Tuesday tidbits (and tails)

Quite a few photos of what's happening around Chez Sunshine.

I found these in my craft magazines/books stash when I was looking for something else. Wow I had forgotten about these, they are old, really old, take a look at that woman's outfit, it looks like something from Picnic at Hanging Rock. I think I might find some inspiration in these for a future quilt. That's to add to 3482 that are already on my list.

I also found this, I hadn't forgotten about it, but.......

I had started this as a BOM about 8 or 9 yrs ago, and although the blocks are very pretty I lost interest and didn't feel like finishing it.  I am still playing with some ideas of what to do with the blocks I have finished. (9 years of thinking about it, what is the chance of it actually happening)

They need a good press. I think I've finished 11 of the blocks, and I have all the fabric to finish it, I just don't want to!!!!

Some photos from today, not very nice weather but still warm and humid. That is a huge pile of mulch. The people across the road were having trees cut down and the guys that were cutting and mulching came over and asked me if I would like it, woo hoo, would I ever, yay. Now I just have to use the wheelbarrow to move 7 squillion cubic metres of it (at least it is all down hill).

Some tropical pinkness in the garden. Medenilla, bromeliad and pink frangipani.

 Coast Banksia develops from this

to this.

I've been quilting away today at the wonky owls quilt. Slow going but nearly there.

Last but not least.

Nice haircut!

Colour

WARNING: You might need to put on your sunglasses for the third photo.

Fat quarters picked up at the LQS as they had a sale so I had to buy them. Great for stash building.

I love these prints, such vibrant colours.

Playing with these on my design wall flannel hanging on the shutters. 

Definitely not the final layout.

Thespian

Living in Paradise sometimes has its perks.  Paradise is generally considered  the playground and retirement village of Australia's rich and famous/infamous. I am neither rich, even slightly rich nor famous, so by rights I probably shouldn't be living  here.   Most of these are "famous" people that overseas readers will not know, but are reasonably well known within Australia.
There's a very well established arts/theatre community here, one of the local residents on the coast is the playwright David Williamson, and each year a local festival is run in June/July called The Noosa Long Weekend, where many Australian and international artists come to talk, recite, and act. Tonight I was lucky enough to go to a fundraiser for this organisation. It was a reading of David Williamson's play Emerald City. He had updated it to include current political/satirical/sport topics and it was very very good. A number of high profile people were roped in to read and they all did very well, some at their first ever play in front of a large audience.

The only one that any UK citizens will probably know is Daniel McPherson, whose acting debut was on Neighbours, he has also acted in The Bill. He has been hosting Australia's Dancing With the Stars.
Some other notable Australians on stage tonight were:
Robyn Nevin - actress and director
Mikey Robins - stand up comedian and TV performer
Ita Buttrose - former editor of the Australian Women's Weekly and made immortal in a Cold Chisel song.
David Field - currently appearing on TV in City Homicide (he was brilliant)
Bob Ansett - founder of Budget Rent a Car
Paula Duncan - actress and also appears in Spray and Wipe commercials lol
Ian Roberts - former football player who is now an actor ( I didn't know that and he was very good)

Sorry to everyone else in the universe I'm pretty sure you won't have a clue who I'm talking about.

It was a really great night, the acting/reading was excellent, lots of laughs and very topical.


I am so very glad I live in this little part of paradise, as I am able to experience something that is so rare and would usually only be available in a big city. An absolutely fabulous way to start my weekend.

Favourite Things Friday

Ooh it's Friday again, I'm sure the weeks are getting shorter, so it's time to link up with  Mrs P for FTF.


Fit Flops

We live in a sub tropical climate, it's warm/mild most of the year, and really stinking hot and humid for a lot of the summer.  Footwear of choice for me, is usually something that has as little foot coverage as possible, sandals or flip flops (they are called thongs here in Australia, I know, that has a whole different meaning in the rest of the universe, we like to be different here! e.g. Vegemite - need I say more!)  Anyway, most of the warmer months I took to wearing Havaianas (flip flops) as they come in a zillion different colours and have really cool patterns, they are oh so fashionable for the young at heart and everyone well almost everyone wears them here. I wore these a lot, pretty much every day if I wasn't dressing up to go out somewhere special, and that doesn't happen very often.  The problem with wearing flip flops all day every day is that they are really really bad for your feet.

I found out the hard way.

The beginning of last summer I could barely walk, with or without shoes, my feet have never been so sore in my life.  I found that wearing my Birkenstocks helped a little, so went to the local shop to buy another pair.  While I was there the salesperson talked me into buying a pair of Fit Flops instead, I'm so glad she did, oh my, they are good. In fact so good I went back and bought some more.

