Did Anyone Else Hear Trumpets Sound?

For the last 10 months this basket has held all the bits and pieces I needed to make and applique my orange peels for the Seville quilt....

Yesterday that basket was finally empty! 

Yep- yesterday I finished the last applique orange peel and did an honorary run around the meeting room table at work like a soccer player who just scored the goal of his career. I was actually in a meeting at the time...thankfully everyone in the room knows I'm slightly off centre and didn't think that was at all unusual behaviour. 

Let's not be too hasty to congratulate me though - I have approximately 10 days to sew 144 of these together, baste and quilt the top and then sew the binding on...it's still do -able right?

And now I can start thinking about my next hand sewing project ....Lucy Boston - you're up!

Getting My Nigella On

I woke up Saturday with an overwhelming urge to cook. At first I wondered if I'd had a personality transplant overnight because mostly I cook for function not for fun. Since the urge didn't go away while I drank my usual morning coffee(s) I decided to roll with it to see how far I'd get before I got bored and wandered away leaving Mr. P to clean up the kitchen.

Everything I touched was pure gold (if I do say so myself) How often does that happen? I started with a triple batch of beef rendang,and 45 minutes later had a spaghetti sauce,a lasagne sauce and a double batch of beef and red wine casserole on the go too.Then I decided to add a double batch of butter chicken because its one of Mr. P's favourite things to eat.  Actually food is one of Mr. P's favourite things to eat. Fullstop. Anything. Except beetroot, brussel sprouts, or anything with bits of citrus fruit peel in it.

I also decided to make some jam because Patty Pie sent me home with strawberries last week. I obviously had some inkling with the jam idea because Little P facetimed me about 10 minutes after I started it to let me know there had been an unfortunate accident with his personal jar of Bella Jam where the jar met the floor and the resulting mess looked like a crime scene. He decided to swing on by to help make the jam, probably to ensure he got another jar, because he was afraid Grandpa would eat it all before he got here if he didn't come over immediately. 

I fed three hungry men vegetable soup for lunch along with vegemite cheese pastry twists, made by my own little hands. Ok - the soup was out of a can because I was too busy cooking other stuff to be bothered making soup from scratch. Nobody complained. And nobody called me out on canned soup (except Mr. P later in private) so it was all good. 

And while all this was going on I was making ciabatta dough for bread which seriously turned out to be the best ciabatta bread I've ever had in my life. Definitely doing that again. 

A brief break ensued while Mr. P and Little P played with boys toys and Little P gussied me up by putting flowers in my hair (They are actually weeds but I didn't have the heart to tell him) 

Apparently I couldn't find my hair brush yesterday either...

My golden run ended with some free form mince tarts because they were shit...I took that as a sign that my period of channeling Nigella was at an end and thanked the cooking gods for their generosity. Looks like dinners for the next week are sorted. Little P and I celebrated with a second attempt at s'mores and called it a day. I packed him off back to his Dad's full of sugar and collapsed on the lounge. 

That's my idea of a perfect Saturday. Let's hope today involves a visit from the same motivational place for my sewing efforts. At this stage it's not looking likely since I've been up four hours and have only managed to drink coffee and scoff more ciabatta bread... 

Mish Mash

In my dream life I get to stay home and sew every day. I create lovely things and somehow in the process become famous enough never to have to work again. The details are sketchy -I'm not sure exactly what I'm famous for - but it has something to do with my boundless creativity and design skills.

The reality is that I don't sew anywhere near as much as I would like, because when I get home from my day job every creative thought has been sucked out of my brain.  From 9am - 5pm  I have to remain logical and rational, and to make decisions based on evidence or fact. Creativity is usually reserved for weekends. But this week I was determined to sew something on a weeknight so I picked a project that didn't require much thinking on my part. My friend Nerida had a family heirloom quilt that required the binding replaced because it had been completely worn away by 16 years of constant love. I've been meaning to get to this for about three months - and finally found the motivation last week. It wasn't all beer and skittles - I had to wash all the swearing out of this before handing it back.

This week I also went hard at finishing the applique for the remaining Orange Peels for the Seville Quilt. I got 20 finished and only have 9 left to do. That means I've done 135 of them...next step - sew all these bloody things together so they look like a quilt. By my calculations I have 20 days to finish the applique, sew them together , baste , quilt and bind this quilt - and you know what? I'm still labouring under the delusion that its possible. Who's with me? 

