Sewtember Day Eleven - Some sad news.

Ok, so I got news today that my great Uncle died this morning. So sad! I'm over people dying. It's a tad depressing. And makes it hard to focus on something good to write for the blog...

"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." ~Revelation 21:4

Our wall is coming along nicely.

While this was being done I was inside sewing again...this time something for someone's Christmas gift which I can't show you...only because they may see.

I have also paired the place-mats with wadding now so I'm hoping to get onto those as soon as I can, probably Thursday. Then I'll be able to show you again, maybe nearly finished!

I actually hung my quilt tops out today to freshen them up a little bit. After so much wet weather in the last year I'm finding things all around our house with a musty smell and unfortunately my quilt tops had it. Most of them are fine, but the Heather Bailey one still smells a bit. I've just decided to hang it inside for a few more days to see if it helps.

Anyway, sorry for the brief entry tonight. I'm so not in the right frame of mind to write any more. See you tomorrow.

Sewtember Day 6 - Thanksgiving

So you probably remember me telling you that I was at a Funeral yesterday, well today I was at the Thanksgiving service for the same friend. How special is that! He really was a wonderful person with a heart for telling people about Jesus.

Given the style of today's service, I thought I'd tell you some of the things I'm thankful for everyday and maybe you can share some too.

Now, everyone would say this, I think, but I'm thankful for my family and friends. I really wouldn't be me without them. The support and love along with the challenges and critiques are the things that make my family my family and me me.

I'm thankful for my surroundings, especially in Spring. Each day is bringing new blossoms and warmth and it's so inspiring to see how the environment around me changes. I love flowers! I'm a terrible gardener, but the people living on either side of me are really good at it and their gardens are beautiful!

I'm thankful for little things too, like strawberries and hugs and flushing toilets and sewing...

I'm sewing around the petals on the place-mats tonight.

 Anyway, that's it for tonight. Thanks for hanging out again. I'll see you tomorrow...

Night!

Sewtember Day Five - Road Trip

Today I drove with my sister and the kidlets to the funeral of a dear friend of ours. He was by far the most beautiful person I have ever met! He was so much better at being Godly and even saying hi in the street was encouraging. His wife is also one of the most beautiful people and she knows so much more about God and His word than I could ever imagine filling my head with. Together they were wonderful examples of all things pure, right, excellent, praiseworthy, lovely, admirable, noble and true. It is sad that He is no longer a part of this world, but I know he is in the most awesome place and I feel blessed to have known him, even for the relatively short time that I have. I'm hoping to spend some more quality time with his wife too. It's funny the things you remember at weddings and funerals, and one thing that comes to mind about this lovely man is that he called me "whistle-worthy" once. In that moment, I felt so special! He really was lovely!

It was a stunner of a day weather wise! Totally Gorgeous!

This is the sunset we watched on the way home. It was an awesome end to a fantastic day! I know that sounds odd seeing as we went to a funeral, but it was not a sad funeral. It was joyous and beautiful. I also had a wonderful time with my sister. We chatted all the way there and sang together all the way home. I love her! And far out she can sing!!!

So after such a great day, I came home at the same time as hubby got home from work and I was so - I don't know - rejuvenated (?) that I actually did a tiny bit of work in the short time before bed...obviously I'm not quite in bed yet, but I'm on the way...

These are going to be place-mats for someone in my family for Christmas - Yay, finally something for Christmas! Hubby thinks an outline of black stitching around the flowers, I thought just the same colour as the linen. What do you think?

I can't believe how good I feel right now. Going to bed just seems like a waste of time! But I guess it's important...oh well.

Goodnight! I hope you had a lovely day too.

Gentleness.

First, today's photo. "Last thing you bought".

Groceries...Yay!

The fruit for today is Gentleness and our sermon at church this morning was all about attitudes and how the decisions we make are based on our attitudes. Sometimes we feel like we don't have a choice, but in a number of those times our attitude is stopping us from seeing the real situation. The other thing about the decisions we make is how they are perceived by others. One thing that stood out to me in the sermon was how some decisions we make and actions we take can really offend/upset others. So we need to consider the feelings of some people before doing certain things. I know for me, my Nana never liked me to wear black things because of things she learnt earlier in her life, and when I was growing up it was really annoying to me and so I would still wear black because I could. I know now (not just from today) that this may not have been the right thing to do. It may be something insignificant, but people are important and relationships are delicate sometimes, so we should respect these little things and do our best to make people around feel loved/respected. Anyway, being gentle is one of those decisions. I always find myself telling my assistant to be gentle these days. She's little and doesn't quite understand why B-man can't play with her yet. She'll get it soon but I get so frustrated with her sometimes. I know she doesn't mean anything by poking him or whatever, but I snap. Sometimes when I'm tired it's pretty full-on. Today made me think about how I need to choose to be more gentle in my dealing with her (like Mary Poppins, firm but gentle) and I guess learn to deal with my frustration better. And that sort of leads into tomorrows fruit, but I'll leave that for tomorrow.

