A Special Christmas

If you don't want to be bored with photos of family and more family then look away now.
We had a glorious Queensland Christmas (the first time in over a decade that all four of us Cox siblings have been home with our respective partners and kids!)

I think I must have consumed almost my body weight in mangoes.  I ate fresh crab sandwiches. We fished. We rode in Gumpy's boat.  We drank moscato by the dam.  The kids went horse riding everyday.  The kids went swimming every day. We met new cousins and reacquainted ourselves with old ones.  We hugged those precious great-grandies and were thankful for just one more visit.  It was soooo good to just be simple and unburdened by all the craziness we left behind.  It was the perfect downtime.
It was a VERY special Christmas.
Belated Christmas Blessings to you all,
Nell
xxxx
p.s. Highlight of James' holiday was running into Mark Webber in a cafe in Noosa.  We were straightaway those abnoxious star-struck fans who had to get a photo but he was very gracious and photogenic about it!

November WIP finish

Finally a finish!!! This was a ridiculous experiment foundation pieced onto A4 paper (some crazy recycling idea in the days when I was sleep-deprived with Hannah as a newborn and I saw Alex Anderson's take on "Depression Era Newspaper Quilts")  You would not believe how often these blocks have been shuffled from place to place and how many times they ALMOST ended up in the bin.  What a relief to finally have them finished.  This quilt actually gave me the chance to really play with my new machine and I have to say that I have totally fallen in love!  No more cussing while quilting! No more losing the needle thread, or having stitches unravel, or even searching for the scissors.  I LOVE IT!!!

I love the 3 million fancy pants stitches (especially the one that looks like hand quilting) and I love the inbuilt walking foot.  It has totally re-jigged my sewing mojo (which is why you see that I've started my Lil and Will quilt!)

Maybe that will be my December finish?

Have a great week!

Three

Tomorrow she is three.  This baby of mine. The last little one who was supposed to stay little forever.

I remember when she was newborn; my surprise tiny girl when I was expecting a big boofy boy, born with the cord around her neck and took the longest moment of my life to take her first breath.

Even as a baby she didn't like to sleep.  She didn't want to miss anything.

As a toddler she was inquisitive, feisty, and always up to mischief.

She is determined.  She is stubborn. She is a tough nut and rarely afraid of anything.

She is loving, and cheeky, and our little clown.

She is my little ray of sunshine and I love her to bits.

Happy Birthday Maddie Moo, I DO LOVE YOU!!!xxxx

A Cautionary Tale and Other Snippets

Remember I promised to tell you a cautionary tale?  Well, as you may have gathered by now we live in a comfortable state of domestic chaos.  I do try to clean up but at best our house is cluttered and at worst our floors are crunchy.  So anyway, the other night it was late, and I was tired, and I went to put a loaf of bread in the chest freezer only to find that there was the iron (freezer often doubles as an ironing board) and a couple of magazines, and a kids drawing on top of the freezer.  I know that any normal person would remove all of those items.  I just kind of eased the freezer open with one hand holding the clutter, and all was going well until one of the magazines started slipping down the back so I grabbed frantically at it with one hand and as I did so I knocked my sewing hutch...and the next thing I knew there was an almighty crash and the entire contents of the hutch (more clutter than you can possibly imagine) came hurtling down.  Luckily it wedged against my big table and didn't squash me flat but piles and piles of fabric and projects and bits and bobs hit the floor along with 3 jars of beads and buttons which smashed in spectacular fashion.

WHAT A MESS!!!
And it was frightening, and it was also mega-disappointing when all I really wanted to do was crawl into bed instead of cleaning up 3 million shards of broken glass and buttons.  I have to confess that I felt a little like having a sniffle.  As I was sitting in the middle of the mess beginning the cleanup my one small solace was that I found a scrap of paper left from a parenting course I did when Hannah was little.  I opened it and it read: "You have permission not to be perfect"  That really did make me have a little sniffle!

