Mother's Day 2012

I hope everyone had a lovely mothers day yesterday.  I certainly did!

It all started with our daughter and her partner coming to visit for the weekend.  Boy did they have me busy though!

Special order for dinner Friday night which was curried chicken pie.  Because I had the oven on I thought I would cook a few goodies for them and us.

This was bread, savoury biscuits, jam drops and an orange and poppy seed cake.  That certainly kept me busy.

 I picked these carrotts for dinner Saturday night which was another special order of roast chicken.

 Op shopping Saturday with them both in one I found this crochet magazine.  It is only fall last year (American) so not very old and has some terrific projects in it.  I just hope I get to do some of them. :(

 Then Mother's Day!  An early trip to the local markets to buy our fresh produce.  I found Maleny Milk was there with a stall so I had to buy some beautiful Camembert and Feta! 

Our eldest daugher, R and her partner came for morning tea, and gave me a wonderful home made cake and Jamie Oliver cookbook.

R and her partner

 Our youngest daugher E, and her partner came with us to the markets.  E gave me a CD by Eliza Dolittle.  I love her song Pack Up.  It is so bright and cheery just like E.

E and her partner

She's an alien!  Watch out D!

Cake made by R and iced in my favourite colour with a love heart!

Love heart shaped leaf given by E!  Too cute.

E kept me busy Saturday night with cushion cover making. (We'd made a trip to Spotlight.)  Shortening PJ pants and repairing one of her partners pair of pants.  Don't know how he got such a large rip in them, but they are his favourite pair of pants apparently!

Cushion cover we made

This week I'm off to the job site with hubby to help with framing a house!  Yeah!  I hope everyone else has a lovely week.

Take care
Andrea

Tidying Up

A couple of days ago I decided to clean up our office.  This meant getting large files off our workspace.  To do this I removed a couple of doors from the overhead cupboards and moved the files up there.  This gives us easy access to jobs that are current but without clogging the work space.  This also enabled me to move other items up. 

One thing I really dislike is looking at this (above) on the top of the cupboards, so I thought to glam it up a bit I would cover it in some old painters drop cloths that I had used for other craft projects.  This is what I came up with!

Total cost of this project $0.00, and I love the look!

I have finished the bunny rug I have been working on.  Nothing complicated here just a giant granny square in blue and white.

 With a small decorative edging.  Nothing complicated at all.

 I have finished some more bags!  These are all made out of furnishing fabrics and made by me!  I have too many now and want to unload them.  Does anyone have any ideas on how I can go about selling them?  Please leave a comment for me!!!

Lovely natural linen look with postage marks.  Outside front pocket and one inside pocket.  Very sturdy with extra thickness fabric on the base. 

One of my favourites!  All neutral colours with a large engraved button made from coconut.  Adjustable shoulder strap.



Same style as above bag, but slightly smaller version.  Adjustable strap and magnetic clasp.





A large shopping tote.  Brighten up your shopping day.  Magnetic clasp

This is the same bag but I made it completely reversible.

Same style as above bag (Not reversible) with a magnetic clasp.

Let me know what you think of all my bags!  I would love some input.

Our daughter, E, is arriving this afternoon with her partner and she has put in order for dinner - curry chicken pie, so I will have the oven on later.  While it is on I'll bake some bread and some biscuits for them to take home.  They don't have an oven so I bake goodies for them to have.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Oh!  A huge thank you to Carol from Art Matters for helping me with loading photos to blogger.

Take care

Andrea

Recycling

Have you ever checked your mail?  You obviously check your mail box, but have you ever checked the stamps?

Good old Australia Post sometimes neglect to postmark the stamps!  This means more money for me!  I tear that part of the envelope off and place it in a container of water.  Leave them to soak for awhile until the glue comes loose.

Then I carefully remove the stamp from the paper and leave it to dry on a tea towel!  You need to use glue to stick these stamps onto your new envelope but it is money saved. 

Just after I had finished these stamps another one showed up in the post, so now I have three stamps that cost me nothing at all!  Take the time to check your mail and remove the stamps that have not been postmarked.  I have saved them up before and had over $12.00 worth!  Amazing!!!

On a lighter note I took a photo of our poor dog last night.  She obviously had a very hard day yesterday.  Doing what I don’t know, but she often sleeps like this.  I wish I could.

She has her toy and everything!  You make us laugh Cindy.

Take care

Andrea

......Ta Dah!!!

As mentioned in my previous post I have finished the hot water bottle covers E asked for.  They are coming to visit this weekend so will be able to take them home with them.

The blue, white and grey is for E's partner and of course the purple and pink one is for E!  The purple and pink one has a crochet flower you thread the ties through just for that extra girly touch.  I didn't think E's partner woud appreciate a flower.

Now I am back to finishing off the bunny rug for the upcoming arrival of a baby.  I hope to have that finished tonight and washed and pinned into shape tomorrow.  I am trying to make the most of the lovely warmish days we are having at the moment.

Our visitors left this morning.  They are making their way back home to Victoria.  I hope they have a safe journey and lovely weather for the rest of their holiday.

Later this afternoon I will be getting out into my teeny tiny vegie patch and planting some more seeds.  I hope this will allow us to have continuing produce throughout winter.  It looks like some of my potato have sprouted so when they are showing a bit more I will post a picture of those.  Can't wait to have home grown potato for dinner.  I just need to find a sweet potato that is sprouting and plant that!  The pumpkin seeds went in last week but they are going to take awhile.  They got planted along the driveway as they will have plenty of room there and hopefully keep the weeds at bay at the same time.  I'm not sure how much longer this mild weather is going to last so I have to make the most of it!

