Cushion Love......

This is the most recent finished article from my sewing room. It feels like an eternity since I did the embroidery on this cushion and then it sat and sat just waiting to become a cushion.

It is a Crabapple Hill Studio pattern and comes with a bedding and pillowcase as well. I have stitched the border for the pillowcase and now feel disappointed that I didn't do two and of course have none of the background fabric left.

It was lovely to put together. Two appliqued borders, the buttons and the feather stitch edging and of course the pom poms.

It's new home is in the rocking chair, beside my bedside table.

Over the years I have enjoyed making quite a few cushions. They mostly live in places where the children don't sit very often. Some have even been and gone as they were used outside (much to the disgust of some of my friends) . The latest casualty was made quite sad by the involvement of a rodent - a large one at that!!! YUK!

This pattern is a Bareroots design. I remember really enjoying this one.

From memory this one is Bareroots too. I love Barri's work. I have only done a couple of classes with my stitching and I was very fortunate to do a wonderful two day workshop with Barri when she came to Queensland I think almost three years ago - (note to self - better finish that quilt!!!)

This one is a Candlelight Creations pattern. This lady is "local" and has designed many lovely patterns. This one was stitched all with single thread - it took a long time. I love the border fabric on this one.

Off to finish some housework now and then to plant out some new bits and pieces in the garden. I am then so looking forward to a haircut this afternoon. It's way overdue! It's a lovely winter's day here, cool but bright sunshine. We've had a little rain and some heavy dew for a few mornings, so the plants are looking quite happy this morning.

I hope you enjoyed my cushions.

A Wonderful Week......

Thank you all so much for your wishes on my first Blogiversary! I had an extra surprise this week when I was so fortunate to be a winner over at Rosie's blog. Thank you so much Rosie for your very generous giveaway. This in turn of course sent so many lovely new visitors over to visit me. It is so lovely to meet and visit so many new friends this week.

I decided I wanted to share a little surprise with three of those who were kind enough to leave me a message this week. There are two little gifts made from Rosie's book and another that was inspired from the Sew Pretty Homestyle book.

So with the help of one of those random number generator thingys the following ladies are the winners in my giveaway.

Susan Cahill - message left at 4.29a.m. on 9th July

Ineke from Holland - message left at 4.53 p.m. on 11th July

Lisa from the lovely blog Knitty, Vintage and Rosy - message left at 2.18 p.m. on 12th July

If you could all email me with your postal addresses I will get your little gifts away to you. I will post some pics after the winners get their mail - I like surprises in the mail, so I will enjoy sending some surprises to these ladies.

That was fun - thank you all so much again.

Anniversary Giveaway & A Few Other Things.....

Blogger has not been playing very fairly for me, so I had given up - just about. My last post took hours to load the photos. I had tried last week and nothing would load for me, so I gave up.

So, another go today and here I am!!

My newly painted and renovated furniture came back. I am so pleased with how it has turned out. The couch above was on Nan and Pop's back verandah for as long as I can remember. It was almost black, the varnish was so old. The man who painted it for me sanded it back and then had to put five coats of paint on it. It has an old wire base that is a bit saggy, so I will have to get a board for the base and a new mattress. At the moment I have this quilt on it. I hope to just change the covers around as I feel.

I am thrilled with the hutch. I didn't take a before pic - so just imagine 80's style pine hutch. It has a lovely new moulded top and new shaped base. I also had the very thin ply back replaced with VJ's. The new knobs match the glass ones on the kitchen cabinets. These two pieces are in the same room and make the space very light and bright. My china looks so pretty displayed in the hutch now.

We have had lovely rain here overnight. So some beautiful water in my tanks to water all those flowers I have been planting. I'm sure the new roses will just love the rain. I am still waiting for my mail order to come. The soil will be lovely to plant into when they do.

With the school holidays here we are finally into a slightly slower pace. I have still been working at our bakery but it's so nice not to have to go anywhere in the afternoons. I have been enjoying some time in my lovely little room and even got some stitching done.

