Handy women

I havn't been sewing much lately as I've been doing a few other jobs.

My new neighbour and I have been kiddying up her yard a bit for her 3 kids. First up we got busy with the chain saw and trimmed up a large tree in her yard. Then I pinched the tractor and we dumped a few loads of sand under it to make a sand pit mound. The kids will take care of spreading it out themselves!


Seems to be popular...


Item 2 on the agenda was a swing. None of this piddly small swing stuff for us.


Expertly created by master swing hangers at Gungunnu Inc.!


Your probably wondering how we got the ropes over the branch? Well I drove the tractor under the branch and we stood in the bucket and lifted it right up high.

From the bucket we had a piece of long string tied around a rock and spent an undisclosed amount of time trying to throw it over the limb. Eventually we succeeded and used the ropes to string up an old truck tyre. Guess this makes us the best Mums in the world now!




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Quilt updates

So I have been very neglectful of late, but only with the blogging side of things.

The Briar Rose topper is almost finished, but most frustratingly I have run short of fabric. I bought more than the stated amount as I intended to bind in it as well, but I am short by 2 x 4 1/2 inch squares.

I spent a great deal of time in Spotlight trying to choose the back ground fabric and eventually went with my current favourite colour... teal. I think it looks fantastic!



I've also done up the appliqué letters for the OHD quilt. Just waiting till I get some of the fusing tape to stick them down whilst I sew them. Here they are laid out ready to go.


The main body of the pin wheel topper is also finished. I just need to add two borders before adding wadding, back and binding!



And Richard used to think this table was too big! Here we have managed to scrape up a little piece of table top to eat dinner. The kids had to sit at the bench!


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Quilt updates

So I've got a few things on the go at the moment. First there's the Thimble Blossoms Quilt. I have all the blocks sewed up and have now to sew them into rows. Here is the first row completed.


The second project I am working on is the Jelly Roll I bought in Donny Brook. This quilt is called Briar Rose and can be found over at England Street Quilts. Instead of the soft florally pinks they have used, I have branched out and gone rich reds, golds, blues and greens. It will be interesting to see what it turns out like. I have had to halt progress whilst I find some coordinating background fabric. This is what I have done so far:


My final project is something I started zipping together last night. I wanted to try an Oh Happy Day Quilt since I saw this one on Pinterest. I decided to applique it over a log cabin so I thought that as it was already going to be fairly schmaltzy I would embrace that and make it a pink baby girls quilt. Progress so far:





Looking at the photos now I am not sure about the white border. I intend to go round once more with some blue, but at the moment it doesn't look quite right.


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Rockmia

We bought 'Rockmia' the small farm next door in 2007. Since then it has undergone several 

transformations. When we bought it the gardens were very well kept, cottage style.

 The two photos above are what it looked like then. After that the garden suffered some neglect as there was no one living in it full time who cared to garden. 

 In January of 2012 my Mum and Step Dad moved in. Mum is a manic gardener and Carlos an excellent maker-of-things. Together they have started to bring the garden back to a different kind of beautiful. It is a lot more hands off than the cottage garden of before, but in 12 months they have got it looking lickety split!

 Carlos made this balustrading just recently with the old tines from the hay rake. And the old 

sheep yard fence, below, was one of the first things we added to the garden.

Agapanthus Bird Houses

 I've been hard at work painting and installing my bird houses amongst the agapanthus. I had grand plans of making all the houses, but never got further than the red and brown one. The whole project was about to dive bomb because I was waiting for the ooomph to make the houses so I decided to buy them cheaply from here and there and paint them instead.

 I went with a whole colour palette of pastels and nestled them randomly through the 

garden bed. They are a little hard to spot, but there must be about 8 of them. I have 

2 more coming in the mail and I think that will be enough.

As a bit of a flashback, I found the following picture that I took in April, 2008 

when I first created the Aggie bed!

So often we look at the agapanthus simply as a flowering ball, but each 

individual flower is really gorgeous on it's own.

Bits n Bobs

We're in the thick of school holidays at the moment and having a ball. I really enjoy the holidays. Letting the routine slack off and not worrying about bedtimes and sleep-in's and TV before breakfast.




We've been up in Perth for a few days. Took the kids and the cousins to Adventure World. They have been asking to go for ages so we finally took them on Saturday. Came home yesterday afternoon and one of our cats, Schmoo, was very pleased to have us back.




We also came home to find some new chooks roaming the yard! Our retired worker stops by several times a year but never let's us know when. We always seem tone away and he leaves me goodies that he gas collected up. This time it was these little rippers.




This morning we have 3 extras. We recently sponsored a Zimbabwean family who have emigrated. They have been here two weeks and this morning had to go off and sit there 'L' plates for their drivers licenses. Their 3 kids have come up for a play.




I really want to know what this plant is. Anyone know?
In craft news, a little titbit to show you what I have started working on.








Peace out!
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Blast from the past Tornado Cake

I feel the need to do a posthumous post about a cake I made back in 2011. My son was turning 9 and requested a tornado cake. I decided to go all out. None of this wussy 2 dimensional stuff for my boy!

My son, Angus, has just reminded me that the funnel was made of a rice bubble slice mix to make it both lighter and harder than cake. I made a funnel out of paper and greaseproof. I filled it with the rice bubble mixture and stuck two wooden skewers in it. Once this was set and the cake was iced I drove the skewers into the cake and prayed like crazy that it would hold.

I little more carnage in the form of fallen trees and flying animals and voila - one happy kid.