Halloween Colours & a little more. :-)

Here’s a little wall hanging I designed a few years ago.

I looked through the pics from our Halloween Party last year
& decided to post a few.

My own little Harry Potter & Hedwig.

Harry & Mad-Eye Moody having a chat.
Is that Sirius Black in the background???

Luna Lovegood. :-)

Professor Sprout instructing the children on
re-potting Mandrakes.

I had my earmuffs firmly in place to take this pic!!!

  I see one boy is neglecting his earmuffs.   

Professor McGonagall (me) & Professor Sprout.

We were a little surprised when Voldermort showed up for the party but here he is with Professor Trelawney. 

Harry casts a spell.

   For more people participating in Halloween colour Friday please visit: http://daisyquilts.blogspot.com/ for the links.

Bargain!!

Now if there’s one thing I love, it’s a bargain. Who doesn’t???Today dh & I headed down to DFO Moorabbin & I found lot’s of bargains. Wow I love that place. It was also nice being there on a weekday rather than the weekend when it’s very busy.

First stop was Kaisercraft, although I’m not a scrapbooker there are heaps of fun things there. I have started my junk journal so I look for things I might use in it. Today I was looking for the big craftwood letters they stock. I saw them on another blog & they looked so cool all decorated. I found my letters & was lucky to get the last E. Shops never stock enough E’s, apparently it’s the most used language in the English language. I also spotted a gorgeous little pad of pretty papers & some ‘droplets’ to add some bling to my journal.

I was looking for some bigger longer tops to help cover my bigger shape, lol so I checked out Rivers. I did get a couple of tops & also spotted these shoes as I was queuing up. Now with my awful flat feet buying shoes is not fun & I avoid it at all costs but in the last few months I’ve bought 5, yes 5 pairs of shoes at Rivers coz they are just so comfy!!!! In the past 10 years I’ve probably bought about 3 pairs of shoes, so I’m making up for lost time!!

These 2 pairs will be lighter & nicer for Summer than anything else I have. The bronze ones will go with most colours & the teal pair were just too pretty to leave.   A quick trip into Typo & I found this lovely owl decal for my sewing room.

Just as we were leaving I checked out Esprit. I found a couple of nice tops & this gorgeous coat. The pic doesn't do it justice. Grey & black check & the purple is quite bright. It fits perfectly, last one in the shop & it was less than 1/3 the original cost. Bargain!!!

Tuesday Treasures

Wow that week flew by very fast.

I didn’t have anything specific in mind for this week but when I looked around my eyes fell on this gorgeous little Singer machine. My Mum’s friend, Mrs Vickers, always ‘Vickies’ to me, gave it to me when I was about 5. It had belonged to one of her daughters but they’d outgrown it. I loved it from the minute I saw it & I’m very glad I still have it. I have very little from childhood, we moved a lot & Mum had a habit of bundling up everything she thought I was ‘too big’ for & giving it to the local children’s home. Which is why I now keep way too much stuff……………………….

Progress

I finished making the bag for my Mum & it will be in the post tomorrow for her birthday on Wednesday.

I hope she likes it.

I also finished part 1 of the ‘Stitching Round the Block’ group I joined. After Orange Friday I had to stitch the little snail in orange.I will pop this in the post to Julie tomorrow & wait for Fiona’s block to arrive. The next instalment comes out tomorrow.

I hadn’t done any stitchery for a long time & had forgotten how much I enjoy it. So much so, I’ve found a lovely floral design I’m going to trace onto fabric today. It will be the front side of a bag for me. :-)

Orange Friday

Lucky I started collecting orange things earlier in the week because Friday snuck up on me!!!

I had to go & check out one of my fave stores today, ‘Ishka’ as they have a 25% off sale on. Managed to get a cool pair of trousers, they are a little tight so I just have to lose some weight. Dh was very diplomatic when I tried them on, they kind of bulge a bit here. No they don’t bulge, I do, lol. I also found a scrummy summer skirt on sale in another shop. A couple of warm days in Melbourne & you have to go & buy some Summer clothes. Well it’s more that my Summer clothes have shrunk. Thank goodness I have a good supply of wrap around skirts, they just don’t wrap quite as far!!

Now onto the orangey goodness:

  I have good reason to LOVE orange. :-)))

My gorgeous son Simon, he has grown a little since the first pic.

Tuesday Treasures

I found another fun group while blog surfing.
‘Tuesday Treasures’ fairly self explanatory really, on Tuesday you post a pic of a treasure.

Well the first thing to come to mind is the thing I’ve owned all my life, ‘Teddy.’ I actually have a lot of teddies, I love them all & will never have too many, but this little one is the one I would grab first if I could only keep one.

  Now as you can see Teddy’s had a rather tough life. We had a little dog when I was little called Cleo, & Cleo ate Teddy’s ears. Mum fixed the head but it remained fragile & finally just disintegrated, never mind I have a very clear picture of Teddy in my head. You can see I still have the cute little muzzle.

The 2nd pic is not Teddy being bold & mooning you, it’s actually showing you the teeny, tiny little bit of fur still left. I wore the rest away carrying Teddy around & loving it, lol.

If you would like to join in with Tuesday treasures or check out the other people in the group please visit:

http://clarescraftroom.blogspot.com/

Thanks Clare, I’m looking forward to showing the special things in my life each week.

Green Friday

I love blog surfing, you find all kinds of fun, wonderful things. Today I visited one of the blogs I follow:  
http://loftcreations.blogspot.com/

& read about ‘Colourful Friday’

& then followed the link to this blog to find out the details:
http://daisyquilts.blogspot.com/

so I decided to join in the fun.

