Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #344 - results

We've gone from snow to endless rain here - little Dudley just nips out into the garden whenever necessary and scoots back indoors for a quick rub down with a towel! He's not a wimp of a dog but I don't think he's keen on regular soakings either, and I don't blame him.

The past couple of weeks have been such a wonderful time with Darnell's brilliant blog hop that she set up to celebrate seven years of yours truly running the Snippets Playground. I've been amazed and totally delighted by the wonderful things you've been saying, by your lovely snippets cards and also by quite a few arriving here through the post as well! I truly can't thank you all enough for your immense kindness and the (blush) wonderful things you've said. And another huge thank you to Darnell of course!

Let's get straight on with the fortnight's picks - and first of all we have a *Gold Star*:

Emma T is going to be a source of much inspiration for you girls I think! She hasn't been playing with us for too long but has totally embraced the idea of using up loads of little snippets, even before she came to play with us! Isn't this shaker jar of explooding butterflies wonderful? So many of you commented on Emma's card and I know it was a huge hit with you. So much so that we now have that same butterflies die in the Toy Box, patiently waiting its turn. I'll be using it differently but you have to wait and see just how!

Do please take your *Gold Star* award from the RH side bar Emma - and well done!

Here's the rest of my picks - all so deserving and of course always so hard to choose a final few to show you:

I love it when Playmates use their prizes and then link up a snippets card - and Sandra H just did exactly that, using the 'Noel Word Antlers' die she recently won in the Playground. Love the soft shades of the patterned paper and am pretty sure it's LOTV.

I just adore this card, made by Margaret. Wonderful use of snippets and it really is like a splash of Summer - I love gingham and the bright and fresh flowers are gorgeous!

I predicted we'd have a few innovative ways to use snippet strips recently - and Jeanne came up trumps with this wonderful card, for the thank you blog hop (mwah!). I totally love the interwoven strips with the die cut sentiment! Funny enough I need to make a Birthday card for a neighbour's little boy and want to keep it clean and not too specific - my own attempt at this design will, with luck, appear here before too long!

We had five new Playmates this time, as a result of Darnell's blog hop:

Donna W

Lucille K

Bev

Tracey

Robyn

Welcome to the Snippets Playground girls and what a wonderful selection of cards - hope you all come back and play really soon.

Including the five new Playmates we had a total of 67 entries - brilliant!

Now it's prize draw time, and our winner of the Sizzix 'Love You Tons' set of stamps and matching dies is:

Andrea(KandA)

 

Do please send me your address Andrea, with full name at the top as well so I can copy and paste or just write straight from the email onto the envelope - for speed and ease. It's also confirmation that you still would like the prize of course and I'll post your prize once I hear from you. Please put Playground Winner or similar in the subject line of your email in case it drops into my junk mail. Email address is on RH sidebar as always.

Actually, I'll post the prize off to you as soon as one of us can get to a post box - right now I can't get a shoe on, let alone drive! After three years respite, it's 'Return of the Gout' - playing at a cinema near you. It diddled around for most of last week and then last night and now today (Saturday) decided to go into full blown 'now I'm gonna make you really suffer and scream for England' mode so am typing this laid up in bed using my baby pink laptop. I know it will pass so long as I keep taking the pills and rest it a bit whilst it's at the peak - if this ain't the peak then you might well hear the roars over where you live!

Remember folks, there's still almost another week to run on Challenge #345 - you can find it HERE. The prize is a Woodware 'Smile On My Face' stamp and a Woodware 'Time to Wine Down' set of stamps.

Hope you all have a lovely week ahead, I don't have any great plans (just as well!). Dudley is happy to keep me company and is never far from my side right now, bless him. Little tinker got into the craft room while Len was out at archery this morning - he was merriily trotting to and fro bringing the waste bin contents into our bedroom, a bit at a time, until I realised what was going on. But, other than that he's been as good as gold - and is currently out with Len for a nice long walk.

