Blog Love Swap & A Face To A Blog

I was partnered with Tracy at Mad About Bags for my Blog Love Swap, for those of you who know Tracy will know that she doesn't live all that far from me, so it was a great excuse for us to meet up when exchanging our blog love swap gifts and Thursday was the big day.  It was so nice to finally meet her, we have both been following each other's blogs for some time now and have said more than once that we should meet up so it was great to do that at last.  We met round hers and after meeting her husband Paul and her eldest son Jack we headed off to her workroom with a cuppa for a nice long chat.

We needn't have worried about not having anything to talk about, the conversation just flowed and time soon ran away with us.  We decided to open our gifts in front of each other at the end of the evening, which felt a bit strange to start with as neither of us have ever opened swap presents in front of the person who had sent it to them and vice versa but after the first present we just forgot about that and was busy chatting again ha ha, well let's face it, chatting is what us women do best right! 

I really cannot thank Tracy enough for my gifts, she did a grand job.  Why don't you take a look for yourself.

Nicely wrapped in pretty rosey paper.  You see the bloggers in us even remembered to stop and take a photo before ripping the paper off :)  How cute is that table cloth!

A beautiful handmade pin cushion, I will be making sure this get's plenty of use this year.

It even goes quite nicely with my bed cover.

Cute heart patterned cake cases now in my cake case jar and even cuter heart shaped measuring spoons, i just LOVE these.

A great book, well actually 3 books in 1.  One of them by one of my favourite authors Cecelia Ahern, I love her writing and also Nicholas Sparks who wrote the Notebook - Brilliant book.

Some yummy heart shaped chocolates, these have now gone, I ate them earlier today and I can report, they were very tasty.

A lovely smelling soap and Rose scented wax po pourri

A fantastically made crochet hook roll

which is now home to

my new crochet hooks, now all I need to do is learn how to crochet.  For those of you who don't know, learning how to crochet was one of my new year resolutions this year, so Tracy has kindly given me a kick start :)

Last but certainly by no means last to open was this beauty.  I just love it, and for those of you following me on Pinterest will know this will fit nicely in with my wedding theme.

I am so pleased with all my gifts, I really couldn't have done any better if I had bought them all myself.  They are all perfect and I LOVE them all.  Thank you so much Tracy.

I loved meeting up with Tracy and can't wait to do it more throughout the year.  So as the trees are beginning to blossom so is our new found friendship.  It is all very exciting.  To see what I gave Tracy check out her post here.

I will be sharing my weekend with you tomorrow.

Lots of love,

Gem x x x x