This ‘n’ That

Here we are nearly at the end of August, before you know it the Christmas decs will be in the shops!!!

Last week was a bit of a lost week really. Major fatigue hit last Sunday & didn’t lift until Thursday. I googled & found the most likely cause to be an auto-immune disease, as I have 3, I had plenty to choose from. I’m thinking the fibromyalgia is the most likely suspect. I’ve certainly had a lot of fatigue with it but this was the worst experience. I didn’t even have the strength to sew!!!

Wednesday was our 31st wedding anniversary, how time flies!!!

Paul gave me 2 dozen roses, real long stemmed roses that smell like roses & have opened into beautiful big, rosey roses.

Anyway on the upside I’ve made up for lost time the last couple of days. We brought another 376 boxes & plastic containers in from the garage & unpacked them. Well maybe not quite 376 but it felt like it. I now have most of my novels unpacked & quite a lot of my yardage.

Friday we finally sorted the ‘games’ room & it looks great. We now have the Wii & the Playstation set up & a cupboard full of bored, I mean board games.

Meanwhile Paul managed to track down some Jarrah for the sewing room. Now it will sit in situ for a few weeks to acclimatize.

We’ve started work on the pink room so it’s ready for my friend's visit in a few weeks. I had plans to make a red & white quilt for that room but with less than 3 weeks till she arrives I think I’ll put that idea on hold & just concentrate on making the room nice & welcoming.

Our old house went to auction on Saturday, the agent tells us the market is dead & suggested a ridiculous reserve. Funny but prices seemed to have picked up everywhere else, so are we to believe it’s just the Central Coast in a major downturn or perhaps the agents just haven’t been told things are on the up!!! I think we might just let  the house for a year or so & try again this time next year.

The weather is appalling, it has been since we arrived the beginning of July, I’m hoping that the arrival of Spring next week may herald some calm, sunny weather. We’ve spent very little time in the garden as it’s nearly always raining with gale force winds. I’m looking forward putting in some new plants. There’s a lot of boring looking plants that basically look like big clumps of dead grass. I plan to dig them all up & put in some agapanthus & other ‘green’ pretty plants. I’d also like to check out the local beaches & have a good look around the area.

I have to stress though, that although the weather has been less than pleasant, I would still rather be here than anywhere else. :-)))

We had some good news this week, we finally have in interview, next week, at the school we’d like Rowan to go to, so fingers crossed it goes well & he is accepted.

Please Vote!!

Linda, a quilting friend of mine has a chance to win a grant to help with her wonderful work of teaching quilting to as many people as possible, they in turn make a quilt to be donated to a worthy cause. You can visit the site, every day until the end of August, to vote for Linda. Please do. :-))))

Click the link in the right hand column to go to vote.

From Linda’s Blog:

‘Background

Stitchin' Mission (SM) developed in January 2005, as I offered beginner quiltmaking lessons at my church, Lutheran Church of Hope. After several series of lessons at Hope, I was invited to teach beginning quiltmaking at a nearby Evangelical Free church. I did so, and since then, churches of all denominations have hosted SMs - including one SM at an Anglican church, in Sydney, Australia. Ninety-nine percent of the quilts made by students have been donated to the host church's mission of choice.

To date, 689 people have participated in free Stitchin' Mission beginner quiltmaking lessons, with 895 baby quilts going to missions throughout the world.

The contest is still on to win a $1,000 grant, and Stitchin' Mission can win only by capturing the most votes. With the grant, my dream is to make a DVD of Stitchin' Mission's five free beginner quiltmaking lessons. Stitchin' Mission will win only if you help by casting your online vote daily, until noon on August 31.

Please vote for Stitchin' Mission every day at http://tinyurl.com/vote4SM’

Linda’s website for more details of Stitchin’ Mission: http://www.stitchinmission.org/

Thanks!!!!!

Life is good!!

Is it just me or are the weeks just flying past??? I guess because I’m so busy & happy :-) the time just flies.

I finally made it to the Carrum Downs monthly quilt group. It was great, the ladies are very friendly, I’d met a couple of them a few weeks ago & recognised some of the names of others from the Quilt Down Under group. There were some magic show & tell items, hopefully I’ll manage to finish something to show next time.