Time flys by just too quickly I think. In the last two weeks it has been my one year anniversary in the world of blogging. It has been a lovely journey, with so many new people to visit and chat with. I just love visiting blogs and get an absolute buzz when people visit me and especially when they leave comments. I think back to that first post, wondering if anyone would ever find my blog, let alone leave a comment. Over nine thousand visitors later I am thrilled to celebrate my first anniversary of Eleanor and Ruby.

So in the tradition of blogging Anniversaries, I am having a GIVEAWAY to celebrate.

I have been having a lovely time looking at Rosie's beautiful new book Gift and I have made a little something from it to be part of the giveaway.

A bit of a long winded post - but I just love chatting with all my blogland friends. Don't forget to comment - I am sure you will love the gift.

So, leave a comment here during the next week and on Tuesday the 15th July I will choose a winner. I hope all those lurkers out there who very rarely comment will enter, I would love to meet you!!! Or, of course those people I know visit and don't comment - you can even enter too!!!! You know who you are I'm sure.

My Boy Joseph......

Just look at my beautiful boy Joseph. My doll Joseph that is! I remember the day he arrived at my home. I was around 6 or 7 years old. Up the road from our home lived a family who had three daughters and I guess at that time they would have been in their late teens to mid twenties. The youngest of the family, Gayle had decided that there were some of her childhood things that she didn't want to keep and that is when Joseph came to live with me. I have loved him for the past 35 years or so. He has never had a large wardrobe as he is a large doll. He had a couple of singlets and a matinee jacket or two and alway a nappy to wear. He has wonderful eyes that open and close but the most unusal thing about them is that they move from side to side!

My Mum has been busy smocking and he is wearing his beautiful new smocked bubble suit and his darling little beret! Isn't she so clever. I wish my little girl was still small enough to wear pretty smocked dresses.

He has just had a trip to hospital - the dolly hospital that is. His hand needed fixing and his face was a little worn, but he is all better now!!

I think he looks a darling sitting up there in his lovely vintage high chair (a recent find) with his Bunnykins bowl and mug (that belong to Alexandra) .

We recently took him to a valuer and were quite suprised to find out he is worth at least $200! I was astounded.

Another recent find is this lovely old mirror. I just love its' oval shape. It looks wonderful above the sideboard.

Can you see my mannequin wearing her new "fur". I was so pleased to find it also in the local thrift shop.

Also at the thrift shop last week I found this beautiful cake plate. It has delphiniums on it. It was meant to be I think as I have just planted quite a few punnets of dephiniums in the garden. I am going to hang it on the wall in the kitchen.

My dear friend "B" has been spoiling me again. Look at this lovely trailing vine she bought for me. It certainly did the job of cheering me up during a few weeks of feeling a little low.

I made this "Vintage Tag" a little while ago. It was a lovely little project to work on. I had a lot of fun going through my old lace collection and choosing just the right pieces. It has some embroidery and also quite a lot of little beads and pearls too.

A little more pottering around the house this weekend I hope. The children are on school holidays now which means a little more leisurely pace around here for a few weeks. I just had a phone call to say my two pieces of furniture have had their makeover and will be back tomorrow - so that will be exciting to play with.

So, with some lovely thrifting finds and some very nice pottering in the garden the last two weeks have been a little more bearable.

I visited the lovely Penny McKinlay in Pittsworth this week and bought five beautiful Old Tea Roses. The two I have already, Mrs. B.R. Cant and Rosette DeLizzy are growing beautifully, so hopefully these new ones will perform just as well.

Looking forward to a wonderful weekend.

Rearranging.....

Last weekend we had a bit of a cleanup of our paved area. Having the gas bottles on full view had annoyed me for two years since we moved in. Small thing, I know - but those sorts of things just stick out and annoy me!! I found a little woven screen at Bunnings and thought it would be ideal.

With everything pulled out and then cleaned of course I couldn't help myself other than to rearrange the whole lot. This area gets the full northern winter sun and is mostly quite a nice place to be in winter. We are spoiled here with our winters - although they can be cold and windy we do get a lot of very nice days that are quite pleasant to be outside .

This little table was on our front area at our last house. It hadn't really found a home here but I shifted it to the bottom of the back stairs and put some bits and pieces on it. I think it looks right at home now.