A photo of Dudley to end with. A good few years ago, Len bought a door stop for the door to his study. A sweet, quite heavy fabric covered creamy white dog sitting up - which he named 'Dudley'. That's mostly how we came to choose Dudley's name at the end of last Summer. The other afternoon Len introduced 'the Dudleys' to one another properly - and also took this photo:

See how they both have the peachy colouring on their ears? Needless to say Dudley The First is normally kept well out of reach of Dudley The Four Legged Chewing Machine!  Psssst, Dudley The First is on the right wearing a red bow tie, grin. And I'm still pondering over Dudley's 'bangs/fringe'. A lot of the time when he's out walking or racing around being a puppy it sweeps back but it just isn't parting enough to frame his sweet little face and keep those eyes uncovered when he's 'stationary'.

Parsnip and Dudley send their love, as usual - and of course me as well,

This has to be the coolest die I've seen recently!

I'm a sucker for new stamps and dies - sometimes I think I need help, BIG time! And now and then a stamp/set or a die comes along which just blows me away to the point of almost obsessively neeeeeding it, right NOW, this VERY minute!

It has to be MFT's 'Christmas Tree Window' for me right now. I found out about the die when Lynne posted her card in the Playground and also linked to where she'd seen more cards using the same die. I recently had Lynne's card as a fortnightly pick - if you missed it then go HERE to Lynne's blog and take a look! It's fabulous!

And, I then looked at the link Lynne had added to her post and found a very talented blogger called Dana Kirby. Now, I 'realised' that Dana had only been blogging since August last year (2018) and has just 23 followers. How could this be? Dana is soooo talented and I just knew you would love her work! So, I commented and encouraged Dana to come and play with us in the Playground, she very sweetly replied by email to thank me for the kind words and said she certainly would try to join in with us. Not a hint of anything more. Duh, later on though, the asses ears went up here! Whilst browsing I discovered that Dana began her blog after and in addition to using Instagram for ages - I guess mostly to be able to write more about her makes (I think IG sets a word/character limit?). Uh, huh - asses ears for sure. Dana has over 2,000 IG followers (including Gina K) - meep, I did feel a bit stupid when the penny pound coin dropped.

However - I had Dana's blessing on doing a very close CASE of her cards she made using the die that started all this off! And of course - I would love to CASE Lynne's design at some point as well, I need the 'teeny scallops' square die that Lynne used though - it's so pretty! Lynne - can you please enlighten us as to who makes it? Spellbinders perhaps?

Right, end of the mahoosive background story - they should have called me 'Mouth and Big Foot In It' - here's my card:

And in fact I made eight of them in total (whoop, whoop!) - two of each colour mix:

I used:

- A6 white card blank, cut down from a 5" x 7" card blank I confess as I find I rarely use them lately

- half a 5" x 7" card blank which I then die cut using a die from the Creative Dies 'Wonky Stitches - Nesting Rectangles' set. One reason I chopped up card blanks for the die cut layer was to make sure the white shades are exactly the same - we all know about how many shades of white there are out there - and also sometimes it's just as cheap in the end as using fresh sheets of white or other coloured card!

- then used a stamp from the Crafters Companion Gemini range of stamps called This bag is not a toy' - oops, should have looked closer - 'Festive Phrases' and a good old Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink pad. Plus the Misti of course, even more useful as I made eight at one time

- before embarking on making the card(s) I had already spent a really happy couple of hours sorting through my XCut self adhesive glitter sheets, finding snippets and cutting half inch wide strips from little saved pieces, which I then mixed around and stuck onto rectangular snippets (approx 2.5" wide and 3.5" high) of white card (any colour of card would do, just make sure you don't leave any gaps between the strips)

- next I used my current favourite die that I've been banging on about - it's by MFT called 'Christmas Tree Window - MFT-1429' - and then die cut the window in the edge stitched panel

