Tuesday, February 22, 2011

First for me

If you are a regular reader of my blog then you will already know that me, my WH (wonderful husband) & little Sis are going to be going to New Zealand together on a skiing/campervaning holiday. And today the news broke that Christchurch was hit by another earthquake (they got hit last September as well), unlike the last earthquake where no one lost their lives & there really wasn't any major damage, many lives have already been confirmed dead & buildings have completely collapsed.

I have never been in a position where a place that we are planning on going on a holiday in having something like this happen. We are planning on spending the last night of our holiday in Christchurch (where the earthquake hit). The pictures that are coming through are just frightening & I will admit to tearing up watching people stagger around outside crumpled buildings.

My heart & prayers are going out to the people of New Zealand & specially Christchurch. I pray that those that are missing are found safe & sound, and that there aren't anymore after shocks.

Monday, February 21, 2011

New pages

I have been forcing myself to stop just reading scrapbooking magazines & actually do some scrapbooking. I struggled with both these pages and to be honest one is still unfinished & I need to print some more photos for.



This is a page from our nephews 2nd birthday (can't believe he is 2 already!), this is the unfinished page as I didn't have enough pictures printed. The extra photos will go under the main photo in a flip up hidden section (sorry no photos of the hidden section!), this layout took weeks & in the end I had to ask my WH (wonderful husband) for help to finish it to this point.





Though I really feel that this layout is finished it doesn't totally sit with me. I think it's probably because of the colours, I am not really a pink girl & there is alot of pink in this layout. But I really like the string of lanterns, I actual cut them out of the photos I had taken.

Feels good to do some scrapbooking, still have plenty of photos to go & I haven't even started on this years photos!

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Time to stop thinking & act!

For I think would have to be about 6 months I have been thinking & planning about putting curtains on my metal storage shelves in my craft room. The space as never felt 'right' & 'organised'. And I have come to the conclusion that it's because I can see everything that is in the shelves & they are packed shelves.
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In hindsight a couple of bookcases would have suited my storage needs alot better, but these shelves were the right price (one 50+% off & the other totally free!). So I am going to work with what I have got & make these shelves work better for me.
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So I have taken the necessary measurements & am now in the process of descided on the look that I am going for. I have a slight green & black thing going on at the moment, so I was thinking of a black fabric with white spots (used a similar fabric in our bedroom onto of the painted dresser) but the fabirc scares the heck out of our bird Curios. Seriously he takes on look at it, squarks & runs away as fast as he can (made for some interesting moments when I was sewing with the fabric!
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Or maybe I should go with a green? I have these Ikea storage boxes (in green) as well as some green metal storage containers that I use to store my stamps & stamping supplies, so I could ekco the colour. At this rate it will be another 6months before I have made a decision!
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Friday, February 18, 2011

Today was the day.....

It has still been raining here :-( but it has only been showers (very heavy showers at some points) so I have been able to get into the garden. Everything has needed to be fertilised, but with the rain my normal liquid seaweed fertiliser would be totally useless. So I have been using a slow release fertiliser. It has been a great success, particularly with the herbs that we grow on our back verandah.


But this morning I started weeding the last half of our main garden area. It is going to be a big task. I have to remove all the weeds, turn the soil over (removing any roots that I find), dig up & separate some plants that are going alittle crazy, replant those plants & mulch. I am very hesitant to begin, because if we get rain again that makes it difficult for me to get out into the garden then the weeds just take over again. But since we are coming to the end of summer & entering Autumn it is a slow growing season so it is my best bet for getting on top of our jungle before next spring.

Wish me luck!

Wednesday, February 16, 2011


On Saturday I looked down from our back verandah & I saw some plants growing in our lawn. On closer inspection it was confirmed that we had sunflower plants growing in our lawn. Why do we have sunflower plants (seedlings to be exact) growing in my lawn? Our bird Curios is to blame (thank probably a better word), why? His seed. Lately our Curios hasn't been too interested in the sunflower seeds that come in his seed mix, so they have been just thrown out onto the lawn (with the thought that some other bird would eat the Curios uneaten seed). Right where the seedlings are now growing.