Take care
Andrea

What a weekend!

Wow!  What a busy weekend.  Firstly our visitors arrived safely and set their caravan up in our yard.  Luckily we have plenty of room.  Our eldest daughter (B) and her partner came to visit later that night and catch up.  We ended up with my sister and her family here for tea Saturday night so that meant catering for eleven people.  Luckily the weather was mild and we had a BBQ out on the deck. 

Our visitors caravan

We did manage to head up to Montville and Maleny on Saturday and do some site seeing.  There was a wood expo on at Maleny and if time permitted we would have spent more time there.  Hubby is a carpenter by trade and loves all of that type of thing.  That is where I bought the boat wall hanging.  It was done by a local gentleman using driftwood and items he found washed up on the beach at Tin Can Bay, Queensland.

I love the weathered look and have hung it in our ensuite.  The green sail is a foothold from a buoy.  I really appreciated this type of craft, especially when the artist is recycling what we would call rubbish.  We had a lovely weekend with the most gorgeous weather.

On Sunday we went to the local shopping centre and I found this book!  I have been eagerly awaiting this book since I first heard of it impending arrival. I have been following Rhonda's blog for years and couldn't wait to get her book.  This was the earliest opportunity I had to find it and now I am trying to find the time to sit and read it uninterrupted.  At least start reading it anyway!

Rhonda is an inspiring woman that tries to live simply.  She takes pride in who she is and what she and her partner, Hanno are able to achieve.  They encourage everyone to live life in a way that is suitable to your own circumstances and all the while trying to live as debt free as possible.  I can't wait to get into this book as I am sure it will be as interesting as her blog! 

On a crafty note.  I have finished the hot water bottle covers my youngest daughter (E) requested so I will post a photo of those tomorrow!

Take care

Andrea

Family

We received a letter from our youngest daughter during the week.  She lives out near Dalby with her lovely partner.  It get quite cold out there during the night so they have bought themselves a hot water bottle each.  In her letter she requested if I could make her some hot water bottle covers (maybe crochet), so lately in the evenings I have been working on them.  I have finished the one for her partner and am a quarter of the way through hers.  They are coming to visit next weekend so I have put my other projects on hold until I can get these completed for her and they can then take the covers home with them.  I will post some photos when they have been finished.

We are waiting on visitors who are arriving from Victoria this afternoon.  My Aunty and Uncle are driving up towing their caravan and are staying with us for the next three to four days.  It is always lovely having people stay, I really enjoy it.

We will be busy with them over the weekend along with catching up with some friends we met while on our holiday to the tip of Cape York last year.  They are visiting family while up from NSW so we really want to catch up with them while they're in town.

Our dog loves to go for bike ride too!

I was hoping to go for a bike ride this afternoon.  I love riding but not if it's too strenuous.  When I finished full time work to help my husband with his business I bought a bike with rear basket so I could take it to the shops if I only needed a couple of items.  I could also visit my parents or sister, each both live only four kilometers from me.  This would hopefully reduce my fuel consumption and give me exercise at the same time.  Unfortunately I have run out of time today to do that, but might manage to get a ride in over the weekend.  The weather is supposed to be lovely.

What are you doing for the weekend?

Take care
Andrea

Cleaning

Cleaning is one of those chores that is necessary.  For me it isn't something that I like or dislike doing, it just needs doing and I prefer to spend as little time or money doing it as possible.  I also try to reduce the amount of chemicals we use around the home, one - because they are costly and two - how harmful are they to us?

In the past when cleaning using chemicals I always felt like I needed a shower afterwards, that was before I discovered Enjo.  I had several of their microfibre cloths, some I found effective and some not so effective.

Just last year I was invited by a close friend to a party she was having to sell a product, similar to Enjo, called Norwex.  I was determined not to buy anything after the hit and miss results I had with Enjo.  That was until I saw these microfibre cloths in use.  They (in my opinion) are brilliant!  I have been using them for over a year now and have never found cleaning easier.  All you literally need is water and these cloths.

Norwex cleaning products

My mother who is 64 and would have to be the biggest skeptic about, has also been converted to these cloths, along with my 20 year old daughter and my aunty from Victoria.  I bought a basic kit for my Aunty and posted it to her with the instructions that if she didn't like them just to post them back and I would be more than happy to use them myself.  On the day she recieved the cloths she sent me a text "One word - Amazing".  She loves them and I am sure would love to purchase more.

I was still a skeptic however when it came to the oven and grill cleaner as I had been told there was only a pleasant smell, no caustic fumes and it would clean easier than the everyday oven cleaners.  After two years of not cleaning my oven (this job I really do HATE) I bought some of the product.  Now bearing in mind how much baked on grease I had on my oven by this stage, it did take me four goes to remove the grime, but I did not find the smell offensive, didn't have to wear gloves and I still think it removed the baked on grease easier.  Now I am completely converted!

I spoke in an earlier post about the trouble I had removing baked on sugar from my cooktop until I remembered my Norwex Oven and Grill Cleaner.  I just heated the hotplate slightly then sprayed the cleaner onto it.  I left it for a few minutes and then simply wiped away most of the burnt sugar.  There is still some residue on it but prior to this I simply wouldn't have been able to use the hotplate at all!  I am talking serious baked on sugar, so much so that there was almost a small mountain in the middle.  So to remove most of it was certainly a huge bonus.  I am hoping the rest will come off with time.

Norwex is a product that I have found works for me and my situation.  It may not be something everyone else likes and I have in no way been approached by Norwex to promote their products.  This is simply my opinion.

Take care
Andrea