The Dr Who Scarf is finished

finally!!

I started last winter s always happens got put away when the hot weather appeared. It came out again about a month ago and I was desperate to finish as I was getting a bit bored with it (short attention span...). I was also keen to begin a decent crochet project.

So it is done and Matt loves it. He wore it to friend's house soon as it was done. Meaghan's reaction was slightly different ("you aren't going to wear that in public???")

Yes he will.

Here is Tom Bakers Dr and the scarf he wears (mine is shorter but really it is long enough..)


I vaguely used this pattern here.

and I used this sketch from Sketchy Thursday.

And I love getting packages in the mail. And today the mailman brought me these lovely packages from Tessa's Perfectly Precocious etsy store. The packaging alone made me smile.

Isn't that yummy??

And then contained within


I esp love the little wooden pegs the ribbon came on - oh and the flowers are gorgeous, go buy some!! Can't wait to get started with them.

Trifecta time

Hope we all had a wonderful Easter and, for those of us down under, a peaceful ANZAC day. We didn't go to any of the marches this year, just pottered around the house and the usual driving kids from one end of Canberra to the other. We would love to go to Gallipoli cove one year (hopefully soon) although I will guarantee that I will be a blubbering mess as soon as the Last Post is played. Even when it is just on TV, I am not worth trying to talk to as I am an emotional mess. But a great day to remember those who have served.

Back to more mundane but creative none the less..) matters. The Dollies trifecta is out. Colours (lime, orange, blue and white - yum) , lots of buttons and this sketch


Plus my photos, some paper, a stamp and some ink equals



So pop on over, check out the other trifectas and have a go!!

We are still on school holidays here. Not looking forward to the kids going back as I do love my bed in the mornings. Even Matt has been on late shift, so nice and relaxed - although Geoff did have to go back to work today.

As nights are getting colder I have been watching more movies (catching up really on those I missed in the cinema). None that I really loved - I enjoyed the latest Harry Potter, liked Mao's Last dancer (but please read the book - it is so much better) and cried when re watching Finding Neverland (Mr Depp with accent, mmmmm).

And I am sorry to say that I watched Mamma Mia. Now I love musicals (singin' in the rain is an all time fav), I love ABBA, and love Meryl, Colin Firth and Pierce Brosnan (my new second fav Mr. Bond after rewatching some of his lately as well). But honestly, this could be the worst picture I have fast forwarded through (just the singing) for a long time. Mum said the stage production was a lot better. Sorry to offend any fans out there...

Oh and Diary of a Wimpy kid 2 was better than the first one. And it was reasonably short as well.


Hopefully I will be back later today with another LO, fingers crossed. xx

PS, thanks for all the bad hair stories, made me laugh (esp Alicia saying her Mum had perms like that...)xx

Bad hair decade

Yep, we all know the decade I am talking about - although in fairness, this is more a leftover from the 80's and may just have slipped into the 90's. But I still blame the 80's. But I love that decade so much that I will forgive her for her many quirky faults...

This is my last Lo as guest designer at crafty croppers. I love this site so very much and the talent is oozing out over there. I have cheated somewhat on the last challenge as it was supposed to be a monochromatic LO featuring red and all it's wonderful darker offshoots and make the Lo about you - and I used a background of white. But check out the other girls examples. they all manged beautifully what I could not. Esp impressed with Irini's Lo. Mmm so good. But they are all fab!!


Mine is of course about my last perm. And how I warned the hairdresser that my hair took really well to perms and I only wanted loose waves. 'Not a problem' she said (HA!). But after she took the curlers out, there was the dreaded 'Oh.... (and more silence)" followed by 'the curls will drop quickly over the week...' All lies of course.

My friends were most (and loudly) amused for a goodly time to come.

never again.

I would love to hear other hair horror stories. It really would make me feel better.. really I promise not to laugh (much).

And go check out The other girls at Crafty Croppers, we would love to see what you come up with.

PS The latest Southern girls challenge is up as well, such a yummy colour combo of blue and green, come and join in there as well.

Off to see Diary of a wimpy kid 2 - sigh.

have a great day. xxx

The Dollies sketch for April

This is a fab sketch, love the two photo sketch.
Ok, so I was keen to use the latest Studio Calico kit that arrived, but I went against my judgement and used a grey background instead of white and I think the LO suffers for it. It would have felt fresher, more suitable for a three yo than the grey. sigh. Anyway it is done now, and it has been put away so I shan't think about it again. I also used a genuine cupcake wrapper - so cute with spots.



