Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Feb 8, 2012, 7:44 am
It's always a race against time to get the day's orders packed in time for the carrier to collect them. We're never sure when he'll arrive and of course he's always early when we're running late. Today though they're done, all seven of them, winging their way to shops, galleries and garden centres f...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Feb 7, 2012, 3:38 am
I've just discovered the mobile blogger app for my iphone. This should make life interesting! More hours to spend with my head buried in my phone - much to my (technophobe) husband's annoyance! I'm going to have a go uploading a photo now...... I may be a while..... I think that worked. The before,...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Oct 2, 2011, 7:27 pm
... you what we've been doing that's kept me away from the late night blogging. Starting with the sunset above, that was 30th July, our 35th ... to the sun. Crete, in fact.  Wall to wall sunshine, clear blue skies, turquoise water and a welcome slow pace which recharged the batteries in time ...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Jul 6, 2011, 12:06 pm
TWO posts in 24 hours? What AM I up to, do you think? Well not a lot, to be honest. Apart from work. And you know what they say - all work and no play makes for boring blogs. I'm just feeling a bit other worldly and lightheaded this afternoon. Combination of lack of sleep and this horrible weather. ...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Jul 5, 2011, 7:27 pm
If I've not been around here lately there is a good reason. We've been a bit busy of late. First there was the Highland Show, which coincided with a sudden surge of wholesale orders from our stockists and suddenly it's summer, which heralds the start of the "busy" half of our working year. Except th...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Jun 22, 2011, 4:02 pm
Hello it's me. I'm having a bit of a quiet night and heading off to bed soon ( yes and it's only 9pm, not the usual early hours). It's been a busy few days ( understatement), culminating in the ritual setting- up -of -the- stand at the Royal Highland Show today. Given that it's only the 20th year we...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Jun 12, 2011, 6:02 pm
Doesn't time fly? It's been over a month since I've been here on the blog to chat. As usual there's just not enough hours in the day ( or night). But I'm now getting to grips with this iPhone and posting pics from it, so without too many words here is the reason for my absence, in pictures.... Fir...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Apr 11, 2011, 1:46 am
Here I am, 6am on a Monday morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed after a good sleep and ready to start the week. When I woke up and realised that I wasn't going to get back off to sleep  (5am) I thought, right, make the most of it, get up and polish off the monthly accounts and VAT before breakfast...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Apr 3, 2011, 10:30 am
to Mums everywhere! I hope you are enjoying the day. The sun is shining here and it's really quite warm. The plum tree is just about to burst into flower and the birds are singing. Lovely. I've been having a good weekend making patchwork cards. Firstly there were 80 to be used as wedding invitations...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Mar 31, 2011, 7:40 pm
So what's all this about? This, folks is my first photo taken with my new IPhone. OK, so it's just a corner of my workroom and a glimpse out of the window, but I'm hoping this will be the first of many to appear on this blog. I haven't been doing much here lately and one of the main reasons is that ...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Mar 20, 2011, 1:09 pm
Hello again - another week passed. I'm glad to say the cold germs have moved on and we're both much better. All I'm left with is a dull ear which is annoying, and a feeling of lethargy. But still on the early nights, so I'm sure the energy levels will soon be back to normal. We had a rare evening ou...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Mar 13, 2011, 4:54 pm
We took a few days out of circulation last weekend to firstly visit Laura and Greg (D& S in L) and then on to London for a city break. Firstly, the PROS... We got to spend time with Laura - that's always good, and not frequent enough - we also got taken on a tour of the new house they've just bought...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Mar 1, 2011, 1:53 pm
All over Blogland people are waking up to Spring - sunshine with a bit of warmth in it and stretching days. Lots of blogs are sporting images of snowdrops and crocuses - lovely. We've just emerged as well from weeks of trade orders, and suddenly without warning there are parts of the day without pre...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Feb 27, 2011, 11:35 am
Every year at this time, Barbara and I head off to Ingliston in Edinburgh for the Patchwork and Quilting Show. It's a rare day out for me, justified by the fact that I'm there to buy fabrics for the business. As it's also something I really enjoy doing, it's definitely combining business with pleasu...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Feb 26, 2011, 2:37 pm
The temperature according to our car today was 15 degrees. The sun shone ( mostly) and we seemed to waken from our winter hibernation. For one thing the camera was actually taken out of its case. And captured the sun shining on a vase of daffodils. Then ventured outside to find Bob washing windows, ...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Feb 22, 2011, 6:12 pm
Thought I'd share this video clip with you. The person being interviewed is one of my old good friends from Art College days. We sat next to each other painting up designs and planning our futures. I think he managed to stick to his plans better than I did! Raymond and I kept in touch for a few ye...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Feb 19, 2011, 5:58 pm