First stop my sewing room, lot’s of green goodies in there. :-)

  Dd painted this many years ago.
A cute little visitor we had one night. ‘Rowan’ Weasley

If at first you don’t succeed……..

Well the lap quilt I started making for Mum has not come together as I’d hoped, to put it bluntly it’s really quite fugly, lol!!!! I may be able to salvage it down the track but for now I’ve put it aside & have started on Plan B, a bag. I realised early on that I seem to have lost confidence in my choices. I guess because it’s for someone else, it’s harder. When you make something for yourself you know whether or not you like it but trying to see it through the eyes & taste of the recipient can be daunting.

  So here it is, it will be a hexagon bag like the Japanese fabric one below, that I made a few years ago.

Speaking of things you make for others, when I met up with Lorna a couple of weeks ago she told me she had a little wall hanging I’d made for her years ago with ‘If Friends Were Flowers I’d Pick You,’ worked on it. She still has it & loves it. Then at the funeral of my aunt two weeks ago a relative asked after me & said she had a folk art brooch I made her many years ago that she loves. It was nice to think that these handmade gifts are valued. I thought then of the handmade gifts I’ve been given over the years, I remember who gave them to me & I love them. How many store bought gifts stand out in your memory & have special meaning to you????

I know some people don’t value handmade gifts, in fact they think it’s the cheap, easy way out, lol!!!!! If only they knew the long hours & second guessing that can go on. So I will continue to make & give gifts, & will hopefully be the recipient of handmade gifts too.

Rollercoaster

Last week was a bit of a rollercoaster & I’ve never been one for rollercoasters so I would have preferred to give it a miss.

Last Saturday week we had a call from the estate agent to say he had an offer on our house. We countered & then agreed a price. It was nowhere near what we had hoped, & been led to believe we would get, but it meant we could move on & not have to make the decision of whether or not to let it.

Monday was a fantastic day as I met up with a dear friend I hadn’t seen for over 14 years!!!!! Lorna & I met when our kids were pre-schoolers, they’re now 26 & 28!!! We lived a few streets apart & saw each other all the time. Lorna then moved up to Qld. Lorna’s eldest dd lives in Melbourne so we’ll be able to catch up whenever she visits, yay.

Tuesday the house buyer had her pest & building inspections done & wanted to knock $15k off the price because the small section of retaining wall we didn’t replace, may need doing within the next 5 years???? The agent who turned out to be totally useless, said we should take it, fat chance. She then upped her offer by $10k, so $5k under the ‘agreed’ price because the builder said our sunroom wasn’t council approved. It was, & we emailed up the relevant documentation from the council. Again the agent said take it, take it. I said yes if you drop your fee by $5k to cover the shortfall. Hah he wouldn’t drop 1 penny. He said, ‘If you don’t take the latest offer the buyer walks,’ so I said, Tell her goodbye,’ lol. She came back to the original agreed price & we’ve now exchanged. You know the older you get the less crap you take from people. She is getting a great house for well below it’s true value & she should think herself lucky. Of course all this took days to sort out & was very frustrating & annoying.

Meanwhile, a close family member had a very serious health scare, so I was riding that one out too with sleepless nights as we waited for the test results. All was ok.

Friday things picked up as my friend Lynne came for a sleepover, it was nice sitting & chatting & knowing a really bad week was behind me. :-)

Monday I started making a lap quilt for Mum for her birthday which is the 27th of this month. I bought a book at Lincraft last week, it’s gorgeous, & one of the projects in it gave me the idea. It’s actually a wall-hanging but by increasing the block size & adding more blocks it will make a nice lap quilt. I’ll put 2 Suffolk puff flowers on each panel as 1 looked a bit lonely on the bigger block.

  Tuesday Rowan finally started at Woodleigh & 4 days in he loves it & has made some new friends. His tutor rang today to say he was settling in well & that he was a lovely boy, I knew this but it was nice to hear it from someone else. :-)

Wednesday & I attended my 2nd Carrum Downs Quilt Group meeting. The ladies are very friendly so I did plenty of chatting. This month Leesa Chandler was there giving a talk on having her own fabric lines printed. Of course I had to buy some, just to be polite of course. :-))))

Yesterday we headed down to Chadstone for some retail therapy, I was after a sound system for my sewing room. I’d tried playing my cd’s through the dvd player but it doesn’t really work with an mono tv. Next dh bought in my old cassette player & rigged it up to play through the speakers. Ugh, I swear my ears were almost bleeding with the horrendous noise. So I bought a spiffy little system that plays cd’s, iPods (tho I don’t have one) & usb sticks which suits me fine. I need to put together a new music list & put on my stick. I prefer to play music in the sewing room coz if I put on the tv I get too distracted & get nothing done. I set it all up & it sounds great. In the time it took to play 1 cd I tidied the room, designed a Yule table runner & covered a folder.

A reminder our BOM Birth Flower is up on the website & will be there until the beginning of November.
http://www.countryoriginals.com.au/

Here are a few shots of my new sewing room. More next time.

The back wall. 

A handy little nook behind the door. I’m not sure how many pairs of scissors or how many rotary cutters you need, but I think I have enough of both!!

Yes I know, a chandelier in the sewing room. I bought it before we bought the house to go in the main bedroom. The main bedroom has a light/fan thingy & I know we’ll want the fan come Summer so into the sewing room it went. :-)

Couldn’t resist this cute cushion for my office chair. 
Pretty & comfy.

Thanks if you stayed with me this long, this post has turned into a bit of a novel. :-)))