This little ladder had been a bit lost too, but straddled across the garden bed with a few more bits it too looks a bit more at home now.

I love playing with arrangements around my home. I am quite excited to be having two pieces of furniture picked up today to get a face lift. My pine hutch that we have had for at least twenty years is going to be painted white/cream and is having new glass knobs put on and the back replaced with VJ boards also the day bed from Nana and Pop's house is getting the white treatment too. They will go is the living/dining area off the kitchen - one more step towards my dream come true! I hope that I will be able to get a wingback chair sometime soon and a footstool too!!

Blessings...... Small and Large

The week is flying by once again. The school holidays will be here before I know it!

The little plants in the garden are doing well, so far. There are larkspur, foxgloves, delphinium, poppies, snapdragons and then the bulbs, daffodil, jonquil, rununculi and tulips! I really enjoy this time of year in the garden, not too hot to tackle all the jobs at once and exciting to plan for Spring.

I have also made a start on Mitchell's quilt - with a little peep in the picture! I have been quilting now for around seven years and todate my boys do not have quilts - bad Mummy I know!! So this year they are both getting one each. Mitchell is a bright boy and loves green, so his is bright with lots of green to match his room. He has a "Bok Choy" feature wall and he just loves his green "hand" chair (shaped like a hand). His fabric is the Friends and flowers range.

Cameron's will be more sedate in the Peace on Earth range - just love the map fabric for the back - so very Cameron .

Well, my biggest boy has been busy, busy. He has started an Arts/Business degree at University and is juggling two part time jobs to pay for his passion and long term goal in life - flying!!

Cameron has loved all things aeroplanes since he was just a little boy. We gave him a trial flying lesson for his 12th birthday and that was the beginning of this very long haul for him. It is just so expensive to fly and basically you buy yourself a job at the cost of at least $60000 for starters
!!

On the 1st May, 2008 this 17 year old son of mine flew solo!! I thought driving a car was bad enough, but knowing he is flying on his own is definately worse.

So I guess he is on the way to fulfilling his career goal. I just pray he will be kept safe and that he is always just so careful when he goes flying and also out in the car.

I just wonder where the last 18 years disappeared to.

As I have written today my thoughts keep wandering to a family from our church who have lost their little boy after a hard battle with illness. I am truly blessed with healthy children and I thank God for that each day.

We really should be humbled everyday and be thankful for the lives most of us live, but it shouldn't take a tragedy to bring me to my knees in thankfulness.

I am truly Blessed beyond belief.

Bits and Pieces.......

An adventurous few days for me. We had a most enjoyable time away, just the two of us! We had won a prize package to stay at the Casino at the Gold Coast - not something we would have ever chosen for ourselves! It was certainly a different weekend than we've ever had before. The room and the food was wonderful. The show was not quite my taste in music, but not unbearable! The casino - an eye opener!!!! :-)

It made be feel quite sad that from very young people to quite old ladies were at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night in a place like that with obviously nothing else to do with their time or money!! Oh well, each to their own I guess.

We stopped at Ikea on the way through Brisbane. Just loved all the bits and pieces there. I hope to go back and get a couple of pieces of furniture soon. BJ thought we had finished on the top floor but I gently explained to him that the things to buy were on the next floor down!!! I made sure he was fed between floors!!!

I enjoyed some time shopping on Sunday before we came home and thankfully, I finally bought some new shoes for winter - I can tell you, it was becoming quite embarrassing to go out!

Charcoal Flannel with Black Patent Trim!

Just Black!

The last couple of weeks I have been able to get small snippets of time in the garden. I got all the bulbs planted and found a couple of jonquils popping their little heads through this morning. I have done quite a few pots and baskets up with pansies and other bits and pieces.

I found this wagon in one of my favourite places and got BJ to drill some holes in the bottom so I could plant it up too!!

I was a very lucky girl a couple of weeks ago when Leanne was having a giveaway of her new pattern "Two Brown Chickens". Thank you Leanne - I hope I get to stitch it soon! It's just like my Scoot and Trixie at the bottom of my garden!!

New shoes, a new pattern and flowers in my garden - what more could a girl want - well, maybe just some time to stitch and then life would be just about perfect!!!!