April Round Up

So much going on in April. Property and pet care has kept me very busy and away from the sewing machine for quilting projects. Nothing like the productivity of last April. 

Holidays - swimming in the cold, heated and spa, Armidale, Dorrigo and Coffs Harbour

Quilt Top - Polaroid 9 Patch. Blocks made by Quilt Club Australia Bee #1 members plus a couple of generous other bees - Waverlee and Christie.

Blocks - Dr Seuss, garden fence, party drinks, snip it good and retro clock.

Chooks - moulting, coming into lay, going off lay, convalescing and growing up.

Injuries - double bumble foot, nail injury and swelling.

Reptiles - tree snake, water dragons.

Harvest - limes, pecans, macadamias, lemons, avocados and leeks.

Books - It's been a good month for reading. You can read my reviews on Goodreads. Wombat Stew Book club - Mao's Last Dancer

February Round Up

Sewing

New to me - Chickens

Books

I guess it was a slow month after all.

January Round Up

Blocks

Holidays

'New to Me' - Backyard Chickens

Books 

Read More

Some of the books I have read this year. 

Are you reading much lately? I find it's hard with so much social media and regular media to distract us. For me I find it best to go to bed earlier and then read to go to sleep.

This year I set myself a goal of reading one book a month. I am well on track but I have few secrets as to how I manage this. I divide and conquer:

* 1/2 books by my bed 
* 1 book in the car - for spare time waiting for the bus, soccer training etc.
* 1 self help book in the loo - along with a highlighter pen
** I also have used cd books in the car for long driving periods.

I also track how I am going with the 'Goodreads' tool. It keeps a list of your current reading and also what page you are up to. It keeps me accountable to my goal as well. If you have friends also on 'Goodreads' then you can see what they are reading too!

I tend to read non-fiction books and they do take longer to read. History books like the Atlas World War 2  take the longest because of their detail. 

So this is what I am currently reading. Unfortunately, I have been in bed with a nasty flu the past 4 days and now the Atlas is overdue to the local library. Sadly I have been too ill to read or do much at all really. Off to the doctor's this morning thanks to my husband who has been looking after me and the kiddies so well.

What about you? What are you currently reading? Any recommendations?

Sunday Stash #15

Textured and Tweed

This week I made use of my $40 off if you spend $100 voucher at out local Spotlight store. I was on the hunt for fabrics and notions for the next few Zakka Style projects. I found some delightful new textured solids and a delicious tweed.

I still have to hunt down some specialist bag-making pieces such as metal tri-bar slider and angular loop combo and a curved metal purse frame, but I did get a metre or two of fusible interfacing in medium and light and some better fusible webbing called 'Heat and Bond'.

This book was only $7.99 at my local Lindcraft.

Thank you to Simone from Local Honey Crafts and Susan from Patchwork and Play who managed to link up last week despite the hiccups in the display on my blog. I am hoping this week that the links will work properly.  


What do you have this week that you would like to link up and share?

Sunday Stash #12

This coming week's Zakka Style project is making good use of my Katie Jump Rope scraps and selvedges...but more on that later.

When I was planning and cutting fabrics for the 'Kaleidoscopic Kites' pattern, I found that the Fat Quarter bundle I had bought from eaudebean on Etsy did not have the full range of greens. I was able to find a nice Spotlight range, Denyse Schmidt green vine to also throw in but not much else.

So to Etsy I went and found some of the rare Katie Jump Rope green prints at Blijie Oliphante. Store owner Kit was kind enough to include the sweet 'ribbon flower' print as a special request. 

This week 'I love Patchwork' arrived from the Book Depository. Mystery class teacher Lisa had showed me her copy and I went right home and ordered it. Authored by Rashida Coleman-Hale, it is her first Zakka style book, and it has 21 small Zakka projects to make.

So once the hand quilting (and there has been hours and hours of it this weekend) and binding of the 'Fussy Fairytales' quilt is done I can finish the cutting preparation on 'Katie Jump Kites'. I can't wait!

What's new in your stash this week?

Rearranging Relief

Zakka Sew-Along - Zig Zag Tote

For the best part of the past 2 days I have been working my way through the pattern for the Zig Zag Tote in the Zakka Style book for the Zakka Sew-Along. It has been REALLY challenging. It is my first bag ever and I am not very good with conceptualising written patterns. This afternoon I was 3 steps away from finishing it, when disaster struck! I could have cried but I was too tired to bother...so I set down my unpicker, turned off my machine and walked out of the sewing room. I need time out from this project. 


So I turned my brain to the rearrangement of shelving in my son's room. Strangely I felt relief!


Expedit Love #2


My husband put together the 2nd 2x4 unit this afternoon and shifted the old 2x2 into big brother's room. So I had to think about what to do with the extra shelf space and storage it created. That's a 'nice' problem to have.


Before                                                                                After

Of course it did involve a lot of tidying up as well. Always good mind numbing stuff!


