A Long Weekend *Updated*

Thanks for playing along with the Fluff Five Paula, Andee, Rose and Tazzie.  I really enjoyed reading your answers too

***

Phew.

What a busy weekend I’ve had!  Although I went to work today I would have really loved another day off.  Why does it feel like you don’t have a long weekend when you have Friday off but it does when you have Monday off?  Strange….

Friday

I went with my Mum and her partner to the Inglewood Dawn Service.  Going to a Dawn Service is something that I’ve wanted to do for a while but haven’t gotten around to so I thought I’d do it this year.

I took quite a few pictures and then when I got home I had fun playing with them in Picnic (Flikr’s version of “mental blank”).

I think I made some of the pics look heaps better!!

This photo is after Picnic.  The before pic is in my Flickr group in the Inglewood Set.

Then I spent all morning working on the butterfly placemats and got them finished and wrapped up ready to give away.  I then worked on the placemats that I had promised my second cousin.

In the afternoon my cousin came along and we went to the picutres and saw “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” which was quite funny.  Not completely my sense of humour but it was funny in some parts.  There were parts that were really funny but no one else was laughing so I couldn’t!  Although my cousin was as well so we sat there chuckling to ourselves

Then we came home and had dinner and she/we looked through the patterns that I’ve liked and kept from AP&Q.  She choose a pattern that we are going to do together and for me to teach her how to patchwork.  I don’t think I’m the greatest teacher so we’ll see how we go.

I’ve cut out all my fabric and made one block as an example.  I think it will look pretty when it’s finished and this will then end up as a Xmas quilt for me or someone else.

Saturday

I took my Mum shopping at West Lakes.  She wanted to look for something to wear to my brother’s 21st.  She didn’t find anything however, I did remember an outfit from Noni B that I thought would be suitable for me.

So that afternoon I went down to Marion to meet a friend for coffee and we also looked at the outfit.  I tried it on and bought it!  There are a couple of pictures in my Flickr stream as I have been getting feedback from all my friends   Feel free to tell me what you think.  I’ll be taking the photos down by the end of the week as I don’t really like to be on the internet.

So, I then came home.  Watched Harry Potter #4 and finished sewing the binding by machine onto the placemats.  I just want to say now that if you ever hear me mention making any more placemats, slap me!  I just have sew the binding down by hand now and they are allllll done.

I also decided to change the ladybird quilt to pink and blue pinwheels.  That way I just have to make 2 and it doesn’t matter if the babies are boys or girls cause it will suit either.  Problem Solvered!

I now have a couple of spare blocks and yellow half square triangles that I don’t know what to do with.

Hmmm…..

Sunday

I spent most of the day in my jammies.  I did do a run to the fish shop to get fish for Grandma and also to Gloria Jeans for a coffee and from there I spent the afternoon and evening hand sewing the binding onto Blue + Tan quilt.  I now have 1 side plus a little bit.  Then it’s a label and that’s done too

I also finished sewing the flowers onto Memories of Spring.  All that’s left on that one is the four butterflies but they’ll have to wait until the binding on Blue + Tan and the placemats are done.

After that I’ll start appliquing the hearts on Doreen’s Hearts and making backing for Asian Pinwheels to take to the next quilt class to do the “mental blank” on it.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself!  First things, first….

Finish the binding on the quilt and the placemats

***

updated 29/4/08

Emma, I enjoyed reading your Fluff Five as well   I only did it as soon as I saw it cause I knew that if I left it to later it wouldn’t get done!  Kind of like the rego sticker for the car……

Tazzie, yes, you must!  Lol

Oh, and how could I forget!  My (baby) list of things to do!

So, my current list of things to do as at 28/4/08:

• bind 16 Patch – 12/4/08
• bind Heart Love – 22/4/08
• finish applique on Memories of Spring
• attach binding onto Blue + Tan by machine - 15/4/08
• attach binding onto Blue + Tan by hand
• finish butterfly placemats – 25/4/08
• hand sew binding onto Jan’s placemats

Gah!  Gotta go back to work.  Hope you all have a great day

We Will Remember Them

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Fluff Five

Ohhh, Kathleen….. is that a challenge????

