I've been feeling like a fluffer...

Spoiler Alert

*if you're one of the awesomely fantastic people I'm lucky to spend my work week with, you might want to skip this post. I'm blogging about your Easter gifts and you don't want to blow your surprise. Come back tomorrow or go read another post or something.

Up to 4 pm Saturday I managed to achieve exactly nothing but write a blog post about mild drunken-ness and my latest fabric acquisitions. Then I got mad with myself for wasting time and sitting on my bum. This spurred me into action. I despise inactivity.

 

The menu board is  done. The new magnets cost six times as much as the rest of the project and had to be mail ordered from  interstate but that's not the point. It looks awesomely fabulous if I do say so myself.

The garden edging for the stair garden  is finished. (Thank you Freecycle for the bricks and edging)  This will stop all the dirt washing down the gutter. Sadly it will not stop the dogs dancing a tango in the garden beds. Only hobbling them is likely to do that and it seems a bit drastic.

I am excited because I have managed to keep my parsley and rosemary alive through the whole summer. I celebrated this unexpected  longevity by buying herb markers...

However,  my boston fern is looking very sick. It is possible I am still  a serial killer but that my tendencies are just in brief hibernation.

Happy Dance Time! The Dresden Fans are finished. All excruciating 500 pieces. They're off to live in a box until I feel like looking at them again.

My thoughts have turned to Easter and I started working on this tote bag as a protoype for  gifts for the girls at work.  I have 8 of them to do. I'm sure at some point I'm going to start muttering about feeling like a sweatshop worker.

The delightful Clare at Clare's Craftroom has a tutorial for making stuffed fabric carrots. I decided to jump on the vegie bandwagon and  make some. I raced out today to buy fabric because I have minimal orange in my stash. It's OK- I blamed Clare when Mr. P raised his eyebrows. Plus I had a voucher for 10 bucks from Spotlight so this lot only cost me $6.25.

SOP(Sister of Pyjamas ) and I headed up to the Hills to check out the Lobethal  Markets this morning. The weather was glorious.

Our trip was in vain since the markets aren't running anymore. There was only one store open that sold fabric. SOP says I planned it that way.  The lady who ran the stall was apparently making up prices depending on how much she liked your face. This bundle of 10 inch layer cake squares were priced at $18.00 and there are about 200 of them there. The navy , yellow and red are the colours of Mr. P's favourite football team.

And this damask fabric which will be perfect for the Dresden quilt back is almost 9 square metres and was going out for $28.50. I got both for $15.00 which was slightly more than the 50% off she was advertising.

We stopped at Norton Summit on the way back to have lunch at the Scenic Hotel but circumstances conspired against us so we went to Assaggio instead. That was also a no go so we ended up somewhere else having lunch at afternoon tea time.  Third time's a charm.

  

It was a lovely way to spend the day.Fabric Bargains, lunch (eventually) and laughs.  SOP even picked up!

It's a public holiday here tomorrow so I'm hoping to get the carrots started, the tote bag prototype done  and the snowball quilt knocked off after Mr. P and I head out for a romantic breakfast together.  All that should bring me up to lunchtime. Any ideas what I can do for the rest of the day?

P.S. I gave up on the mirror mosaic that's been in my sidebar as an unfinished project since January 2010. Does anyone need lots of broken mirror pieces? It's been sitting outside for 14 months gathering dust. Time to face facts and chuck it.

The Best Laid Plans ...

So I've been working on my secret project for about a week now and it would be completely finished if it wasn't for one minor detail ...

Meet my re-useable menu board. I loved this idea because it cuts down on writing my weekly menu on paper. I saw this somewhere when I was trolling round in Blogland and naturally can't recall where- dear person who had the original idea - I'm sorry I can't give you proper credit.  Anyway, it's cute and adds a pop of colour to my kitchen, and nobody else I know has one. There's just one small problem.

I added 8 magnets to the back thinking that would be enough to hold it to the fridge. Nup- slid straight off ...so I figured 16 magnets would do the trick . Twice as much is always better. Apparently not in this case - I'm pretty sure that those extra magnets added dead weight and yet again the menu board slid down the fridge. Now I'm stuck with a non magnetic menu board that has 16 useless magnets stuck to it with Tarzan's Grip that I have no idea how I'm going to get off...

In desperation I contacted the magnet shop dude ( or it could be a dudette for all I know)  to ask them exactly what kind of magnets I should use because the ones I bought from the craft store kind of stink.  So if you could all just pretend this is on the side of my fridge looking pretty that would be great - thanks. I'm rating this project 10/10- and my execution of the project at about a 5.

