Idyllic holiday

We headed off to our friends farm for a few days Rest and Recreation. A great New Year and few days with lovely weather, lots of river swimming and time together.

Arriving at the farm, opening the gate to get to our camping spot.

Great swimming hole after an hour walk along the river, in amongst incredible wildflowers. 

A bit of Alpaca wrangling and a tired 12 year old Fox Terrier.

Cushion - A Christmas Tree Bauble

I'm really happy with this make. A Christmassy item that is different, reusing what someone else had discarded. It is a cushion made to look like a Christmas tree bauble.

I was cruising Bloglovin before Christmas and an interesting blog post came up - Studio DIY. She had made cushions to look like Christmas tree baubles. Some of it was sewn, however to simplify it the entire top piece was glued. I knew that I could sew it all and so collected old cushions from the local dump shop to use as stuffing and ransacked my own supplies for material.

However I wanted plush comfort and so in the end purchased some furnishing velvet from the Fabric of Society and obtained the shinny furnishing fabric, for the top, from Fabric Vision. For $32 I have enough material to make two or three of these. A lot of trial and error as for some reason my seams weren't equal, I think I took more seam in the zip. My guessing for sewing the top section in worked well however, the circle given for the top did not match and was too small, so there was some fiddling.

Very excited as it was my first ever invisible zip and I think it was very successful. No more zips showing up unless I want them to be a feature. Woo Hoo. I've shown you the rather ugly bottom but when it's on a sofa you will not see that.

This Christmas present was sewn after Christmas but that's OK as I have yet to see my niece to have a present time. So all wrapped in a brown paper bag that my grocery shopping comes it... Another bit of reusing. I'm going to adjust and try the pattern again as I think they look better in a group and are a bit of fun to make the house look Christmassy.

Redcurrants

 A significant part of summer for me is about picking fruit. This starts in November and goes through to April. I love being in the sun entangled in vines or trees, adding to the bowl, basket or bucket and enjoying warm fruit as it's being picked. We have two redcurrant bushes and this year due to all the rain the currants are enormous. I don't normally net our bushes but was we were going away just when everything was ripening I thought it prudent to do so.

I went out to pick and thought I was done but every time I went to leave I would lift another branch and find it dripping with fruit. Perfection.

Another Christmas make - dress pattern weights

I previously made myself some pattern weights and was really pleased with them, so decided to make a set for my sister and niece for Christmas. I used an oil cloth again but this was a much heavier cloth and very stiff. It made it incredibly difficult to turn through.

The first of the season's raspberries

Picked today, the first real pick of about about 500 grams of raspberries. Oh so delicious. I was laughing at myself as I was picking. My picking style at the beginning of the season is not to miss a single one, checking every branch, being careful. As we're going away I feel that I am missing out on all my season's raspberries.

I have three varieties. Some get more bugs than others, which are always clean. So I pick with two bowls - one for eating and one for jam.

Everytime I drop one on the ground it is a lost opportunity and a scrabble to get it, normally by the end of the season I don't care !!!

Ceylon Curry Powder - home made

When I was in Australia with relatives I took photos of a few recipes from very old books. Back HERE I blogged about the hot chilli oil. Yesterday I made a curry powder that was simply titled Ceylon Curry Powder from a recipe book bought in Darjeeling. It makes a flavorsome and not overly hot curry. So now with two recipes from this book under my belt we are going to have some tasty dishes at our house.

Minecraft Pillow

Minecraft is now almost a retro game!! When my kids were little we all used to play it as a family and the Zombies and Creepers used to freak me out. Now on ten years and my young nephew is seriously into it and has slowly drawn my family back into the net too. Now they all play online together with their own servers. It's a great boys family thing with the two brothers and their offspring all getting involved again.

Anyway - forward to this Christmas and trying to be inspired for presents, I had the brilliant idea to make a Minecraft Creeper pillow. Super easy as it is a block based game and due to the wave of popularity 10 years ago there are a lot of Minecraft inspired patterns and ideas out there. So I made a 2 inch block pillow (total finish is 20 inch) stuffed with a gorgeous good quality feather pillow.


Linking to a new link up over at Wendy's Quilts and more.

 

Hot Chilli

I have been doing a bit of crafting for Christmas presents which will have to be posted about after Christmas. But one item I've made was meant to be for Aaron for Christmas but the reality is that the whole family will use it, so it's no longer a present.

When I was in Australia Barry gave me some recipes and one of them was for Chilli Oil. It was delicious. So I have come home and made it and it's the most luscious colour and boy does it have kick.

No licking these bowls! This is going to jazz up our plain pasta meals.

Dress Weights

Until recently I had only ever seen one person use dress weights and that was a professional dressmaker. Over the last few years I've notice more and more people using them and have finally twigged to it being a great idea. I hate (yes loathe, detest, can't stand) pining patterns and now I'm not going to have to do that any more.

I had some leftover oilcloth that has the world map on it. I made a 2 1/2 inch base and 60 degree triangles. An easy sew. I trialed using rice and pebbles and ended up with pebbles.

I'm one shorter than the pile here. My puppy got hold of one and chewed it to bits when I was at work today!

I killed the lawn

Last year I sprayed the lawn and we got rid of quite a lot of weeds and it was looking healthy for the first time since we moved in. This year, same spray.... but......I killed the lawn too! The new grass that had grown was a type the spray killed and I had no idea. Now we have no lawn, its actually died more since I took the photo!

I've finally purchased more railway sleepers to start working on the borders for the rest of the garden, you can see in the background. It will now match what Aaron has been doing for a vege garden.

I really like what he has done and the edge of our garden vs the start of the lawn has been very murky and hard to maintain. Yesterday we sweated and I dug in the beams and Aaron back filled them. We managed to do half before giving up. Today we just about finished. 

Is Blogging still a thing?

Well I have been absent for a bit, life has gotten in the way. It has left me pondering....is blogging still a thing? I love reading other peoples blogs but I am getting really annoyed at Bloglovin and the inability to remove inappropriate sites from being a follower. Anyone else having issues with Russian sex sites masquerading as normal people ie Lousisa64257635. Bloglovin used to remove them when I complained, now they do nothing and there is not tool to remove them yourself.
If you don't use Bloglovin then do you get any traffic at all?
Keen to here everyone's opinion.