It's a termite day  today. I like termite days. The air is filled with them, flying gossamer about and the birds are all chasing them about and eating them. The other reason I like termite days is that they mean rain, and in this climate all rain is welcome. So within the next 48 hours the termites will have shed their wings and mostly died, their bodies stuck in spiderwebs and then the rain will come.

I'm having such fun with my clocks, the only problem is, they have run out of blanks at Spotlight! Oh, no. What am I going to do? I hope they get more in before Christmas, I want to make them for everyone. 

This clock is a special one for a friend of mine. She has 3 sons (much, much larger than the average elf) and a special connection with her late dad and Chrissy lights. I hope she likes the clock. 

This was my first go at doing a Christmas clock. I was a bit worried that my painting skills were too crap to make it look any good, but I got over that. Okay, so I'm not a great artist, but I'm having fun, and I don't think it looks too terrible. I thought of these ages ago, before our kitchen even got done, and I just loved the idea so much. It's fun decorating them with buttons and things instead of numbers.

I'm having the best time, making my Christmas clocks. Sunday was my 50th birthday and I wanted to have my new clock up for Christmas to show it off in my kitchen. Of course I went with the reindeer theme, to honour my totem animal. The artwork is deadset crappy, but that's okay. The colours go great in my kitchen and I've come to terms with the fact that I'm not a great artist.

I'm really happy with my Christmas clock, you can see the little deers in the larger picture – some of them are buttons and some are earrings and some are just decorations that I have had for ages. Around the outside edge there are stars. They light up with a battery pack. Well, they light up for about 10 minutes, then the batteries go flat. It's a bit of a disappointment, really. Brian's thinking up ideas for how we can work better. Either wire them up to a power source so we can just plug in and switch on, or wire them up to a solar cell so they can work or sunlight and kitchen lights. I hope he figures out an idea before Christmas!

This is another clock for a gift that I've just finished. It's going to be a present. Part of the fun of this is doing themes and this is a real "kitchen" clock with a gingerbread man and cookie cutters and candy canes and ginger bickies for the numbers. Not great artwork, but simple, since that's all my skills allow.

I'm really pleased with the table decorations I made for Nick's 21st party. I went to the party shop and was going to buy some but I just didn't like any of them. So instead I bought the makings.

The little boxes are plastic noodle boxes and I filled them with plaster of paris which I dyed with a bit of blue food colouring. Before the plaster set I embedded a chunk of polystyrene into each, so that I'd have something to stick the um, stick thingies into. I decorated them with some stickers and that flossy paper stuff in the top to hide the plaster. I love that wire that's been decorated with tinsel stars, so there's a bit of that across the top, and then the tinsel stick thingies in the top.

I just hope they're heavy enough to keep the balloons tied down, otherwise they'll be floating all round the room.

H'm. On second thoughts, that could look really nifty!

Earlier this year we got a new kitchen. I just love it. I love using it and I just love looking at it. Of course I had to have a new kitchen witch. My old one was about 30 years old and she'd got all clogged up with greasy kitchen dust and her face was mean and hideous. I retured her and her faithful black cat to my balcony.

Mai helped me make this new witch. She did the sewing and I did the cutting, painting and glueing. She's made out of an old flour bag.  She doesn't have a name.

I also wanted a kitchen witch clock. Note to self - in future when I paint a witch wearing black clothing and a black cat and black cauldron, I will NOT paint the background black!