- my method to fix the panels behind the apertures is as follows. I used red line tape around glitter sides of the bottom and both side edges of the rectangular glitter paper covered panels - NB. NOT the card front panel itself - too risky! My glittered panels were actually a bit close to the height of the tree once I'd jiggled the sparkly piece around so that the star is cut from one colour only (not essential but you know me!) - and so I added a small strip of red line tape on either side of the star on the reverse of the die cut white aperture piece of card to hold the top portion together on the card front

- that worked just fine and it was then a matter of holding the die cut panel over the sparkly striped rectangle of card with the red line tape protection removed ONLY from either side of the star and carefully lining it up so that the stripes were horizontal and also the star was only showing one colour - and then pressing it in place

- at that point the panel and glitter striped rectangle could be firmly pressed into place by slowly removing the red line tape backing with pointed tweezers on the sides and along the bottom and carefully pressing the panel into place

- then just added the panel to the card front using red line tape again - peeling off the top and one side only until it was lined up properly.  Sometimes glue will ooze through faux stitched edges, I found this out the hard way some time ago - a Woodware or SU adhesive removing rubber will clean it away but I just didn't want the hassle to be honest. I love using glue but this worked fine as an alternative - so long as you always bear in mind that once you press down that really is IT

- eight cards, finished for next Christmas - wahoo!

There is one thing I really still envy about Lynne's card - she was precise enough to have her star all of one colour and ALSO the tub is one colour. That takes some working out - well done! My advice is to do half inch strips all the way up the piece of card but make the top one just that little bit taller and so your star will sit higher on the glitter strips background and then your tub will also sit higher with some room to play. I do hope some of this makes sense - it will if you're actually making a card I promise!

Another thing you could do would be to get three tree shapes from one wide stripey piece of card by flipping the centre one upside down - but I so wasn't into trying that one! 

I do think this die is a stunner - for instance, Len doesn't like black Christmas cards (Victorian old values still come home to roost after generations). I'm fine with them and just bet that a plain black card with the tree die aperture cut and then backed with gold plain or glitter card and a sentiment in gold would look stunning!

And soooooo, the Playground Toy Box is already off to a start for Christmas 2019's prizes, needless to say! Ha, if you can wait that long of course.

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #345

Well! What a week that's been for sure. I was totally blown away by the wonderful blog hop that Darnell arranged in such secrecy to celebrate 7 years since I took over the Snippets Playground - and of course it's 8 years since Jules started it all off. Who knew it would still be going from strength to strength all this time later? And I certainly didn't realise the wealth of love and gratitude there is for having the Playground to share your snippets in. I've smiled like a Cheshire cat, laughed out loud at some of the outrageous shenanigans going on ..... and also shed a few tears of pure joy to know that you like it here! A huge thank you - and also, don't forget that we do have some lovely Playmates who at times send prizes for the Playground as well. Am not asking for more, can only just close the toy box lid right now - but it's important that we also remember their kindness.

I see the hop carries on for another week as well - I'm doing my best to comment and will get round to every single one of you I promise! A HUGE thank you also to Darnell of course who arranged this, mwah, you really are the best! Reaches for fresh box of Kleenex.

Friday was a blizzard here in North Hampshire for most of the day and in the end the whole area (our closest motorway stretch and other local roads) was totally gridlocked - and a lot of it still is apparently. We'd already decided not to budge and had done all our trips out before yesterday thankfully. We saw people trudging home on foot having abandoned their cars in the lane at the top of our road, or even further afield. Len fought a constant battle to keep the penned in part of the patio near the house clear so that Dudley could go to the loo without being up to his chin in snow. We only had about 9" in total and both of us have seen much worse when we lived in other places - but this is the very worst we've had in the whole time we've lived here and frankly much of the UK is just not geared up for such conditions. Both of us have previously been caught in sudden snow storms in our cars here when we were commuting and it can be pretty scary stuff! Today (Saturday) the sun is shining and folk are out clearing their driveways etc.

Here's my snippets card - and in fact this week you get two for the price of one - special offer (BOGOF, Buy One Get One Free):

This card is for all of you girls, with love from me!

