Whilst waiting for Girl Lacer to FINALLY get into her pyjamas . . .

 . . . I was taking the washing off the line in the encroaching dusk (which I’m suddenly aware of is so much earlier now), I looked round my garden, which an estate agent would describe as ‘mature’ (i.e. full of weeds – honestly, there’s a flat round the corner from me in the same design, so I was nosing online at the particulars (and the price, which has fallen dramatically, the housing slump is really starting to hit round here) and anyway the garden was described as ‘mature’ and honestly it was from what I could tell from the wall of green in the photo, actually full of weeds). Anyway, there I was in my ‘mature’ garden and there is currently a shameful lack of colour in it, other than green but for one thing and all that green made that one thing look so good, I just had to go and take a photo of it, except I’ve only got battery in my camera phone at the moment and so the photo is a bit blurry but here it is,

Of my vegetable gardening attempts this year, I seem to have turned out to be pretty much solely a chilli and basil farmer, as I do ok with them but not with much else!

By this point Girl Lacer, who has all the makings of a diplomat or a civil servant in the way how she can find excuses for anything then stand her ground like a stubborn bulldog was debating whether her pyjamas were in fact too small. So I found her a new pair (she has shot up like one of the weeds in my garden this summer) and then my eye caught the painted boxes that were drying by the kitchen door as I went out again to complete my laundry.

We made these yesterdays, just out of the sticks you get in ice lollies (we don’t eat that many ice lollies, you can buy them in craft shops). They’re easy to make into boxes, just construct the base first by creating a layer of sticks against two edging sticks (I am so not explaining this well) then layer up the sticks to make the walls of the box. The lid is made in the same way as the base. I made the box yesterday and Girl Lacer made the lid, then today Girl Lacer painted the box and Boy Lacer painted the lid.

So, another busy day, with no chance to play with a new toy that arrived today until a snatched ten minutes where I had to ‘hide’ in my bedroom and get my new stamps out.

Not the best place to do stamping on the bed really, but it’s two lovely stamp sets (I used a combination of the two sets for the picture above), from Yellow Owl Workshop, which I couldn’t resist after seeing them on Angry Chicken. I’ll be using them to make cards. Will definitely be having more practice though, this time on a table!