I have these 3 styles and possibly more in my closet. They are not cheap, and I initially baulked at the price tag for a pair of flip flops, but they are worth every cent.

I wore them everyday for about 6 weeks, even when I was walking around the house, as walking in bare feet hurt a lot, a real lot.  Not only did they make my feet feel better, they made me feel heaps better, and the cherry on top was that I had been getting a little bit of sciatica (comes with old age) and after wearing these it went away. And the bonus, I can wear high heels again. Not for long but hey, at least I can wear them now.

These days I wear Fit flops as much as possible, not exactly a high fashion statement but I don't want to go back to feeling the way I did last summer. They are great for walking for exercise, umm, they would be if I actually did any!!!

Fit flops are my favourite thing this week.


P.S. Fit flops are not paying me to say this, I just love them lots. Sorry no pics of my feet in them today, I need to make my feet look pretty before I take photos. Hmmm you may be waiting a very long time.

Angst

I suffer from terminal worrying. I worry about whether my plants have been watered enough or have they had too much water. Have I bought too much food, not enough food when friends come to stay. Will the world really run out of food. Do I have on the right clothes today, is it going to rain, be hot, cold, sunny or cloudy. I worry about global warming, world peace, world war. Should I be wearing my granny knickers today, what if I am knocked over by a bus and end up in hospital wearing ugly knickers that they'll have to cut off and people will talk about me............


But my biggest worry of all and the one that keeps me up late at night, way past my bed time, is the whole commenting in Blogland thingy. That's the real worry.....


Where is the rule book on commenting in Blogland? 
Am I supposed to reply to every comment individually, do I comment in my own comments? Who will go back and read them, who will miss my reply? Do I personally email each person who takes the time to comment? This is what I've been doing, but what if I get mega famous and have a squillion followers? If I stop replying to every comment individually,will everyone think it's because I'm famous and I'm far too famous to reply? Or, will they realise that if each email takes one minute and there are one squillion comments it will take me one squillion minutes a day to reply to each and every comment. My fingers would be red raw and I would get RSI and then I wouldn't be able to reply to anyone. Then will everyone think I'm too famous to care about comments, and then they won't comment anymore. Ohhh the worry...................................

Tuesday tidbits (and tails)

Now that I have paid the huge fee, I am going to make the most of it and post squillions of photos, te he he.

I stalked followed this lady around the airport last week trying to take a photo of her lovely top. I should have just asked her if I could take a photo, it would have been easier, and I wouldn't have looked quite so suspicious. Lucky nobody noticed and I wasn't dragged away by security.

Spring and warmer temperatures means frangipani in the garden, heaven!

The opposite of heaven, this is what my verandah looks like right now, that's a 6 metre (20 feet) drop down there. I can't wait 'til they finish. It's going to look great but I didn't realise how much I would miss it whilst it is being renovated.

 This is a daily problem. Trying to type is not easy.

The first time I have ever seen them sleep this close together. They usually fight if they are this close.

Bailey, what more can I say! He stayed in that purple plastic bin all afternoon.

 Another great place for sleeping, a nice comfortable bowl with a piece of wood in it.

Lulu looks like a bat with her paws out to the side, this is how she sleeps most of the time, weird, seriously weird.

Last but not least, ta dah,

PS. If you don't hear from me in a few days I will more than likely be found suffering the consequences of posting this photo.

Ambivalent

Bitchypoo's quilt top finished.

It's impossible to take a photo of anything without one of the cats, especially Lulu.  I'm sure she thinks she is the feline equivalent of Paris Hilton.

 

I spent quite a bit of time with the layout so that it was "random". Unfortunately I forgot that the quilt top is so large it hangs over the sides of the bed and you can't see all of it at once. It doesn't quite look as good when you can't see all of it. That's my excuse anyway.

It does look better in real life, but neither of us are sure we like this now that it is completed, sigh! 

So on to something else.

I'm not sure whether I like this either.  I started quilting it this afternoon, and I'm occasionally having trouble keeping the stitching straight when I go across a seam. I'm hoping that when it's washed and all crinkly the odd glitch in the quilting will disappear.

Maybe it's the weather that is affecting how I feel. I live in paradise a grey damp and windy place at the moment, (very unparadise like), and very unseasonal weather too. It's more like winter weather here. My idea of winter is 20C (70F), yes I know, that's not winter for the rest of the universe.

I am allowed to show one of the photos (cropped) taken after graduation, when she (bitchypoo) was leaving in the rain, to go to the formal.

