New spaces

I have a new space in our house.  It's full of light and it smells of fresh paint, laundry powder and possibility..

I have new things in the drawers (waiting to be colour coordinated..)

And new fabrics that are waiting to be recycled into something amazingly soft and cuddly and sent overseas to a soon to be born half Aussie/half Canadian baby

I'm enjoying the room for it's crispness and whiteness right now. It won't be long until it takes on the cluttered madness that is my time at the sewing machine.. but in the meantime, I'm going to enjoy its emptiness.

4 year old girls?

I actually had to google 'what do 4 year old girls play with' to help me decide what to make for our cousin's daughter's birthday party this weekend (I will quite readily admit to not being in tune with what 4 year olds are up to these days)

And I decided to buy her a notebook and some new crayons - and make her a clutch to carry her crayons around in.

I used the instructions provided by on the skiptomylou blog - which I found to be really clear (thankfully!).

Here's hoping they are well received at the party on Sunday.

 

What did I learn from this project?

 

- Must spend more time using pins and less time unpicking

- Practice sewing on ric rac (yes, it is meant to be on all 4 edges)

- Next time modify the pattern if you buy 'jumbo crayons'..

- The darker the fabric, the better it will look after the crayons have been pulled in and out the first 50 times.

 

My new life as a gardener..

They say having a child changes you. Whoever 'they' are, I should congratulate them because they're right. Otherwise I would never have sectioned off an area of our back yard and built some garden beds for a vege crop (and when I say 'I', I really mean 'my husband and father in law' built the crop - but it was under 'my' supervision)
I originally planned to make them all no-dig gardens, but because of the cost of creating the no dig gardens, and the fact that our soil isn't too bad (it leans more to the clay'y end of the scale) I decided to try 2 as regular gardens, and the big one as a no-dig. Ironically, here's me and my boobs digging in the no-dig garden.
A couple of weeks later I created the no-dig garden, and boosted the soil quality of the other two gardens in preparation for planting.
I decided there was no great hurry getting seeds into the soil, as February is not the best time to plant.. Here are the results of what my folks did to amuse themselves the morning after I created my gardens (I think it was payback for the flies I attracted with the bags of manure and hay!).
So - I've got the garden ready, I've read the Diggers website back to front, and my Stephanie Alexander "Kitchen Garden Companion" book, and once I get the seeds - I'll be ready to go. I'll keep posting updates on how the vege garden progresses over the coming months. Hopefully it will become a bountiful patch of goodness in no time :)