17 Birthday Candles

Hannah turned 17 yesterday, and I can hardly believe it! She said to me last night, this time next year she’ll be 18—how is that possible? We’re incredibly proud of our wonderful girl. She’s still passionate about all things hair and beauty, working hard on her ballet, and really enjoying being an assistant teacher for the young ballet dancers at her dance school.

We celebrated last night after dance class with takeaways and some divine cupcakes from a local bakery, yum!

Today it's my youngest niece Sally's birthday, she's 14 today, where have the years gone? We're looking forward to seeing Sally on the weekend as we're planning a family morning tea to celebrate Mother's Day.  

See you soon x

 

Three new starts

This month, being my birthday month, I decided to have several new starts. First up, this cute pink fawn from Satsuma Street.

I just love these adorable designs, and stitching on the perforated paper is quite fun.  

Up next, I'm adding another sampler design to my growing collection of sampler wips - Americana Blue by October House Fibre Arts, stitched on 36 count Fibre on a Whim Affogato linen and with the recommended Weeks Dye Works Blue Jeans threads. 

Started during the Easter break, a little chart that has been on my to stitch list for ages, Cottontail & Company by Scattered Seed Samplers. I'm using all the recommended threads and 36 count mocha linen.  

You might remember me chatting about having a major sort through in my craft room/office? I spent quite a bit of time in there over the recent long weekend and made some really good progress, sorted out lots of donations for the local op shop, scrapbooking resources that I no longer want to use have been given away,  a big box of fabrics to give to my friend for the destash sale coming up.  This coming weekend, I'm going to sort through all my knitting yarn, needles and patterns.  Getting there very slowly!

See you soon xx

Easter weekend

 I hope you had a wonderful Easter weekend, we certainly enjoyed our four day break.

We started the weekend with a very wet day on Good Friday, the tail end of Cyclone Tam, which had seen quite rough weather and flooding up the top of the North Island and Auckland. The rest of the weekend the weather was very warm and sunny. We spent our break working on some projects around home, catching up with family, a day out to Napier and just enjoying being around home.

We were treated to some yummy Easter goodies on Thursday morning at work. 

 It was a beautiful day on Saturday, just perfect for strolling around Napier, browsing the shops and enjoying our favourite Starbucks drinks.  Lots of people out and about enjoying the sunshine. 

We had a Jamieson family barbeque on Saturday evening and had a fun night catching up with Paul, Jude and the girls.

Of course we enjoyed some Easter treats!

Hannah's annual Easter basket, minus the new pj's she was already using lol.

We enjoyed our "cheese" o'clock on Easter Sunday after a day of gardening and other outside jobs. I cleaned the greenhouse out and emptied some of the vegetable gardens, all ready for winter. 

Glenn finished the new raised rose garden so a few new plants purchased and planted in the garden. 

My niece Zoe came home for a few days to stay with my parents so it was super lovely to catch up with her, and her Dad, my brother Marcus, came to stay too. I'm so proud of Zoe and her partner Dylan - they have recently purchased and moved into a new home, and Zoe has also changed positions at her current workplace, so busy times for her.  Diesel just loves Zoe and gives her lots of smoochy hugs whenever she comes to our house. 

This week has been zooming by, public holiday Monday, three days to work, another public holiday on Friday for ANZAC Day. I had thought about taking some time off  but I decided to wait until the next lot of holidays in July as we have bit of a holiday adventure planned, more about that another time!

Thanks for stopping by, see you soon x

A finish, new stash, books and scissors

It's a beautiful autumn day here in NZ, and we've been enjoying some really nice weather lately. I love the weather at this time of the year, cooler mornings and evenings but gorgeous sunny days. Our daylight savings ended last weekend. Its also the start of the school holidays here, Hannah now has two weeks off school after finishing term 1. We have the Easter break coming up from Friday so we're all looking forward to some down time around home. We might head up to Napier over the break, for a day out, go somewhere nice for lunch perhaps. Other plans include more sorting in my craft room/office and Glenn has been building a new rose planter box as we were gifted a rose from some friends, Compassion, so he'll try and get it finished.

Another work in progress ticked off the list, Green Coat Santa, which I finished over the weekend. Stitched with recommended threads and 32 count natural Belfast linen.

Lovely mail received recently from Helen, That Crafty Kiwi :

I've ordered some linen from Helen for this chart

New Cohana scissors, all the way from Japan. I couldn't resist when I saw these being advertised 

Oh Joyous Day came out of my stitching basket for my sampler choice last week and I spent a few evenings working on this lovely design. 

Some new books bought with some birthday money. A new cook book by Vanya Insull, VJ Cooks, a NZ food blogger, and this is her third book. I just love her recipes, so easy and most of the recipes use pantry staples. 

a new Hunger Games novel, and the latest in a series by local Hawke Bay writers Gareth and Louise Ward. They own a bookshop in Havelock North, which is not far from where I live.

