Saturday 14 January 2012

My Little Helper

I decided to finish cutting out a quilt I started cutting out last year. I stopped off for lunch & came back to this. Zaphod having a little nap.lol

I love the way he’s using the fabrics as a pillow.

helping

I left him to sleep & later he woke up & helped by holding down the fabric for me, lol. Until he dozed off again.

Wednesday 11 January 2012

My 1st Make for 2012

1 Helen January

A gift for my dear friend Helen’s birthday. I pieced it by hand, as it would have been very fiddly to piece by machine & I prefer hand piecing anyway. Helen is a vet so I incorporated quite a few animals into it, plus a few extras. Now we’ve moved to Melbourne I miss Helen’s phone calls, consisting of ‘Is the kettle on, I’m on my way?’ so I had to include the teapots, & the scissors & thimbles are there as Helen is a crafter too.

pressies from emma

The project came from this gorgeous book that Emma gave me for Christmas. I also cut some squares to make one for myself.:-)

I have added a pic to the Flickr ‘I Have Pledged a Monthly Make for 2012’ folder. http://www.flickr.com/photos/32055815@N08/6677451441/in/pool-1830444@N20

You can join this group via the link on my blog, (top right). :-)

Summer Mantle

summer 2summer leftsummer right

Ta-da! My first mantel for 2012. I don’t plan to post a heap of mantle shots this year like I did last year, but I’m so pleased with this one I thought I’d share. The picture was my birthday pressie last year & I’d planned for it to go in the bedroom but it looks so good here…….. Btw it’s called, ‘The Sea Hath it’s Pearls.’ We bought the candelabra at our fave vintage shop last week & the cute garland is from Spotlight. They had it with red, pink or cream roses.

We are currently making over our foyer, lounge & dining rooms & I will post pics when they are all done. There has been lot’s of furniture moving, lot’s of cleaning & sorting, & lot’s of huffing & puffing, but it will be all worthwhile.

Thursday 5 January 2012

The Distant Hours

Hmmm maybe it should be called the lost hours. I was so looking forward to reading another Kate Morton book, I loved The Shifting Fog (House at Riverton) but this is just so tedious. It’s set in 3 different years & each time you feel like something is going to be revealed we change decades. I guess I’ll slog on, I’d hate to give up on the first book of the year, I very rarely don’t finish a book.

Mind you I do have incentive to finish, in the past 2 days I’ve bought 5 more books. Another Marian Keyes ‘The Brightest Star in the Sky,’ 2 Fay Weldon’s, another Katie Fford, lightweight but fun, & PD James Death Comes to Pemberley which sounds fabulous. PD James loves the work of Jane Austen, & as a top crime writer, she has set her murder story in the lives of Mr Darcy & his lovely wife Elizabeth 6 years after their marriage.

Monday 2 January 2012

Books I read in 2011

januaryfebmarchapril 2MayJunejulyaugustSeptemberoctobernovemberdecember

48 books! not bad. Next year I’ll see if I can make 52, one for each week of the year & it would also be 1 for each year of my life. :-)

I enjoyed them all. There were a few I’d read before but not many, most were new reads.

My first book for 2012 is Kate Morton’s ‘The Distant Hours.’

I will continue to blog the books I read this year, I’m really pleased some of you are looking for some of the books I’ve mentioned. This year I’ll also list the author, as it’s not always easy to read the spines in the pics. I tend to pick up books in op shops, the $5 bookshop, Big W & sometimes The Book Depository. They aren’t as cheap as they were now that Amazon bought them out, but there are still bargains & free postage anywhere in the world. I don’t ever pay top dollar for my books, I read too many to be able to justify the expense!