Kate Rusby, Sweet Bells

Here's something to get you in the Christmas mood, from one of my favourite singers.

Annual Santa Photo

The girls and I met 'Santa' the other morning. I have to say, he was a wonderful Santa, and the girls had a lovely chat to him about Christmas Eve and what they might leave for him and his reindeers.

He also asked if they'd thought about what they'd like and Lizzie mentioned a Flairie doll (from Barbie in A Fashion Fairytale), and Louisa, having just seen a toy cobra in the store, mentioned that. So we discussed Cobra cars and how Daddy would probably like one, but they're very expensive and maybe a toy one would do. So a very patient and lovely Santa.

Lizzie managed an almost smile, while Louisa beamed.

Lizzie's Kids Swap

Well done to Kylie for organising this Kids Swap. We enjoyed making some clay decorations and cutting out some paper dolls, as well as choosing some cool craft stuff to send to another mini crafter.

Mollie's received her parcel from us. We hope she enjoys it! We hope our other little recipient recieved hers in one piece too.

Lizzie was so lucky to get some beautiful things from Alice. Unfortunately my camera's playing up so no photos, but there was so many bits and pieces, and a drawstring bag full of things that tinkle and sparkle. Lizzie loves it! And is painting her little clay santa as I write.

I hope to be back with a load of pics soon!

Still here, still busy

Sorry for lack of posts lately. I seem quite busy leading up to the Christmas hols - only a week and a bit before all of Santa's little jobs must be done! I've been running around trying to locate items the girls have on their lists, while also assuring them they won't be getting even half of what they've asked for. We don't want to overwork those elves now, do we?

Someone may end up with this:

and there may be a new Tinkerbell DVD and playset for someone else, so they can't really complain.

I'm looking forward to the end of term,. I love the lack of rushing around and remembering forms and taxiing to activities. Roll on Friday week!

Pumpkin free zone

Hi everyone.

I have nothing against others celebrating Halloween. I'll keep a small stock of lollies in case anyone comes door knocking on the weekend, and may even take my kids along to a Halloween dress up party a friend has organised - but just letting you know I'm not doing any form of Halloween decoration.


I'll admit to spending way too much time looking at blogs, and gee, those Americans get carried away with it, don't they? I'm sure it's lots of fun, but let's just say that any holiday where orange and black are the predominant colours isn't going to win me over.



And let's face it, the seasons are all wrong. Here in Australia it's spring, and images like this are far prettier:



That's Under the Jacaranda Tree by Richard Godfrey Rivers. If you're ever in Brissie, pop into the gallery and you can check it out. The girls and I decided it's our favourite painting there. The girls may have been swayed by the pile of jacarnada leaves the staff leave at the base of the painting at the right time of year.

At the moment, the jacarandas are blooming everywhere. The girls play a little game when we're in the car to see who can be first to call out 'Jacaranda!' everytime they see one - even they same ones we see everyday.

It was funny reading A-M's post today about the connection between the jacaranda blooms and the start of exam study. Being from Victoria, I never knew about this, and so thankfully I can simply enjoy the purple prettiness.

Back in action

A big thank you to everyone who sent their thoughts (here and through messages on EB and emails) after the passing of my beautiful father. It's so lovely to know that there is a bunch of people you've never met in real life who care about you. Really touching.

I've been using one of my favourites forms of therapy: thinking about and working on making my home my castle. Lots of questions to ponder there.

• Will I ever finish sanding and staining my deck? And what's the ideal ground cover plant to replace the awful grassy things that look like weeds in around the pool area? One with pretty flowers?

• Is Tapestry Beige (Dulux) a good colour for a feature wall in our master bedroom? Is it the right kind of beigey grey I'm after? If not, what is?

• How am I going to finish sanding and painting our hoop pine entertainment unit, without unplugging all those very complicated cables? And if I do unplug them all, how am I going to put it all back together?

• Will the home design police come knocking if I put up a print I bought at Target in my main living area?

• Where can I buy mini lamp shades to replace revolting glass bulbs on lights in the dining and formal lounge?

