Thought for the day...

...and boy, do I know some good places to shop :)


TTFN xx

P.S. Why is it that the urge to sew is greatest when your sewing machine is in the repair shop? A very strange phenomenon... :)

P.P.S. Looking like it might be another no-sew Farmers Wife Friday tomorrow...unless I can find the foot pedal for my "other" sewing machine LOL. Wish me luck!

P.P.P.S. Image from here via here

Farmers Wife Friday - The No Sew Edition :)

So you could probably be forgiven for thinking that I have totally lost the plot LOL...but here's the thing.

I don't like being behind...thus the Farmers Wife Friday post on a Tuesday :) The rate that the days are going by lately, Friday will be here again before I know it, and I'd have a double lot of blocks to prepare...and that would not be good :)

And my sewing machine is broken...thus the no-sew blocks :) The shock of being almost finished on my Little Bluebirds quilt (yep, really!) was enough to send my poor Janome into meltdown, and it is now at the repair shop for at least for the next 2 weeks (the repair guy has gone to Switzerland to a training course...just my luck!)

So here are my Farmers Wife blocks for last Friday, minus the sewing :)

This one is called Country Farm, and is block number 23. I thought I'd get a bit adventurous and throw some different coloured polkadots into the mix...hello orange and green!

Block 24 is Country Path...

...and looks like it's going to be lots of fun to construct (said with some degree of sarcasm!)

My sweet daughter has kindly offered to loan me her sewing machine, and I do have another machine of my own that I could pull out of mothballs, so we'll see how I go...watch this space for the next Farmers Wife Friday instalment! It may even happen on Friday this week :)

TTFN xxx

A new kind of Saturday

Six years ago, I made a phone call that would change my (and my family's) life.

We had just moved from a small country town to a capital city, and a whole new world of possibilities were opened up to us. My just-turned-eight year old, who had spent his entire life scaring the neighbours with his antics on his swing set, and tumbling and cartwheeling and jumping on his trampoline, dreamed of doing gymnastics. Almost as soon as the plane landed in Perth, I made the call and enrolled him in a boys gymnastics class.

He was a natural. Before long, he was training for several sessions each week, and loving every minute of it. By the end of that first year, he competed at his first Western Australia State Championships...and won the gold medal.

And many more followed. By the time he was ten, he decided to change to trampolining, and again, many more medals followed. State Championships, National Titles...he competed in them all with lots of success, and with the kind of determination and good sportsmanship that would make any parent proud.

Each and every week, in every season, in school holidays, even over Christmas, he trained and trained and trained some more. Sometimes i wondered how he kept motivated. Sometimes I wondered how I kept sane LOL.

This week, he decided not to train any more...to move on from his trampolining and pursue some other interests. I refuse to let him say that he "quit", because after all the years of commitment and hard work, he is anything but a quitter :)

Today...for the first time in as long as I can remember...my entire family slept in on a Saturday morning. We got up late, did some housework, the kids did all their homework for the weekend. And now, at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon, the entire weekend is open before us :) No training. No competitions. No commitments.

I could definitely get used to this :)

TTFN xxx

Just so you know...

LOL!

Seriously though...just so you know...I am really really busy with work this week, and won't be doing my usual Farmers Wife Friday post. Hoping for a quiet weekend to have a play with fabric again :)

See you soon

TTFN xxx

P.S image from here via here

The pins are in...

...and I am procrastinating...again!

If procrastinating were an Olympic sport, I would be a Gold medallist for sure :)

I'd like to say that now the pins are in that this Little Bluebirds quilt of mine will be finished soon....but we all know that probably will not be the case LOL. After all, my very-first-ever quilt still had pins holding the binding on for many many years after I started it. It was on our bed for many many years with the pins still in...and probably still would be to this day, except it was ruined in a flood of water from a broken pipe that swept through our house one night :) And we ALL know how long the pins were in my Farmers Daughter quilt that I finally finished a few short weeks ago.

More than once I've considered handing it over to the professional quilter, but I'm still waiting on my Gardeners Journal quilt to come home from her house...and it's been there since before Christmas! This one would be a "custom job" too...which would mean lots and lots of money for a relatively simple quilting job.

So...now it's up to me.

The pins are in...

...let the quilting begin!

TTFN xxx

Farmers Wife Friday - The Storm In A Teacup Edition

I don't mind admitting it...this weeks blocks for my Farmers Wife Friday sewing had me a little bit freaked out.

Sooooo many little pieces in Block number 22 ...44 in total...and every single one of them a triangle.

I started with Block number 21 Contrary Wife to get the piecing mojo happening...