Only 1 problem.....I realised that since it was Saturday my WH (wonderful husband) was going to come home from work in the afternoon & is going to mow our lawn! Oh no! Now our lawn on Saturday was is desperate need of a mowing but those seedlings weren't going to survive!

Side note: I have been trying all summer to grow sunflowers. The first lot of seeds got completely eaten by birds, the second lot I built a bird proof cover for that worked great and I germinated all of the seeds. Only to have them eaten by more birds & caterpillars (only one survived & it is growing in a pot on our verandah where I can keep a close eye on it) once I planted them in my garden :-( So finding a whole lot of seedlings in my lawn that I could try again with was so exciting.


So began Operation Rescue!

I grabbed my gardening gloves, filled a spare pot full of potting mix & my gardening spoon. Sitting on the lawn (in the hot sun I will add) I carefully pulled up pretty much all of the seedlings that I could. A couple didn't survive being removed from the ground, no roots. But a few casualties were not a problem with the number I was actually able to 'rescue'. Once I had filled the pot & and apologised to the plants that I just couldn't take (yes I actually said 'sorry'). I brought the pot upstairs onto our verandah & gave them a good watering.



Do you think them know how close these little seedlings came to being destroyed by the lawn mower? Do you think they are appreciative? Or maybe I had too much sun? Later more likely :-)






Tuesday, February 15, 2011

All you need is love







Happy belated Valentine's Day!
To be completely honest me & WH (wonderful husband) haven't done Valentines Day is years. It might sound corny but everyday is Valentine's day for us, we don't need a day to express how we feel about each other. Corny!
Anyway, we did go out for lunch on Monday & just had a lovely day together. My WH has Sunday & Monday's off from work so Monday is always generally always 'date day'.
But I hope that you had a lovely Valentines Day!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Treasury Thursday


Ok I know that Thursday is almost over, but I just wanted to share some of my favourite finds from Etsy.
Today my finds are a extension of my last post about the vintage cameras my WH's (wonderful husband) Grandparents gave us. I really would like to make the collection larger & I am loving anything with a vintage camera picture on it. Check out my whole treasury!

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Food for thought




Just before Christmas last year me & my WH (wonderful husband) made a trip to see his Grandparents, they would normally travel to where we live at some point around the Summer months but they couldn't this year due to health. It was a real quick trip, we left after my husband finished work on Saturday at 3pmish & came home on Sunday in the afternoon.
While we were with my Wh's Grandparents me WH was showing off the pictures that he had been taking, his Grandmother said she had some cameras that she wanted us to have as she thought that we would like them. She was right, three lovely vintage cameras. I personally love them, especially the stories that come with each of them.
But having these cameras does cause alittle problem, how to display & store them? Storage in itself isn't a problem......a box in our storage space downstairs would fix that. But I don't want them somewhere where they are never seen. So we come to how to display vintage camera?
I have been collecting images of vintage camera displays using VisualizeUs, here are a couple of my favourites.
Image from Unplugged; love the idea of each camera having its place but not sure how to make this work in our house.
Image from my VisualizeUs collection; I love this print & the simplicity of the display.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Travel Treasury



It has been a while since I have created a treasury, and our up coming trip is a great excuse to search through my fav site Etsy for some great stuff that I would love to take with me. Check it out here.

Friday, February 4, 2011

It's my birthday!




Today I turn 28, yep 28.....getting close to the big 30! I have had a pretty quite day today, it has been soooo hot so sitting in the shade with a big glass of water is all I have been doing. And since it's my birthday I think that I am allowed to.
I have been so blessed with all the wonderful birthday messages that I have received today & my WH (wonderful husband) gave my a couple of beautiful birthday presents
I l-o-v-e lanterns, and these ones are sooo cute. My favourite part is that I can pull them apart & store them flat (love a good storage solution!).
Isn't this a gorgeous mousepad, it has actually inspired me to do an artwork for our house (more on that another time).
This has been a very eventful week, Queenslanders have been watching two cyclones (Anthony & Yasi), both have hit the topical north coast with Yasi doing the most damage. It seems that Queenslands moto 'beautiful one day perfect the next' needs to be changed to 'flooding one day cyclones the next'. Don't really know if our state can take anymore natural disasters. My prayers & thoughts go out to those who Yasi hit. I know that the road to recover has only just started and will probably be quite long but this will get better.