• Where will I ever find a huge, stylish yet affordable light fitting to replace the gigantic very unattractive one in our foyer?

• Should I sand back the dining table top to natural or leave it the slightly orangey stain when I paint the legs white? The obvious answer (Sand it back, of course), leads to the next question, how will I find the time?

• When am I ever going to get to Ikea? So many items on the 'if I ever get a window of more than a few hours to myself, I'm going to drive all the way down to Ikea and buy' list (rugs, storage units, picture frames,etc)

If you know the answer to any of these questions, please let me know!

My Dad

23rd March 1931 - 20th September 2010

Here are some excerpts from the eulogy I read at Dad's funeral:











I've left a lot out from what you read here, about his community involvement, his love of travel around Australia, and his time spent with his grandkids, but you hopefully will get an idea of what a special person he was, and how much we all love him and miss him.

My dad

I lost my dad on Monday, so forgive the lack of posts. I'll be back during the week to rave about what a fabulous gentleman he was.

Link to a fab freebie

I love this idea for a quick and easy project that I found here.
My own laundry is quite a boring space. Servicable but dull. To add to the 'ambience' or lack thereof, my dinosaur of a machine that will not die is yellow and faded and comes complete with cracked panels. I'll add pics of it one day when I'm feeling brave.


At least there'll be something stylish in there!

Happy Fathers' Day!

Back again

I'm sorry my blog has been neglected lately. We've been interstate yet again, visiting my Dad who is currently in hospital. He has Alzheimers, and has also had pneumonia and other health issues lately, so it's not a very happy situation. This picture was taken looking out of his room, so at least he has a lovely view to look at.

Paint therapy

There's something very therapeutic about slapping some white paint on something. I finally won something on Ebay - which is remarkable for me, as I always bid so ridiculously low. My successful bid as a couple of not so lovely chairs. One of them is what they called a 'captain's chair' so I thought it was appropriate for our boating family. So a quick sand and some white paint and voila. No doubt there's someone out there horrified at me whacking on the paint, but, hey, I'm the only one bidding on it, so if not for me, most likely it was off to the tip for this cutie.

Here it was before, the photo actually makes it look not too bad, but the finish was really bad:

I've got no clue what to do with the other chair that came with it - perhaps I need to sew a linen cover and it can be my sewing chair?

Bunting for the girls' room

As promised some pics of the bunting I made for the girls room, following the bedroom reshuffle to to put them back in together. I'll admit I'm not the world's best photographer, and I do find it difficult to take shots indoors that do justice to how pretty it looks, but you get the general idea.

I used the spare pillow cases from the girls doona covers. Lizzie's is a Sheridan fairy one that she chose when we first moved into the new house, and Louisa's is quite plain (bought as part of a doona set actually). It's such a pretty colour though. I think the bunting does a great job of tying it all together.

In the top photo, you can see the vintage prints I posted about here, along with some favourite toys.

The furniture is a bit of a mishmash in this room, I guess, and I have visions of matching little girls cast iron beds, but for now this is what we have and they both think it's very pretty.

Vespers

This is gorgeous also. I love the warmth and comfort I feel when I listen to this one.

Hannah Recites The King's Breakfast by A.A. Milne

While looking for entertainment for my sick little Lizzie yesterday, I found this on youtube. Isn't she fabulous! This was one of my favourite poems my Dad would read to us. He is an ex-radio announcer so always did it brilliantly!

Sneak peek

My weekend project for the girls rooms is finished, but I have a sick child at home today, so no time to take pretty photos and post it. But let's just say - I love it!

Coffee table transformation

I posted about my poor coffee table here. It had certainly taken a beating, so I knew that one day I'd have to do something to it. Well, finally that day (or days actually!) arrived and I had a little spare time to do it. I sanded the top right back to the wood, taking off the dark stain finish, and painted the base white. I used some polyurethane on the top so hopefully it will be a little harder wearing this time around.

I think it looks great, although I possibly would have changed the drawer handles, but for the fact that my husband had glued them on super tight at some stage as they'd kept coming off. So it was just as easy to leave them on and paint them white.

