making and planning

 Last night I was listening to an audio book and cleaning my glass doors that are in the playroom. The old window stars were looking a bit sad and well loved so I made this picture by tearing kite paper (idea from pintrest, my new favorite site)
I also made some soap but its still too soft to take out of the silicone molds. I tried removing one and it broke. Any one know if it will dry out yet or if it hasn't yet would it be no good?

edited to add**

all good, I left them a few extra days and they turned out fine, phew!

 The one at the back is the first one I removed, can you tell why I was worried?:)

They are chamomile calendular, colored naturally with carrot juice. They don't look very bright so i'm not sure I added enough carrot juice. Might add the pulp too next time as I've seen others do. To think I was worried about them coming out bright orange!

 I've been drawing up plans for the soon to be play kitchen in my art journal. Not that I needed to as the alterations will be so simple and straight forward, but mostly just for fun. I found these paints that Mum gave back to me recently and had fun making the plans extra pretty

 I'm still deciding what design to cut into the door, what do you think? Which one is your favorite?

 I made some little oven mitts and plan on making some aprons too

Today I found some things for it at a local second hand shop and got wooden knobs for the taps and stove. I also gathered together some things I've slowly collected for our 'one day wooden play kitchen' at opp shops. These are my favorite pieces so far. The lidded pot this morning was my most exciting play kitchen find yet I think. You know, aside from the actual kitchen the other day. I'm feeling pretty lucky at the moment

thrifted woolen cardies

 Here's the two cardies that I opp shopped the other week. This one is black Merino, super soft and a perfect fit! Ive been wearing it every chance I get (although it doesn't stay on long in this weather)

 This is the lambs wool one. When I said it fitted I meant a saw potential.
I contemplated felting it a little to make it a better fit but I loved the sleves the size they were so instead I took in the seams a few cm on the trusty sewing machine.

Its probably hard to see the difference propperly in my mirror self-portrait but im so much happier with it now!

Oh, and this pics just for the cute rabbit factor:)

opp shop adventures and my knitted blanket so far

 I mentioned that I dyed some different coloured wool to spin, here is the fluffy pretty stuff. I love how all the colours turned out except the orange. Orange happens to be my least favourite colour and turned out the brightest (on purpose to spite me I'm sure!:)
Of course my willow rabbit had to be in on the photo because he likes to be sniffing anything new about the place.

 here is my little bit of knitting so far. Its quite a bit wider then I intended for it to be so knitting has paused while I decide if I want to continue with the larger size or save time and wool by unraveling it and starting again. (of course even though I know it will save time in the long run it still seems sad to pull out those pretty stripes)

 The basket it's all in was a great opp shop find on the weekend.
Some days I go in opp shops and find nothing at all but this day luckily wasn't one of those! Its so much fun when every corner you turn takes you to  another wonderful find. Even better when you get to the counter and discover that all of your wonderful finds come to a grand total of under $20!
On this day I found cute doilies and a treasure trove of cheap feltable woolens. When I got home I realised that a black cardigan made of the softest merino and a long lambswool cardie in chocolate brown happened to fit me perfectly! I'm all set for cool weather now!

I also found this mug which is my absolute favourite and came home with a big pile of children's books, as I always do. For 20c each, opp shops are my children's books library. I take them back when we are finished with them and am able to keep the favourites.

Other fun things on the weekend that I haven't gotten around to blogging about
* We fished and had a great time at my friend Sarah's shack. Ah the memories of high school flooded back as they always do:) We spent so many weekend there while growing up and it has so many fun memories.

* Dad made me some more wooden blocks for my daycare children, which are being thoroughly loved and inspiring much creative play. We are slowly sanding and polishing them up to show the beautiful colours of the fancy woods (scraps from the wonderful things dad has made over the years)

A weekend full of my favourite things

Me and Benny went to visit my wonderful Sammy sister on the weekend. We had an absolute blast checking out a new supermarket sized opp shop near her house (see her overflowing basket? We could have filled it 10x with stuff we loved!) Im fairly sure we would have spent the whole day there if hunger didnt get the better of us!

