Birthdays, bags and blog buttons

 
It was my birthday on Wednesday and my newly returned son Felix made me this scrumptious white chocolate and summer berry cheesecake! It is his own recipe and it tasted as good as it looks.

My dear husband bought me a new camera! I have been using his old one, but it was a bit too complicated for me and we never really bonded. So now I have a Nikon Coolpix. It's purple and about the size of a mobile! I love it, but I don't have a photo of the actual camera as I don't want to use anything else to take photos now!

And if that wasn't enough I also received my bag from the Goodie Bag Swap!

Isn't this fabulous! Made by Kelly of Serendipity Designs blog. It came all the way from Australia! Kelly made this in her last few weeks of pregnancy, there is a thrilling story about it here. It is a proper weekend sized bag with 4 pockets inside and 2 outside. I am going down to London next weekend for my neice's hen night and I was really hoping I would get a bag I could take with me. So I am really delighted, AND Kelly included a bag of fabric scraps too!
 
I love this gorgeous fabric, and the pinks and reds together. It is totally me, thanks Kelly!!
 
She also sent me this really funky corsage made from a zip! I have never seen this done before - ingenious!

I have been too busy taking photos and eating cake to get much sewing done this week, but I did manage to make the back for my kaleidoscope quilt and baste it. In fact, I have just about finished quilting it by now. I am finding it very hard to manage my time at the moment. I have so many things on the go that I feel like a headless chicken, hence the fact it has taken me since Thursday to actually post this.

By popular request, here are the prayer flags that Felix and Jonathan were putting up as I was writing about his homecoming last weekend. I love having this splash of colour amidst the green.

I am not much of a photographer (being married to one has made me a bit lazy), but seeing as I have my very own camera now, I tried out a couple of landscapes. This is the field across the road from us. I love it when the sky is all grey and stormy but the sun is shining in the foreground. Please excuse Jonathan's watermark on all the photos (I did take everyone except the last one!), we are having a few teething problems with software.

And if all that wasn't exciting enough, I also have my very own blog button! That you can grab!!
I drew this little button flower and Jonathan made it in to a logo. And Lynne very helpfully told me how to make it into a blog button in this post on her blog (yay, I did it on my own Lynne!!). The strap line 'as crafty as a quilted fox' was suggested by my youngest boy Jacob when I set this blog up (2 years ago now!). I think it is spot on - whimsical but accurate!

I think it is a very pretty button, and if you agree, please feel free to decorate your own blog with it. Plus I would love to see it in use so I can check I did it right! I do have another reason for needing a new logo, but more on that later...

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.bearpawandbearpaw.blogspot.com/" title="Bearpaw"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2175/5823897085_b619e24d16_o.jpg" alt="Bearpaw" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

And one final little treat for you...

This cutie-pie is a baby stoat. he was wandering around outside our house the other day and Jonathan managed to get a photo of him (not easy). How cute is he?!

You just wouldn't believe the amount of wildlife roaming around us here. Honestly, I feel like we are on Springwatch!