See you then! xo

Sorry little miss. I love you lots! 

Friday (not so) Fun One - The Big Goodbye

Yay it's Friday, right? Well, maybe. I don't know. Today was a big day for me. My little man moved out. Boohoo... He's 9 months today! Now, having him in our room has been causing some tension with my assistant, so the time came to move him out. It's a strange feeling. Coincidentally, my assistant has gone for a sleepover with her cousins, at Normal Nana's tonight. I spent the day saying goodbye not only to B-man and his cot, and my assistant, but also to...

...my sewing room. I know, I'm devastated! 3 big goodbyes in one day.

Humph! It's been really strange feelings all day for me. I'm a bit excited about having our room to ourselves again, but knowing that B-man is all alone is sad. I really wanted the 2 to share a room, but it just isn't an option with such small rooms and also my assistant is very much against the idea of B-man sharing with her. Actually, she doesn't want him sharing with anyone. I guess if she can't sleep in our room, no-one can.

Anyway, I took a couple of pics of my new sewing room(s)...

Bed/library/fabric room. (This is a teeny sample of my fabric stash...mmm). Very organised-looking scraps above...

Lounge/fabric/pattern/sewing room.

I guess it's not all bad. Now I can look at my fabrics whenever I want without having to move half the house around to get into the sewing room. But, it's still sad. I feel like I've lost something very sacred or something. Everyone will be able to see everything I'm working on all the time now too, so I'd better stay a bit more organised.

So that's it about my goodbyes. Now onto something a little less sad, the fruit for Friday. When it comes to goodness, does doing the washing and vaccuuming count as being good or goodness? If so then I guess you could say I was good today. What sort of things do you think of when you think of goodness? I don't think I'm so great at being good sometimes. I definitely have good days and bad days.

Oh, I nearly forgot the photo for today. "On the road". I'm cheating for this one, that is, I didn't take a photo today for it.

Ok, so you can't really tell, but that's me on a motorbike, on the road!!! It's from a few years ago while i pregnant with my assistant. I just really wanted to go for a ride with someone on a motorbike, and the time just happened. I'd been on bikes before, but each time was really slow and round in tight circles, so it always felt like I would fall off. I needed to do it properly to know that it was ok. Strange, but today being a day for big stuff I though it was sort of appropriate. The person in control of the bike is AWESOME! I had a great time and hope to do it again someday...not just yet though.

Only a few days left in July, so I won't be continuing with these photos. Is there something else I should post about here? I might try and do some more craft, a few people have requested that, but if there's anything, please leave me a comment and I'll see what I can do.

Nighty night!

Triumphant Tuesday, Peace and a stranger.

Hi!
Today was great! My sister visited, my friend and her daughter visited and I even started and completed an entire sewing project, and I might do another one before I go to bed. But I'll tell you more about that in another post.

Before anyone came to visit us today there was a stranger in our yard. A man with a BIG van. I think it might have been for the neighbour, but he parked across our backyard. It  wasn't very good. But oh well, can't do anything about it, I guess. Here is the picture of his van, I thought it would be rude to take a picture of him, even though he was a bit rude parking in our yard without asking us.

The grass looks nice...

The rain helped the morning to be quite peaceful and also reminds me of God's hand on everything in our world. I had to explain that we need the rain to make the grass and plants grow so that we can have food. Plus, we need the rain to fill up the water tank.

Anyway, I need to cut it short, the kidlets are not cooperating tonight. Maybe, just maybe I'll get some peace before I need to get up tomorrow, but who knows, it's going to take some effort...
Goodnight!

Monday Mirror and Where does your joy come from?

Rain certainly doesn't help in my feeling joyful. I don't mind it really, but there's something about sun in the morning that seems to bring joy. So, on a rainy wintry Monday, a visit from our friends was a great mood lifter. My good friend and her daughter who is the same age as mine dropped in for a couple of hours and it was lovely to catch up. We have similar backgrounds and our main life choices are similar too, so we have a lot to talk about. It's really encouraging to have a friend who supports you no matter what choices you make and offers gentle words of conviction to open your mind to other ways of doing certain things. Whenever we catch up (not often, unfortunately) I always feel uplifted and I hope she feels the same. It actually gave us both joy to see our beautiful girls talking (with real understandable sentences) and playing so well together. I know they are a big part of our lives and I hope we are of theirs too.

So, where does your joy come from?

The photo for today is "mirror" and I love looking into our only mirror, which is in the bathroom, at night. If you look in it at the right angle, the reflection shows the lights from the road through the big oak tree which gives a gorgeous silhouette. It's really pretty...problem is, it's hard to get a good photo of it. I tried though and here it is.

