Strawberry Jam

(Please excuse the look of my blog, I'm having problems with blogger, see end of post...)

I'm a hopeless gardener. I've never even managed to grow a decent crop of strawberries. Everyone can grow strawberries. Not me. I grew one once. Yes a strawberry actually grew on a strawberry plant I had planted. It was tiny and green but a strawberry none the less. Big Cuckoo was almost a year old and he scrabbled along to the lonesome strawberry and plucked it off. Gone.

This week I wanted strawberries of the home grown variety...

...so I made some

 

...several actually

They are filled with lavender.

So sweet!

 Some will go in my drawers to keep the moths at bay

Some will hang in my wardrobe

Some will be tied on to wrapped gifts

I plan to make many more as they are adorable and I'd like to have a strawberry garland on my plate rack. I have seen this, some time last year I think, on one of the blogs I read. The lady had been rearranging her treasures and added some little strawberries she'd made. It was a pine dresser. I want to give credit to the person who has inspired me. I think it was a follower of mine. Was it you? Please say and leave a link so I can edit this. (edit: it was Ruby Red!)

I enjoyed making  these strawberries a lot as once I'd got to the stuffed and stitched stage they were very portable and I missed my quilt. I missed stitching. So I took them about with me to have their hats popped on.  Terribly relaxing, maybe it was the lavender. Well whatever it was I have had a calm week. Except for after school today when I opened the car door in the village and it seemed the entire contents of my car spilled out into the very full and wet gutter. Books bags, crochet bag, diary (yes my posh one that was a special gift), the nappy bag and Big's lunchbox and half eaten contents. I swore. Then I sniffed a strawberry and all was well.

I have now started more so this jar will b

You may recognise these little dearies from this months Mollie Makes Magazine...

I'm so delighted with Mollie Makes. Mollie Makes me feel inspired, excited, happy, like I belong to this crafty world. I just feel chuffed with every page.  Even the advert you can see here is right up my street. It'll be no big surprise that I have signed up for the subscription. Actually I went for the 3 for a fiver offer before I'd even seen a copy in real life! I was going demented trying to get the trial edition, you know the one with The Apple Cosy. I felt I needed this magazine. That it would make me happy happy happy. Then one arrived in my letter box from gorgeous Vanessa who had heard of my search. Gawd bless her and this blog world we inhabit.

Enjoy your weekend where ever you are. Ours is going to be jam (pun intentional in light of all the strawbs) packed. I prefer them to be slow quiet ones where we just pootle about. I'm sure it'll whizz by in a flash. Time is running too fast lately. I go to bed each day wishing to start it all over again. The boys are fun bundles these days and the baby is such a sunny little chap. I'm loving this chapter of my life. I feel happy. I feel....steady, normal.... I'm feeling well. My state of mind is good. I do not take this for granted believe me.

xxx

ps. I just tried cropping my banner photo as I feel it's too long, and blogger said I can't because I've exceeded my picassa web album upload quota and I need to purchase more storage. What's that all about? I'm hoping I can upload pics to my posts still! I'll try now....

pps. (a bit later)  So I can upload photos to my blog posts and to my side bar using URLs and from my computer but not to my banner. And now Blogger has lost my old banner photo all together even though I did not click save changes! 

I have opened a flickr account but it keeps saying the URL is invalid (it says this when I try to upload from there for my posts or photo's in my sidebar too) So flickr is not helping me.  

I can upload a banner photo from existing photo's on my blog using the URL but of course they aren't the correct width, same if I upload from elsewhere on the net. 

Now this techy stuff makes my head burst. One minute my banner was there and the next it is gone. I didn't "save changes" when I was editing so it should still be there.  I've deleted photo's from my blog but there's still not enough space. Is this one of those Blogger gremlins that is going around? Honestly, I get so frustrated by this stuff. I have such a small blog I can't see how I can have ran out of space already.   It's this sort of thing that will stop me from blogging. I'm feeling RAGE!!!!  I need a lavender strawberry.

ppps.(the next day) Phew, I have a banner again! But now it's a bit wide....So weird how I managed to upload a photo and now it's not uploading again so I can't alter the size. But at least there's something there.