The weather has been pretty awful the past couple of days - constant rain, heavy skies and no light. Cold too, brrr.But something unusual has been happening outside our kitchen door.On Thursday there seemed to be a lot of activity in the field. It's not our field, but we think of it as ours, or at l...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Jan 14, 2011, 7:32 pm
I've popped back here to this blog a few times over the past week, just to look at the pictures of my Dad again, and I've been loathe to write another post and so consign him down the page, but now it's time to move on. Friday night - today was supposed to be a day of catching up with accounts, but...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Jan 9, 2011, 6:36 pm
On this day fourteen years ago, I said goodbye to my Dad. He'd struggled through weeks of serious illness, unaware of Christmas and New Year, but  the dark days of January were to beat him. When we visited him in intensive care, there wasn't much of him to recognise through the tubes, lines and dri...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Jan 8, 2011, 8:17 pm
Who wants to read it when there's no "eye candy"? But it's been so dark lately and the days so short, there's hardly been a chance to take photos. I've been busy uploading stuff on to our new website ( for Trade Customers only) which will go live just before the Trade Show in a couple of weeks. It t...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Jan 3, 2011, 8:17 pm
Hello again. If you read yesterday's post this will make more sense. It's another late one, but I've been plodding through the chore of uploading photos for our new Trade website. It takes an achingly long time, I can tell you, and so repetitive. But it has to be done. So I stopped a while ago and t...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Jan 3, 2011, 5:27 am
Do you ever find yourself bored with nothing to do? The evening stretches ahead of you, nothing on telly and it's too early to go to bed? Well I've got the simple answer to eat up those empty hours.... get yourself a blog ( if you don't have one already), decide in a simple naive way that it could ...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Dec 30, 2010, 12:31 pm
With the end of the year almost here, here is a quick look back to the last twelve months before we plunge into 2011.January brought the first Trade Fair of the year at the SECC in Glasgow, where we tried out our new display racks for the cards.February we took a long Valentine's weekend in London a...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Dec 19, 2010, 7:01 am
I don't know what kind of Christmas it will be this year - white seems likely, but with family scattered over the country it might be a very quiet one too if people can't get home for the holidays. I just hope this new snowfall today doesn't last too long. We are all but cut off again as I think the...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Dec 11, 2010, 4:46 pm
I've now made a start to letting go for Christmas. Does that make sense? Probably not. What I mean is, for the past six months at least, I've ignored the fact that this house is a home and treat it more like a factory cum warehouse. That's what happens when you run a business from your home and the...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Dec 7, 2010, 11:55 am
It's now officially a banned substance, this white stuff. We're all fed up of it now and just want it to go away. So I won't talk about the weather except that it was SO cold today it was a pure pleasure to cuddle up to my computer and spend the afternoon adding things to the website. Bob went out f...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Dec 4, 2010, 1:35 pm
Getting in the Christmassy mood a bit today. We had a lovely walk down to the town in brilliant sunshine and dazzling snow and back via the Farm Shop to pick our Christmas tree ( Be warned - I have it on good authority that real trees are in short supply this year). We won't be putting it up until a...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Dec 1, 2010, 6:20 pm
This weather is getting way too much. We're still buried under feet of snow and yes, it's STILL snowing. Although we're lucky enough to work in the comfort of our own home, things are beginning to become a problem. No post since Saturday, so no mail orders have been able to get here. Also no supplie...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Nov 21, 2010, 6:06 pm
The last post was just before the fair when I was panicking about not having enough stock. ( In fact, I didn't get it finished and I've only just uploaded it - worth a look because it's all about a certain person's birthday treat.)  Anyway, now we're home and the show is over for another year. We d...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Nov 21, 2010, 5:34 pm
I don't know why I always decide to post something here when it's ridiculously late and I've gone beyond tired. I should be tucked up in bed because I know that working too late and losing out on sleep is counter productive the next day, but I always do it, pushing on just a little bit more to finis...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Oct 5, 2010, 6:44 pm
 In fact it was my BRA I left in Las Vegas. But that's another story. Yes, we're back. After our ten day holiday in the US. Three days in San Francisco, three in Vegas and three in LA and another day travelling home. Phew. Six flights, three hotels, one seven hour round bus trip, numerous miles w...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Sep 16, 2010, 7:55 pm
Way back in 1992 when Embroidered Originals was just four years old, we decided to build ourselves a studio/workshop to be split neatly in half, one end to be my workspace and the other end to be a shop. This is our little shop. It is tucked neatly behind our cottage and is approx ten steps from ou...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Sep 9, 2010, 7:09 pm
to prop my eyes open. It's yet another ridiculously late night. (Why do I punish myself with these? It's plain crazy and I'm too old for this nonsense!) But here I am again, four minutes before midnight precisely and I'm zipping around the time wasting "social network"- Twitter and now Facebook. Ga...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Sep 4, 2010, 6:41 pm
