celebration

I celebrated a birthday over the weekend. I was totally spoilt with flowers, divine chocolates and some amazingly thoughtful wonderful gifts. Like that green ceramic jug, it fits in perfectly with all my other green ceramics that live on the shelves in my lounge. This jug like the rest of my ceramic collection is imperfect, it's lid is missing. The other ceramic pieces boast large cracks, missing lids and chips etc and I love them for it.

Probably the best present of all was the arrival of some truly beautiful spring weather, the sun shone and the sky was clear and I could actually feel some warmth on my skin, summer is on it's way.

needle and hook

I've seen some fantastic yo yo projects over the last few months and as the weather this weekend was so blah I thought I'd have a go at making a few. I'm totally inspired by this great project, although I doubt I have the commitment to make one similar - but I would have enough fabric scraps! This also caught my eye and so did this. As I started sewing I thought, how would these look with some crochet edges? Any excuse for a bit of crochet! I'm quite happy with how they turned out, I thought they'd look cute as brooches or sewn on some bags or a skirt for miss E. I think I could make a lot of these and not get bored, the perfect little project to do when I have only a few spare minutes and little ones around.

tea

I was very lucky to attend high tea at Henri & Co yesterday afternoon. It was divine! and a very special treat. It was like all my tea party dreams had come at once, delicious food, beautiful setting and great company. I can highly recommend it so if you are every heading to Pukekohe it would be a good idea to book in. Now I need to find an excuse to go again.

Congratulations to Stella who is the winner of my little etsy giveaway, I'll be in touch very soon Stella.

Hope the wild weather over the weekend hasn't caused any damage to you or your family. I lost a lot of my broad bean plants but that was all thankfully. I"ll be glad once all this wind and rain is over.

miracle

Today a miracle occurred, I somehow made these three crochet items (and a small pink one for miss E too), took the photos of them and listed them in my etsy shop all with two small children at home. The rain helped as we were cooped up inside, also the massive fort that miss E built with the coffee table, dining chairs and several million blankets! There is nothing like a big fort to make the time go fast on a rainy day. The top little brooch is my favourite, the pretty little flowers peeping out from behind the crochet, like a secret garden.

collection

a new

I've finally found some time to get my new etsy store stocked with a few little things that I have been making over the past few months. I opened a new store to match my blog name, seemed to be the right thing to do. So in order to celebrate I'll do a little surprise give away. Just leave a comment on this post and I'll draw a name on the weekend sometime.

Whew, now I'm off to do some of what I enjoy more than computer time - sewing.

special

There is a special birthday to be celebrated in my family this week. My Nana turns 80 and I wanted to make something a bit special for her. Now she's very sensible and always says not to buy her anything or spend too much money on anything for her. That's exactly what I did. I looked in my material stash and came up with some fabrics to make a small lap quilt. I had some batting that I had used for a squab type thing that had outgrown it's use and that became the batting for the quilt. I spent no money except thread to stitch it together and it feels great to make something from stuff in my stash. I really hope she likes it, it's the perfect size to have over your knees when reading which is how I imagine she will use it.

I've noticed lots of these guys around in the garden over the last week, busy times ahead in the garden.

friday finds

This Friday finds me with an extra pair of little hands in the house. To keep them entertained I drew some crown shapes on card and left them to add the decoration. We kept it simple using felt tip pens and coloured pencils. When finished I added some elastic to the ends. Now I bought that elastic from a fabric emporium for $3 at the time I thought, bargain, I was right. It looks like I've hardly used any but I seem to use it for heaps of things including lots of children's crafts. Luckily there is HEAPS left.

I found this cool little train play mat this week. It wasn't priced and I didn't have much cash on me so I was hoping it wasn't going to be too much. I also had two pieces of fabric, with my fingers crossed I went to the counter, totally convinced I'd have to put most of it back. I breathed a sigh of relief when the total was $2.50. Score. The play mat is the kind with little rings around the edge and a cord so you can pull it up to secure the contents, although looking a bit vintage it has a little tag on it saying it was made in 2009. It's nice to find something for my little guy.

Hope you have a great weekend. I'm still thinking about everyone in Christchurch, hoping all those after shocks will stop.

bloomin

There seems an abundance of blooms on our daily journeys and miss E and I talk about what some of these blooms will become in the coming months. Plums, wild strawberries are a few on our preschool walk. But what has really caught our eyes over the last few days are fallen Kohwai blooms. We have had some quite heavy rain and some strong winds the past few nights and this has caused a number of Kowhai blooms to form a yellow carpet beneath a large tree. Today we stopped to carefully gather some, once home we used a needle and cotton to thread them to form a spring time necklace. The perfect accessory for a nature loving little miss and once it's had it's day it can be popped in to the compost bin. These necklaces are a much loved activity I wrote about them last year here.

weekend

My heart goes out to all those families in Christchurch after the earthquake on the weekend. It is a helpless feeling being so far away and wanting to reach out and help them. Kia kaha.

The weekend was filled with freshly baked rolls, some Tui watching (and listening - I love their cheerful song) and celebrating Father's day with a special gift for Mr nzgreenbuttons. A lovely portrait from this Very talented lady - thank you a million times over Stella, he loves it! and so do I.

in anticipation

I've always wanted one of those trugs that I've seen, well everywhere. Mainly because I romantically imagine popping out to my vege patch and filling one up then trotting back inside and making a fabulous dinner out of produce from my garden. The reality is that my small plot will probably never produce enough at one time to fill anything more than a two litre ice cream container. Never the less when I spotted this basket (the next best thing to a trug) at my local thrift store, the romantic in me bought it. So now I feel compelled to jam pack my little plot full of plants to produce enough to fill it. The only thing I could pop into it this week was some silver beet or swiss chard, the only thing I can grow year round.

The broad beans that I planted earlier this season are doing well, the ones that didn't get squashed by a cloth nappy covered bottom. They only need the bees to come along and work their magic, fingers crossed.

Happy weekend to you!

clean

Well the beautiful Spring weather that we had yesterday has disappeared and in it's place today was the more common - rainy Spring day. I was all geared up to be out in the garden today but I realised that wasn't going to happen when I woke up and threw back the curtains. Slightly disappointed I decided to do some things that have been on my to do list for a while. First up was a new version of laundry powder, it is Wendyl Nissen's recipe that you can find here. Since I started making my own laundry powder I've wanted to try a new recipe, my old recipe that you can find here contains Sunlight Soap which isn't so environmentally friendly and although the powder does a great job it would be nice to use something that is better for the environment. Wendyl's recipe is super easy to make, looks just like the real thing and smells good too.

The second thing on the list was the lemon dusters another recipe from Wendyl that you can find here. They look cute all rolled up in the jar, so much so I'm not sure I want to use them, can I use that as an excuse not to dust?

Finally this one wasn't on the list but I had a whole lot of lemons without peels to use up, so I made some Devine Lemon Squares from Allyson Gofton's book, Bake - I do so love that book. So we were tucked up inside today, hopefully tomorrow will bring the return on the blue skies and the weeding might get done.

I should also add that I used the Soda Ash rather than Washing soda crystals for the laundry powder recipe, at $2 a kilo it makes it half the price of washing soda!

welcome

Welcome Spring! It was a beautiful Spring day today, the sun felt warm on my skin and the sky was oh so blue. I took this picture on the walk to preschool, it was nice to look upwards to all the blossoms along the way, signalling the warmer weather to come.

I hope you had a great day whatever season you are living in.