2010 finished

Another mosaic, this one is a compilation of the projects that I finished during the year.  All the quilts are now named, it's so much harder trying to find names for the crochet projects.

1. My favourite cushion, 2. Back of my favourite cushion, 3. Sea and Sand Cushion, 4. Back of Sea and Sand cushion, 5. Chocolate Hearts Quilt, 6. Front and back of Summer Fruit raggy quilt, 7. Crochet hot water bottle cover, 8. Crochet Scarf, 9. Picnic in Provence quilt, 10. Noro Shawl, 11. Table runner, 12. Laundry Banner, 13. Dusky sunburst throw, 14. Meg's crochet throw, 15. Coin quilt, 16. Kites and waves, 17. Granny squares cushion, 18. Back of granny squares cushion, 19. Indigo Cherry blossom, 20. Indigo Cherry Blossom, 21. Journal cover, 22. Close up of journal cover, 23. Cushion, 24. Wonky Owls, 25. Detail of back of Wonky Owls quilt, 26. Christmas stars, 27. Crochet star in metallic thread


Oops I forgot these.

Goodbye to 2010

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE

I wish everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous year in 2011.

Thank you all so much for joining in my journey and becoming friends through the blogosphere. 

I hope to meet up with some "in person" in 2011.

A special mention and thanks to Shay who has been THE best friend, you have made 2010 a real joy. I love the emails and banter and hope we continue on our crappy (sometimes) happy quilty journey for many many years.

2010 a pictorial crafty review

Lots A few of my fabric acquisitions during 2010. Looking at these, there are a lot of brights and there is an awful lot there that is still sitting in my fabric stash.

Sewing/quilting projects I have been working on this year, using some of the fabric stash from above. Most of them are finished but there are still WIP's in there and a couple that will probably never be finished.

This years crochet.

I have been playing with Flickr mosaics, it's fun but time consuming. Now I just need to make one of all my finished projects for the year. 

PS I have no idea why the fabric mosaic is bigger than the others, I can't seem to make them all the same size, sigh!

Christmas weekend

We had a fabulous weekend.

• Friday night we all went out to dinner to a local restaurant and had the best meal in the company of wonderfully kind and caring friends. It was a great start to the "official" Christmas festivities.
• Afterwards sitting enjoying the balmy weather, a drink or too and the fairy lights out on the verandah.

• Saturday morning, up not too early to open our presents. I struck gold this year, especially as Bitchypoo has been working part time since finishing school and now is "flush" with cash. My sister felt sorry for me as usually Bitchypoo doesn't get me anything so she had bought lots of little presents for me.  So, with lots of presents from my sister and all the presents from Bitchypoo, plus presents from the rest of my family and friends, I well and truly did very well.

• I will have to take photos of my bounty, we have been way too busy to have time to do that, so I might save them for another post.

• E (Bitchypoo) loved her hand made Christmas stocking and even left a lovely comment on my Christmas stocking post on Christmas afternoon, it was so cute and almost made me cry!

• I made J a pin cushion as part of her Christmas present.
• Christmas day weather-wise was pretty darn good too. With the threat of severe weather including very heavy rain we were a little concerned, however the weather couldn't have been much better. It stayed relatively dry with only a shower or two later in the afternoon. The sun even tried to peak out from the clouds late morning, which made it a little humid. It wasn't too hot, so we had a lovely lunch with family and friends.  Lunch included turkey, ham, prawns, stuffing, a sugar snap pea salad and beetroot, feta, and walnut salad, followed by J's fabulous ice cream dessert, shortbread, black and white cookies and rocky road.
• Saturday night was very relaxing spent watching videos and enjoying a quiet evening.

• Sunday the weather worsened so we took the opportunity to partake in a bit of craftiness. My friend J helped me baste a quilt. She was excellent help and we had it finished in no time and now I'm all set to start on the quilting.
• In the evening we sat out on the verandah again, under the fairy lights and had cheese and biscuits and wine, whilst enjoying the balmy and less rainy weather.
• This morning we had a coffee along the river, and then did a spot of shopping.
• This afternoon I pieced the backing of the Spice Boxes quilt, with more help from J as my mathematical ability disappeared and I completely miscalculated by forgetting to add seam allowances. After much cursing and hair pulling we eventually came up with a design that was pleasing and was big enough.
• Tonight, dinner was lamb on the BBQ with roast potatoes and Greek salad and we went to see Little Fockers, very funny and a great end to the day.

It was just the nicest Christmas I have had in quite a few years, no hassles, no arguments, just relaxing, enjoyable and stress free. I hope everyone else was as lucky as we were and had a stress free time too.

No views like this, the weather has been pretty ordinary, a fair bit of rain and no blue sky or sun for almost a week now, but I am not going to complain as there are a lot of people who are in the midst of very serious floods, and doing it tough. We have been very lucky here as it could have been far worse.

