As promised, this post is going to be a celebration of my clever friends and family. I was so amazed by the thought and creativity that went in the gifts we received for our wedding, but here I would like to highlight the homemade.

Most particular, from my sister of who it could previously have been said wouldn’t know how to thread a needle! She sewed every stitch herself and I am so pleased with it!

From my mother-in-law and one of my sisters-in-law another beautiful sampler - I love the colours in the piece!

My husband’s employee Leonie not only designed our invitations, but also made us this book, it’s embroidered with our initials: DM on the front and SM on the back

Another of Duncan’s employees, Emily is a very clever artist, she gave us this lovely screen print. My photo doesn’t do it justice, I couldn’t get rid of the reflection - there’s some stitch work on this as well..

We also got some lovely homemade cards - I was using a borrowed camera and not all the photos turned out well, but here’s a photo of most of the cards - there are more out of shot..

and in particular ones from my old flat mate Hannah: hannah.jpg

and last but not in the least least a card from my parent’s neighbour, Christine - this is a waterfall card. I hadn’t come across one before, but I’ve just had a quick google and found a tutorial for how to make this type of card.

So many thanks to all!!

A photo that not only shows my lovely new husband, my beautiful dress (I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say that but I loved my dress!) and THE cake! My mum made the cake for us - the flowers and everything.. I’m so proud of her, I have to admit she took some persuading and really didn’t want the responsibility but I knew she’d do such a wonderful job and it means so much more.. in fact here’s another photo of the cake!

There are more photos over on flickr, so I won’t post any more here - until the official ones come through

We just had the best day - our friends sang beautifully in church, they were really amazing and if I’d known whether the mascara I was wearing was waterproof I’d have been in floods throughout!! Just thinking now I keep thinking of all the little things that happened to make it so special, I guess the main thing was sharing it with friends and family who were just so lovely and supportive.

We also got an amazing selection of homemade gifts and cards which I will be photographing and blogging about - including a surprise sampler from my sister who we jokingly say can’t sew on a button - she certainly proved us all wrong!

Last week we had a few days in the Peak District at a lovely Inn, which did great pub food, lots of good beers and was really well placed for me to go check out a sewing shop in Bakewell They have an online store, Wye needlecraft which I haven’t checked out yet, but if it’s anything like the shop it should be pretty good - they had a great selection of embroidery threads.

Followed by a few days in Madrid, in another lovely hotel right by the Retiro Park.. which is well worth a visit if you’re in Madrid.

Unfortunately, I came home with an ear infection - so normal service won’t resume quite so quickly, I know I have a backlog of blogs built up to add to the list, but I’ll get there eventually!

I hope you all had a happy month of June,

Suzi Morris