Happy New Year!

Here I sit, listening to the possum aka the elephant with clogs! skimming across our roof!! Sorry, I digress already!! One of my aims for 2013 is to be more up to date with the blog :) Second is to spend more time on myself/family!!!
Since my last post, we have had one of our 'trees' flower and fruit! This is it...anyone have a guess?? Its a banana tree and we have fruit!!!! The garden centre said it would never do that here in South Australia, but there it is...just waiting for the little fingers to ripen now.

 

Had done a bit of sewing towards the end of November - made this Santa 'sack' for a friend interstate.  Sack being the operative word, ended up being bigger than the child it was made for, certainly will last a life time I think!  

Early December and we went off to a volunteer BBQ - don't win many things in my life - but had a lucky guess...and won 1306 M&M's!!!!!!!

Then we had a lazy day...so did the cats!

Went to the opening of a new bra shop (yes you may laugh those that know me personally at this one!)  Michelle is the owner and is called "The Bra Lady", 99c Prospect Rd, Prospect.  So if you are in the area go and see Michelle (professional fitter of over 25 years.)  There is a lovely cafe next door, so makes for a good visit in the area.

As December approached, I thought I had better get some bits and pieces ready for my Christmas gifts - so here is a little forest ready to be placed in the gifts.

 

A lovely little person (along with his parents) arrived from Wales to spend some time in the Land of Oz.  This is Seth - some of you would of seen him on Quilty Gals blog - he is her cute little grandson!

 

Of course he made his debut at the Thursday Crafties! Here we all are with our finished crazy patch waistcoats that we did as a project last year.

Finally!!!! my big San Fran House is finished and wired and lit!!!  Here are some pics - outside the house and viewing through the windows.

The upstairs balcony.

 

The bathroom.

 

   

The study.

Bedroom One.

 

Kitchen. (Maid is peeling prawns for the party!)

The front entrance.

Dining room with the tables laden with food (lighting is pink cos the shades are pink)

 

And of course it Christmas so there has to be a tree and nativity scene! 

There are another couple of rooms, so will post them later when I take a better pic of them :)  Some of them need a couple of bits and pieces in them. 

Then it was on to Christmas Day.... 

as you can see, one of our guests was thoroughly tuckered out after his meal! ( Had nothing to do with the fact he works night shifts and was exhausted...lol) 

 

So this brings me to 2013, and I would like to wish all of you the best for the coming year.  Hope it is a happy, healthy and fulfilled year for you all. xx

Hmmm....over 2 months....

...since my last post! How terrible :(  Well, here I am again!  Today was the beginning of the Christmas Pageants in South Australia, and for those of you that don't know, we hold the biggest one in the world!  Speaking of Christmas, one of the ladies that goes to Thursday craft, entered her Christmas waistcoat into the local show and won a prize! Well done, Mary :)

It has been quite a busy few months, that's my excuse and I am sticking to it!!!!  YWCA Encore Adelaide were successful in securing a decent grant for 2012-13, which has enabled us to be able to run several programs, so that's part of what I have been up to :)  Below is two lovely ladies, Marilyn on the left is a volunteer ambassador in SA for The Otis Foundation ( they provide retreats free of charge for people who have had breast cancer to go and have a holiday with family, friends or supporters) and Ruth, my colleague on the right :)  We were at the St Andrews Breast Cancer Luncheon which is held every year.  People (and I say people, because breast cancer is applicable to both men and women) who have had BC surgery at St Andrews get to come along for two years after their treatment and can invite a friend to come along.   There are guest speakers and a lovely lunch too!

Please ignore the dates on the pics - camera was not set right!  So...then it was a bit of quilt therapy for me...I booked in to see Ricky Tims at the AMQ Festival :) :)  What a fab day we all had (well, I think we all did!) Exhausting, lots of woo hooing and light bulbs going on during the course of the day.  The venue was at the Adelaide Convention Centre and I have to say I was impressed - staff were great, food (gluten free!!!) was provided and it was EDIBLE!!!! and delicious :)

This is one of Ricky's quilts, unfortunately the picture does it no justice at all.  It is called Bohemian Rhapsody.

Here is one of my friends, Marilyn, with Ricky.  He was sooo nice, he signed every ones book and had a picture taken with all that wanted one! You don't get that very often.

 And just have to show you all again! This is my 1/12th Quilting studio...