After making toasties for lunch we went to the beach in our new opp shop shorts (no it wasn't really warm enough but we had fun pretending!)

And then the next day after walking mia to the beach and back we went to markets and and had lunch infront of another pretty beach. Yep, thats my idea of a good weekend!

spreading the chickeny love

On the weekend i offered mum three of my chickens and the little cage me and Benny found at a garage sale to borrow. Her and dad have for a long time talked about wanting some chooks for their garden so i thought this would be the perfect introduction, borrowing them (if they like having them they will borrow them indefinitely)

Yesterday we took them to her house and they were mighty impressed with their new garden, full of new bugs and weeds to scratch away at.

It was a really fun day, we drove over in the morning, got goodies at the garden centre (veggie seedlings etc)

We ate subway at the park (mum and a rainbow, pretty pretty:)

And jumped for joy in new opp shop clothes (only my blue top, it was too cold to wear our other great finds) 

And then we thought wed better get back to the chickens to see how they were getting on. We needn't have bothered, they were content and amused and behaving themselves just fine. Here's mums post on her new chickens 

So we went inside and made some green smoothies (baby spinach, berries, apple) and sat outside to watch the chickens 

opp shop finds

I love this tiny tea pot

here it is next to a regular tea pot to show how tiny and adorable it is!

I found 5 balls of this 100% wool 12ply for just $1 per ball. Im knitting a hooded scarf out of it

How cool is this metal ice cube tray?! im looking forward to trying it out (the divider part comes out to remove ice)

The new babies now have names, the grey one is Winter and the brown one is Ella. They are so cute! I took them out for a run around the garden and they very soon heard my other chooks and went to say hi. They are very social and want to be part of the action, the other chooks arent too sure about them though

more cozyness

its been a nice week.

i spent some time at port Clinton beach and i went to visit mum. we had such a nice day together, doing nothing much, just enjoying each others company. oh and sorting out a massive amount of stuff that i hadn't yet shifted to the new place. the opp shop people must have thought it was Christmas when they saw us coming through the door loaded up with bags upon bags (most of which had probably come from there on various visits)

and walked out with a little something too, i love these cushions that mum got me. if you ask me there is no such thing as too many cushions. i have literally about 10 on my couch and use all of them i swear!

and i collected some winter stuff. coats, beanies, scarfs, im so excited to be using them all again. this is my second favourite beanie (after the awesome one that oma knitted me a few years back) i made it by felting an opp shopped granny cardigan (the bottom of which had the zig zag edge) and sewing it until it fitted right (which i assure you was many sewing lines and much unpicking!) it is so ridiculously warm and cozy, i most definitely recommend felted granny cardigans as hats!

and this little fellas been keeping cozy too. this is his all time favourite spot to sit and watch me when im on my bed journaling/reading/hand sewing. i don't know if its the softness of bennys boardies that does it for him or the coziness of his jeans up above but every time the cupboards shut i sit there and hear scratching and know what he wants. lucky benny isnt apposed to a little cat fur on his clothes

finaly gettin in the making spirit

its about time (because it sure didnt happen before christmas)
Hope you all had a very merry christmas!
with all the packing, shifting, unpacking i was sooo not into christmas prererations, it sadly just didnt happen. next year. but we did have a fantastic christmas, getting together with my family christmas eve and bennys family for christmas day.


this is my new favourite photo, ben, me, dad, mum, aj &kane

anyway,
ive been obsesed with mosaic for years thanks to my aunty helenas many beautiful mosaic pots that she's made over the years and various mosaic murals ive seen. every time i see something mosaiced i think to myself 'wow, im deffinately going to do that soon. well i saw a particularly cool mural here while i happened to be writing a christmas wish list. i got given mosaic glue and gem stones (those around me has DEFINATELY heard all about them and every mosaicing idea ive had) so today i set off opp shoping to find some cool coloured plates etc to smash (well for benny to smash, this was the part he excitedly volunteered to do)

im planing to make mosaic stepping stones for my veggie patch (which is starting to look like a veggie patch!)


well i did good. there were some great plates and bowls in wonderful colours. that im realy not sure i can bring myself to give up...

