NEW BLOG

Hi!

Sorry it's been so long. I've had some issues here and I've decided to start a new blog here. I'm hoping to get back soon to post again.

See you there soon!

Manda

2013 - Woah!

Wow! How time flies! January has been and gone and with February nearly over, the new year is well under way.

I'm sure everyone has been as busy as us! So much has been happening in our lives here that I have hardly had time to think, let alone write new posts. My assistant has started attending pre-school 2 days a week, which is sad and happy for me. Sad because I miss having her around, but happy because B-man is learning much quicker and more freely during our Mummy-son time. I did think those days would give me some much needed work time, but dropping off and picking up before and after pre-school each time wipes out an hour and a half from each day anyway, so it doesn't really work out...

I really wanted to show you all some photos of what I have been up to, but blogger isn't letting me upload for some reason, so I've been putting them onto facebook instead. I think it's public so even if you don't have an account you can view some of them on there.

Anyway, I need to get back to work and kids and all that jazz. I'll get back as soon as I can and try to work out this silly uploading dilemma. Thanks for visiting!

Manda

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Happy December!

I just wanted to quickly share a video with you so you can see one of the many projects I have been working on for the last few months. You can see it HERE. This was the morning after the main event, but the same as one of the items we did there.

I hope you enjoy it!

S'Been a long time!

Hi!!

I know it's been ages, but I have been even more busy than usual, if you can believe that. Plus, I got really annoyed because Blogger wouldn't let me upload any pics, ugh!

Anyway, how is everyone? How was Thanksgiving (for those of you that celebrate that)? How is everyone's prep for Christmas coming along? How many of you are making gifts/decorations etc??

I think the last time I posted was at the very start of this month... Wow! So much has happened around here!

Just before that post B-man turned 1 and we had a smallish afternoon tea to celebrate. About a week later my assistant turned 3! I can't believe how fast the last year passed by! So to celebrate her birthday she decided (and reminded me of that decision for the last 8 months or so) that she was having a "princess party" with a princess tent...(WHAT!?!?) She's not even into princesses usually...more cars, trucks diggers and the like. Oh well, I spent the 2 weeks between birthdays preparing for a princess party. She wrote on invites and we posted them, that was pretty much the easiest thing to do. I went shopping one day with my awesomest sister and bought a bunch of bits and pieces for party bags and all that jazz. It was sorta fun to do, but I'm hoping I don't need to do it too often, it's pretty pricey when you add it all up.

In the couple of days leading up to the big event I was making party bags, cake pops, fruit skewers, choc-coated strawberries and of course a pink swirly star cake with sparkly sprinkles. There were a few more things to plan/make, like the tent. It worked out pretty well, all except for the weather on the day, it was freezing! Our poor little princesses were shivering for the party and we ended up moving inside my tiny and messy little lounge-room to finish up opening presents and giving out party bags.

So that was the party! The next day I was unusually motivated to do some gardening and ended up transplanting one of my 20ish-year-old Camellias to the opposite side of my garden, and it is heaps better there. I put it into an actual garden bed, as opposed to being on the lawn. Hubby's much happier now as it makes mowing heaps easier for him, especially on the ride-on.

Last week I went with my assistant and B-man to a sewing day where 5 of us and my assistant sewed some items to send to MAG, and on to Tanzania. It's always nice to be able to sew for others, except I was having a shocker of a day! I don't want to go into all of the details, but one of the things that happened involved my sewing machine...I tried my foot controller in my assistant's machine which I really didn't think through properly, and it burnt out the potentiometer (speed adjusty bit) inside my pedal. Oh man, BIG TEARS!!! I love my machine and use it ALL the time, EVERYDAY! I was SO SAD! Boo hoo! The next day Hubby and I looked around online for a replacement pedal, but there weren't many and they were all going to cost around $50-$100, not really what I can afford right now, so I decided to open it up and see what the little part inside looked like and whether I could see it too, so we found the little teeny weeny bit that was ruined and ordered a new one online for 45c (plus $4.50 postage) in America so I'm just waiting...and waiting...hopefully it will be fixed in the next week or so, I'm going a little crazy, which brings me to the next project...

