Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Paint & Scarecrows

Another beautiful sunny day here so out came all the board & the Green is now finished & made a start on the Red, ran out of space so i could only start on the door.
decided to make a scarecrow for my new garden. she is made out of chicken wire & a big ball of wire for her head, one of her boobs is bigger than the other LOL. i think she looks very fashionable with her rope belt & sunglasses.



they have forecast rain for the rest of the week so back to inside jobs.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Hen House & Seeds

at long last the marine ply found its way to our house on Thursday night, all pre cut & ready to go. it has taken so long because the boys had a lot of work on & could not get it cut.
on Saturday A, S & i pre drilled & screwed all the pieces on to the frame, A cut out the heart shapes on the 2 side walls & on the door. i sanded it all & then unscrewed all the pieces ready for a coat of paint. S & i put up the chicken wire on 2 sides & the star pickets on the other side.


today saw me painting in the beautiful sunshine, hopefully tomorrow i will finish off all the Green work & make a start on the Red work {floor, door & iron for the roof}.


this week also saw the delivery of my organic seeds from Green Patch & Eden Organic.
Saturday i planted out a few seed potato's in black pots / recycle bin.
Sunday i dug up the grass for a new garden bed, i am in need a some bricks as i don't have enough left to make the border, so have been on the look out for a few weeks, just no luck yet.
also made a mini green house/cold frame with the left over 1/2 & 1/4 bricks laying around & topped it off with a piece of the alsanite that came off the veranda roof. don't know how it will go but we will just have to wait & see.

today i also spied the first flower heads on the peas Wooo Hooo
after painting i sowed the first of the new seeds, Onions, Radish & Cabbage into the spaces in the garden bed & in starter pots into the new green house of Capsicum- Californian Wonder & Golden Wonder, these will be grown in big pots as my garden space is limited.

no time for cooking on Sunday so i spent some time in the kitchen this afternoon
new recipe is Chocolate short bread {turned out more like cake} got the thumbs up
an old recipe from the Woman's Weekly cook book Lunch Box Cookies
second new recipe is Amish Sugar Cookies { uses a lot of butter & sugar} may not make these again.
Pictures tomorrow

Working on List
70s Blanket {only 4 more rows to sew on}
Patchwork Quilt {1/4 of the way through the top stitching}
Floor Rug {8 colours in & many more to go}
Advance Australia Cross-Stitch {just the wording to stitch}


Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Winter or Spring

Sunday was a beautiful warm day, not a cloud in sight. spent most of the day in the garden, weeding, watering & making a new wood chip path. wiled away the afternoon in the sun joining the last of the 70's crochet blanket squares into long strips. then onto my crocheted t-shirt floor rug, i can only do a small amount at a time on this as it hurts your hand after a while.



Saturday A & i went to have a look at a couple of kit homes in Emu Plains, we are thinking about buy some land & building a kit home. it is a huge step, that size loan scares me a lot.

Monday morning i went out the back to hang the washing out & found white crunchy grass & the bird bath water frozen & ice on the veranda, this is the most frost we have had this year.


i baked all the cookies, plus my new recipe was a Hummingbird Cake. Minestrone soup & zucchini bread for tea.
& today we are back to spring weather, no clouds, a slight breeze, beautiful & warm.


ALS challenge for this month is Stock your pantry, & i am well on the way.
today my goal is to clean it up as it seems that a lot of items just get thrown in any old way & its a bit of a mess. so ill tidy it up & make a list of all the items that need restocking. this week is also my use it up week. Sunday we started by eating all the leftovers in the fridge & a couple from the freezer. for the rest of the week i will be cooking up all those odd bits & bobs in the freezer. you know like 1 piece of steak, 2 sausages that type of thing. so my freezer is all ready for the organic side of beef that comes next month.


Friday i purchased the cotton to make some dish cloths, but i wont be starting them until i have finished another project, other wise i end up with 20 odd things on the go at once.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Garden & skirts

here are the 4 jeans Skirts i also made, as you can see i am a fan of the Tartan/Checks, the Brown , Green & Maroon ones all have vintage buttons at the side, for the Black one i use a kilt pin.





the Green one makes me feel like summer



the Peas are getting taller, i can almost taste their sweet goodness


Sweet baby Lettuce


Silverbeet

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Winter Skirt

this is the winter skirt i made a couple of weeks ago, its a wrap around with vintage buttons & a kilt pin at the side. this is the 3rd one of these i have made they are super easy, nice & warm & definitely my style.


Monday, August 04, 2008

weekend items

i cooked on Saturday this week, starting with Left Over Cake - i used left over apple sauce & left over sultana bran to make an Apple & Sultana slab cake. Peanut Cookies, 100's & 1000's cookies, Honey Jumbles & an Orange loaf of bread for sundays breakfast {the boys said it tasted more like orange cake instead of bread, but very nice toasted with butter}

i layed out the patches for the 70's blanket & they are all stacked into rows ready to sew together, its a queen size blanket & i had a few left over squares so i will crochet up some more to make a couch blanket.

this if before i layed out all the squares

Sunday i made a big meat pie & peeled & cut the potato's ready for tea.
spent the rest of the morning & some of the afternoon out in the yard. turned the compost that now has lots of wriggly worms in it, potted up some seedlings, some weeding, repotted a hibiscus with nice new soil & added a couple of sunshine yellow Daisy's around the outside.
BIL & SIL came over for the afternoon & for tea. spent some time bird watching in the warm afternoon sun, then got down to some scrapbooking, well none for me i just helped Wendy with hers.
Meat Pie, mashed potato's, beans & carrots for tea.
they also took home the 3 cockateils we had & they will go into a nice big avery with lots of Birdy friends.


oh & this is something we saw when we were walking around the city last week after the Organic Expo

Friday, August 01, 2008

Organic Expo

last Saturday A & I went to the organic expo down at Darling Harbour.
it was a bit of a brain over load. there were quite a few exhibitors who's product came from over seas & these we were not interested in at all.
the high light for us was landtasia.com Organic beef, we spoke to Richard the owner, he showed us through his web site which is fantastic, tried some of his beef that was mouth watering & when we asked if he delivers up the mountains he said "we do now".
this weekend we will be ordering 2 sides one to be delivered in a few weeks & the other in a few months. if you order a whole cow in 12 months you get a free freezer, but as we already have a huge box freezer we will be getting $250 off our order.






on the Quilt front, i am just over a 1/4 of the way with the hand top stitching.
all of the ends have been tied in on my 70's crochet blanket, just needs laying out & then i can sew all the squares together.
still working on the floor rug.
haven't even touched the x-stitch but i live in hope that it will get finished in the near future.
2 Wednesdays ago i sewed 4 short skirts to go over jeans & one long winter skirt. ill take some pics on the weekend :o)