I'm hoping to get more craft done tonight, so if it works out I might be able to show you tomorrow, but things don't always go to plan around here.

So I'd better go while both kids are asleep. Goodnight!

Sunday and the week that was...

Upside-down

I washed up today. Feels like an achievement considering how little of anything else I seem to be doing these days.

This week was a really good one and made me remember a few of the reasons I fell in love with my Hubby all those years ago. We spent his week off working around our house and just getting a few little niggly jobs done and out of the way. Spending extended periods of time together sometimes isn't great, but this week was fantastic and I'm not really looking forward to him going back to work in the morning and neither is he. So my week in short involved weeding, clearing, sweeping, digging, pulling, grinding, shopping, roofing, chopping, moving, fencing, chucking(rubbish not vomit), laughing and sleeping. It was pretty successful and we got more than we had planned done. Less sleeping though. It was a lovely week! 

On a completely different note, I think I want to design fabrics. I've thought about it for a couple of years now and every time I think about it or see a new range of fabrics released I want to do it more. So I guess the next thing to work out is how to go about it. Then I guess I need to actually have some designs to print. The other thing I want to do, but already sort of do, is design patterns for sewing. I have designed quite a few patterns already, but have never had them printed professionally or anything like that. I'm wondering whether PDFs might be a good idea though. I've purchased a few patterns in that format before and they seem to be pretty good. I like the idea of not needing to go to the post office when someone buys one. What  do you think? Are PDFs a good format for patterns?

Anyway, I was invited to join a fruit challenge starting today. The fruits I mean are listed in Galatians chapter 5 verse 22. The first is love. Thinking about love makes me think of my family. I'm always reminded of a verse that I, like many others, had read at my wedding, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. The challenge for me is to try and remember all of these points about love and live by them. There are one or two which are harder than the rest, so it's definitely a challenge. A good one though. Hopefully it will help me to be more Godly.

Tomorrow is all about Joy, so we'll see what happens then. I'll be back with another photo too, so I'll see you then.

Goodnight!

Friday Fun One - Eyes

Hubby had this week off and to end a great and very productive week we decided to do the second half of the garage roof. Yay! Only problem is I now feel totally wiped out. Probably from being out in the sun all day and climbing on and off the top of his very tall 4 wheel drive (We didn't have a good enough ladder and it was wider than scaffolding anyway). So thinking about what to blog about has been a bit tough. The photo for today is supposed to be of eyes and trying to work out what to take a picture of and what to write about, hasn't been so simple. I was thinking through everything I've been doing this week and when I last did some stitching so I could tell you about the eyes in the needles. I couldn't think of anything with the eyes of needles, but I did remember that I went to craft on Wednesday and was actually working on the eyes of the Ragdolls. I have only done part of the eyes on one of the dolls, but hopefully when they're done they'll look good. I did a couple of different styles to test which would look best and the eyes and face I'm in the middle of were my favourite. It's a big decision, how to create the right face. There are endless possibilities and only a few of them could work. In the case of real people, I don't know how God has the patience to design every single one of us differently. He is Amazing! I am not.

But thinking of eyes and differences, have you ever tried people watching. I love people watching, something my sister (and apparently cousin) also enjoys doing. I wonder about how each person is similar or different to their families and whether they ever think about me and how I might be similar to mine. I often think about what got them to the place I see them. Whether they were on the way to or from somewhere in particular or just wasting time. I'm constantly reminded of the fact that there are more people on this earth than just me and those around me. The lives and stories of each of the people are so complex that I can't even begin to imagine them all. But somehow and for some reason we were in the same place, doing the same (or similar) thing at the same time. Isn't it great! Once I went to Australia's Wonderland and met a girl who's Grandparents were my Great Uncle and Aunty! That's fun!! I will never forget that. We were both there on school excursions from different schools, in opposite directions from the park. We "just happened" to be waiting in the same line for the same ride and decided to say hi to each other. I just love it when that sort of situation happens. Has it ever happened to you? Have you ever bumped into someone you are related to, by accident?

But anyway, I've been trying to get the face on the dolls right and it's not simple. So let me know what you think and hopefully they'll be done soon. Thanks for reading.

Super Saturday. Garden.

Not so super, actually. I woke up sick today, so the morning is a bit of an uncomfortable blur in my mind. Then by this afternoon my assistant was sick too and did this...

...again. Poor Chicki-Boo.

The photo for today is of something that she picked (much to my disgust) out of our "garden", which is more weeds than anything else. I planted these a couple of years ago and for the last 2 winters we've watched as they raise their pointy little green heads further and further upwards and then turn into these awesome and beautiful creations.