these are my favourite pieces, not that the pic does them justice. a happy yellow bowl, and a set of four glasses with little trees, houses, rainbows and birds.
i deffinately couldnt part with them!


look how big the chickas are, and more to the point, check out the mohawk! two of them have a natural mohawk and i only hope it stays (because who doesnt love a chicken with attitude:)

settling in nicely

ive had lots of great visitors and lots of great fun. my favourite part of having my own home is having friends and family gathered around our little kitchen table (if there's enough of us, some one will be sitting on an esky topped with cushions, another on a lounge chair) for a meal, a chat, some making or baking.

my visit with lil didn't go quite as planned, i was sick, but we still made ourselves lots of fun. mostly lazing on a mattress in front of the tv, catching up on what each other had been up to. and we made the greatest crumbed chicken together!

these pictures are from a while back, opp shopping and garage saling in kadina together, oh the good times we have together:)

by the time aj came over i was thankfully feeling much better. we invited mum over for the day and made the yummiest cadbury chocolate rocky road ready for christmas. we also went wondering in my new town and found a beautiful little stream and waterfall, perfect for dipping our toes in. later we went looking at christmas lights

trust me, it tastes just as good as it looks!

me and benny are loving the extra time together, adjusting and figuring out who does what and most importantly making sure we have fun together. we've been to a beach close by (which made me breath a sigh of relief as its much nicer than 'our' beach!) gone for night walks and have been generally goofing around, singing and dancing in our kitchen together.

ive been living spending lots of time with kylie, its so fun that she lives across the road! pancakes is a way happening thing

the hardest part for me was my first day at home by myself, after everyone had gone home and benny had left for work. i was struggling a bit, plenty of things to do, even all the craft materials i could want but no motivation to do it all. luckily dad popped in unexpectedly on his way to adelaide and we had a good chat about fear, insecurities and other lovelies and it helped me get back on track. i am now happily lazing my days away with daytime tv and gardening. the garden is looking better every day especially with chooks now pecking about the place. the house is slowly becoming more and more our home. infact, im at kadina right now and i miss the place. deffinately a good sign!

this chooky pic was taken last week but i swear the chicks are twice that size now, they grow so quick!

good times with good friends

well, friday we start moving into our new house! all week ive been excitedly tucking bits and pieces into boxes and planning what will go where. i am seriously jumping out of my pants in excitment, yippe!! last weekend we checked out my new local opp shop. it is the little building next to the church. you go through the white picket fence and down a winding pathway through a mini garden to get to it, so cute.


sat nite we got together with friends for a barbeque at sams, lots of fun was had by all! (me benny and kara cooked, you can see in the middle pic how yummy it looked:) the first two pics from the left are bare feet and hand massages that took place at the pub, the rest are pics of us all being our dorky wonderful selves:)

ive been spending lots of quality time enjoying the wonderful little beings i have the pleasure of looking after for the next week and a half. there has been extra baking, playing, singing and making together while we still can. i am happy to say i am out of my little sadness funk and am now enjoying and living in the moment with them.
our favourite activity at the moment is finding catterpillars. a few of the plants are quite damaged by them so we look underneath each and every leaf, pick off fat green catapillars, have a lovely little play with them and then feed them to the chickens as a tasty treat. the chickens love this game!
i hope your having a happy week too:)

my new favourite jeans

look what i accidently got from the wallaroo opp shop this morning, benny jeans!!! for some reason i spotted these jeans and fell in love with them even though its almost summer (they have realy cool buttons!) i didnt even try them on (you dont wana know why, lets just say that it was washing day) so when i got to the beach and tried them on i was so pleasantly suprised to find that they were a PERFECT fit and had my man beautifuls name in them. oh boy was i happy!

so i cristened them in the water. while wearing a dress that i got also .dont worry, i wasnt trying to make a fassion statement in my dress and jeans combo, just desperately had to wear them both 'right now' because they were new (to me)

here they are dripping away and looking pleased to be my new faves

and here is my dress that makes me feel like twirling

ive had such a fantastic day off work, one that just makes me breathe deep and smile