...and it came together quite quickly and easily :) Seams matching. Pleasing colour combination. Cute :)

Enter Block 22...Corn & Beans. My youngest will tell you that anything involving corn and beans would have to be bad :)

Truthfully? It wasn't so bad. I didn't have to pull out the seam ripper (well, maybe just the once!) and I'm quite happy with the way the points matched up.

Maybe it was just a storm in a teacup, after all :)

Have a wonderful weekend

TTFN xxx

The inevitable spots.

The colour palette may be a little more subdued than my usual choices on my latest layout, but try as I might, I can't seem to avoid using spots :)

This layout started as an entry in the cybercrop at Scrapsidaisy a couple of weeks ago, but went astray from the criteria...so it ended up being just for fun :)

I've used some older bits and pieces on this one...some ledger paper from Basic Grey, Prima Jack & Jill along with some Say It In Studs bling and AC Thickers.

Thanks so much for visiting...

TTFN xxx

Tales of Red and Aqua :)

I have a thing for red and aqua...perhaps I've told you about it before? :)
Red and aqua make my heart sing in a way that no other colours do...especially when that red has polkadots!

Now, today started out like any ordinary Monday, but went downhill fairly quickly from there. Nothing, but nothing, was going as I had planned, and the day was looking pretty much like a write-off. I had a very bad case of the blahs. My husband walked in the front door, asking if I was expecting a parcel? A parcel! The blahs started rising instantly...

...not only was it a parcel of red-and-aqua loveliness, but it was a parcel that I had all but written off as lost/missing in the postal system...hooray!

You want a closer look? You know you do.....

Even better again... I purchased this red-and-aqua loveliness with a voucher that two of my dearest friends gave me for my birthday, so it will always be lovely, even if I ever get over my red-and-aqua phase (heaven forbid!)

With the blahs lifting, and my ironing basket empty, I decided a little scrapping was in order...

...this line of paper from Kaisercraft called Miss Nelly is so very very me, so I scrapped my thoughts on turning 40 :)

I kid you not, this page came together in record time! I find these colours so easy to work with...but this is my last sheet of red Dots and Stripes...a re-order may have to be organised! The diecut paper was so perfect that I added very little to it.

The IKEA catalogue was also in my letterbox today,so I sat down with my lunch for a squizz, and LOOK LOOK LOOK!!!

A bargain priced, perfect sized, red polkadot lounge! I've had quotes to cover my old lounge in red polkadots, but the cost was WAY out of my price range. Can you imagine how excited I am to find an IKEA one? YIIIPPPEEEEE!!!

The blahs have now been well and truly banished, and I am about to put the quilting pins into another red-and-aqua project that I've been working on for several...um...years. Can you guess what?

Hope your day is filled with colours that make you happy!

TTFN xxx

Need a mojo kickstart?

Then perhaps a beautiful kit from Tomorrows Memories could be the answer :)

Designed by the talented Mel Connell, this kit contains a whole range of co-ordinated products to get your mojo started, and best of all, the girls at Tomorrows Memories can ship practically anywhere!

Pop over here for details.

TTFN xxx

Saturday Catch-Up

A little bit of stitching has been going on around here...it really saves my sanity some days, to be able to sit quietly for a minute or two and pass some thread through some fabric...sounds crazy, huh?

Anyhoo...my September block for A Family Gathering is called Dad's Shed for obvious reasons :)

Cute little silver tools bring a smile to my face, even if nothing else in the shed does LOL...I'm not really into tools so much :)

My girls both had friends over after netball today, so while they played with my scrap paper and die-cutting machines, I put my Farmers Wife blocks together...giggling girls are such fun to listen to :)

Block number 19 is called Checkerboard...

and block number 20 is an old favourite, Churn Dash...

A bit of a stripey theme going on today :) It's not every block that I can use the stripes, so I try to incorporate them when I can. I can't quite believe I've done 20 blocks on this project already...the weeks are flying!

Have a great weekend

TTFN xxx

Farmers Wife Friday...The Choices Edition

So...today it was a choice... Farmers Wife Friday (not really work LOL...but anyway....) vs kids school sports carnival.

The winner (and rightly so) was the sports carnival! Hopefully the weekend will see me catching up on a couple of blocks ;)

Until then...

TTFN xxx

Circa 1971

Have you all recovered from the surprise yesterday? I hope so, because wait...there's more!

Challenge number 2 from the Cybercrop over at Scrapsidaisy on the weekend was to create a layout about a father figure (which tied in nicely to Fathers Day on Sunday). While I was switching things around in my house the other day, I came across this photo tucked away behind something else in a photo frame.