To cut my cautionary tale short.  I used the catastrophe as an excuse to move the hutch to a less dangerous area (part of the problem was that I was always reaching around the back of it for power points so it had crept forward) and to have a BIG cleanup.  This is the bit that will really make you laugh:

This is the FINISHED (ie. cleaned up) hutch.  Still a bit of decluttering to do me thinks!!!!

Not a lot of blogging happening lately because I have been flat out at work and with the kids.

Last weekend this little possum went to her first big-girl (by herself) party.

Last week this dear friend visited.  We haven't seen each other for almost a decade.  It was so good to catch up - even if the terrible selfie shows up all my wrinkles!

And then today I got to spend some time with my lovely friend Lea-Anne and we cast on our first toe-up socks on one needle (and got as far as the gusset increases!)  I think I am going to love this new way of sock knitting!

And what does the small boy think of all this?

Have a happy week!

Spring Things

I get ridiculous about Spring.  I always have.  I always will.  I may have been born in Autumn but Spring is my season.  I love that first delicious day when you wake up and Spring is just "in the air".  I love getting excited by new growth and new discoveries in the garden.  I drive my husband crazy with plans for spring planting, and cries of  "come and look at this!" and while he is pretty good-humoured about it, it really is not his thing, which is why I have a blog of course.  I can ramble here and you can take it or leave it! I can show you new asparagus shoots (asparagus that I thought was dead after the small boy light-sabred it and the small rabbbit chewed what was left!)  It is now looking so healthy that I am tempted to pick a few crowns..

I can show you roses that were newly planted in the Winter before last and have now come into their own; huge swags of lavender full of sweet native bees that tumble and roll amidst the fat blossoms; armfuls of cut roses brought inside to be arranged in cheery blue jugs, and cut glass and tin cans; so many that I am thinking of leaving a bunch on every doorstep in the street with a note saying "come and pick a bunch and give it to someone who needs it"

I am excited, so excited, by our raspberry canes (3 out of 4 taken from cuttings from school) - will we have juicy berries this year or next?

And our cherry tree, our cherry tree - planted last season, has six cherries on it!!!!
The plums are covered in fruit this year too, and my clematis has run riot all over the fence.  Last night, on dusk, the birdsong was incredible.  Oh Spring garden I just LOVE you!!!!

I will be back later to share some sewing exploits (including a cautionary tale!) but before I go, just one more bit of Spring goodness - Kathy's Spring Fibre Club "Spring Bouquet" which was such fun to spin.  I'm thinking this might be a nice little shrug for the Madster.
Happy Spring!
Happy Sunday!

EEEKKK!!!

Yesterday I bought a sewing machine that was worth more than my first car.  I am shamelessly justifying this purchase as the last 10 years of SAHM bonuses and rationalising that if I get 10 years out of it then it is really only a couple of hundred dollars a year (or approximately the cost of getting one biggish quilt professionally quilted)  I am also justifying it by the fact that I have been working pretty hard lately and the next 5 weeks fulltime will more than pay for it (and I KNOW that when those kindy kids are being less than angelic, and those 27 school-leavers reports are looming I can smile serenely knowing that there is plenty of quality sewing time ahead.

I pick up "the new girl" Saturday morning.
Eeekk and YAY!

September finishes

Sneaking in a finished WIP for September.  I have had a headcold and been a bit blah lately so this sort of free and easy sewing was just what I needed.  I think there is a lot to be said for this kind of "no quiilt police" sewing.  This cushion uses up the leftover fabric from Hannah's Robyn Pandolph "Flirt" bed quilt and you can tell from the photos how much she loves it! Part of my problem with WIPs is that I have 3 mammoth projects on the go - the horrible machine quilting on the quilt I have lost interest in, needleturn applique borders on a quilt that probably should be hand quilted, and my Patchwork Apple BOM that needs lots of applique and intricate piecing.  I feel like life is so busy at the moment that I need brain dead projects. I need things easy to complete so I have started Maddie's strippy which will hopefully be my October finish.  It DID feel good to be able to use the shoebox full of leftovers to make this (and then put a few smaller bits into my sorted scraps!)