Have a fab week friends, see you soon x

It's now April

Hello friends,

thank you for your condolences, and kind and thoughtful messages, it really means so much xx 

Today I'm going to jump back in and start sharing my recent stitching projects, and what else I've been on working on over the past few weeks.  Although our weekends and evenings after work have been filled with lots of admin tasks, and the process of sorting Glenn's Dad house, shed and workshop, I've been trying to squeeze in as much stitching or reading as I can. Presently I'm trying to get a few older projects completed, some ornaments stitched and I have had one new start, for Easter. I have some new goodies on the way, some Nashville releases and other charts from my wish list, threads and fabrics.  These I'll share when they arrive. I also had a very special delivery, all the way from Japan, with an item I'd been wishing for a long time, so once I get some photos sorted, I'll share that here too.  

I think with all the sorting, tidying and decluttering at my father in law's house, I must have been in the right frame of mind as I've made a small start on the absolute "mess" that is my craft storage/office.  In the past year, this small room has become our junk storage space. I hadn't done any sewing in there for ages, and there's piles of stuff, fabric, etc just waiting to be sorted out.  During the summer holidays, Glenn and I rearranged our garage, moving our chest freezer and fridge to other side, creating space for a new store cupboard to go. Glenn finished making this last weekend and we've been able to move quite a bit of stuff out of the office into there. So now I can get stuck in, when I have the time, go through absolutely everything and rearrange to make it work better. A friend of mine is organising a fabric de-stash sale in June, so that's my goal to have it all done by then as she'll take any of my unwanted fabrics, charts, etc.  Watch this space!

I'm not sure why, because this I love the colours in this design, but I hadn't stitched on this project for ages. I'm using all the recommended threads and 36 count Black Swan linen by Fox & Rabbit. 

Another of my focus projects recently, please excuse the wrinkles, Green Coat Santa by Teresa Kogut. I'd started this mid year last year, could have been during #jollyjuly? I'm stitching this on 32 count natural linen and the recommended threads. 

Lastly for today, here's our handsome boy, we are so lucky to have Diesel x

See you soon x

Sad times

 

On Friday 28th February, Glenn's much loved Dad, my lovely father in law Cliff, and Hannah's proud Pop, passed away suddenly after a short illness. Our hearts are broken.

I've known Cliff for a very long time, since I was a high school student, where he was the woodwork teacher, and when I became part of the Jamieson family, he's was always there with a smile and kindness, and always so willing to lend a hand or help out with something. Cliff helped Glenn with many of his projects around our house, and it was Cliff's idea to build the extension from our lounge and kitchen. He loved calling in for a cuppa and some baking, and always enjoyed coming to have a meal with us, especially in the years since Glenn's mum passed.  Cliff loved spending time with his three grand daughters and was incredibly proud of their achievements, watching the girls play sports, including their hockey games on a freezing cold winter's night, and coming to Hannah's end of the year dancing show.  He always had doggie treats in his pocket for Diesel or Buddy.  

In recent years, Cliff had taken up a few hobbies, including e biking and playing golf, and he also really enjoyed getting away on little trips visiting parts of New Zealand he hadn't been to before. He had made lots of new friends, including a lovely lady whom he'd become very close to over the past twelve months, and was enjoying getting out and about socialising, and spending time playing golf together.

During the week after Cliff's passing, we hosted many of Glenn's relatives for meals, and also dinner after Cliff's service. It was so wonderful they were able to be around for a few days and spend time together, some we hadn't seen since Hannah was a baby.  

Clifton Roy Jamieson, forever missed, cherished and loved.

A Finish and Yummy Treats

This design has been so much fun to stitch over the past few months. It's pretty well travelled too, having been with me on my trip to visit my cousin, and then to the beach several times as well.

This is Christmas Cuckoo Clock by the Tiny Modernist, last year's mystery Christmas stitch along.

I used all the recommended DMC threads and 32 count vintage grey Belfast linen. 

So happy to have another of my 2024 projects ticked off the list!

It's been quite hot here this week, we've days that have reached 30c plus, so a friend and I went along to check out a newly opened cafe in town, Rubylicious Cakes.  This lemon meringue raspberry cupcake was divine, 

So was this passionfruit ice cream, yum!

See you soon xx

Beach Days

Over the past month or so, we've been making the most of the sunny and hot weather and heading out to one of our local beaches in our campervan after work on Friday afternoon.  I've usually got everything ready to go by the time Glenn gets in from work, and we're off. How lucky are we to have several beautiful beaches, all only about 45 minutes drive or less from home.

Diesel loves coming too, lots of beach walks, splashes in the waves and hanging out at our camp site.  He gets super tired by the end of the weekend and will usually snooze the day away once we get home.

Some weekends it's just Glenn, Diesel and I, other times Hannah comes along too and puts her tent up, and we are often joined by our friends with their campervans.  Some weekends there's fishing, but usually there is lots of time for just chilling out, enjoying a bbq for dinner, lots of cheese and crackers,  and a few glasses of bubbles.  Often I take my stitching and it doesn't even come out, as I might just spend a few hours reading.  Life at the beach is so much fun, stress free, and I start each week at work with a clear head.  We hope to get a few more beach weekends in before the cooler weather of autumn comes in April. 

See you soon x