This male King Parrot visited us today dressed in his best Christmas finery.

Still wishing everyone a nice stress free and peaceful time for the end of 2010.

Merry Christmas

A big thank you for your kind words, support and encouragement throughout the year and it's been inspiring to be able to see such beautiful work, and fabulous reading all the wonderful posts.

To all the wonderful friends I have made this year, thank you so much for joining me in my journey and random ramblings. I hope you all have a very happy and safe Christmas break, and I really hope the weather is kind to everyone in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Especially those in northern Queensland with the first tropical cyclone of the season hitting the coast (this morning) on Christmas Day.

THE DIGITAL STORY OF THE NATIVITY

I have visitors here at the moment and I'm hosting Christmas lunch too, so no time for normal posts.

This is another absolutely gorgeous story of the nativity, again even if you are not religious, it is so well done and is worth a look. A great modern version and very clever.







Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone.

Back to normal posting next week.

Take care over the Christmas break,

Marg

xx

The Christmas Story (HD version)

You just have to watch this, it is SO CUTE. Even if you are not overly religious, it is well and truly worth 3.53 mins of your life to watch this right to the end.
Wise man #3 and the star are just adorable, and I love........... and then there was a party.....

Christmas stocking

I needed a crafting fix yesterday, after a completely craftless week, so I whipped this up. I'm not sure whether I love it, I tried to do random and I really just can't do random, unless it's well planned random, lol, and then it's not random is it!

P.S. You may note that it has an E on it, not a B for Bitchypoo, it is for Bitchypoo but I don't think she would appreciate that.

Saturday's storm

To keep on my theme of weather/thunderstorms. No I'm not obsessed.  I took this video to show just how much rain came down in the storm yesterday (Saturday). We don't have any naturally running water here, this is just the run off from my property and the next door neighbours, after having two inches of rain in about an hour.  I am do glad I live on a hill! 

It's a little wobbly I was still keeping half an eye on the storm hoping that the lightning had moved on.
I had already been standing out on the verandah before the storm, and I heard the sound of lightning before the strike, a very disconcerting electrical sizzle. Something I have never heard before and I never want to hear again. I do not know how I didn't get hit, I was very very lucky. I had a nice headache for the next couple of hours though.

Warning, it is really loud, not quite as loud as if you had been standing here.

Summer storms

I have promised to try and take more photos of the area I live in. Last week as I was driving home, I pulled over to take some photos of storm clouds building to the north. These were taken on my phone, as usual I had forgotten to take my camera.  They are (kind of) taken viewing from south west to north west. I stopped at a lookout which looks across the valley, lovely views but the bad weather almost always comes up and across this valley. This storm was too far north to affect us. If you double click on the photos you should be able to enlarge them.

This last photo taken along the road to my house, looking at the back of another set of storm clouds that were affecting the coast even further north.

Thursday

The last two photos were taken Thursday evening less than three minutes apart, after the power had gone off but before the storm hit.

Favourite Things Friday

It's the last FTF for this year. I have thoroughly enjoyed each Friday. Mrs P should be patted on the back and be given several gold stars for coming up with such a brilliant idea. I love touring all the blogs to see what wonderful favourites are posted each week, and I've been introduced to some lovely new blog friends through this as well. I love it when people make the effort to leave a comment after reading each linked post. It is a real pleasure each Friday to think of something interesting to post about and I can't wait to do it again next year.

This week I'm posting about two favourites, because I was all set to post about George, but then we had a number of massive storms here on the Sunshine Coast. We were very lucky at Chez Sunshine, no damage at all and not too much rain either, but lots of areas on the coast had damage. Due to this we were without power from 4.45 pm yesterday until 10.30 am this morning.  So my other favourite thing is electricity. I miss it when I don't have it.  Without electricity we have no lights, no computer (aaaaaggghhhh), and worst of all no water. No water to flush the toilets or have a shower, we live on acreage so no town water, it's all stored in tanks and needs a pump to get it to the house.  No aircon or overhead fans when it is 24 deg C (75F) at night to cool you down and 33C (90+F) during the day. So  now that my electricity is back on, I LOVE electricity. Fingers crossed the forecast storms for this afternoon and tomorrow are not as bad.
(I was prepared yesterday, with buckets of water and bottled water for drinking, lots and lots of candles, and a battery powered radio, so it wasn't a complete disaster, and we went to my parents house for a shower this morning. I've just bought a big bag of ice, just in case, and stocked up on more batteries, and I'm now charging the lap top, iPad, cell phone etc so we have something to play with if it happens again this afternoon.)


I want to finish on a high note and what better way than to watch the one and only George.
He is scrumptious and I just love these Nespresso ads.

