Colourful Friday - Silver

Silver, well it even crossed my mind I might have to skip this week’s colour coz I don’t have a lot of silver but then I started noticing things………

A couple of pics from Yule 2009. I’m using the same colours this year for the lounge room, it will be fun decorating the new house.

If you haven’t joined in before think about giving it a go, you wander around your house & start to notice things you probably haven’t looked at for quite some time & it’s a very nice experience. :-)

Here’s the link if you’d like to pop over & see what others have posted for ‘Colourful Friday.’

http://kaingahappenings.blogspot.com/

A quick note: I ‘LOVE’ getting comments but haven’t been keeping up lately with replies, sorry. I started out replying via the comments then switched to emailing privately. I found some of these emails bounce so I’m going to go back to replying in the comment section. That way I’m sure the reply goes through. :-)))

Books & Mug Rugs

Paul & I decided to check out the op shops in the area looking for bits to put in the new verandah area we’re working on. We didn’t find anything suitable but I did find an op shop with a fantastic range of books. I’ll enjoy sitting on the verandah reading them. :-)

When I carried the books out to photograph them, I dropped a couple of them & this card fell out of ‘Evening Class.’ Now there are a lot of names in the world, so for the name on the card to be the same as my eldest ds is a bit of a coincidence!!!

Sewing wise I seem to have caught the Mug Rug Bug, try saying that 3 times!!!! I have finished 3 & have plans for many more.

I have to admit the binding is time consuming but I saw some coasters on a blog this morning & they had been ‘birthed,’ rather than bound & they had ricrac sewn into the seam. I think they look great & would save lot’s of time, so I’ll be giving that a go.

I’m going to a quilt group Xmas party next week, it’s the first Xmas party I’ve been to in years, & I decided to make a Mug Rug for my Kris Kringle gift. Of course it should have a mug to match so I did the smart thing & went in search of the mug first. I spotted this cute Japanese style mug & as I have a collection of Japanese fq’s thought it would be ideal.It even has a lid to keep your drink hot.

Colourful Friday Brown

I can’t say that brown is one of my fave colours however I do have some things I love that just happen to be brown.

I’ve had this gorgeous little teapot cottage for many years. I was helping on the Mother’s Day stall when Simon was in Kindy & I spotted this in one of the boxes of donated items. I asked if we were allowed to put things aside for our children to buy & the immediate answer was ‘What is it?’ I held up the teapot & was told, ‘No worries, put it aside for Simon.’ I’m guessing it didn’t appeal to anyone else, lol.

How cool is this little sculture? It’s all washers & nuts & bits & bobs. I love it.

  Lots of brown buttons as I don’t tend to use them much.

My old spinning wheel, it needs a bit of work!!! I learnt to spin at the The Rocks in Sydney in the late 70’s. I loved the area so much we had our wedding & reception there.

This lovely old dresser was painted white when we bought it, it looks much nicer back to it’s original wood.

This old hatbox belonged to my Mum’s lovely neighbour Verna.

One of my fave brown things. YUM!

Yummy Fabrics

I recently realised that I don’t actually like quite a lot of my stash, after all I started buying quilting fabric in 1990 & my taste has changed a lot in that time. I sold off a lot of fabric before we moved, but obviously not nearly enough.

Now I could sit with my head in my hands over the whole sorry situation or I could do something about it. I’ve decided to do something about it, the obvious thing, go out & buy fabric I do like. :-)))

Here are some I picked up today.

Aren’t they just yummy? Nice & bright which is what I really love these days. I also like nice clear pastels, what I really don’t like is anything muted or dull.

Not all of these are quilting fabrics, but that’s ok, because I’m going to make mug rugs & placemats out of them to add some colour to our currently bland house. I know we’re all supposed to love neutrals but I don’t, they’re dull & boring. I want to look around me & see pretty colours, they energize me & make me smile. Brown, taupe & beige don’t, they just make me say ‘BLAH!!!’ Even dh, who said he’d had enough painting, said today we need to paint the foyer & our bedroom, so the bland is getting to him too.

As far as my stash goes, I need to go through every container of fabric, I have 1 for each colour, & take out the yuck & pack it away. Maybe in a year or two I’ll fancy subdued, though I doubt it. :-)

Colourful Friday - Lavender

Even the word ‘lavender’ is pretty. :-)

I’m running late today, we had a lovely day out exploring antique shops. I picked up some interesting books which may feature in another post.