Ok, you’re on!  But only quickly as I do have to go and do some more hand sewing!

Five things found in your bag

1] My IPod Shuffle and IPod mini 6gig

2] Wallet with credit card as well as money and many loyalty cards so that I can get “free” coffees!

3] A spare bag of silver, cause I get sick of carrying it around in my purse

4] My Polar F11 Heartrate Monitor so that I always have it on me when I go to the gym

5] My mobile phone.  I feel lost and naked when I don’t have it

Five favourite things in your (sewing) room

1] My sewing table.  It used to be Grandma’s kitchen table.  Perfect for pinning quilts

2] A couch that I bought at Christmas so that when my Mum and her partner comes down I have somewhere comfy to sleep

3] An empty vaccuum cleaner box that I’ve now filled with in progress quilts

4] My laptop, cause it is much warmer in here than in the study!

5] A TV with DVD and VCR, cause I need to be entertained whilst I create my quilts

Five things you have always wanted to do

1] Visit Europe.  Really, really, really want to

2] Be a size 10

3] Get married

4] Buy a house

5] Finish my Accounting degree and maybe actually use it?

Five things you are currently into

1] Becoming a Les Mills RPM & Pump Instructor

2] Actually finish my quilting projects!

3] Eating healthy and going to the gym

4] My cat Ginger

5] Chocolate Almonds

Five people you want to tag

I’m not sure if the people that I tag will do it as the are also busy but I’ll tag ‘em and if they want to, they can.  I look forward to see their answers

1] Tazzie

2] Rose

3] Emma

4] Paula

5] Andee

Slowly, Slowly

Hi Rose. Yes, I’ve been up to some “fun” mischief! I’ve also started sewing the left over blue half square triangles together to make a quilt out of them for my Mum’s spare room. I know I seem busy, but I think I forgot to mention I have absolutely no intention of even starting Butterfly Garden when I get it (hopefully soon, I can’t wait!) or in the near future. I’ve loved this quilt since I saw Leanne start to create and it have wanted to be able to do the BOM since it became available. I’m so glad that I can now do this.

Hi Kathleen. Terminator? I love the Terminator. Specially the second one. I’ll be back! I reckon, those demontors are enough to give me nightmares, let alone younger kids!!!

***

So, I haven’t been doing much. Well, not quilt wise anyways. I’ve been working lots and went to the gym Monday night and tonight as I’m still on holidays from TAFE I went for a Bowen Therapy treatment and then decided to come home and just be.

I managed to finish the binding on Heart Love and with a label! I’ve also even written a post on it! How’s that for organised????

I’ve also started the seriously focus on finishing the Butterfly placemats. I’ve started taking them to work and doing little bits here and there in the spare minute or two I have and I’ve even done a little on the bus! I have 5.5 to go.

I haven’t done any more on Memories of Spring since I last “talked”. I plan on doing more of that on the weekend along with starting the hand bind Blue + Tan.

I’ve also got 2 Thursdays off in May so I’ll be able to go to quilt class, yay!! I want Memories of Spring all appliqued by then so that I can get help in stitching the antennia on the butterflies and then I can finish them and then hand it to Tara to quilt and pin (shhhh, don’t tell her cause I haven’t asked her yet!) so then I can perhaps finish the whole thing when I’m home looking after Grandma in July.

So, my current list of things to do as at 22/4/08:

• bind 16 Patch – 12/4/08
  
• bind Heart Love – 22/4/08
• finish applique on Memories of Spring
• attach binding onto Blue + Tan – 15/4/08
• finish butterfly placemats
• finish Jan’s placemats

Catch you all later, hope your week is going well

Heart Love

Finished Size: 44″ x 44″

I started this quilt January this year after finding the pattern in a digest from the Yahoo Group ‘Stashbusters’.  I followed the link and liked the look of the block and thought that it was just the thing to help me use some of my 2′ squares.