Isn't it wonderful? One of the most beautiful flowers we've seen in our garden...ever!

And, talking about creations, I spent the afternoon working on one of mine.

You probably remember this doll, with this hair...well, I undid it all today and re-attached it differently.

There is still another layer of hair to add to make it thicker and more lush at the back, however the front is done. I think it's nicer the new way, so far anyway, and so does my assistant which works out well given the fact that doing it a third time doesn't sound all together lovely. I think I'm going to have to give this doll to my assistant, though as she's had such a big role in making her.

So, what do you think? Please let me know if it looks bad...I may not change this one, but I still have three to go, so I will consider your feedback when deciding how to do those.

It's bed time now though, so thanks for reading. Let me know if there is something in particular you would like to see on my blog, I love getting comments and I can always try to incorporate whatever into here.

Hopefully you are all having a great weekend!!

Goodnight!

Monday, Monday.

So we start another week with Hubby at work and the usual pile of housework to do. But for some unknown reason, it actually works out really nicely for once. Normally Monday is dreary and full of boring, but today was different. I mean, I still did the normal 2 loads of washing and some washing up, made brownies and dinner, but this time my assistant was really helpful. She loaded and turned the washing machine on both times and put the wet things into the basket to take outside, carried pegs, helped with brownies and dinner (we had roast beef, Yummo!!) and even collected all the dirty nappies and undies from B-man. I couldn't really have asked for more from her today. It made the day quite enjoyable and I actually don't feel as exhausted as I usually would. We even had both kidlets in bed by 8.05, which is really good for us. Plus, the weather was beautiful! Not really like winter at all. I just had the usual t-shirt and jeans, even outside and it was gorgeous in the sun! My first load of washing dried in just a couple of hours...What an awesome God we have to make days like today!!!

This is from last week sometime on a colder more wintry day, but you can see that B-man likes helping out too. Today was much more sunny and warm looking than in this day was. Normal Nana was here when we swapped loads outside today too, so B-man sat beside her on the grass in the sun and watched us get the clothes sorted.

Here they are both helping with the washing last week.

I think something else that may have contributed to my enjoyment of today may have been some stuff that went down over the weekend...my assistant had her first sleepover at Normal Nana's while Hubby and I went out for my older brother's birthday, so that was nice. 

This is the card that my assistant made for my brother. He loved it!

Plus, I designed and drafted my first clothing pattern completely from scratch and it worked pretty well, I just need to do a couple of minor adjustments. But I'll tell you the details later on in another post. But yay!

Did I mention I've introduced B-man to the potty? I think it's been a month or so now. Today he did his first poo in it and I tell you what, we all danced around like we'd won the lotto!

This is him quite happy with himself after doing a wee on the potty last week. It's so cute seeing him in the little teeny undies...

Oh, and someone ordered a tea cosy, Sweet! I'm back into things and I feel great! What an excellent end to a Monday! I hope you all had a good one too and you'll hear from me again soon with those new project details.

Goodnight!

Monday Monday

I wasn't really planning on posting anything tonight, but I just looked at the partial lunar eclipse. I hope you all got to see it. It's so clear, thanks to all the wind we've been having. 

It's beautiful and reminds me how AWESOME our Creator is! 

Thank you God for beautiful things!

May Challenge Day Twenty-Four

I went for a walk today and came home in the rain. On the way into my yard I saw a huge stick-insect, about 12 inches long, just chillin' on my letter box. It was random and cool, but mostly just reminded me once again of our Awesome Creator and the unlimited creativity He shows. I love spending time dreaming about all the great things I could make or do, but nothing compares to the wonders of His hands!

When it comes to craft, I started making a dress for a gorgeous little girl (Yes, she's my niece, but I can still say she's gorgeous). I've cut it all out and am just about ready to sew it together, but the rain on my metal roof is calling me to my pillow. Oh well, tomorrow might be more productive.

Goodnight!

Friday Fun One - 3

Yay for sunny days! We soaked up as many rays as we could today. We ran around and kicked the ball, sat and looked at aeroplanes and birds and we brought in some washing which we hung yesterday. It was a gorgeous autumn day and the colourful leaves were falling all around us to remind us of our Awesome God!

Happy Friday and I hope you all have a beautiful weekend!

May Challenge Day Ten

Today I laid out my flowers ready to be attached to the backing. It was a little tricky to get them into the same positions I had them in before, but they're pretty close and I don't mind if they are a tad different so it should work out okay.

Today was a glorious sunny day! I did washing twice just so I could hang out in the sun a little longer. I think I need more vitamin D...but it really did feel good soaking in the rays and it's hard to look past the Lord's beautiful creation all around! I probably should have done more inside the house, but it can wait til the next rainy day.

Anyway, I really need to head to bed, I should try and get these posts up earlier in the evenings...

Goodnight!