She Loved it all

My niece that is.  We had a lovely girly lunch with my nan, mum, lil sis and of course the star of the day the 21st birthday girl.  There was lots of yummy food laid on by my mum to which we all tucked in and scoffed the lot!  Her brother joined us after his shift at the pub and yes we did save him some grub.  Once all our bellies were full it was onto the tradition of card and present giving.

21 glittery cupcakes with candles had to be blown out first.  Making these was a bit hairy that day as it was mightily hot and humid and you can guess what that does to the buttercream I was trying to pipe oh so elegantly.

Can you spot the little doggie in amongst them.  Looks like he is checking whose watching before he has a good ol lick of the icing.  She wants a real St Bernard but that's as close as she is getting at the moment.  Have you seen how much food they get through in a week!

It's tradition for me to make my niece big birthday cards, for her 18th she demanded an A4 size, for her 21st she wanted A3 no less!!  It's not that I don't have cardstock big enough you understand, it's the 'what on earth do I fill it all with' dilema!  So as you can see I pretty much chucked everything at it!  The border was punched using my new Martha Stewart deep edge punch which also makes daisies if you punch both sides of narrow card strip.  The bunting sentiment in the middle was hand drawn by me and the embellishments and papers are all from KandCompany ranges.

And it just about passed the test of standing up unassisted, phew!

Another card made for Nana to give.  I like this colour combo and as you can see I'm back to the easel cards again!

And we had to have one for Great Nana to give too.  The flowers are by Prima and are so very handy to make a quick card pop.  All of her cards were magic ones, you open them up and pieces of valuable paper come fluttering out of them.  I used to love those as a child although now I much prefer an actual pressie that someone picked out for me.

It was a very nice day and the sun came out in the end for us to enjoy in the afternoon.  These gorgeous yellow roses were destined for her bedroom dresser, I gave them to her with the picnic hamper I renovated for her.

I can't for the life of me remember where I got this check fabric from but I love it.  Twas perfect for the hamper and goes really well with the spotty napkins from John Lewis.  The vintage flask is from a bootsale a while ago and she's always wanted one to put her Pimms in!

It didn't take too long to do at all, the most time consuming bit was stitching all the elastics in place.  I did make one booboo, can you spot it?  I cut too wide round the buckles and when hemmed the gap is a lot bigger than it should be, hey ho!  Despite the booboo (how else would we learn) this has really inspired me to get more sewing done, I really do put things off for far too long.

Oh and this is how the hamper looked before I made it over.

Thanks for popping by, hope you are all well and if in the UK enjoying the glorious sunshine we are having.