Sunny Seaside

 We are home again from our lovely trip to the seaside...........a wonderful week full of fresh air and sunshine, blue skies and blue sea............my husband had a great time sailing in the regatta and the family came down to stay too and we had lots of fun..............

 .............mr p and i had a picnic lunch here the day we arrived, watching the waves and the boats and the sea birds..........we explored a bit more of the pretty island too..............

 ..................i love looking for wildflowers (still) a hobby that i began as a child with an i-spy book.....

 ................in the days when i used to paint flowers all day i would carefully draw and paint each flower in watercolour and eventually add them to textile designs or birthday card illustrations......

 ...........purple vetch was one of my favourites and the twining leaves were always useful to fill in gaps in all-over patterns..........i still love to have wildflower posies in the holiday house, even if i'm not actually painting them at the moment..................

 ...............i did a little bit of crochet over the week, finishing my latest flowery cushion.......

 .................here it is outside the holiday cottage.....the chair is mine, i took it with me :)............

                ............now i have my little summer flower pillow collection all done................

 ..................there were bright summer flowers everywhere, and it seemed there were many more than usual, perhaps because of all the good weather............below is a picture of a cottage garden at cemaes bay, packed with colourful flowers............the whole village was decked out with pretty pots and window boxes...............

...............charlie and daisy had a wonderful time playing on the beach and in the water.........there is a safe pool for children where they met up with lots of others too..........they went crab reeling on the pier every day, both proving very deft with the fishing nets, and fascinated by the crabs they caught............we enjoyed every moment of our time.............the house was very quiet when they all left on friday night and we tidied up and packed to come home on saturday morning...............

 ...............as always in beaumaris, i visited the inspiring janet bell gallery and met up with lovely janet herself for such a nice chat and catch up............the gallery always has something tempting and i bought a few treats, including a wonderful wintry print which i will show in a future post.............

 ...............i really love the pretty painted cottages...............i wonder what colour i would choose if i had my own holiday cottage?................i would probably go for something pale like this pretty blue one.............but i do love this rather bright raspberry pink one too..............

 ...............below is my project in this month's crafts beautiful magazine.............

.............a pink cottage and a blue cottage for a cross stitched pin cushion and tag...............find out more on the crafts beautiful website here...................

 ..............now we are home i am getting on with my two quilts and planning more that i'd like to make........i also want to paint some furniture and do some gardening as the garden has been growing madly while we were away..........lots of sweetpeas to snip, beans to pick, zinnias to snip..........and weeds to pull out...........the marsh marigold in the pond has suddenly grown lots of flowers too......i will be looking after the grandchildren a few times over the summer holidays and will enjoy hearing them running about and their little fluting voices again.............
i will leave you with this seaside picture of some ever hungry seagulls watching a family enjoying their picnic nearby............

......thank you for dropping in to see me here, lovely readers, it is a pleasure to have your visits and to read your sweet comments too............wishing you a wonderful week.........back soon xxxxxxxxxxxx