Before

 After

The New Expedit 2x4 


Top - Ikea fabric boxes with cds of talking books, board books and finger puppets. I alsor swapped the framed pictures because this cute one, from A Little Birdie Told Me, looked better with these colours in the boxes.

Top Shelf - Toy Story tins from Op-shops. Stripey robot and Toothless the Dragon (we picked him up at the 'How to Train Your Dragon' live show last weekend in Brisbane).

2nd Shelf - Disney, Dr Seuss and Charlie and Lola book series. Then a selection of my favourite kids books including many written and illustrated by Alison Lester and Fulvio Testa.

3rd Shelf - Mostly picture and fiction books

Bottom Shelf - Non-fiction. Full of trains, space, dinosaurs and 'Tell my Why?' titles.

Desktop - needed a good declutter. I forgot to take a 'before' shot. It would have been worthwhile -darn! (But it should be a complete mess by tomorrow afternoon...so I may update this post with a photo).

Younger Boy's I-Spy Quilt


This one was also made by my mother when Tristan was barely out of a cot. I love its busyness and borders.

Older Boy's I-Spy

Now I can claim this one! This was my first single bed quilt and first written pattern. I whipped up the patchwork top in less than 4 days in January 2010. It involved a LOT of fun fussy cutting and many, many fabrics.

I wanted Duncan's quilt to be predominantly green. I added a few non-picture tone on tone greens, blues and oranges to give it some 'pop'.

I love all the London prints that my mum gave to me when she de-stashed her kid's fabric. Thankfully the green Dr Seuss had just been released, so I couldn't resist throwing in a Lorax and Sneetch..

A lot of the animal/wilderness prints were from Keepsake Quilting. They do some great I-Spy releases. It was much harder to find 'Australian' prints. I found only 2 - cricket and koalas. I also threw in some Halloween prints too!

Back to the tote tomorrow...can't wait to finish it! The next project the 'House Pouch' started today. I am not sure if I will join in with this one - it had better be easier than this first project! Grrrrr for the idea of following the patterns as laid out in the book rather than building our skills by doing the easier projects first.

Cutting through the Clutter

I tend to accumulate clutter...well flat surfaces really - table tops, floors, and especially the kitchen bench. It is a constant battle and some days I win and some days I lose. I was alerted  to a great book called 'Cut the Clutter' by Cythia Townley-Ewer and a website called http://organizedhome.com/articles/cut-clutter.

I found that I fit more than one of the profiles of a clutterer - 'Hoarder - "I might need it one day"; Perfectionist - "Next week I'll organise everything perfectly""; Deferrer - I'll think about that tomorrow"; and Sentimentalist - "That belonged to my....". Four out of the five listed personality traits were mine...so I was in BIG trouble.

Plasticware

Yesterday I tackled the dreaded corner cupboard...always a difficult shape...but I had seen a great idea using an old cd rack on Pinterest and I put mine ("I might need that one day) to use. It turned out well. 

I also used an old Elfa shelf (see that came in handy too!) that was orphaned in our garage.

Kitchen

During the recent school holidays, a lovely friend gave us her old fridge for FREE, we in turn gave our skinnier version to another friend (love the 'pay it forward' attitude). But I was determined to make a fresh start. 

Using another  Pinterest idea, I bought some plastic shelf boxes with handles and made a tidy fridge. After 6 weeks, it is still holding up well under the demands of a family of 5. Can I also say that it is such a bonus to have more door shelves for jars and bottles too!

Loungeroom

Our dvd and cd shelves were prettied up with a couple of purchases from vintage stores...the tree and birdcage. 

Our sideboard top was covered in Christmas decorations and photos...so it got a clean and dust.

It has been 2.5 years since we moved in and I finally felt confident enough to unpack the good crockery (usually we find out that we have a new posting soon after I do this...so fingers crossed!) and hang a few pictures on the walls.

And I put the tea and coffee cups into the drawers. The two on the right come from my mum's crazy tea set collection. They include cup, saucer and a dessert plate. Beautiful.

About 2 months ago, we bought some Ikea 'Billy' bookcases for only $69 each. I decided to keep some topics together (Pre-Raphaelites, North American Indians, cookbooks, Tolkien etc.) but for the rest I sized and colour-coded. Having 2 bookcases meant that I could also break up the book stack with some frames (original painting by my preschooler) books on display.

My 'La Passion D'Adonis' J.W.Waterhouse frame was a bargain from a second-hand store.



Workspace

After 9 months, I finally got around to having the computer guy come and 'fix' the computers. It turns out that my computer  wasn't on the blink, but I had the monitor cable plugged into the wrong socket on the back of the CPU. 

Our Expedit comes in handy everyday. On hand are things like address books, envelopes, board games, scrapbooking pages, OT, Speech and visual aides. 

Lower left basket for cardboard boxes for preschool, centre left for wayward toys, centre right for playdough and mats and lower right for receipts. Upper right magazine holders have notes from Preschool, Kindergarten and Grade 2 respectively.