Showing posts with label flowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flowers. Show all posts

Monday, October 29, 2012

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.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Sewtember Day Twenty-Six - Short and sweet


Last night I showed you one of the place-mats turned the right way. Now they are all turned and I'm going to start "ladder stitching" the openings closed.



I actually like them more each time I look at them, which is a little unusual, but very confidence boosting.

Anyway, it's late and we've been out ALL DAY! I'm really tired and I need to sit down and do the hand stitching. I'll be back tomorrow.

Sweet dreams!

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Sewtember Day Twenty-Five - Triumphant Tuesday


I got a fair bit done today. I even had the kids inside for most of it, which is different. I guess having my assistant occupied with small jobs like sorting my buttons into little jars really helps. What doesn't help is losing velcro! I really needed it to do something which took 4 minutes in the end, but over 2 hours was wasted looking for the velcro! Oh well, I still got stuff done, so that's the main thing.

The first thing I was working on was the cape for an order. You might have seen the "C" emblem in past posts. Well, now it's finished and in the bag ready for delivery. Woo! Here is a very quick how-to style run of pics from the next step.






Then turn through the opening at the curve and top-stitch around the whole cape.







Now try it out!







What do you think? My assistant thought it was pretty cool, so I deem it a success!

Ok, the next project for today was the flower place-mats I started a few weeks back. Here you can see where I was up to. And here is what I did today.







I think they're going to look really pretty when they're finished. Then I'll just need to wrap them.

Anyway, I'm off to watch something on TV, by myself! Hasn't happened for a while, and I'm sick of having to justify why I want to watch a particular show. I don't really care if someone else thinks it's lame. I like it.

I'll be back tomorrow with some more progress pics, I hope...

Sweet dreams!

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Sewtember Day Nineteen - Spring has most definitely Sprung


It was most definitely Spring today, and I've decided that Spring is best spent at Great Nana's house. Her garden has the most beautiful aroma! I could have just stood there in her backyard breathing it all in for the whole afternoon. As it turned out, we played Scrabble in the sun room so we were still surrounded by the awesomeness of her garden, and the fragrance. It makes me want to sing "Indescribable" by Chris Tomlin, "...From the colours of Fall to the fragrance of Spring..."  I love it! (The song and Spring, that is.)

At craft today I was helping my Aunty to put together hexies for a quilt that she is working on. It needs to be done by Christmas and it's a slow process when the only time it gets done is at craft and that's hard because my kids demand a lot of her attention. So I was helping her and it was a really nice change from my applique. I always wonder why I choose those tedious projects, I guess it's worth it in the end, but it's annoying in the process and I shouldn't start them anymore.

When we got home tonight there was a big change to the new wall.


There is a wall the whole way along...not long now 'til it's done...eeeeee!

Our landscaper must have had a much better day, weather-wise, he got a lot done. It's looking really good and I think He's hoping to have the posts for the fence in over the next day or so. How exciting!!

Oh, here is a sneak peek at my project for tomorrow...I know at least one of you knows what it will be, but for those of you who don't, just wait and you'll soon see. I'm so totally pumped about it!!! I hope it works out in real life like it does in my head. My test one was pretty close, so with a couple of minor adjustments I think the real one will be so amazingly awesome...


I'd better get to bed. My energy tank is almost empty and I do have a huge pile of work to get done in the next day or two.

Thanks for reading along!

I'll see you all tomorrow. Goodnight!