My gf Lynne managed to get a day off work last Friday so she picked me up & we headed for Gail B’s shop at Bayswater. I LOVE this shop, it has the biggest range of fabrics I’ve ever seen, the prices are good & the staff very friendly. What more could you ask?? I took some of the purple fabric I’m using in my Kaffe Fassett quilt in the hope of finding more as I’d run out. I bought the fabric 2 years ago, so wasn’t too optimistic, I was over the moon to find they had it in stock!!!! I also chose a gorgeous turquoise hand dyed fabric to use as the triangles between the hexagons on the KF quilt. I was going to use KF fabric but thought it might be a bit much. I was looking at a friend’s sisters blog & she’s doing a hex quilt in KF & has turquoise between the hexes & it looks stunning.

Pretty!!!!!

Also picked up some black & whites, & some red & whites, to add to the collections. Dug out all the red & whites I’ve been collecting & got them all washed & ironed. I’m thinking of making a simple quilt-as-you-go quilt for the spare room.

Yummy!!!

I have so many projects on the go & planned at the moment so I need to get the room sorted so I can get stuck in. Then maybe I can put up pics of projects I’m working on instead of all my retail therapy!!!!

There has been some progress in my sewing room, 3 walls are painted, which allowed me to fill those walls with shelves & start unpacking. We finally remembered to get some gyprock to fill in the hole where the bar was on the the 4th wall.

Now you see it, now you don’t. Now for paint!!

We also ripped up the tiles & baseboard in the ‘bar’ area.

 They’re now all gone!!! I managed to cut my finger & my thumb on the edge of the broken tiles, boy they are sharp. My thumb is too sore for hand sewing so I dug out a top I started knitting about 2 years ago & got stuck into that. I hate sitting & doing nothing.

I found some gorgeous curtains, I’ve hung them but they need to be taken up & pressed to look their best. I was going to put a few pics of the room in progress but I’ll wait until it’s all finished. Very soon hopefully!!!!

Today we headed off in search of timber to patch the hole left by the tiles. The timber is Jarrah, as suspected, & although the hardware store can get Jarrah they don’t have the width we want. Luckily they have it a little wider so we’ll have to buy it & trim it to suit. It won’t have a tongue anymore so we’ll have to use lot’s of glue to make sure it sticks. Luckily it’s only a small area.

We also spotted a shopping centre we hadn’t seen before & stopped for a look. I actually found 2 pairs of shoes I liked & that are comfortable. I’m not a shoe person, I hate buying shoes & don’t have many pairs so this was a real find. I was actually looking for brown but they didn’t have any to suit.

DS says they’re daggy, but that’s ok coz I’m daggy & have daggy feet. I have orthotics so I have to find shoes they will fit in & still feel comfortable. I also finally found a pair of jeans that fit & they aren’t cut low to show off the tattoo above my butt that I don’t have, lol.

Then I spotted these boxes!!!! I couldn’t decide which ones to buy so I bought them all. They’ll go in my sewing room & store all sorts of goodies.

  Also found this pretty wrap-around skirt, that’s looks much nicer in person. I’m thinking the purple shoes will look pretty spiffy with this skirt. :-) Gotta love the aubergine carpet in this house. It actually looks quite nice but shows every speck of fluff.

When dh bought this house the agent told him there’d been little or no rain for a long time. Since we moved in it’s rained nearly everyday. Heavy, torrential rain & gale force winds!!! I wish I’d had my camera with me today, there’s a huge puddle in the front yard of a nearby house & swimming happily in it was a duck. So I think for now the drought is over.

My fave mag arrived today. I’ll save it up for some bedtime reading/drooling. :-))))

An interesting Quiz

I saw this quiz on a blog I follow:

http://www.psychologies.co.uk/personality-tests/whats-your-creative-style/

Just a part of my result.

‘Creativity is a release

For you, creativity is first and foremost a form of expression: it creates a special link between the internal and external worlds. It allows you to get a grasp of your powerful emotions, by moulding them into a physical form. In fact, the most important thing for you is to be able to release your emotions. You need to be able to touch them or look at them in concrete form, and to do that you have to find a way to make them come alive. This is how your desires and anxieties take shape. Keeping things bottled up creates a tension that can only be resolved once you have expressed how you feel……………………..’

I have to admit I’ve never put too much thought into why I feel the need to be creative, it’s just an urge I’ve always had. It’s true though, my crafts have kept me sane & allowed me to be distracted through some very trying times. I know this is true for a lot of people & I wonder how people who don’t have a passion for something, cope.

August BOM is now available.

http://www.countryoriginals.com.au