Button challenge, little lambs & white Easter 2008

Easter has come and gone so fast, but I still have a few photos to show you anyway, but first of all I'd like to show you the beautiful mail I got from Andrea's web boutique http://www.onehundredwishes.com/ on Saturday :

It is so hard to resist all the wonderful goodies from her Onehundred wishes web boutique, don't you think so too? Got these beautiful satin ribbons, foil keys, flash cards as well as the 2 gorgeous velvet bunnies and the wonderful big Nicol Sayre collection eggs!

I made this two sided egg for my mum, the other side is turqouise:

More filled Easter eggs:

Easter Sunday we spent at my sister's cottage where she had these cute 2 weeks old Easter lambs in her cottage garden:

We could enjoy seeing them play outside in the sun through the window of her conservatory and my daughter took lots of photos too from which she also made this little animation:

See the beautiful blue sky on Easter Sunday? You'd think it would have been a warm day wouldn't you? But it was actually freezing!

The next day we got the first snow of the year, we didn't have any snow all winter, but got a white Easter Monday:

View through my kitchen window, click picture to enlarge:

But as if this wasn't enough for spring, the next day we woke up to even more snow, can you see it falling?

Quickly my garden lay under a white blanket:

Well now to change the subject I took photos of some of my buttons for Analise's button challenge show and tell over at flickr, go have a look if you'd like to see more beautiful button collections:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/showmeyourbuttons/

Above are my mother of pearl buttons and below is my button treasure box filled with vintage buttons:

These were flea market finds, I took this photo last summer but think it fits so well in Analise's challenge:

That's it for today, happy 1st of April everyone!

Carol(a) xox

Happy Easter and oh no we'll get frost and snow!

Thought I share with you my dear blogging friends and readers some more Easter and Spring eye candy, but before I show you more pictures from my decorated home and garden, I have to show you what I got in the mail on Thursday just in time for Easter!

It is a wonderful surprise parcel from my German blogging friend Nicole of http://www.smalltreasures.blogspot.com/!

Oh how I love surprises like this! :D

See the tiny bird cage above isn't it just the sweetest? It was in the parcel along with many other treats like lots of millinery flowers, birdies, lace paper border, Vintage wallpaper and wallpaper border which I find extremely pretty, tiny buttons in beautiful colors and a collection of her gorgeous Toile de Jouy tags! Aww I feel so spoiled Nicki, thank you so much! You can click on the picture and then on the orange button to enlarge it fully and see all the details:

In the following photo is my new birdie king along with a garden thread tin box. I found both things on the first garden fair of the season:



I decorated a little Easter display around the self made nesting box:



The golden bunnies in the glass cloche belong to my faves this year. You can click and double click all the pictures in this post to enlarge them!

This glass pott is for plants or flowers but right now I use it as a storage for chocolate eggs:

Back to my garden, here is a pink display on one of my garden tables, I just love the pink filled prime roses and bought them in 5 different shades of pink. My mum once made the pottery wreath which I decorated around the pott:

Well it looks like I started the spring season a bit too early and my poor flowers are going to freeze again. The weather forecast says that we'll get a lot of snow and frost from today on until next Thursday *EEK*!

I cross my fingers that all my flowers and plants will survive these hopefully last day's of winter weather! We had such a mild winter until today and I'm not prepared for snow and frost, I want SPRING!!!

I made a nest for the fluffy chicken from a paper egg half which I simply decorated with two different Dresden gold borders:

Happy Easter to all of you!

Hugs Carol(a) xox

Spring is almost here and oh Easter too!

Temperatures are already rising up to 15 degrees celsius in the shade sometimes and clear sings of spring and Easter are to find everywhere around the house and garden here at Boxwood Cottage:

If you like to see more of my "creations under glass" like the one in the picture above please hop over to Pearl's blog: http://www.astorybooklife.com/
She has posted 2 whole segments about creations under glass from various talented blogging friends and I'm thrilled to be part of it!

I'm so in love with all shades of lilac, blue and pink in spring and the frilly pansies as well as the smaller viola cornutas are my all time favorite spring flowers, they are just so nostalgic and pretty that I can never resist them!

Doubleclick on the pictures to enlarge them (and then click again on the orange button which appears in the right bottom corner of the photo when you go over it with your mouse ) and see more details:

The little rusty bird is singing a spring song!

My favorite crocusses:

See the rusty iron thingy with the tea light glass in the next picture? It was a surprise gift from my friend Al aka Sigrun over at http://hillsidegarden.blogspot.com/ ! Thank you so much Al, I love it!

