Mothers Day Rush

This is what kept me so busy on Saturday - began it about 1pm and finished after 6pm. (With a little help from the girls before they lost interest). A long concertina album for Mum with pictures of all her grandchildren. 22 photos in total (of 7 grandchildren). It was a fun project but all a bit of a rush, including a mad dash through the pre-Mothers Day rush at the shops to get photos printed and buy a large piece of cardstock while on the way to visit the other mother. phew! Anyway, Mum seemed to like it well enough. Dad commented that they would need to build a new room to accommodate it. (it is about 48 inches long when stretched out)

And what did I receive from my lovely family? Well that will have to wait till tomorrow's post.

Crafting Fun

Last night we had 5 girls and their mums over for our card-making night. It was lots of fun and I think they enjoyed making these two cards. Then we feasted on Swedish Chocolate Cake, French Vanilla Cheesecake and Millionaire Cake. Yum!

This afternoon I have been making a concertina album to give to Mum tomorrow for Mothers Day. Nothing like leaving it to the last minute! I'm happy with how it's turned out, but hopefully I'll get to photograph it early tomorrow because the photos I tried to take tonight are hopeless. In fact a lot of my card photos are not turning out so well at the moment, I'm afraid!

Since we will be out all day tomorrow Steve cooked a yummy dinner tonight, I didn't help a bit, which made it extra yummy! And truthfully I was flat out trying to get my craft stuff off the dining table after my album-making afternoon.

Have a Happy Mothers Day!

More Cards and a little Cleaning

Some more cards from my Hero Arts late-nighter last week:

I'm busy preparing for a Mother-Daughter Craft Night on Friday night with Emily's friends and their mums. Just finished the pre-cutting and will get all the stamps and tools ready to use.

Oh and spent 5 hours cleaning the living room. I swept and washed the floor, and wondered why I don't do it more often. Then I counted the pieces of furniture that have legs ...

1 dining table and 6 chairs

1 girls' desk and 2 chairs

3 stools at the kitchen bench

2 club chairs

5 little chairs or stools for little people and 1 little table

3 sofas

That's 24 items each with four legs. That's NINETY-SIX legs to sweep around. Yikes!

96 feet to remove fluff from ...

96 legs to collect dust!

And that is not counting a rocking chair and 2 beanbags

No wonder I don't wash the floor that much ...

Hmmm maybe it's time to declutter some furniture ..

Just hangin' round

Did I mention my new Hero Arts stamps? Very cute and versatile - just what I wanted. :-)

So ... Saturday

Today was ... mixed. A morning spent tidying the accumulation of papers, pens, books, knick-knacks and half-used erasers which the girls have left on their desks over a long period of time - a lot of these we had thrown into a big box one day when visitors were coming - plus moving round some toys and videos - all time-consuming and stressful.

After lunch I just had to get out so I left the girls baking with Daddy supervising and went to buy scrapbooking cardstock, and felt much better. Then I baked a slice before a grown-up niece came to visit.

We had fairy cakes baked by the girls, (I forgot to take a photo but we did serve them on my favourite Meakin plate, above), Anzac Squares, and a new type of tea. Yum. And such cute paper serviettes with fairies and cupcakes on them!

Tonight a delicious dinner of Spiced Apricot Chicken, couscous, mushrooms and beans, but the girls were somewhat tired and difficult, so that too was mixed.

Hoping for a better day tomorrow - church, then dinner of more Apricot Chicken. Tonight or tomorrow I will try out my new quilting foot on my machine and practise quilting before tackling this in the near future. Also for this week - preparing for a Mother-Daughter Craft Night with some friends on Friday night - designing and pre-cutting cards. Busy is good.

Autumn weather

I am loving the autumn weather - cool air and sunshine. Or even without sunshine I am loving the cosiness.

And after just 5 minutes of tidying (!) I found the surface of our dining table and rescued these pears on a secondhand dish from the surrounding papers, placemats, pens etc. and remembered this thrifted chicken scratch cloth. Perfect! (well so long as I held the camera just right to avoid the background mess)

Off to clean up that background mess now. Nothing like some sunshine to make me feel slightly like housework!

Look What I Did Today!

Today our craft group had a quilting workshop with a wonderful quilter called Yan. I pieced this garland quilt top in just 5 hours!

I chose the fabrics weeks ago and I'm so happy the way they turned out. It's for Laura and she wanted pinks and purples.

The border fabric is much more funky than it looks from a distance, I wasn't quite sure if it would all work together, but it has. The photo hasn't turned out so well, on this dark day. The darkest squares and the thin border strip are purple, not navy.

I was so pleased to get it all pieced, hopefully I can get on with the backing and quilting soon, although it might be a while -without a teacher cutting and planning and telling me what to do.

This was so much fun. I've been in an anti-sewing mood since my sewing frenzy a few months back, so I wasn't expecting to enjoy a day of sewing. But I did. We had about 12 machines humming away and lots of chatter, yummy chocolate biscuits, cheese and crackers, and Thai for lunch. A perfect day out!