The other girls have done wonders with the sketch, go check it out and then have a go. It's all good fun and we will leave completely brilliant comments (I have discovered so many lovely people through the Dollies) and you get a chance to win some scrummy prizes!!

We had a really good weekend here, Geoff and I took Henry bike riding around the lake and past the wetlands - I love living in Canberra, this is all in the middle of town.


And a small confession here. This may shock some of you (yes Jo, probably you...) but I love watching a)AFL, b) road cycling and c) Formula 1. It comes from growing up with three brothers, you either develop an appreciation or you hate it. Loving it meant I could easily impress the boys when I hit uni (I'm sure Geoff was only interested because I vaguely knew what about the lbw rule..)

It has been a good week with my beloved afl team winning (the kids won't be in the same room as me as I shout at the tele alot..). Go hawks.

The Paris- Roubaix bike race was an absolute cracker with a humble domestic winning this year

And It was the best formula 1 race in years, with Mark Webber cutting through the field to come from 18th to third. And Sebastian Vettel didn't win, even better. Ok enough boring you now - although I realise everyone tuned out as soon as sport was mentioned.

Anyway I'll be back tomorrow with the latest challenge at Crafty Croppers. You can still enter for the previous April challenges, so much stuff goes on there, it is well worth checking out.

ok til then xx

It is so very cold here....

Last week we were in shorts and t shirts, this week, autumn has hit. I would put up some pretty pictures of the leaves turning, and they are gorgeous this year, but I am being particularly wimpy and staying inside in very close proximity to my little heater. And I know it is getting colder soon and I will adjust but I am still in my adjusting phase and I am not liking it!!!

Enough complaining (hmm, I seem to apologise about whinging every post, not good...), onto The latest Dollies challenge. This week is the elements turn, and the chosen element is lots of buttons!! Hooray, i always seem to need a button or two (or three..) on my work so I loved this challenge. We want you to put at least 7 buttons on your entry, much easier than it first sounds.

I love the different ways the girls have used them this week, flower centres, button flowers on cards, buttons in a row and adding textural depth to trees. All very scrapliftable ideas.




I wanted mine to be a bit more formal to highlight the uniform nature of Matt's purchase. So I laced mine together. I thought I had gold thread somewhere which I think would have been better but I couldn't find it.

Oh and yes, you can go to Hanoi and pick up a full military uniform, complete with medals and the hat for not a bad price. And it does impress the girls. And Matt did wear it to a party just after he arrived back. And apparently impressed everyone there as well. Not sure the hair is the appropriate length for a general though...

So come and play, this one should be easy for both scrappers and cardies (is that the correct term or am I just thinking of woollen items of clothing???). Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

have a great day and either stay warm or enjoy the coming spring depending upon the hemisphere you reside in xx

No Internet!!!

Our suppliers box blew up at the end of last week, great smell as well...

Luckily there was no accompanying fire. However dealing with them (transact, grrrr) was an exercise in frustration. Geoff got through to them to report that the box had blown up and he needed the internet for work. But could he explain that to them. No. he was not the account holder so he couldn't even report a fault. So I hopped on the phone and was placed in the queue (there's an hour of my life I won't get back..). Honestly this is Canberra and your a comparatively small supplier. How hard is to man the phones slightly better than that??

Anyway all fixed now, just have to get a new router. sigh (oh and the other headlight went on the blue car and the drivers seat got stuck in the furtherest back position in the red car which my little legs and too short arms can't cope with, so not a good weekend - luckily not too expensive to fix any of it, just really, really annoying..)

Enough rambling, time to post what should have been posted days ago, the next Get Creative @ Crafty Croppers challenge! Hooray, and it's a sketch - double hooray.




I went digi for this one (as did a couple of other on the DT, it's just that sort of sketch I think).


This was our favourite place that we stayed at, anywhere. It was a small place just outside Luang Prabang, Laos and the husband and wife have set up a set up a series of bungalows, all hand built by him. We went everywhere on the back of an open topped jeep, so much fun. And the food was all cooked by the wife, consistently good. Despite no tv or internet, the kids loved it as well. Never bored, there was always something to do and we played lots of cards.