And this card is also for you girls. From some of the comments I've been reading as I hopped around' I can see that the surprise visit from one certain little Miss Mischief precipitated a load of sneaky sips and even some moonshine!

Both cards were made in a fairly similar fashion so am covering them both  in my usual 'I used' blurb.

I used:

- a black snippet of thick card, scored and folded into an A6 sized card blank - tent style and a snippet of Strathmore Mixed Media paper (which is actually 300gsm!), which (once the image panels was ready) I scored, folded and trimmed to 4" x 4.25" - side opening

- then I used a couple of snippets of the Strathmore Mixed Media paper (I never throw any offcuts of that out, it's too expensive!) and stamped the image panels

- I used a Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink pad and stamps from the Woodware 'Smile On My Face' single stamp set and also the Woodware multiple stamp set called 'Time to Wine Down' (one image and two sentiments)

- before the ink dried, embossed both image panels using WOW clear embossing powder as I wanted to use my Zig brush markers and knew it would spread over the lines otherwise. Really dithered about using a Versamark pad and black embossing powder instead but, even using my anti-static pad, I felt that both panels had such a lot of detail on them it would be all too easy to end up with a stray grain of black embossing powder. Clear embossing at least wouldn't show up!

- spent a happy time colouring both image panels with my Ziggies - word of warning, the red is really easy to pick up on a finger or the side of your hand and then leave a little smudge - ask me how I know this, thank goodness for a sand eraser!

- trimmed and backed the 'thinking of you' panel with a snippet of green card most likely 'Certainly Celery' and glued it onto the white card front

- then trimmed and glued the 'wine' panel directly onto the black card front

I had been going to change the card sizes and add a stripe of patterned paper to both cards but in the end decided they were already busy enough.

I've had both these stamps for a good while now but to be honest, colouring the 'wine down' one always seemed really daunting but in fact it was great fun! When I use the 'smile on my face' stamp again with Ziggies I'll do the backgrounds first so they can be mottled with a mix of colours.

And of course, this fortnight's prize is the same as the stamps I used:

The Woodware 'Smile On My Face' stamp and also the Woodware 'Time to Wine Down' set of stamps. I will be offering these as a bundle and won't separate them, but do feel free to give one or other away if you don't want them both.
 
As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 17th February. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

It's a maximum of ONE entry and please say in a comment if you wish to play and be a possible winner of the prize. Please also link back to the Playground in your blog post to be eligible for the draw.

Remember, if you link into the Playground and don't say clearly that you're wanting to be in the draw in a comment on here, then you will be bypassed if your name comes out of Mr Linky. I'm sure you all know I ask for a positive 'yes' on the blog post itself- just in case you're playing only for fun - otherwise I ignore you on my little list.

Mr Linky is below - please let me know if you have any problems linking, it's easy for me to sort out so don't struggle on alone :)

Last minute edit! After the snow clearing, Len took Dudley out for a walk. I managed to take a quick photo when they got back, but he just won't look at the camera so this is the best I could do. In fact, he's really keen on eating as much snow as he can! At least he's showing off his new jacket though:

With love from Parsnip, Dudley - and of course me, stay warm and safe!

A card for Hazel's Christmas card challenge!

It's absolutely ages since I joined in with  Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge. It's always anything goes with an optional theme if you wish - this time it's 'no sentiment' but my card was already made by then. Shame really as I do have issues with getting some die cut sentiments absolutely straight!

I also made this card for Scrappy Mo's Rudolph Days challenge but most of you will know that Mo has just undergone knee replacement surgery and decided to not run January's challenge. A wise move, hope you're recovering well Mo!

The idea for the card began when I was rootling through a box of Christmas toppers and embellishments and found a packet of two sets of embellishments that date back goodness knows how long - so the card evolved from there.

