Bits & Pieces

It's almost the end of the school holidays for Hannah and today we're having a day at home together, she's happily playing with her Lego and then has a friend coming for a sleep over, and I've been catching up on some things and hope to do some sewing later. 

So this post is really a catch up one today to share some miscellaneous happenings around here.

It has turned bitterly cold here and I'm certain it was trying to snow at one stage yesterday! Recently a friend gave me a couple of balls of this lovely alpaca/merino mix, so I decided to make a slouchy beanie to wear going to and from work.  It's knitting up so lovely and soft.  Once this is done I'll cast on the pattern for the male beanie, to be a gift for my father in law's birthday later in the month. This is the pattern I'm using, which I received a few weeks ago (you can sign up here to receive the Naturally newsletter and also receive weekly free patterns).

One of my dear friends celebrated her birthday this week and we'll be catching up this Saturday evening so I decided to make a little crochet wash cloth for her. The Eco Store soap is a favourite of mine and I couldn't resist buying some of this new body wash for myself and my friend the other day while grocery shopping, I'm the perfect consumer when it comes to spotting new body gels, etc on the shelves at the supermarket, ha ha. Pattern can be found here.

Glenn and I have decided to have a bit of a change around with some of our furniture in the house, and also down size our bedroom furniture - he'd made this way back when he was a young apprentice boy at the joinery factory :)  Our walk in wardrobe has plenty of space so last weekend we put up some new shelving, and also had a massive sort through of all our clothes, shoes, my jewellery and hand bags, etc - we were very ruthless!

So neat and tidy!

During winter is when some of the flowers I adore come out, and this week I've had a bundle of winter sweet sitting on my office desk, just lovely.

My all time favourite, the Daphne, is also flowering prolifically in the garden at the moment.

Now for some Hannah news - look at her go!  The other night she asked Glenn to take the training wheels off her bike, which he did, and she was away first pop, no troubles at all.

She's growing up so fast!

Enjoy the weekend x

New Shelves and a Gift

Hello there

I was so pleased when DH mentioned a few weeks back that he was intending to make some more shelves for our office/craft room - yippee, as that meant I could finally sort out my sewing and stitching fabrics, collection of ribbons, trims and buttons, and the rest of my sewing accessories.  Up until now everything has been stored in plastic bins and as much as I tried to keep them tidy, it was too easy to get them into a right mess.

This past weekend I spent several happy hours sorting, folding and colour coordinating until I was happy with the new arrangement.

It's now going to be so easy finding what I need and I shouldn't really need to visit the local sewing shop for sometime, yeah right, lol.

I was looking back through some recent photo downloads the other day,  and I realised that I hadn't shared the gorgeous stitching companion my friend Clare stitched for my birthday in April.

This is a Jeanette Douglas Design called "We Stitch, We Create, We Share"

Isn't it lovely, Clare also included the cute scissors and one of her wonderful block rolls, that are always handy to have around. A special gift from a special friend.

Bye for now x

This and That

Hi everyone

Hannah and I have both been out of sorts for the past week or so with the winter cold that seems to be doing the rounds - sore throat, runny nose and a general feeling of yuckiness.  But we're both on the mend now.  

Recently we took advantage of the nice day we were having and headed into town for a girls' lunch and some shopping.  On our way home Hannah couldn't resist having a play in this big pile of leaves, lol.

We have had our raised vegetable garden in for a few years now and this year for the first time I decided to have a go at growing carrots. Yesterday afternoon Hannah and I discovered that some of our little crop were ready and we had some with our dinner last night.  They were the sweetest, tastiest carrots I've eaten in a long time!  Lucky for us, DH is currently in the middle of building us another raised vege garden ( you can see our other ones on this post) and I'm tempted to plant the whole thing with carrots, especially if they are going to taste that good!

Talking of DH, here's another of his little projects he finished recently - a new desk for Hannah, which will eventually go into her new bedroom.

We're in the process of redecorating our spare room to turn into Hannah's bedroom. We've stripped off the old wallpaper, and the ceiling has been replastered so now it needs a coat of paint. Then my Dad, who is painter/wallpaperer by trade, will finish off the decorating for us.  Watch this space for an update!

As for my stitching, I've been getting in a good few hours most evenings - now that winter is truly here there's nothing better than stitching in front of the fire :)  I've had a couple of small finishes lately including another Little House Needleworks ornament:

The Merry Skater by Little House Needleworks

stitched on 32ct olive green belfast with recommended threads

This photo looks a bit washed out - its been a bit tricky to get decent photos of my stitching lately due to the winter light.

Another new project I've just started this week is a Wool Eater crochet blanket, to try and use up some my wool odds and ends.  I've picked out a pink-blue-purple colour theme. I'll be back with a progress pic soon.

Until next time, take care xx

From Our Weekend

We've enjoyed a few days around home this weekend so there's been a few more jobs crossed off DH's "list":

some stones around the new plants

sand now in the sand pit, with another load coming next weekend

which Miss H is just loving

everything is just zooming away in the vegetable garden - and we had good rainfall overnight to help speed things along

How's your weekend been?

~Katrina~

The long weekend

Thank you everyone for your well wishes for our wedding anniversary over the weekend, it was wonderful to know you were thinking of us, we really appreciate it :)

It was oh so good to have a few days extra at home but it did turn out to be a pretty full on weekend. We had a lovey catch up dinner with Kath and her daughter Lauren Thursday night at Kath's lovely new home. Then my cousin Donna arrived Friday to spend a few days with us so as usual we spent the weekend non stop chatting!! Hannah was a bit poorly Friday but by late Saturday she'd perked up so much, it always amazes me how fast she can get sick, and then just as quick she's back to her normal self.

The rest of the weekend was pretty much spent either socialising with family and friends, or out our gardens. I always like to get our vegetable garden planted up over Labour weekend too - the only thing I didn't get in was any lettuce plants, too funny but everyone around town must have had the same idea as I couldn't find any lettuce seedlings in any of the garden shops! We do have some seeds planted up but they won't be ready for a little while yet. I was quite happy with what I achieved overall, a few more hours this coming weekend and the gardens will be all ship shape for summer :)

My favourite of our trees is fully out at the moment, the snowball tree, or pompom trees as they also get called. We have two up our driveway and they are looking just gorgeous at the moment.

Of course, I had to get some photos of Hannah hanging out by the trees.

I don't have any stitching to share today but I thought I'd show you what Glenn has been up to recently- you might recall we had a swimming pool put in last summer? He's spent hour after hour building a deck around the pool for us to enjoy this summer.

Presently he's working on turning that green water blue!!! Roll on some hot summer weather!

I did manage to get a bit of quality stitching time in, and have finished the stitching on a small Christmas gift. Last night I started on the next snippet in the Christmas Rules series, Fa La La as you decorate, which is so cute. I've also been browsing through my JCS ornie magazines and other Christmas patterns to work out the last of the Christmas ornaments I need to stitch for 2010. There may be some secret stitching going on over the next few weeks.

Have a happy day,

~Katrina~