oh..WOW!

Look at my poor garden gnomes today!!!  It snowed all night, and then all day too, and by this evening they were completely buried!

This was the view we woke up to this am [it started snowing slightly 9pm last night, otherwise it had just been a hard frost yesterday]...

from our bedroom window

from George's window at the back of the house

The kids built a snowman this morning, and Sophie and I sledged before starting our igloo in the back garden.

I took some photographs down the road; there were plenty of people getting their cameras out, it was so beautiful.

We finished the igloo late this afternoon.  The boys were great at making 'bricks' by packing snow in the washing up bowl :) 

It does look more like a beehive than an igloo, but it's ace inside with candles lit.

Forecast a freeze tonight so this igloo should last us a while!  We're much more used to rain here in Manchester than this much snow.  It was such an unusual thing that ITV broadcast their national news live from Manchester tonight!!  Snow's on it's way down south tonight.  I think I need a play inside day tomorrow, every time I shut my eyes all I see is snow falling.  I spent 11 hours out there today, just went in for lunch!!

weird weather!

It shouldn't really feel weird but it does!  It doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind here.  We've just had a bit more snow, on top of the ice from yesterday.  It was -7C last night, but warmer tonight, although my laptop has a little snow symbol by the temp!!  My 3 children were sent home from school today as the boiler had broken.  George [15] had been lamenting that it never happened in schools round here (Oldham and Tameside had lots of closures on the radio this am) and hey presto, 45mins later he was phoning to say they were coming home.  It's all fixed now so they'll be back in tomorrow and I can get on with sorting out the house, and my craft room!  I'm having a major reorganisation in there...

 

...and I can finally get to my desk!!  Lots of sorting and moving of furniture to do on the other side of it though, I have to say!!!

ooo...ooo...ooo

I've got 50 followers!!!  Hee hee hee.  It's very, very nice to know that people like my blog enough to want to follow it and there's just something about having 50.  So thankyou all, and a special hello to the newbies :)

This is what I actually came to blog!!  Although the title still follows!! 

Jill's having a blog hop.  :) :) :)

I've only recently started doing these and they're great fun; you get to see loads of blogs you might never have found, and there are giveaways on the way.  Jill's treat is that this starts on the Sunday after Christmas so gives us all something to look forward to after the joy of Christmas. 

We'd love you to copy and paste the above image on your sidebar so we get lots of people joining in.  The more the merrier!  Visiting other people who leave comments is another way of finding new blogs to fall in love with :)

Now I can't say my sewing machine needle appreciated getting gunked up with embossing powder on occasion whilst getting these cards finished but it coped admirably.  I'm pleased with them.

Hope you can see these cards; sorry they're white on almost white!!

I woke to some amazement re the snow this am.  You saw the inch or so we had.  Well, it froze last night, so we woke to warnings on the radio from police and ambulance to only make essential journeys as the conditions were so treacherous.  But I guess ice is ice and it doesn't really matter if it's an inch thick or three inches thick, it's still nasty, nasty stuff.  And it was bad out there!  But the main roads improved throughout the day so driving was actually safer than walking!

real snow...how fab!

We don't get good snow very often, the clouds usually tip it on the hills surrounding Manchester before they get to us.  But we got some today :) 

We had a bit of snow yesterday but it had gone by the evening, washed away by Manchester rain.  But we woke up to that special silence snow brings, and the excited voices of the little ones next door, which hinted that it had snowed again.  I have to say though, it was a lovely surprise to see how white it was out there.

[unfortunately we don't live in that yummy b/w house but the house in the middle above with the beech tree in the garden - still a gorgeous house though!]

Gyp loves catching snowballs (and eating them) but was rather surprised to discover that it was a bit slippy out there.  Frozen rain from last night meant treacherous road and pavement conditions.  But we were ok building a snowman!

And I made it out for lunch with some girlfriends from school.  Look at these snowmen in a shop window we went past,...how fab are those hats!!

With all our December birthdays over [my youngest nephew was one yesterday :)], I settled down to getting a bit further with my Christmas cards. 

I partially cuttlebugged the white card with the snowflake EF, and mounted the pieces I'd made at Paddy's last week on her batch card workshop.  I loved making these, Paddy comes up with some amazing techniques :)

I'm adding stitching to mine so it's the sewing machine out tomorrow.  Which is good, as I've got some Christmas presents to make!!

it's snowing!!

Only on my blog though, unfortunately!  These little full stops and apostrophes falling as snow are pretty close to what it looks like if it does ever snow in Manchester ...just floaty bits in the air that take a while to stick. 

Don't forget play date tomorrow; I got to play with new stamps to make this week's challenge :)