It used to hang in our house many years ago...it's my husband with his Dad. A perfect photo for the challenge, don't you think?

I used a single piece of Echo Park paper called Fancy Floral from the "For the Record" collection pack, and kept the embellishments fairly simple. The real challenge came when I attempted the second part of the challenge...to create a card with the leftovers!

Since I only had one sheet of the paper (which I used), I had to resort to what was left in the paper pack "For the Record". I mimicked the look of the diecut label in the layout by adding a sticker...but had to use different colours as I had none of the originals left :)

I still have a couple of the challenges to go...but work is not leaving me with much time to complete them. Might have to pull another late night tonight :)

TTFN xxx

P.S Thank you so much to those of you who have left me such lovely comments lately...I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts, and love finding new blogs to visit xxx

I hope you're sitting down...

....because on the weekend, I actually did some scrapbooking! Remember when I used to scrapbook every day? Wow...that seems like a long time ago now :)

The lovely girls over at Scrapsidaisy held a Cyber Crop over the weekend, and I decided to play along, just to see if a challenge or two could get some scrapping mojo happening!

I started with Challenge number 2, which was to use a song title.

To be honest, I really really wanted to scrap one of my photos from our Sharon Manning photoshoot, so
choosing the title was easy :) Here's a detail shot...

The sticker is Miss Nelly by Kaisercraft...and I bought the whole sheet just to get it! I've highlighted some of the details with Smooch accent ink, Tim Holtz Distress Stickles and some Kaiser pearls. The paper is my favourite Echo Park Dots and Stripes...just the one sheet, cut through and flipped so I could use both sides.

Challenge number 5 involved pre-choosing a letter and a number, with each being a code for what you had to use on your layout. My challenge was to use 3 photos and brads.

More polkadots from Echo Park Dots and Stripes...love love love them! Can you tell? The tree border strip is from Echo Parks' Country Drive, along with some American Craft Thickers for the title.

It's not too late to play along...the challenges are open until Wednesday night, and there are prizes up for grabs ;) I still have a couple of layouts I'm working on...the ironing will have to wait!

TTFN xxx

Down to five...

...and what an awesome feeling that is!

So, without further ado...here it is...

You wouldn't believe how hard it was for me to finish this Tis the Season quilt. It's shameful, really. I have major issues with completion, that's for sure.

You'd think that when I'd finished quilting, those last few steps of putting on the binding and hand-stitching it in place, putting on the quilt label (which was already made, in this case!) and sewing in the threads would happen fairly quickly...but no :(

I put it off, and put it off, and then put it off some more. Finally, after giving myself a firm talking-to late last night, I stitched until my eyes were giving out, and put the final stitches in.

What a relief.

Thank you to every single one of you who have left me lovely and encouraging comments while I've been working on this quilt, especially those who have been stitching along with me in the Stitch-a-long group
...I really appreciate your support!

I wonder how long my unfinished quilt list number will stay at 5?



TTFN xxx

Farmers Wife Friday - The Book Week Edition

I always approach the kids' annual Book Week parade with a range of emotions :)

On the one hand, they love to dress up, and it can be fun to pull a costume together (when it all goes to plan, that is!) On the other hand, it can be a bit stressful when one of the kids can't decide who they want to dress up as, and the parade gets closer and closer, and a decision doesn't.

Merryn's was a bit of a no-brainer...

...thanks to this gorgeous ladybird outfit that she received for her birthday this year (thanks Aunty Leisa!). I knew that Eric Carle had written a book about a ladybird, so a visit to the library was in order to check it out. I thought it was "The Very Lazy Ladybird", but bad-tempered was also a pretty good fit...LOL

Lydia's costume...not so easy. Every suggestion she came up with was an animal...and fur can be a bit tricky to acheive, especially with a limited time frame! So we visited some op shops, and came home inspired!

Little Red Riding Hood's granny! I whipped up the night cap at 7am this morning, and managed to break my 1/4 inch foot in the process...which will teach me for being too lazy to swap it :)

So a visit to my local sewing shop, and I was ready for Farmers Wife Friday!

I laid out all my blocks to get a feel for what colours I might use...

...and decided on an aqua infusion :) Block number 18 is called Century of Progress, and came together quite nicely. I love how, if you look closely, you can see a square in the centre.

Block number 17 is Cats and Mice, and left me feeling a little...overwhelmed?

There are 29 seperate pieces in this block! I was thinking that was quite a lot, until I flicked over the book pages a little...Block 22 has 51 pieces...EEEEEEEKKKK!

Now I'm feeling just a little scared :)

Happy Friday to you!

TTFN xxx