I made two cards exactly the same:

I used:

- 6" x 6" square white card blank

- die cut the aperture using a Spellbinders 'Labels 18' die

- made the background using snippets of pearlescent card in baby blue and white, using a die from the Spellbinders 'A2 Borderabilities' set to cut the curve on the white snippet of card

- then adhered the blue and white panel behind the aperture and backed the inside of the card front with a layer of white card, just marginally smaller than the card front itself

- added the tree and deer embellishments to the panel, adding some fresh glue to the pads which were well stuck on but I wanted to be sure they also stayed stuck to the background panel

- then found some perfectly matching purple sparkly glitter sheet from the XCut A5 Adhesive sheets pack (Darks) and die cut the sentiment using a Britannia 'Seasons Greetings' die

- stuck the sentiment in place (it looked straight to me at the time!) and there was one finished card! Two in fact :)

Hmmm, looks as if I have two thick cards due to the sticky pads on the back of the embellishments. I think these will be hand delivered!

AND - I got the biggest surprise ever on Sunday when, following a hint, I discovered that Superwoman Darnell had organised a blog hop to celebrate seven years since I took the Playground over from the lovely Jules. We've been a bit busy here and still are but I fully intend to take the time to visit every single one of you who joins in. But in the meantime, thank you from the bottom of my heart - I admit I cried and even typing this am still quite overwhelmed. Who knew what wonderful people I would find when I dipped my toe into the wonderful world of blogging! Big hugs to you all!

I'll write more in my post on Sunday - hopefully I'll find some time to make a snippets make before the weekend.

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #343 - results

It seems as if we'll finally be settling back into the Snippets Playground routine posts from now on. It was great fun running the Grand Draw, although a bit of a task I admit, and I'm so glad you all seemed to have a good time playing along!

Let's get straight on with the fortnight's picks:

Lesley G has used snippets for her flowers on this lovely card - I know we all have tons of white snippets for sure. The extra clever part is dry embossing the top and bottom parts of the card whilst leaving the centre portion plain - the number of embossing folders I've deliberately bought with plain centre portions and yet just never thought of doing this, great idea Lesley!

I just love this great card for a golfer - shared with us by Janice. Plenty of snippets used and also such a clever design and fun sentiment. Do hop over to Janice's blog and check out how she made it!

Lots of you have been playing with stripes as a way to use up snippets - I really love this card made by Jackie T. Such rich colours and so very Christmassy. This could be the year for using up lots of leftover snippets of patterned paper!

And, snippets aren't only about paper either! Kath used up lots of fabulously coloured snippets of ribbon to create this gorgeous card. The colours do remind me of liquorice allsorts! Kath's ribbons are the self adhesive type although am sure you could adapt her great idea to work using self adhesive sheet adhered to a piece of card and then non-adhesive ribbons laid across - not that I could ever achieve the precision that Kath did!

And here's a fourth pick I really had to include - again using strips of leftover card/paper:

Lynne really came up trumps with this wonderful card, based around an idea she'd seen on Pinterest. It's so elegant and once again uses up lots of snippety strips! Of course I took one look at the beautiful die and raced off to buy myself one (ahem, plus,  as this would be a lovely prize at some point) - this design is brilliant for batch baking! Ask me how I know, I'm making some similar cards, in between other things :)

We had three new Playmates this time:

First of all we had Lynda with a great card but when I added a copy of the image from Instagram I lost almost ALL of this post on Friday and spent a lot of Saturday recreating it! The post was wrecked with reams of HMTL code knocking everything out of sync. So, in the interests of preserving my sanity I'm just going to say that THIS is the link - you may need Instagram to view it of course. It's the very first entry we've had from an Instagram account, probably not the last, but I do need time to work out how not to muck up half a day's work, sigh. I suspect that my quick and easy copy and paste will mean copy, save, fiddle around and then add into a post?

And then I could safely add images so we have:

Brigitte

Meghan K

Welcome to the Snippets Playground - and what stunning colouring as well! Hope you all come back and play really soon.

