Seven candles too!

It's one of those happy coincidences in life :)

Each year, the Donna Hay Kids Edition is released just before Merryn's birthday, giving me just the right amount of inspiration to get off my butt and start party planning. It usually has a party cake that grabs Merryn's attention too...and this year was no exception!

Have you had a peek inside this years edition yet? You'll immediately see where the inspiration behind this cake came from, although I went with mauve and pink to match the cute polkadot candles that I found.

Such inspiring themes for parties, great ideas for cakes and party food...or even just some great new recipes to try.

This year, Merryn chose to have her party at a venue, with all the food provided. I felt a bit cheated...making party food is one of life's pleasures for me, especially for little girl parties...but she had a ball playing with her friends. One thing for sure though...I'm not missing the cleaning up part!

Off to have a cuppa and enjoy a slice of the leftover cake...the recipe called for a whole kilo of dark chocolate, so perhaps I should be heading for a power-walk after that :)

TTFN xxx

Some Kind of Wonderful

With the completion date looming for our Tis The Season Stitch-a-long project, the ever encouraging Chookyblue
got busy and organised a new project for us...isn't she wonderful?

I was most excited when my book arrived on Friday, and even more excited that my yummy Strawberry Fields by Fig Tree is going to be the perfect range to make it!

I ordered my copy through Hatched and Patched in Bathurst, and requested (ever so politely) that the author and shop owner, Anni Downs, sign it for me :)

I am a long-time fan of Anni's work, and have stitched several of her quilts and many of her projects over the years...so excited to have my very own signed copy of this beautiful book!

The Stitch-a-long group will be making the "My Favourite Things" quilt, which has all sorts of cute blocks...shoes, rainbows, umbrellas, ice-creams, teacups...it is soooooo adorable!

The book has lots of other projects too...which might be just the thing to keep me occupied until Chooky gives the go-ahead for us to start on the quilt!

Love a new project to dream about :)

TTFN xxx

Farmers Wife Friday

It's a fact. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done that you want (or need) to get done :)

It's also a fact that you have to make time to do the stuff that you love...even if it means NOT doing stuff that really should be done, like laundry :)

And that is what Farmers Wife Friday is all about...taking a little bit of time each week to play with yummy fabric and cute little blocks. Am I making a queen size quilt like the one in the book...who knows? Will I have enough fabric in my jelly roll to make all the blocks...who cares? Will all the colours eventually gel together? No idea :)

Because you know what? It's really not about the finished quilt at all, for me. It's all about piecing a couple of little 6 inch blocks every now and then. Just for fun. And my colour choices are made, just because I like the look of them together...not based on some grand plan for my finished quilt.

This weeks blocks are called Bat Wing and Big Dipper, and are numbers 5 and 6 in the Farmers Wife Sampler Quilt book. Cute, huh?

TTFN xxx

Seven

Birthdays are very special days...

...especially when you turn seven.

Happy birthday beautiful girl xxx

TTFN xxx

Cookies and cards

Back to school for my little munchkins today, after a rainy but relaxing holiday break. It amazes me how fast the year is flying by...term 3 already :(

Some home baked goodies in the lunchbox makes the first day back just that little bit easier to bear, don't you think?

(You'd be correct in assuming that red polkadots are taking over my life :) They seem to be everywhere at the moment, and I can't seem to resist adding to my collection)


A big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my nephew Jordan xxx When I talk about time flying, I only have to think of his sweet face as a baby to realize how fast it's going....7 years old today:) I broke out the much-neglected cardmaking supplies to make him a birthday card.

Must keep that cardmaking momentum going...my own little girl turns 7 this week too! Yep, my sister and I were in hospital having babies together....but that's a story for another day :)

TTFN xxx

The perfect apron

During one of our late night "3 Of Us" get togethers, we got to talking about aprons (as you do, LOL). Tracey, Linda and I all love aprons, but the style of our Label Crew apron that we had planned to make just wasn't quite the style that we were looking for.

Linda declared that she had the perfect apron hanging in her pantry...she had bought it at some markets many years earlier, and it had been her favourite ever since!

The style was just your normal, tie-around-the-waist type, but the addition of a hand towel was the kicker...how much time to you spend looking for your tea towel while cooking? Either that, or you have it draped over your shoulder? We all had to agree...Linda's was the perfect apron!