More R&R, this time up to the Lyndoch Lavender Farm with SW and the Fossils for a lovely morning tea.  We then headed up to Tanunda for lunch (ice cream really), had a mooch around and then headed back home.  Believe it or not that took the whole day up!  Was my birthday so it was nice to do nothing much.

October was our middle great nieces 5th birthday, sadly I did not get a pic of her :( But this is one of the 8 new puppies in their household.  Soooo cute, but no! I am not getting one :)

There is always a fugly pic somewhere, and this is mine for this post.  If anyone would like to purchase it (the light fitting that is) it is up for sale.  And NO, it does not belong to me, but to one of the Snobs & Slobs, it came with the house she bought.

Last week, we had some lovely weather, so I was able to leave my studio door open while working and in flew this little butterfly!  It made a bee-line for the fake flowers and it took me a while to get it to go back out the door. 

Other people have been busy too...this is Quilty Gal holding a baby - two reasons for the pic....1) She doesn't often like to hold babies 2) The baby is only 3 weeks old, but look at that hair!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Moving right along, we are now in November so that meant it was Father-in-law Fossils 85th Birthday, so I thought I better make him a quilt :) Very easy one to do and I love the way they all turn out differently - "Disappearing Nine Patch".  He put it straight on the bed, so I guess he likes it.

 This is Tom with the great grand kids and grand nephews and nieces.

These are some of the lovely friends I have made through doing Encore.  We get together for dinner every 5-6 weeks and its always a laugh.

The Adelaide Quilt and Craft was on this weekend.  I had not been for a couple of years so was eager to go and see what was out there.  The Eggers had a lovely display - so here is a few of what they did this year.

The quilt display was good, but this one caught our eyes (mine and Quilty Gals) cos its different.  It is a Dragons back with a tattoo of a lady who has a tattoo of a dragon :)  Congrats too to Tara and Lizzy for winning a prize with the Farmers Granddaughter quilt - just beautiful!

Well....that's about it for now folks, probably bored you enough at one time!  Till later, I better go and do some more work!

Its nearly Valentines Day...

...not that that means much in our household! I think that after SW being with me for nearly 28 years has been time enough to not worry about Feb 14th!!! LOL

Anyways.....since my last blog, we celebrated my cousin-in-laws 40th Birthday with her and her family. Really nice afternoon.We also celebrated my brothers birthday by dining out with all the family...once again a nice time was had by all. (The one to the left of the front is the birthday boy!) Because he (Ray) is a bit of a handy man and is kept busy around the house - I managed to find some "Mr Fixit" fabric - some with a cream background and some with a brown background. Did not manage to get all the quilt in on this picture (will have to visit to re photograph). This was the front and the back was in the darker browns. I decided to make it into a Quillow - brother was very happy with the effort!As some of you know, I go to a Craft Group on a Thursdays - we have been doing a Friendship Grandmothers Flower Garden. There was no pressure at all on the women to do or finish their quilts - however....one of the ladies was rather miffed (in a nice way!) that her quilt had not appeared on this blog yet....so here it is SHEILA!!!! in all its 'nearly finished' glory :)))
Only another 20 blocks of flowers to attach and a million borders! So anyways.....a couple more of the FGFG quilts were finished in the last few weeks...so here is Margaret's one.This one is Mary's - she is happy about the finished product even though she may not look it!Jean has been doing some wool embroidery on a baby blanket.The end of the week was in celebration once again - we had called into a friends to find their friend was having a birthday - which of course we had to help celebrate!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

This was our Christmas Lunch Table today! Was absolutely fabulous that we had the family and friends here for a great lunch - much talking, eating, laughing, eating, slothing, eating, snoozing and of course eating was done! Thank you all for making it a great day.

Phew!

....what a wonderful day it has been! Tiring but good :)) A delayed birthday celebration was had. This wonderful cake was made as a gift from my friend Beth - who also did the catering. Beth managed to encompass a lot of things in my life - my cats, miniature houses, fairies, and quilting (the mat and the patchwork path) Thank you Beth xx I wont bore you all with all the pics that were taken (as there are quite a few) Most of you know Quilty Gal and saying she is my BBFF I thought she should definitely be on here.Bumblebee stroker aka my hubby - David also should get a pose on this post.Another of the gifts I received was the "Balladeers" coming to sing for a couple of hours. They were fantastic and the crowd enjoyed the late 50's and 60's songs.They certainly got some of the folk up and dancing and clapping to the beat.
So, just to finish off this quick post - thank you to all my family and friends for coming and sharing my day with me!