Check out the other ladies who have joined in this week’s fun, pop over to Bev’s blog: http://kaingahappenings.blogspot.com/

Jan loves Happy loves Rosie

HAPPY LOVES ROSIE, this is my favouritist blog, I’m sure that’s a word. :-)

http://happylovesrosie.blogspot.com/

& when I saw what she’d done with this dinky little caravan I was smitten!!!!

http://happylovesrosie.blogspot.com/2009/08/vintage-caravan-done.html

I showed it to Rowan & now he’s all grown up at 14, the usual answer is ‘meh.’ Which I translate as ‘yeah whatever, don’t care,’ but this time he forgot himself & said ‘That’s so cool.’ Yay breakthrough!!!

So first up I searched for cute little caravans to do up, then realised that as our back yard is tiny & totally inaccessible to a caravan, unless it’s 1:12 scale, it probably wasn’t one of my better ideas to buy a cute little caravan to do up. Then it hit me, we have a lovely back verandah/deck in our new home just crying out to be tarted up.

Paul, who has learned to just glaze over, smile & nod at my ideas, did just that so I took that as ‘What a wonderful idea darling, I’d love to help you do that.’ Lol.

We just happened to be going to Bunnings so I grabbed some paint swatches to use to match things to. The colours are much more vibrant than they show in the pic.

I already have a nice old cane setting with the darker blue cushions, that we nearly didn’t bring with us, which will fit in nicely. I need to make lots of bright cushions, paint up a few old bits of furniture & I’m on my way. There’s even an outside power point for a kettle. I know this is going to be a lovely spot to sit & sew or read.

I feel a trip to Tyabb antiques coming up. :-)

Before, I hope after won’t be toooo far away.

Busy, busy, busy

Do you ever get so motivated you just don’t know what to work on???? That’s how I am at the moment & it’s exhausting, but loads of fun.

I think it started when I did the stitchery for the ‘Stitch Round the Block’ round robin I’m in. I remembered how much I love to do stitcheries. I finished the centre then wanted something else to stitch so I stitched this garland, it’s a Rosalie Quinlan design. I made a few tiny changes. I plan to make this a panel on a bag.

Then I came across some fabrics Paul gave me for Xmas last year & decided it was time to do something with them. I decided on a simple lap quilt, ten 5” squares by ten, 5” squares. I chose the fabrics & cut the squares. Now I don’t have a design wall anymore so decided the next best thing would be to lay a sheet on the floor & arrange the squares on it. Good idea huh???? Not if you have a crazy spoodle.

Unfortunately i didn’t take a before pic.

 

Apparently my neatly arranged squares looked like the perfect place for a wrestling match with ‘puppy.’

So I picked them all up & had a rethink.

The pink strawberries will be the outer border, the bright pink the 1” inner border & the binding. It looked a little boring so I decided to add some stitchery blocks. I’m going to redo the garland, above, & add some of Bronwyn Hayes Catalicious blocks.
http://www.red-brolly.com/red-brolly/catalicious-quilt.html

Here’s one I’ve started.

Now this really should be enough to go on with, but in the meantime, I discovered the most fabulous blog & have decided to decorate an area of the back verandah in this style.

I’ll blog about that tomorrow. :-)

Tuesday Treasures :-)

Now when it comes to treasures…………………….

 

My lovely, lovely Simon.

 

My gorgeous Emma, who dodges cameras at every opportunity!!!

 

My baby :-) Rowan.

Note the junior & senior versions of Indiana Jones.

My dh Paul.

Colourful Friday – PINK!!

 

Even the garden joined in this week. :-))

It was a ‘Wendy House’ when we bought the property, it’s since become the ‘Wendy Shed’ for dh’s tools as there isn’t a shed, lol.

       If you’d like to see more PINK visit Robyn’s Daisy Quilts page for the links to others having fun with ‘Colourful Fridays.’

http://daisyquilts.blogspot.com/

Tuesday Treasures

As I looked around today to find a special treasure I couldn’t go past another item from childhood. I bought this little frog when I was 11. It’s actually a necklace & I wore it every day. At the time my teacher was Miss Nicholls & I loved her, I also loved my frog, so the name was easy. This is ‘Little Miss Nicholls.’ Lol. She is about 3” high.