Thank you everyone for coming to play on FTF and I'm really looking forward to seeing all new FTF's next year.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Have a lovely break and take care,

Marg

Here's the link back to Quilting In My Pyjamas.

PS  A long overdue thank you.  I completely missed mentioning that her awesomness, Shay came up with the name for my Wonky Owls, so thank you so much Shay, you saved me from going bald, tearing my hair out trying to think of a name.

Getting jiggy

So cute!

Tuesday tidbits (and tails)

Another couple of the blocks from the long lost BOM.  I'm really starting to love these again. It just shows that if you put aside something that you no longer love, and eventually come back to it, you just might fall in love with it all over again.


I've been tagged by the one and only, wonderful Mrs P, aka Shay at Quilting In My Pyjamas. Thank you Shay.

Now part of receiving this award,  I need to reveal three things I like.

1. Is too easy -  Chocolate. 

2.  Bitchypoo, not necessarily in second place. She can be so lovely and sweet, then she can be such an annoying, teenage Bitchypoo. I love this photo, she hates it.

3. At the moment it's my verandah. Finally finished, I didn't realise how much I used it and took it for granted until I was without it. (Still waiting for the oil to dry, but that's ok.)

Now to pass it on to three lovely bloggers who I think are (in the words of Mrs P) an uber-cool read. It's difficult to pick only three, I really don't like this part of being tagged. How do I pick only three out of all the wonderful blogs I read. 

So here goes,

Rachael at Blue Mountain Daisy, a lovely blog, she is very talented, the quilt that Rachael entered into Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival is gorgeous. She lives in the Blue Mountains and always has lots of lovely photos.

Cam at Curlypops, one very talented lady. Cam has just started designing her own fabulous fabric range and she is a wizz at whipping up gorgeous items.

Jenni at Baa-me Knits is so clever with a crochet hook, she can do wonders with a piece of yarn, fibre, or just about anything that can be crocheted. Jenni always produces wonderful pieces.

Please don't feel obligated to play along, I just really want everyone to know how much I enjoy reading these blogs.

Now for something completely different.

Lots of lush tropical plants in my backyard.

Scary!  Look at those fangs.  I was trying to take a photo of the verandah outside my bedroom, when I caught this moment. It's very tiring being a fur baby.

Finally...

Hand sewing binding is working it's way up the list of my least favourite things, along with basting and quilting. Maybe I need to change crafts.

Do you remember this? I started this quilt back in early August.

It took me most of last week to finish it.  I wanted to finish the binding in the evenings, the idea was to watch tv while hand sewing to keep my mind occupied and make it feel like it wasn't taking for.ever.

The first night I was attacked by these.

Even though I had all the screens shut, these flying ants swarmed inside, straight for the light that was over my head. There were lots more I just don't want to gross you out with pics. Please excuse the cat fur, who buys a white sofa when they have a black fur baby!!!! 

Despite this set back, hand sewing the binding continued, and went on and on and on, until, finally.....

it's finished!

The binding is in Kona charcoal and I added a strip of  Kona Artichoke and a strip of Hope Valley for a bit of interest. I pieced the back which included one more owl block.

Oh and look it matches my cushion on the outdoor sofa, a very happy coincidence.

Favourite Things Friday

Warning: lots of photos




This week my absolutely favourite thing is my verandah, I can show you some lots of photos.

Before:

The side used as a dumping ground.

The nicer side, but still messy, not staged for the photo, note the bucket under the table!

The water tank at the end of the verandah, that has been moved as it was handy but an eyesore.

Notice the boards in one photo are running parallel with the house, in the other photo they are at right angles. This is because the joists that the boards sit on all run the same way and the verandah wraps around two sides of the house.  Cleared of most of the furniture and junk, ready to be pulled up, it doesn't look so bad from this angle, but take a look below! I was so scared that someone would fall 6 metre (20 feet) through the boards.

Boards almost finished, Bailey and Karma checking it out. Bailey is more likely checking out some birds in the tree and working out how he can get to them.

Oiled and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for it to dry.

Unfortunately we had very very wet warm and humid weather and it's taken a week for the oil to dry.  It's dry enough to walk on and I've put the seating out there, it doesn't move around and shouldn't scratch, but I want to wait another few days before I put the table and chairs back, as I don't want them scratching the surface.

Still some plumbing bits and pieces in the background, the guttering and plumbing to the rain water tanks isn't finished (next week, fingers crossed.  

The decorating isn't finished yet, I still have more to do and fine tune where everything is placed, but I wanted to show you for FTF this week.

My hammock, and  below, the view from my hammock, heaven!!!!! This is why I had to show you my verandah for FTF, I finally have space again for it on the verandah and it's  ready for the lazy days of summer.

To see more of this weeks favourite things,  you can visit Shay at Quilting In My Pyjamas.