I started out with the one block with a black fabric that I bought in Spotlight in January ‘08:

After thinking about it and letting it stew in my head for a while I decided that I wanted to do a 3×3 setting with the first dark border and then the bigger border, like I did for my Mum’s quilt.

However, I wasn’t totally happy with the black fabric so I as I had just bought some black fabric with a white flower pattern that I thought would work really well.  Then I decided to put the blue flowers with it as I had just bought a metre or so of it from the cheap aisle.

As I was making it I had no idea of who it would go to.  It was also around this time that I decided to start quilting my own quilts.

This was the second one that I quilted myself, although Tara did quite a bit of the work on it as when I took it to quilt class to quilt I just wasn’t all that interested in doing anything!

It was quilted with a blue King Tut thread that I had heard good things about.  It worked well, but at this point I probably wouldn’t use it again.  Only, cause I don’t have a local store that supplies it.

As it was sitting in the bag waiting for me to finish it I thought that I would give it to our next door neighbour who is a really good friend to Grandma and I.  She comes over every day to have afternoon tea with Grandma and often if she is going to go to the Chemist she will also grab Grandma’s prescriptions.

It is now bound and labelled and all ready to go.  I want to give it to her now (cause I totally suck at waiting to give people their presents) but Grandma thinks that I should wait ’till July when Grandma is out of hospital and home again.

So for now, it will live on the couch in the sewing room with Scrap Basket Lattice and 16 Patch.

Ginger helping me quilt it.  He is actually sitting on top of the quilt!

Harry Potter Night

Thank you Tara and Paula for telling me what makes you happy. I hope you guys have had a Starbucks today!

Hi Marie! My friend who doesn’t have a blog, now has broadband at home so is now able to read my blog so thought I’d do a shout out to her

***

“I solemnly swear that I’m up to no good”

Tonight is the 3rd Harry Potter movie and although I missed the first half I did manage to catch the end and Kathleen, I watched all of it tonight cause I didn’t have to go to bed so early.

I haven’t been doing much lately just trying to finish things.

I’ve nearly finished the binding on Heart Love, I have 3 more flowers to go on Memories of Spring, finished another couple of placemats and as yet have yet to start hand binding my brother’s quilt.

However, I have been up to no good cause I actually started another quilt!! Yes, I know, I’m naughty. But, I’m only doing a few bits at a time to make it last and it’s more about keeping me entertained whilst I finish all the other things off.

I’ve also been up to no good cause I went to the quilt shop on Friday night to get more material for Memories of Spring. I’ve got a beautiful blue patterned material for the large bit of the wing and a bright(ish) blue for the smaller part. I can’t wait to see it finished

Hmmm, what else?

Oh, I also ordered to do Butterfly Garden BOM. I can’t wait to start receiving that and seeing all the beautiful fabrics. I might keep this to keep me entertained when I look after Grandma in July.

And that’s about it…..

Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend

“Mischief Managed”

Joy & Happiness

Oh dear.

I should really not get anywhere near my blog when I’m tired should I?

Sorry about that.

So, moving on, let’s talk about what makes you happy.

What makes you happy?  What gives you joy?  What is in your life that you know that as soon as you touch/smell/feel/hear it you will feel better and happy.

For me it is:

• hearing and seeing Rob Thomas/Matchbox 20 in concert
• my cat Ginger
• going out to lunch with my Grandma
• my dressing gown – very fluffy
• Gloria Jeans Vanilla Chillers
• coming home after a long, tiring day
• going to the gym and enjoying my workout when I had to drag myself there
• Haighs chocolate
• the smell of rain
• walking on the beach at sunset

Please share with me what makes you happy

A Day In My Life: 16 April 2008

Well, here we are a month later and it is time once again to bore entertain you all with a day in my life!