P.S. Ironic, ambivalent? I'm working on expanding my vocabulary, he he he

Ironic

After my little dummy spit last week, when I found out that I had reached the limit for photo storing, I took a deep breath, checked out to see if there were alternatives, (there aren't) and decided that really in the greater scheme of things, $5 to continue blogging and being able to load lots and lots and lots more photos, was not too big a deal.  It's ironic isn't it, that I have no photos to share today.

I have been very very busy and lots of things have been happening at Chez Sunshine, but no photos.
No "crafty goodness" photos, because I haven't touched any crochet or quilting.
No crazy fur baby photos.
No photos of where I have been wining and dining, and I have certainly been doing a lot of that and enjoying the fabulous weather we have had here this week.
No photos of my lovely friend who came to stay at Chez Sunshine this week in the midst of renovation chaos.
No photos of bitchypoo's graduation.
No photos of bitchypoo looking absolutely beautiful all dressed up for her formal.
No photos of renovation chaos.
Nada, zip, diddly squat, zero, zilch.

Also no Favourite Things Friday post this week either, but I am really enjoying reading everyone else's FTF posts.

Calm

I've paid the US$5 fee to google and now I can post photos again. It's going to take me a very long time to fill the extra 20GB.

After my little meltdown yesterday,  I found my crafty mojo and it stayed all weekend.

Another pincushion.

Lots more crochet stars.

Putting together bitchypoo's quilt.

This morning after a de-clutter in the spare room/study, I have two bags of things to go to charity, and lots of stuff to go in the rubbish.

A productive weekend.

Christmas crochet and a tirade

Sorry but I am about to rant!!!!!!!!

I have been busy crocheting even though I have been tearing my hair out trying to work out how to put some photos on this post. I absolutely hate Blogger today, because even though it is free, (thank you Blogger), you have changed blogger so that all my blog photos go to a Picasa web album. BUT you didn't bother to mention the fact that there is a limit to how many photos you can have in that album (1GB), UNLESS you pay to upgrade. HMMMMMMMMMMM

AND you also didn't mention that if I try to delete photos out of my Picasa web album I delete them permanently out of the blog post too. Thanks a lot Blogger. Great, really great, I really appreciate that!!!!!  I don't want my photos in Picasa web album, but I have no choice. Also when I go into my Picasa web page, I find that all my photos are ticked for everyone to see, unless I had the foresight to go in there and change the settings, great, really really great. It is US$5 a year to upgrade to 20GB of storage but I don't want my photos stored in there so why should I have to pay for it.

Now I have finished my rant, I have deleted a couple of photos from the web album that appear to be duplicated, and have enough space to load these, and now I am just going to have to pay the $5 a year if I want to keep posting photos and blogging on blogger.

I have been making these gorgeous crochet stars using this tutorial from Yvestown Blog.

I used a metallic thread I found in my stash which I've had for many many years. See it does pay to keep things that you may use one day!

I also made some white ones in a fine crochet cotton, they still need to be blocked so they stay flat and in shape.

Italian style

OK this is a bit out of left field for me but I just saw this on Advanced Style. A blog I love to read, as I hope when I grow up I will look as fabulous as some of the people they feature.
It's the cutest ad.

Favourite Things Friday

It's time for Favourite Things Friday so go and check out Mrs P at Quilting In My Pyjamas and take a look at all the interesting favourites that have been linked to FTF this week.

This week's favourite for me are cook books. I love cooking and I love cookbooks.  I have lots and lots of cookbooks.  My cookbooks cover cuisine from all around the world, including middle east, greek, italian, asian. Books from celebrity chefs, kids cookbooks,  Australian Women's Weekly cookbooks, lots of low fat and healthy cooking books.

 All these cupboards have some cookbooks in them.

 The books below are in my bookcase, not in the kitchen.

 The two stacks below are not all cookbooks but there are a couple in each of them.

 I am sure there are a few more lying around that I haven't included.

The thing is, I have so many cookbooks I can never remember which book a recipe is in, so lately if I want to find a recipe I go to the internet, and my website of choice is  taste.com.au. A website that has thousands of recipes from most good Australian food magazines.  I just have to type the main ingredients that I want to cook with, and up pop lots of recipes to choose from. I can save it into my online cookbook file or print it off and add it to the hundreds of recipes in my folder, (that I haven't shown you). 

I still love browsing though all my cookbooks when I have the time and  marking recipes for future use and I will keep on buying cookbooks, but maybe not quite as often, primarily as I am running out of places to put them!