The paint colour is Dulux Fair Bianca and I like the slightly creamy look. Of course, I used gloss, so that it would be nice and easy to wipe off after those inevitable spills!

Now I have a new machine...

there's no stopping me!



There's something new on my entry table - the scrap of linen there. If you look really closely, there's a lovely white scalloped stitch on the hem, courtesy of my new machine:

Ta da!




If you haven't checked out the online auctions at Grays, you really should. It's amazing the wonderful bargains you can pick up. I'm so happy with this machine and am amazed I put up with my super basic machine for so long.

My first real project was a simple cushion. I'm in love with linen at the moment, and all the French style homewares. So I combined them here. Of course, I had to use one of my machines new stitches, one that does a thicker than usual straight stitch, and because I did a simple envelope opening, I was also able to use one of the prettier stitches on the hem there too!

Off to make some more!

Some Highland Fun!

We were busy on the weekend with the girls both competing in a highland dancing competition. Here they are in their kilts:

A not-completely-unrelated-to-sewing post, as I made the litle white blouse in the first photo an dd a bit of adjusting of Lizzie's kilt - hard to find one to fit someone so small!

The Brisbane River

The Brisbane River is one of the best features of this city. With the weather a bit too cool for our usual boating destinations (I couldn't see myself snorkelling with the water temps as they are at the moment!), we headed up river recently instead, to get a view of Brisbane from the water.

Here's some of my favourite city addresses:

The new Gateway bridge beside the old one.

Part of the huge wharf section of the river:

And of course, the girls' favourite home on the river: the pink one!

Winter Skies

School holiday entertainment

Th girls are doing a fabulous job of keeping themselves occupied over the school holidays. Louisa received some of the Enchanted Doll's House theatre books, and the she has being playing 'theatre producer' very well, distributing tickets, collecting tickets and the performance, dimmig the house lights, directing the 'actors' and even gathering audience feedback by writing questionaires for the audience! Lots of fun.

They've also enjoyed modelling the masks from this book.

The toy sale catalogues have been useful for collage (messy hair is allowed on the holidays):

And I've enjoyed the slower pace, without picks up and drops offs and meetings and coffee catch ups, and dancing practice and more dancing practice, etc.

Hope you're enjoying your holidays, if you have them at the moment.

Home from Victoria

My blog has been sadly neglected as we enjoyed some time away, visiting the girls' grandparents (both sets!) and meeting their new little cousin, my sister's new baby Leo.

While the weather was chilly, the girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves. The highlights for them were getting to pick flowers from Grandma's garden (as you can see laid out on the table below, they didn't hold back!) and patting the next door neighbours cats. I myself am not such a fan of cats, and even had to push one away with a broom when he looked like attacking a bird!

Here's baby Leo - quite a cutie!
My mum loves her garden and her roses, and this was my favourite a dusty pink/almost brown one. (I've forgotten the name already!)

We also managed to catch up with my husband's parents too on the way back to the airport, where they were spoiled with tasty treats (Nanna's a great cook and always has a muffin or cake waiting for the girls) and hugs and kisses.

Now off to so some sewing! Yes, sewing!!

Wordless Weekend

Mother's Day

I hope everyone had a fabulous Mothers' Day. Mine was very nice, and started early with an afternoon tea at Lizzie's kinder on Wednesday.

The children politely took our drinks orders and brought our food to us, and sang us some lovely songs, complete with actions. They also gave us some early gifts - handmade, of course! The children had also helped decorate the tables and did a brilliant job. They also helped prepare the food, but I'm not sure I want to think too much about that!

See Lizzie's lovely sewing? She does enjoy it, and we have many hand sewn items from kinder at home, but this one is extra special.

I was also spoilt by Louisa, with a very well organised stall at the school, so I received some lovely choccies and a key ring also.

And then on the actual day, I received date toast and a cup of tea in bed, with help from Peter - (not showing the photos of me eating that though!) and I received a lovely pot of flowers. I must take a photo of those. They're beautiful - just like my children!