So I took it home, and set about making a proto-type....with a Susan twist :)

I chose some of my favourite Flower Sugar fabric, added some polkadots and a cute little mushroom label (thanks Lisa!)and created the cutest apron I've ever seen :)

Now all we have to do is catch up on our Label Crew projects (wow, they mount up fast!) and then we can make aprons together :) I've done my bit!

Have a fantastic Monday

TTFN xxx

Merryn

She takes my breath away...



...especially those ringlets :)

TTFN xxx

One for Jordy.

As nephews go, my sisters' boy Jordy rates up there with the cutest :) He has the biggest, most gorgeous eyes framed with the longest eyelashes...I really don't know how his parents ever say the word no to him :)

Jordy has a special place in my heart, that's for sure. For part of his birthday gift last year, I set about making him a pencil roll.

It was going really well...the colours were great, I found a matching hair elastic for the closure, I loved the fabrics...until I got up to the binding bit. I have some issues with binding. So when the binding didn't look right, I re-did it. And re-did it again. And again....until the project was thrown into my too-hard basket for an extended stay.

Having worked through some of my binding issues lately :) and with Jordy's birthday coming up, I decided to pull this project out and have another go.

Now, either my binding technique has improved, or I've relaxed my perfection criteria, or I just got lucky LOL, because the binding went on very easily...and on the first attempt :) Gotta love that!

Wooohoooo...my UFO pile is getting smaller!

Have a great Saturday.

TTFN xxx

Farmers Wife Friday

From experience, I've found that I work better when I have a time frame...something to aim for, something to work towards, an end date :)

With that in mind, I've called this post Farmers Wife Friday, hoping that it will encourage me to make it a regular thing...you know, post some Farmers Wife blocks every Friday? Hey, it's worth a try!

So here are my blocks so far...

...a massive four in total! See why I need the blog title? LOL

This one is called Basket Weave, and came together quickly.

Can you go wrong with red polkadots? I think not :)

Yellow polkadots are also a bit cute...

...especially with a ric-rac handle for the Basket block.

Happy Farmers Wife Friday!

TTFN xxx

Almost there....

Just one more month of stitching to go on my little Tis The Season wallhanging...

...how quickly have those months flown by? It doesn't seem so long ago that I was confessing to you that I had started yet another new project...and you were probably rolling your eyes and thinking...oh gosh, not another one! LOL

It's lovely to part of a group that stitches a project together. The feedback, the encouraging comments, and the pure joy of being part of such a supportive and friendly group is reason enough to join in...not to mention that you actually have a finished project at the end of it all (in theory, anyway).

Our next Stitch-a-long project has now been decided upon...and I'm excited!!! I've ordered the new book today (really, I was just waiting on an excuse to buy this book) and I have the perfect fabrics sitting here in front of me. I'll show you some pics when I have all the bits gathered together... it's going to be a challenge to not make a start on it, that's for sure!

Have a lovely day

TTFN xxx

A Day in the Country.

It's very easy to get bogged down in the everday stuff...school stuff, sports stuff, household stuff...and forget that weekends should be all about getting out and doing different stuff!

So this morning we packed up the car, and headed out for a drive in the country.

One of the things I love most about driving in the country is stumbling across stands selling local produce...always so fresh and yummy!

Our destination today was New Norcia, Australia's only monastic town. It's always been on my list of places to visit in Western Australia...but not-so-much on everyone else's list :) Let's face it...a day spent visiting churches and historic buildings is a pretty hard thing to get everyone enthused about!

We arrived just in time to go on a guided tour of the town...a two hour walking tour which I quickly signed us all up for. I wasn't going to give my family time to consider what a tour involving countless chapels, monks and religious history might involve :)

The interiors of the chapels were amazingly preserved, and stunning in their detail....

..the architecture so incongruous in the harsh West Australian landscape.

And the highlight of the trip, as noted by the children?

Rolling around in a pile of road gravel while my husband and I consulted the maps after the first of many wrong turns that we made during the day!

Oh well...it's all about exposure to information. Right?

TTFN xxx

A Family Gathering catchup.

I'm a little behind with my Family Gathering stitching at the moment...it seems that a whole new month started, and I didn't really notice :) What can I say except that life is busy around here!