A little background, we had termites in one of the posts on our verandah which hadn't been sealed properly when it was built 20-ish years ago. We knew they were in there, we've killed them before, but a couple of nights ago Hubby went out into the yard and there was a huge swarm of them coming out from the post. When I say huge I mean a good 6 meters of dense termite-y-ness. Yuck! So the only option was to jack up the verandah and the roof and take the post out. Seeing as it was already dark and all, it seemed much easier to just chop it off near the top with the chainsaw, so while everyone else in the street were just hopping into bed he was out there starting up some noise and then a fire to dispose of it...hahaha, I like to think our neighbours are used to the crazy shenanigans that go on at our place...if not, I'm really sorry if we disturbed you!!The next morning we got straight to the hardware store and bought a replacement post along with a bunch of other bits that we thought we should probably replace while we were doing it anyway, so we now have a whole stash of timber and screws plus a bunch of tools here ready to put together as our new verandah railing. A bit ambitious, I know, especially with the whole fam coming here for Christmas, but better to be ambitious than not get anything done at all, I think...hahaha

Anyway, I should probably go and attempt to do some of the work that needs to be done out there...hopefully I'll be back soon with pics of everthing. In the meantime, feel free to check out some of them HERE.

Have a great day/week/month...just in case I don't get back by then...

Ugh, Ruffles!!

I know I've mentioned it before, probably more than once, but I really love hanging out with my brother's family. My SIL and I are pretty close in age and our daughters love playing together, so I go and see her every couple of weeks and we catch up for the day. It's always lovely and today was no exception. However, a fortnight ago while I was there we pulled out a skirt that had been cut out and started by somebody else and left with SIL to complete. One of her UFOs. The picture was so sweet, a very frilly layered skirt, perfect for my niece. We started to get it all together, but we ran out of time, so today we pulled it back out again. I took my sewing machine over today and got straight onto stitching ruffles (SIL did all the gathering, thankfully) to the in between-y strips. After we had joined together 4 of the 6 layers, the skirt was only down to my niece's bottom, not very modest! After much studying of the cutting instructions etc, we agreed that the pattern was incorrect and it couldn't have been any better than it was given the size of each piece. It took AGES to get to the point we were at and we really wanted to get it done today. We were both a bit over it but were also totally disappointed with how it turned out. So we decided to lengthen each of the in between-y strips, then left off the bottom ruffle and after another couple of hours of stress and frustration...

TADA!!

One cute-as ruffle-y skirt.

Never again!

Mind you, both SIL and I were tempted to try it again just to see whether or not we could improve it.

oh yeah, and isn't my niece gorgeous!

Now, talking about UFOs, yesterday I pulled out one of mine, a panel that was given to me when my daughter was born. I had added some decorative stitching to highlight the details on the panel. I had also added a peeper and border. Yesterday I sandwiched it with wadding and backing and used the bagging technique to join them. The I quilted around some of the features on the panel, but not much.

I realised 2 things while completing this project:

1. I LOVE my walking foot!

2. I really don't like working with cheap puffy polyester wadding.

I'm not a huge fan pf panels usually, but my assistant totally deserves this quilt!

Last night, having finished something, I was on a craft high, so I used the motivation to dive into my stash and make another skirt for my assistant. She has been eyeing off this yellow printed vintage replica fat quarter that I've had for years, so I decided to use it to make the new skirt. I paired it with some striped cotton voile which I bought at the very start of my stash building. I used it to make a skirt for myself about 9 years ago and since have only used tiny pieces at a time. It had the perfect colours to match with the other fabric and I knew it was meant to be.

I really love the way it turned out.  I know, gathering, but this was way easy and way less gathering than today's insane ruffles.

I also love these little try-hard smiles! I know I have the most adorable little assistant though.

Anyway, I should go and sleep...

Sweet dreams! xo

The End

I was going to start by saying that I can't believe there is only one more day of October, but I can believe it, it just feels like it has passed so quickly.

We have had a very busy month! It started with holidays, moved on to job interviews for Hubby, my birthday, Hubby resigning, B-man's birthday and Hubby starting his new job. Plus a few other projects scattered around (I'll tell you about those soon). So I feel like it was the right decision not to post everyday in October...

Hubby took a couple of weeks off at the start of this month so we took the kids away for a few days. We stayed on the farm with my Uncle and Aunty and the kids had a ride on the pony, Tango.

One of the days we set off for Canberra and this was some of the countryside on our way. Isn't it magnificent! There were heaps of these canola fields on the way and they were so yellow. It was stunning!

Floriade is an annual event in Canberra which we have wanted to go to for a number of years now and finally we made it there. Fields of tulips all planted in specific designs, beautiful!

There were poppies too!

After Floriade we went just out of Canberra city to Cockington Green. If you haven't heard of it Google it. It's fun there. They have immaculate gardens with miniature replicas of some of the most famous places around the world. The kids had a great time too with miniature trains and people everywhere and a playground with some life-like animals to play with.

Last time I posted I was telling you about "Swaptober" and I would have liked more time to post about it again, but I'll just tell you now that I managed to get heaps done and drop 2kgs through the month of October, so it wasn't a complete failure. I would have liked to lose double that amount, but given the amount of birthdays and parties and holidays and eating out that happened, I'm not a bit surprised.