Today I had a day off from work and when I go back to work tomorrow I am working 8 days straight. Eeek!!!! I have also decided that in those 8 days I’m going to cut the excess sugar out of my daily food pyramid. I am of course going to keep it for my tea and coffee but out will go all the lollies and chocolates that I normally seem to eat. I’ll see how I go. My aim here is to perhaps also keep it out until I lose a further 3kgs or maybe 21 days. We’ll see.

I’ll let you know how I go.

Just to let you know that normally my days off aren’t this laid back but as I’ve been feeling a bit tired and run down lately I decided to have a super slow day today.

So here is what I did today:

9.00am – wake up and realise that I don’t have anything to do today so I decide to stay in bed and read trashy novels.

11.00am – decide that perhaps it’s now time to get out of bed and get a move on with some of the stuff that I do need to do. Go to the computer and read emails and blogs.

11.30am – go take a shower and get ready for the day. Sms my personal trainer to cancel tonight’s training session as I don’t feel all that crash hot.

12.30pm - leave the house to go to West Lakes for wheat free bread and buy some new jeans as my old ones have split on the inner seams. Also buy a top. Drop by Go-Lo to get the dressing gown that Grandma saw in their catalogue the other day that she wanted. Think about going to the beach and going for a walk and an ice cream and stop by Spotlight on the way. Decide not to go anywhere near Spotlight as it was way too dangerous and that I’ll go for a walk later.

14.00pm – get to Arndale to buy a coffee and a couple more trashy novels.

14.30pm – get home, show Grandma my new jeans and decide that they fit the same as others* that I have in my wardrobe and decide that I’ll return them when I get a chance. Flake out on the couch to read the trashy novels.

17.00pm – finish reading trashy novels and feel completely lazy that I haven’t done anything and guilty that I still haven’t vaccuumed the house. Decide to get up the couch and do the vaccuuming and bring the water in from outside even though I really can’t be bothered.

17.30pm – sit down and do some more applique on Memories of Spring and watch The Antique Roadshow – one of my favourite shows – and make a deal with myself that I’ll learn my Pump song at 18.00 when the News comes on. Decide that I’ll do the 4 butterflies in purple so once I finish the flowers I won’t be able to do anything with this quilt until I can get to Quiltaholics.

Fondle the pink and yellow fabrics that I’ve put aside for the pink quilt that I want to make but decide that until I finish 5 quilts and all those placemats I can’t start it.  Until then I’ll just fondle and look at the pattern and imagine how cool it’s going to look when I’ve done it.

18.00pm – decide that I really should watch the news to find out what is happening in the world these days. Besides I can learn my song at 18.30pm when A Current Affair comes on cause I really don’t like that show.

18.30pm – turn on the dvd player and find the track that I’m supposed to learn. Doubt myself a numerous amount of times as to whether I should be doing this but then decide that I should cause I can’t give up on another thing.

19.00pm – turn to The Biggest Loser and have crumpets and honey and a cup of tea for dinner and wonder how on earth they are managing to eat a deep fried Mars Bar. Hmmmm…… I wonder what it tastes like? Continue on with the applique.

20.30pm – move into the lounge room to watch Spicks and Specks with Grandma and type out this post.

21.00pm – Spicks and Specks finishes, I finish this post to go and tidy up my thread box and continue on hand binding Heart Love.

21.30pm - watch Numb3rs cause Grandma is going to tape something on another channel for my Mum.

22.30pm – bed time!

*I have a pair in the wardrobe that I haven’t worn since about 2005 as they have been too small. They are now at a point where I can do them up but they are slightly too small around my waist causing a small unsightly “muffin top”. But they are wearable which is good cause I have no other alternative! So I thought perhaps buying a new pair to get me through until these fit however, the news ones are a slightly smaller fit and make it look worse! Back to the gym for me.

Craving Pink

Rose, I’m not sure you would say that if you could see it close up!  But it is getting better

Kathleen, no worries!  I also sms’d Tara.  I hope she forgives me!  Memories of Spring is really starting to grow on me but at this point I’m going to like it much better when it’s done.

