Happy Homemade Christmas time for all the senses

One of the things I enjoy about Christmas is having time to be creative in different ways to my usual jewellery making - I obviously enjoy the sparkle of Christmas, so this year I knitted this bead and wire bauble for our tree.

and these fun beaded snowflakes 

I also enjoy the homemade tastes of Christmas - I have to make vegetarian mincemeat 

so the non meat eater of the family can still enjoy some of my homemade mince pies - 

and of course Christmas at home just wouldn't be right without some seasonal smells so today I made this clove studded orange - my house now smells wonderful

you can find the recipes for the mincemeat and mince pies on my recipe page 

Small tortoiseshell on thistledown

how about this for somewhere soft to rest

A couple of dragonfly visitors today

This morning we had these two dragonflies darting about the garden, the red male seemed to prefer to fly over the lawn using the cold frame as it's perch, the green female spent most of her time in the herb garden, I think these are both ruddy darters

Moths from last night's trap

In total we identified 67 different species of moth from our trap last night, it took far too long, having spent an hour or so before breakfast and then going back to it for at least two more hours- not finishing until lunch time!
I helped with the emptying and identifying for some of the time but kept getting distracted by the butterflies that were also floating around!
I did though manage to take some photos of my favourites including these:

large emerald

scarce silver lines

pebble prominent

common rustic, garden tiger, elephant hawk moth

garden tiger

garden tiger

drinker

drinker

elephant hawk moth

Butterfly day

My herbs and buddleia have been covered in butterflies today -

comma

large white

large white

gatekeeper

gatekeeper

ringlet

ringlet

peacock

small tortoiseshell

green veined white

meadow brown

small skipper

we also had a hummingbird hawk moth briefly which I didn't manage to photograph!

Hummingbird Hawk Moth

I have had a busy morning, I finally found time to go outside where my cup of tea was waiting for me and started talking to daughter who was sat cross legged on table, as she does, eating her breakfast, when out of the corner of my eye I spied it! I had been waiting to see one all year so I rushed in for camera - it had the wrong lens on of course but I thought best try and get a photo quick before it flew away! so snapped these two photos, daughter then told me it had been there all the time she had been out there but hadn't realised what it was, at which point I relaxed a bit and decided to check the settings and the photo previews, when I looked up again the moth had gone and has not returned yet so for now these will have to do!

Look to the skies

It was Cosford Airshow today, which meant we might get some impressive planes over our garden, so camera was kept close by just in case! Mr S and daughter were not disappointed when this Vulcan flew right over our garden

then later on and I presume marking the end of the show the red arrows flew over

Azure damselfly

Another gem from the weekend this beautiful azure damselfly spent most of Saturday in our garden