Ok, so the little projects...I spent a day with my SIL helping her to make my niece a new skirt and afterwards I was so inspired and came home to make some more clothes for the dolls. I made 2 more skirts and little blouses to match, so now they're all dressed then only thing I need to do is work out their faces. Mmm, the hard part!

I also made a new skirt for my assistant which she won't take off except to sleep.

I FINISHED THE DRESS!!!!

It has the best zipper I have EVER inserted and I only used my un-picker on 3 occasions for the whole process, 2 of which were removing the basting stitches (and none on the zipper!!), I only un-picked once to redo a small section. This is a monumental achievement for me!!

We sold a car! Another big deal for my car-collecting Hubby! It was so sad to see this particular car go, but necessary, I mean who really needs 6 cars with only 2 drivers...? That's 2 cars we've sold this year!! Yay! They paid for the new wall/fence and will pay to fix up another one of our cars...mmm...then maybe we can sell another one, but not one that will actually get much money.

I mentioned that I had a birthday too, which was not all that fantastic, I kinda feel older now, but something really exciting was a gift from a close friend who knows exactly who I am and what I love. She actually designed some fabric (AWESOME) and had it printed by Spoonflower and gave it to me! How special is that!!! I have awesome friends! My parents  bought me some gorgeous fabrics for my birthday too and a cute owl wallet, while they were IN JAPAN so that was really special too! My siblings gave me a charm pack of one of my favourite fabrics "Salt Air" and a replacement bottle of my all time favourite perfume which ran out recently. How my family know me...Sigh...I love them all so much and they made me feel so special over my birthday.

The day before my birthday it SNOWED! For the first half of that day it snowed at our house. They were huge snowflakes too, but unfortunately we're a tiny bit too low for them to settle. It was still pretty exciting though. Odd though, it's the middle of Spring and in the weeks before and after this it was really hot!

The following Wednesday we went to visit Great Nana and her snowball flowers were ready for us to play, so we had snowball fights there instead of in the real snow. It was a lot of fun and a bit of a tradition now.

B-man turned 1! I love seeing my kids grow and change and learn how to live. In this past year B-man has gone from a boring and icky baby to a walking and talking(ish) little person. He can do so much more now and is so cheeky. He is even starting to actually play with my assistant which is really cool.

Oh and I made him a special cake for his party. Never doing one like this again!

  

I spent a whole week sorting out my house in readiness for B-man's party. I ended up taking loads of girly baby/toddler clothes to a friend with a baby girl, put a few things aside for when my sister or someone else very special to me has a baby, and turned some really tatty and un-wearable things into rags for Hubby to use in the garage. It helped so much in making space! I didn't get rid of fabrics though, and instead gained a few bags from various friends and relatives. But you can't tell there are more here, I have a really good way of storing most of them so no-one else can tell...I am starting to use them more though, so that's good.

 Anyway, I think you've probably heard enough about my month. I'll post again, hopefully more frequently, in November. I still have a long way to go with Christmas gift making, so you'll probably see a lot of those projects.

SWAPtober- the BIGinning

Oh how I'd like to be skinny!

I've had this plan for a while, that during October I would try a new way of losing weight and as an added bonus, be more productive too. Basically the idea was to swap "naughty" food for productive activity.

My thinking:

Based on the fact that I eat naughty foods because I feel like it and not because I'm hungry, I thought it would be simple enough to ditch them. That's not actually the case. Apparently, telling myself not to have something makes me want it more and eventually I get it and usually more of it than if I'd just had a small amount in the first place. I used to be good at not having special foods in the house, but apparently there are some things my family can't live without.

Make sense so far?

Secondly, I get a real high from completing things and when I'm busy doing something, I tend to forget about food in between mealtimes, so I thought that filling up my time with more work and creativity should stop snacking.

Yeah.....nup!

So, basically my plan means that every time I think about eating a special food, I need to go to one of the many projects I have going and continue work on it. The hope is that this will help me finish some more work and eat less junk, therefore making me lose weight, get stuff done and feel better about everything!

Progress:

How's it all going a third of the way through October?

Really badly!

I suck at it!

I'm not getting stuff done and I'm eating the same naughty food. Why? Probably partly because hubby is on holidays and partly because I am addicted to sugar or something. Hubby doesn't like me sewing while he watches TV and being on holidays basically means if we're not out somewhere, he wants to watch something every night, and late into the night. So no sewing. Plus, he has holiday food around, because he's on holidays, so he is eating special things more and it's right here and way too accessible.

The solution:

I don't know. I guess I'll keep trying to distract myself and look forward to hubby returning to work next week so some of the naughty foods won't be here staring me in the face.

Will I lose weight? Possibly, but probably not. Definitely not as much as I'd hoped. I guess we'll soon see. I always feel so good when I finish something I've started, so why is this so hard?!