire's shaped card
A creative romance something old my old is my stamp, bought last Christmas
Crafty boots stars
Crafty sentiments use die cuts
Party time Tuesday anything goes
Simon Says stamp Wednesdays anything goes
Creative Inspirations season's greetings

I also chose a cute image as we are looking forward to a super long weekend celebrating our SIL's 30th birthday at the Winter Wonderland at Centre Parcs, Longleat. We are so excited as on Sunday we will be taking Daisy to visit Father Christmas...ho ho ho. I hope to be able to schedule my Funkie Junkie card for Sunday, if I manage to get it made and photographed in time. Fingers crossed.

A very happy thanksgiving to all my friends across the pond, enjoy time with your loved ones,

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x