Well, summer's almost over and almost like the change of the season, my thoughts have returned to my blog. Quite a lot has happened since I last recorded anything here, and a great deal more is about to happen, including a MAJOR business decision. ( More about that later). It's been a busy summer an...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Jul 25, 2010, 7:44 pm
It's been a wee while since I sat down and wrote something on this blog. I think  a lot of bloggers take a break during the summer, usually because they are off on holiday, but we are in the throes of our silly season now, and time is a joke. What have I been doing lately? Well, a massive clearout ...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Jul 6, 2010, 7:30 pm
No, no not at all. But that old complaint of no time left to do stuff like blogging is back. Since I was last here for a chat, we have been at the Royal Highland Show, which was four days of glorious weather, record attendances and sell outs of our cards.Which is of course what we want, isn't it! I...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Jun 12, 2010, 7:28 pm
Sorry it's been a while. I've been busy - we've been busy, I mean - but I had to add another post to this blog so that the first thing anyone sees when they land on this page isn't that photo of chaos in the workshop. It's been embarrassing me for days, especially since the workshop is now all nice ...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - May 29, 2010, 6:48 am
It was a late, very late night in the workshop last night. The birds were singing and the sun was almost up by the time I crawled to bed, and then this was the scene that greeted me when I opened the door again this morning. Err well - I wasn't going to waste any more precious sleeping time by tidyi...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - May 28, 2010, 8:21 pm
Do these people ever do any work, I hear you say. This blog is turning into a travelogue. Well, in anticipation of a long - and hopefully hot - summer, with no respite from work - the month of August, after all, disappears in three and a half weeks, seven days a week at the Edinburgh Festival Craft ...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - May 19, 2010, 7:28 pm
I thought I'd show you some photos of our day out last Sunday - a trip we've been meaning to make for a long time - and I'm so glad we made the spur of the moment decision to go when we did.It was a boat trip to the Isle of May, a national Nature Reserve and bird sanctuary situated at the mouth of t...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - May 12, 2010, 7:30 am
Yes I know, that's the name of a favourite old garden plant. But for the purposes of this post it exactly describes our weather yesterday. Bob was out in his picture framing shed, complaining that it was cold enough for snow, to which I laughed ironically. Ten minutes later he was knocking on the sh...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - May 9, 2010, 7:41 am
Unusually we've had three weekends on the trot where we've been socialising rather than working. It makes a nice change. After the Aviemore Trade Show a couple of weeks ago, we had a lovely family reunion last weekend when Laura and Greg got back from their world travels, and Nick was home for the w...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Apr 28, 2010, 3:03 pm
That's it over for another year. Our annual trip with the trailer tent up to Aviemore in the Cairngorm Highlands for the Scottish Trade Show. We always stay at the Glen More campsite on the shores of Loch Morlich. This was last year's image. Just beautiful and so peaceful. We didn't have quite such ...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Apr 22, 2010, 4:13 pm
Mums are allowed to be proud aren't they? This is Nick, our 26 year old little boy ( the big one in the photo - the little one is his cousin John). Nick has just phoned from a posh hotel in Glasgow to tell us that he has won an award. (Drum roll) He has been awarded Multi Media Journalist of the Yea...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Apr 17, 2010, 8:33 pm
This past week has been quite odd in some ways. There was a slight concern at the start of the week about Laura and Greg in China when we heard about the earthquake in Yushu county. We knew that they were travelling to Tibet, but didn't know where exactly, or when. And there was no way of contacting...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Apr 9, 2010, 6:40 pm
It was time to restock our card spinner at the Farm Shop today. We do this every week if possible, to keep the display fresh, and today we had to replace Easter cards which were left over.That meant some new designs, and one of them was this selection of cupcakes. (I think I've mentioned to  one o...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Apr 7, 2010, 7:37 am
It's Spring at last. Morning walk - sunshine, warmth, flowers and wet feet!
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Apr 2, 2010, 6:16 pm
I just love this photo. Lanterns for sale in Hoi Ann, Vietnam.Taken from Laura's blog (that's our daughter)She and Greg are off to China tomorrow for a tour which includes Tibet, and they'll be home at the end of May! They've been travelling since last August and have visited Chile, Bolivia, Peru, ...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Mar 31, 2010, 11:13 am
What can I say about the last couple of days here in Scotland? Wet, snowy, fiercely windy and very very cold. Our stupid old boiler doesn't cope with the north winds. The fumes get blown back down the flue and the safety cut out shuts off the burners. Result - the heating and hot water are not wor...
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Marion M. posted an article on Embroidered Originals - Mar 19, 2010, 7:11 pm
Well, Mother's Day has come and gone. It heralds Spring and sees the shops full of daffodils and tulips. Much needed colour, if at a premium on that particular day. So the next event on the calendar is Easter. It's early this year being the first weekend in April. I don't confess to being in any way...
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