So here are the blocks that Linda, Tracey and I were supposed to be finished in June....called Blackberry Picking...

...and Animal Stack.

I loved stitching the little blackberries...they give a beautiful texture to the finished block. I always stitch colonial knots rather than French knots on my quilts, as I find that they don't disappear into the fabric like French knots do at times, and they sit up nicely on the surface....but that's just my personal preference :)

It is soooooo chilly here in Perth at the moment... perfect weather for baking and stitching and reading and watching movies snuggled up on the lounge :)

Best get back to it :)

TTFN xxx

Corruption and cupcakes :)

How I've missed using my new camera. Despite lots of online research and reading of the instruction manual (even by me...gasp!) we just couldn't work out what was going wrong. In desperation, I returned to the original place of purchase for some much-needed guidance :)

Very very relieved I was when I discovered that it was the memory card, not me, who wasn't doing the right thing!

My girls had lots of fun road-testing new computers while the friendly camera guy explained what was going wrong. The term he used to describe my memory card was corrupt which I found a bit amusing, despite the fact that it had eaten up a few hundred of my recent photos :(

Speaking of photos...

During the week we received my print order from my 40th birthday photo shoot with Sharon Manning, and to say I'm happy is an understatement! I can't wait to hang this canvas on my wall...it will make me smile every single day :) I'm also quietly hoping that having some gorgeous photos to work with will inspire me to scrapbook a page or two...you never know!

And finally, what's a chilly Sunday afternoon without some yummy home-made treats to snack on?

Butterfly cakes are simply delicious made with fresh cream and a sprinkle of icing sugar...one of my favourites!

Have a wonderful Sunday...

TTFN xxx

Move over, Farmers Daughter...

...the farmer wants a wife!

You may recall, a while back, I mentioned how very tempted I was to start stitching The Farmers Wife Sampler Quilt. When the book was sold out, I took it as a sign...a sign that I have too many projects on the go :)


Which, incidentally, may or may not be true :)

BUT...then I receieved an email. The book was back in stock....and my unfinished quilt pile had since reduced by one, and coincidentally, the quilt I finished was called A Farmers Daughter. Now THAT was a sign if ever there was one. Not only that, but the perfect fabric was sitting on my desk, just waiting to be made into something special.

And so, the first blocks of my Farmers Wife Sampler Quilt came into being :)

I started with Block 1 Attic Windows...

...which, in another coincidence, was the name of the first quilt I ever made.

I moved on to Block 2 Autumn Tints...

...mainly because I'm easily confused LOL and if I go mixing up the order of blocks I'll probably
throw myself into a tailspin eventually :) There are 111 blocks in the queen size version, and that's A LOT of blocks!

I'm using the Rose Parade jelly roll pictured above, along with some of my favourite polkadot fabrics and a white cotton as the background. Love it? Oh yes...I do!

So now my unfinished quilt pile is back up to 6...which is a nice, rounded sort of number...don't you think?

tee hee hee

TTFN xxx

Thought for the day...

(source)
via pinterest.com

This little thought crept into my mind a lot today...as I drove home from the airport at a ridiculous hour this morning (fly out day for my DH is a killer!), as I packed school lunches, as I endured the morning tears over hair tangles and lost reading folders, as I went about my busy working day, as I folded yet another basket of washing straight off the clothes line this afternoon, and as I get ready for the evening session of taxi duty and homework and dinner dishes.

It's very true, don't you think?

This little thought...and the promise of a little quiet stitching time tonight when the children are in bed...has kept me sane today :)

Because if it's important to you...you will find a way.

Hope you are having an awesome day.

TTFN xxx

Monday maths :)

Unfinished quilt count? 6 - 1 = 5

Yep...we are down to 5. Farmers Daughter, my rather long term quilting project, is now complete. It even has a quilt label :) I can't say that these are the colours that I would choose, should I be starting this project now, but that's ok. Completion is a good thing, right?

I wish I could show you some close-ups of the stippling...I'm rather proud of it, actually....but I'm having some issues with my new camera. My husband has suggested that these issues could possibly be very quickly overcome with a browse through the instruction manual...and he could quite possibly be right. But that's not really my thing :)

I figure if I wait long enough he'll come to my rescue... :)

TTFN xxx