9 of 52 weeks of happy

Good evening

Just a quick post whilst I wait for the dinner to finish cooking - oh the joys of a slow cooker - bung it in and wait a few hours! This will be happening lots this week as I've ended up with several days paid work :)

I was late joining in with the happy posts hence I am on week 9 and everyone else is posting week 10 pics!!

Here's this weeks mosaic;

1 & 4- As everyone knows it was Mothers Day here in the UK this weekend. Those boys of mine were brilliant - they prompted each other and cards and pressies were bought and wrapped! Even more amazingly Big Son got himself up yesterday morning and after checking if I was awake, disappeared downstairs and made me breakfast in bed!! Such sweeties the pair of them :)

2 - My copy of Pretty Nostalgic arrived in the post last week - real happy post. Full of lovely things as usual.

3 - I love rugby and I was more than happy to see England win against Italy yesterday - setting things up for an exciting finale next weekend against Wales. 

Right apparently its dishing up time - two faces have appeared with hungry looks on them - odd considering they raided MY mothers day chocolates after school AND the cake tin!!

See you soon, I've a couple of little makes to share.

xxx Vicki xxx

The madness has started!

Good evening

Yep the festive madness has started. Firstly Saturday saw those brass players of mine at their first festive event - Christmas Lights Switch On in Aldeburgh. Oh dear the weather was pretty dire - wet & windy. However most of the band are a hardy bunch and there was an excellent turn out and they played their sets and then retired to the pub!! Therefore we missed Lenny Henry actually doing the switching on bit but I'm told he was lovely!!

Sunday was drier which was handy as I'd a hot date with Little Son. We headed on the train to Ipswich. He has his first proper girlfriend and wanted help choosing Christmas presents for her. There was also a list of other things that are needed both for Christmas and now including trainers for said teenager who is growing far too quickly.

What we didn't realise until the morning was it was the big lights on event there too - luckily we were in and out in a couple of hours before the hordes descended on the Cornhill. This picture from the local paper shows how busy it was after we'd left and also the Christmas tree which is dividing local opinion;

I don't think I need to go into any big town now until after Christmas - any remaining pressies can be bought locally or online :) Rather handy as there are now no spare weekend days left!

I treated myself to two things - firstly this cute gingerbread house which you can light up with a tealight;

Good old Poundland!

and secondly the Pretty Nostalgic book - its normally for sale for £25 but WH Smiths had it on offer for just £12 - an early pressie to me from me!!

Lots of lovely pictures and articles - I've started on the Winter section with pictures of vintage Christmas celebrations and decorations.

I've decided to join in with Floss's Pause In Advent for a 4th year - some might have noticed I accidentally published the draft of my first post yesterday - whoops - its now back in draft form till next weekend.

I hope none of my lovely readers and followers have been too affected by all the awful flooding? 

See you soon

xxx Vicki xxx

Pretty Nostalgic v The Simple Things

Good afternoon

Brrrr its gone chilly here - just in time for the weekend to start :( It starts here about 3.30 on a Friday when the boys arrive home from school. Once the house is fuller I might sneak the heating on for an hour until then its cardi & scarf time - clashing patterns are the thing today!

Anyhow - Pretty Nostalgic v The Simple Things - 2 relatively new magazines that have been mentioned many times in blogland and also in my other home of Instagram.

I've bought several issues of each now and now its time to decide - which one is best.

Simple Things comes from the same publishing team as Molliemakes. The first two issues I enjoyed and was excited to see No3 in the shops. However like MM the quality varies and this issue is not great. Rather too many ads and rather commercial :(

Pretty Nostalgic is independently published and has a much more cosy feeling to it. Its published bi-monthly so its £8 cover price makes its actually cheaper than the monthly published Simple Things and there's a wonderful subscription offer on at the moments where you can save 25% - I've just done this.

It is the sort of magazine that you'd want to keep and refer back to for a long time. It feels almost wrong calling it a magazine as the quality is more that of a book. The articles are lovely and there's lots of emphasis on handmade by British makers rather than the imported from the far-east-even-though-its-pretending-to-be-handmade that other magazines seem to feature rather a lot of - I can't name that maker as I don't want to be sued!

Anyhow off my magazine soapbox - just a note to say - there is no sponsorship involved in this post - just my opinion. Have you read either of these two mags - if so what do you think??

Oh and just to prove it - one quick final picture;

Have a lovely weekend what ever you are planning - here it includes Christmas cake baking, rugby watching, crochet, Strictly Come Dancing, Remembrance Parade and a roast dinner to finish it all off.

See you soon

xxx Vicki xxx