Including the three new Playmates we had a total of 59 entries - a very healthy number given that many of us were 'just all crafted out' after the pre-Christmas rush. Now it's prize draw time, and our winner of the Creative Expressions 'Snow Flurry' background, Wild Rose Studio 'Snowmen' and Crafters Companion Gemini 'Festive Phrases' stamps is:

Kathy K

Do please send me your address Kathy, with full name at the top as well so I can copy and paste or just write straight from the email onto the envelope - for speed and ease. It's also confirmation that you still would like the prize of course and I'll post your prize once I hear from you. Please put Playground Winner or similar in the subject line of your email in case it drops into my junk mail. Email address is on RH sidebar as always. I'll post the prize off to you this coming week.

Remember folks, there's still almost another week to run on Challenge #344 - you can find it HERE. The prize is a Sizzix 'Love You Tons' (really cute Narwhal) set of stamps and matching dies just perfect for Valentine's Day which was kindly donated by Linby.

We're still having to watch Dudley very closely - he suddenly developed an interest in a couple of low level shelf edges in the kitchen. Luckily Len spotted him straight away but it shows we're certainly nowhere near out of the woods yet! A lot of it is down to the endless teething he's going through so we keep him well supplied with chews of all descriptions. Although I know that opinions are mixed about hide chews, Dudley arrived here with some from his breeder and he adores them, although we never leave him unattended with one.

The other morning, after a restless night he surrounded himself with chews (on OUR bed indeed - the nerve of him!) and promptly fell asleep on his back totally oblivious to the World - with a chew sticking out of his mouth like a cigar. I do wish he'd learn to wipe his (ahem, little tiddle, for himself though ......... it wasn't in my job description to soap and wash his nether regions regularly - actually I do tell fibs, having had Bichons in the past)! And it comes as part of the 'deal' with the whole lovable package as am sure you know. When he sweetly licks you as a thank you your heart just melts! Meanwhile we both were staggering around like a couple of Zombies for the whole day - sleep deprivation is a very cruel form of torture. Gosh, he looks so comfy there:

Hope you all have a lovely week ahead, it's certainly been colder here lately and we did have a very fine layer of snow a couple of times. Dudley thought it was great fun to trot around the patio licking up the fine powder - ha, I wonder what he'll make of it is we get a load of the deep stuff?! We've bought him a sweet little coat to wear in cold/wet weather on his walks - not too girly though, it's sort of Hunting Green a bit like a Barbour jacket and should keep his back, sides and chest warm. When he gets to wear it I'll try and take a photo - we did try it on him the other day but had to keep it low-key in case he thought he was off for another walk! Parsnip and Dudley send their love, as usual - and of course me as well,

Holiday Giveaway update - overseas prizes

Hi folks

I finally got to the Post Office today (Thursday 24th January) and posted the 12 remaining prizes to you overseas winners. Hooray!!

Please let me know when they arrive, I have Proof of Postings so will keep all of those until I know everything has arrived! Back on Sunday here with picks and the result of the latest challenge draw.

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #344

First of all, news about the prizes from the Grand Draw. I posted all the UK ones on Thursday, standard postage. Some even arrived at their destinations the following day which was a pleasant surprise.

All the remaining prizes, which are non-UK of course, are packaged ready for me to take to the Post Office this coming week. I wanted to do that yesterday but for various reasons I didn't manage to get out - I'll put something on the blog once the posting is done.

It would be really good if you could let me know that your prizes have arrived OK. Even leaving it within a comment on here when you add your entry will be picked up by me.

Let's crack straight on with my snippets card:

I used:

- 5.75" x 5.75" square white card blank, side opening

- a whole sheet (shock horror!) of patterned paper from the Bo Bunny 'Barefoot and Bliss' paper pad, trimmed to remove some wording along the bottom and then the sides adjusted accordingly to keep a square. I love that this makes a sweet background for an underwater scene

- a snippet of lime green card, trimmed to just a bit bigger than the patterned layer to form a 'frame'

- glued the lime green and patterned layer to the card front 

- stamped the narwhal, two set of hearts and bubbles and the sentiment onto snippets of white card using a Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink pad and stamps from the ever so cute Sizzix 'Love You Tons' set of stamps and matching dies

- coloured the images using Pro markers and added a tickle of clear Wink of Stella to the lime green bubble and the narwhal's 'horn' (which is actually a tooth, who knew? I certainly didn't until I was reading up about them the other day)

- then, using the matching dies, I die cut all the elements  - love these dies as they absolutely don't need you to die cut any templates to ensure accuracy

- then glued the sentiment, narwhal and sets of hearts and bubbles in place - finito!