Anyway, go over to Crafty Croppers, check out the very talented Dt's work and have a go, you know you want to....

Have a great day, I shall be here getting my fill of the big wide world that I have craved over the past few days...
xxx

SGC - a sketch!

Hooray! You know I love sketches and Trace has come up with a very versatile one this week for the Southern Girls.


Just about all the girls on the DT flipped it or rotated it so I will be interested to see what everyone comes up with. The amount of entries we have every week blows me away - truly amazing.

Anyway here is my take, isn't my girl the prettiest???

Not a good scan though...
Love the die cut pink flowers for Dear Lizzy and American Crafts. Love their lines, just saw some die cut butterflies that are very yummy as well.

The flowers is handmade by Natalie, I received some blog candy from her recently (yay) and this gorgeous flower was part of it. Thank you Natalie. x

Ok, go check out all the loveliness the other DT team has to offer and then join us - great sponsors again this challenge - can't wait to see what you come up with. x

The latset Dollies challenge

Not sure where the post is for this weeks Dollies challenge. But I totally love the colours Leah has chosen for this week. Royal blue, orange, lime green and white - very funky.

This photos of Matt in this photo were taken in Melaka. Matt loves trying new food (esp junk food..) mostly it is edible until he came back from the shops with Lobster Crisps. Once opened, the pleasant waft of fish food filled the room. The flavour was also what I imagined goldfish food to taste like. We all tried - oh about half a chip each and that was it. Not quite to our taste...

so although the challenge isn't quite up officially yet, you may begin to assemble something to impress and excite us (as all your entries do!).

Have a great day!!! xxx

So Excited!!

I have been looking forward to this month because - ta dah - I am guest designer at Crafty Croppers!! Irini and her team create some of the most gorgeous stuff, sigh. Just love it!! And now it's my turn.

The first challenge of the month was a total challenge for me - here it is

Soon we will be celebrating Easter.
Do you make and send Easter cards?
Do you decorate the house with eggs and baskets?
Your challenge is:
To make something for Easter whether it be an Easter basket for your 
child's teacher or Easter cards, painted eggs or 
garlands...get creative and have fun.

Now as we all know, I don't do cards. I have enough crafty addictions without adding to them..

So an off the page project was in the offing, so to speak. I will admit to grand ideas of an Easter Garland with paper eggs alternating with chocolate eggs, for hanging in the garden while the traditional egg hunt was on. Well, I created the paper eggs, hung some beads from the bottom, and started stringing them together. They looked truly dreadful. A complete fail whale, as my darling children would say. sigh. Time to start again.

I struck on the idea of a painted and decorated birds house with a hinged lid to put eggs in and be able to easily access them as well (can't have anything stand between the children -ok me- and chocolate..)

Off to the nearest big hardware store - no bird house but they did have a great little kit to make a bird feeder. Perfect. Very quick to put together.

After that it was a matter of painting and staining, doing some fussy cutting (!!) with the very yummy Cosmo Cricket c1934 ginger paper that came in my last Cocoa Daisy kit.

Hmm still not that Eastery, so a quick search of the Digi Cosmo Cricket site (available at Jessica Sprague, here) I downloaded some Easter files - isn't he a very cute bunny?- printed them on sticky back canvas and put them on.

The egg down the bottom and the butterfly cut outs are from Kaiser Crafts and the grass chip board holding the egg in was a lovely RAK from Irini (perfect- thank you xxx).


More photos - I am so pleased with the way it turned out - all the family approve - a rare thing.

All Ready for hanging in a tree for Easter.


It was all so quick as well. The fussy cutting was by far and away the most time consuming
 bit. If you had a premade bird feeder and some appropriate stickers, this would
 come together in a flash. 

So put something together for Easter and show it off. Can't wait to
 see what everyone else comes up with - should be fun. Pop on
over to Crafty Croppers and check out all the talented ladies
and their lovely works of art.  And the slightly dodgy photo of me
was taken in a hotel room in Laos. It is safe to say the windows were
the best part of the room.. 

Oh and all the eggs were gone within 2 days...

No more until Easter now!

Ps - you would think that being guest designer for
a Greek based site would come with some sort of
holiday, say checking out the Greek
isles for example.But much as I check the mailbox, I have yet
to come across any airline tickets. sigh.

guess i'll just have to save up myself;)