It was a long weekend here and with my parents impending move less than two weeks away, we headed up river to help them with a garage sale so they have less to pack and bring with them. And we brought back a load of stuff as well. I spent the weekend full of a nasty cold (which I'm pretty sure I caught from Little P when he came from his sleepover and he in turn told me he caught it from the girls at kindy because they kiss him all the time) I'm not sure how much help I was because I spent the weekend buried in a pile of tissues moaning about how awful I felt and barking like a dog. I think Mum and Dad are at the point where they just want it all over. Both my cold, and the move!

Last picture of the old homestead . It was sad driving away for the last time. 

Other Nephew of Pyjamas and his other half graced us with their company for the weekend and G and I had the inspired idea to make Aussie S'mores. (no Graham Crackers here so we had to improvise) It was all going swimmingly....until we put the halves together. 

Obviously since we Aussies haven't been brought up on S'Mores, we went a bit overboard on the "more marshmallow can only be a good thing" principle and ended up with something that tasted great but had marshmallow guts leaking out all over the place. We already have plans to tone down the marshmallow on our next attempt. 

And re-do's and renovations continue at Maison Pyjamas. Gardening has been happening and beds have been dug and plants and actual bulbs put in them, but most exciting of all is that my new shutters and sliding doors have been installed so I finally have coverings at my dining room window for the first time in about 10 years....

That's it from me. I'm off to stare at my shutters again. 

Highs and Lows

This week has been full of highs and lows... 

This is my car being towed away for repairs because the transmission is broken. I sent the car in for repairs 7 weeks ago because I knew there was something wrong with the transmission , and it came back marginally better after a full major service but still wasn't quite right. It's been back in since then for other repairs,  and I have been asking Mr. P for 3 weeks to take it back in to have the transmission looked at. There was some rather blue language round here on Saturday when the car just refused to go into gear.  Mr. P arranged for the car to be towed away to be looked at after the RAA dude confirmed it was transmission related issue .  Mr. P's  motivator was fear - I was not a happy camper. The irony of all of this is that Mr. P works for a major international car company that has all the fixit guys you could ever need about 30 seconds walk from here he sits all day Monday to Friday - I ask you how hard it could have been to organise for the car to be looked at on one of the other 475 occasions I've mentioned it.... 

These are the jeans that I went to put on Saturday morning and the zip on my jeans broke ....its not like I don't have others - but these were one of my favourites :(

I also stuffed a brand new pair of unworn unides but since this post is already sounding a bit like a pity party lets all move on shall we?  

We had a house full of visitors all weekend. Aside from my parents, we had a very special visitor come to stay on Friday night for the first time in a while. We had a camp out in our bedroom and everyone knows when you have a camp out you have to have a fire. I was a bit dubious about setting a camp fire on top of my carpet so we improvised.

Unfortunately Kevin the sock monkey got too close to the fire at one point and we had to render first aid. 

On Saturday Little P chose hanging out at home over going to the movies. We baked some chocolate chip cookies (no pictures -since they all got eaten rather rapidly), blew some bubbles, made playdough, did some drawing, and then did some gardening. I know you already know this - but this kid is the light of my life. I love seeing the world through his eyes. His enthusiasm for life is positively infectious.   

The week before last I won a giveaway over at Rachael's blog (Blue Mountain Daisy). I kept waiting and waiting with increasing excitement for it to arrive, checking the post box every day. I mentioned to Mr. P last Monday that I was waiting for parcel and he sheepishly went out to his car and brought in a package that he told me had arrived Friday but that he forgot to give me. 

Talk about hitting the motherlode-A huge parcel of awesomeness! Thankyou Rachael. I dont know what to use first but trust me - I'm going to have fun playing with all of this loveliness.  

And last of all, I managed some sewing in amongst the madness that was my weekend. I've been moving forward on my Seville quilt (which in theory is meant to be finished by the end of June -dont laugh - it's still possible) 

And I started cutting fabrics for my first new quilt of 2014...which doesn't look like much at the moment but is going to be absolutely gorgeous if I can make all my seams behave. You'll have to wait until I have an actual block done to see where I'm heading with this. And who knows when that's going to happen. Crazy week coming up....