I dithered a bit about using the little row of bubbles and hearts (bottom left of the card) but it shows everything that comes with the set of stamps and dies, plus it somehow pulls everything together (IMHO). Len hasn't seen this card so just might keep it for his Valentine's Day card.

This fortnight's prize, as usual, is reflected in my snippets card - and there's a little story behind it. Early in the New Year Lynn (aka Linby) was sweet enough to send me a few items to offer as prizes. One item in particular really jumped out at me and it was this:

It's the Sizzix 'Love You Tons' set of stamps and matching dies of course. I fell in love with it and after some hunting on the internet I managed to order one for myself as well! I'm offering it now as it might come in handy for your own Valentine's Day cards.

When there are weeks that I fancy making a card which perhaps is inspired by one of your wonderful ideas (such as stripes or inchies) then the other items will pop up as one or two bundles as I can't find any of them available in on line shops. HUGE thank you again to Lynn - and I still have a couple of items left that Viv sent as well. The Toy Box is depleted of Christmas items (although one of the stamp sets Lynn sent has a Christmas/New Year theme). But, it's looking pretty healthy until well into Autumn 2019 and there are lots of fun prizes in the offing.

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 2nd February. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

It's a maximum of ONE entry and please say in a comment if you wish to play and be a possible winner of the prize. Please also link back to the Playground in your blog post to be eligible for the draw.

Remember, if you link into the Playground and don't say clearly that you're wanting to be in the draw in a comment on here, then you will be bypassed if your name comes out of Mr Linky. I'm sure you all know I ask for a positive 'yes' on the blog post itself - just in case you're only playing for fun.

Mr Linky is below - please let me know if you have any problems linking, it's easy for me to sort out so don't struggle on alone :)

An update on Dudley now! We're getting precious little sleep here as his adult teeth are now coming through along each side, upper and lower and to be honest there are times when he really 'doesn't know where to put himself' as my Granny would have said. He woke up all confused yesterday evening and promptly piddled without warning us - serves me right as I was talking to a special friend just a matter of hours earlier saying proudly that it had been weeks since he had an accident!

Other than that he's thriving, although at age six months puppies go through a second 'fear' phase (the first one is briefer at about 12 weeks of age). So, some of the most mundane things will spook him right now - things he never worried about previously. On Thursday I took him for another Puppy Grooming session - as usual he yodeled all the way there and then refused to entertain walking through the pet store to the Grooming Salon. But, he apparently was as good as gold during the whole process and he came home smelling delicious and fluffed up to within an inch of his life! I arrived back a bit early to collect him and hid round by the tropical fish accessories area so I could see him but he couldn't see me - and sure enough he wasn't leading them a merry dance like he does when I'm grooming him! The girls there absolutely adore him - and I think the feeling is mutual as I had to practically carry him back through the store 'cos he didn't want to leave ☺

We're still letting his fringe grow for now as before too long it should begin to fall into a parting to frame his sweet little face - but, a lot of the time he looks a real little mop head! More so as the girls blow dried his fringe forward whereas I keep brushing it back.

I took this yesterday - one sweet smelling bundle of fluff with one eye peeking at me:

He's starting to get a cute little crooked smile - a typical trait of many Havanese, and very occasionally tilts his head to one side quizzically if he's listening to what you're saying. He's growing up in so many ways!

Have a lovely fortnight and I do hope the cold snap we're due isn't too unkind.

Love from Dudley Dog, Parsnip and of course me,