No I didn’t watch the end as I couldn’t stay up to watch the end cause I had to be up early to go to work the next day.  However, I have it on DVD and if I could have been bothered I could have watched that instead without the commercial breaks and much faster.  But I couldn’t.  Besides, it’s not like we don’t know what happens anyways

***

I keep on seeing pink quilts all around me so now I’m just craving a completely pink quilt.

Not a soft pastel wishy washy pink though.

A full on, here I am pink.

I’ve been thinking about what sort of pattern I could do and was originally thinking perhaps a scaled down version of my brother’s “blue + tan” but obviously with pink, then I was thinking about doing perhaps a log cabin but with small blocks with pink and white/tan.

And then I had no idea at all.

However, I have been going through my folder of the pattern’s that I liked from last year’s AP&Q’s magazines and I’ve managed to pull quite a few patterns out that if I start it it won’t take long to finish.

Hopefully.

Not that I really need to start yet another quilt.

At the moment I’m really tired and just looking at my sewing room makes me tired.  I look at what I could do and just can’t be bothered.  So, hopefully after a long sleep I’ll be back up and running!

***

Rob Thomas/Matchbox 20 absolutely rocked!!  It was worth every penny that my Mum (Xmas present) spent on it for me to go.  I have been to all their concerts and I will definitely be going to all future concerts, no matter what it takes

I have photos and when I have a spare minute tomorrow I’ll post them to my flickr account.

Whoopsies

I’ve had this hankering to go to Spotlight for about a week now as I wanted to find fabric for the back of Memories of Spring and also some white for the scrap quilts that I’m turning into baby quilts.

I had pretty much talked myself out of going as really, I won’t be using the fabric for the backing for some months yet but then I talked myself just into going to Spotlight to “look only” and just fondle the fabric and see what was there.

Well.

They are going through their fabrics and selling some of it quite cheap.  There was fabric at $3/m, fabric at $6.99/m and fabric at $8/m and they also had tone on tone at 50% off!!

So from the $3/m heap of fabric, I grabbed 4m of the grey fabric that’s at the bottom of the pile in the picture for the back of my Doreen’s Hearts quilt, 4m of the green in the middle (although this ended up being $6.99/m*) for Memories of Spring – I hope I have enough.  It’s the same size as blue + tan so I just got the same size backing.

I also got 2m of the white on white fabric at $5/m for the baby quilts and 1m each of the yellow and pink which were $6.99/m.

*They ended up being $6.99/m but some other customer had put them in the $3/m pile so they weren’t quite the bargains that I thought that they were.  Still I did pretty well

***

Ewwwww, I’m watching Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets and it’s at the point where that big spider is on the tv.  I can’t watch, I’m so going to have nightmares!!  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk…………..

***

In other news…..

I have finished the binding on the 16 Patch quilt.  Now, I just have to wait for the baby to be born for me to add the label onto it.  Now, all I need to do is find room for it whilst I wait!

***

I have also been working more on the applique for Memories of Spring and have now finished 6 flowers.  I was going to try and do more tonight but I got sick of them so instead I finished binding 16 Patch.  I’ll try to finish them later this week.

Oh uh, I think I better watch out.  This quilt is going to be really pretty, I think I better hide it before Grandma or Mum steals it!!

***

So, my current list of things to do is:

• bind 16 Patch
• bind Heart Love
• finish applique on Memories of Spring
• attach binding onto Blue + Tan
• finish butterfly placemats
• finish Jan’s placemats

***

Oh and when I was at quilt class I bought a bag of scrap fabric so I can put some more flavour in my scrap quilts.  My 2′ square were looking a bit boring!  The picture doesn’t really do it justice but I got some beautiful bright fabrics.

Cutting it all up will have to wait until I finish a few other things.  That and I better start cutting out 1800 black 2′ squares for my hexagons.  It’s going to take me a while!

***

I’m going to the Matchbox 20 concert tomorrow night.  My Mum got me a ticket for Xmas and I can’t wait!