She just knows my love for rusty things in my garden!

I could already sit and relax in my deckchair a few times this year (with a hot coffee mug and lots of cushions and a warm cover of course) and I always enjoy this so much!

My sweet little friend Robin often comes by to enjoy the garden together with me:

Some glass eggs etc. hanging in my living room window:

I wish you all my dear readers and blogging friends a very happy Easter week with hopefully sunny weather to enjoy some time outside after all those cold, dark wet and windy weeks!

Thanks for stopping by everyone and I would be glad if you enjoyed my photos!

Carol xox

New Spring and Easter pendants

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers!

Spring is in the air now and I was quite productive in the last 4 weeks - whenever my back allowed me so - and can now happily present you my latest soldering works right in time for the beginning of spring and Easter. For the case that you might be interested in purchasing a pendant or even more, just drop me a line to the e-mail addy in my profile and we can sort something out. I'd be happy to hear from you! Hope you'll like my new creations. They are all two sided so that one can choose the favorite side to display.You can click on the pictures and enlarge them to see more details.

Front side or vice versa:

Two sided square pendants with Easter decor, made with lead free silver gleem solder, silver wire, vintage pictures and pearls. Size 7 cm x 7cm.

Back side or vice versa:


Front side or vice versa:

Two sided square pendants ready with different decors, made with lead free silver gleem solder, silver wire, vintage pictures and pearls.Size 7 cm x 7cm. Update Nr. 7, 8 and 9 are sold - thank you!

Back side or vice versa:

Front side or vice versa:

Two sided round spring pendants with different Spring and Easter decors, made with lead free silver gleem solder, silver wire, vintage pictures and pearls. Size is 7 cm diameter. Update: No 2 is reserved!
Back side or vice versa:

And for the french lovers:

Paris on both sides made from micro slides with lead free silver gleem solder and silver wire. Update: Paris No. 10 is sold - thank you!

And lastly I created a set of 6 cute soldered eggs to hang on an Easter tree for example. I really love how they turned out!

Made with lead free silver gleem solder. The size of the eggs is 1,5" x 2"

Update: The egg set is sold - thank you!

First side - or vice versa:

Second side or vice versa:

I hope you enjoy my photos and pendants!

Until next time at Boxwood Cottage, have a fab week everyone !

Carol(a) xox

Bad back and what's new!

New pictures from Boxwood Cottage, come see the big versions here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/boxwoodcottage/


Created with fd's" Flickr Toys. Click to enlarge!

Dear Blogging friends and readers, if you are still there, I have to apologise again for my long blog absence. I'm really sorry!

My lower back ist still hurting from the lumbar vertebrae inflammation and I still can't sit at the pc for a long time. I was at sick leave for a few weeks, even over my 45th b-day, but had to go back to the office sooner or later, now I'm back at work - with very much work to do - and it is quite hard to sit at my desk for 7,5 hours and in the evening my back is tired and I can't sit at the pc again for long. I get physical applications 2 times a week and physical training also 2 times a week and it's better, but I don't feel completely healed and I'm afraid of the bad pain possibly coming back when I do to much pc work in my spare time. Of course I check my e-mails regularly and I load some quick pictures of what's new here up to flickr every now and then and check my contacts pictures there. I became quite a flickr maniac and a swapaholic lol. When I have some spare time left and I'm still able to sit I prefer to use this time in a creative way for crafts and swaps better than for reading blogs for hours which I did before. I check my favorite blogs and leave comments sometimes but not as often as I used to do. I hope to get my full back strength back and then be able to come and blog regularly again though! Please keep checking in and don't forget me! A big thank you to everyone who checked in and left me comments during the last two month! I appreciated them a lot!


Meanwhile I'd like to link you over to my flickr account here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/boxwoodcottage/

if you like to see the full pictures which I showed you in the mosaic above and want to see what else happens at Boxwood Cottage then please come visit me there! I'd be more then happy if you would leave me a comment!

Warmest wishes from Boxwood Cottage sends y'all

Carol(a) xox

P.S.:

A post with just one picture looks so sad to me so I decided to add my latest crafts:

1. My nest for Heather Speckled Eggs Sweet little nest swap:

2. My new inspiration board made from a simple pin board, painted shabby white and then I pinned pretty papers, emphemera, soldered pieces, embellishments, jewelry, Dresdens, art work etc on the board with pretty hat pins. This was such a fun and easy afternoon project!

If you want to see more details please come to my flickr as I told you above! There you can chose the sizes you'd like to see it! As always blogger isn't cooperating with me and you can't enlarge it here grrr