Oh and I made one for Miss P too. Hers wont stick to my fridge either...

In other craftiness this week, I finished piecing Little P's Alphabet quilt.  

Ta Da! The Front

And I did the back too. Goal achieved.

I took the bull by the horns and started putting the Snowball quilt top together. This is number 3 of my PhD projects from 2010. I'm half done and I like the way it's turning out. Miraculously some of my seams are matching up . As usual some are not.  I am beyond thinking about perfection and am only focusing on a finish.

It wouldn't be Sunday without  a Dresden update. 3 more done except for the applique which I'm hoping to get done before bedtime tonight.

4 left to do. I will confess I'm starting to get a bit tired of Dresden's.

I must admit since I've been doing No Fabric February my mail has been a little dull this month. This was rectified by the arrival of exciting mail this week. I recently won a giveaway over at Taradiddle and Malarkey. My book arrived this week and it was wrapped in these cute fabrics. Thanks Ms. Taradiddle. I can see these adding some zing to a spiderweb or other scrappy quilt sometime this year. Thanks for thinking of me in my month of fabric-less-ness.  I pretty much rolled around on top of the fabrics for a full 10 minutes after I ripped the package open. Mr.P said it was sad to see a grown woman acting that way .

Oh and I dropped by the op shop this week and this was calling my name.  If my kitchen dresser ever gets finished this will look fantastic as a display piece.  The little things often make me happy.

It's going to be a busy week at Maison Pyjamas. Miss. P finally exits the teen years Wednesday, it's the end of Frugal Grocery February tomorrow,  Autumn starts Tuesday ( I can hear my Northern Hemipshere friends perk up in anticipation of us Southerners returning the sun )   and I am going to try and squeeze 5 working days into three and half days. Should be fun! 

Goals for this week:

Decide which project I'm going to start next while I contemplate my navel fluff
Finish the remaining Dresden blocks -then shove them in a box for a while
Put the rest of the snowball quilt top together
Order new magnets !

"Stuff I'm loving" Saturday

As I wander around blog land and the Internet I see so many wonderful things to make, great ideas and inspiration. Some people are so clever. I'm not talking about the perfect house/life  people. I'm talking about real every day people.  I bookmark a lot of them away for future reference, but I've decided to share some of them with you. Maybe this will become a regular feature of things I found in the past week or two or maybe it wont make it beyond this one post but this week I've been totally inspired by heaps of really cool things and wanted to share.

Marg's Ricotta and Spinach Cannelloni- I'm not a big fan of Cannelloni .  I made it once 20 years ago and vowed never to make it again. Thank Goodness I didn't listen to myself.  What I loved so much about this is that it's meatless (and we all know from my failed Meatless Monday experiment how much I love meatless meals-NOT  ) but I  LOVED it and managed to fill the cannelloni tubes without coating myself, the bench and the walls (very much) Definitely a keeper. Snaffle this recipe quick!

Some people are just clever. Lisa D over at Recaptured Charm refinished a cabinet. Yeah I know some of you aren't into furniture restoration/re-purposing. Wander over and have a look at what she did with it and I'm sure you'll be saying "Wow".  I just sat here in complete awe. And while you're there she's having a butterfly  jewellery giveaway.

The most impressive  quilt I saw this week was over at Love to Quilt. Quilting Queen's  Chinese Checkers Quilt is just stunning. There is something about multi-coloured bright quilts that just makes my heart sing. Since I failed miserably at maths at school and this involves something called a 60 degree angle, I'll likely never make one of my own , unless I become a quilting genius at some point. Thank Goodness  I can live vicariously through other people's eye candy and creativity.

For those of you with kid-lets, check out this great idea for party favours at Cap Creations.  Little fishes swimming in soap. In a bag ! Just like a fish you buy from the pet store!  Easy, Cheap and Impressive. You can even download the tags for free.

And I'm still really excited about the EQ7 giveaway. The 10 lucky participants have been chosen, and are running contests on their blogs. Many of those contests are now closed but Mary at Mequilter , and Ann at Prairie Primrose Stitches still have active contests. Wander over and comment if you're interested in a chance of winning  a copy of EQ7 for yourself.

I'm off to quilt! Hope your Saturday rocks.

Round up of my week

Meatless Monday is on hold this week since we’re going to be at my in laws for dinner tomorrow to celebrate my father in laws birthday and they have decided on Chinese. So we are having Herbivorous Tuesday instead and will be pretending pasta is a plant. Awesome vegetarian and pretend play all wrapped up in one meal! How can we lose?

Just a couple of other observations. I want to reiterate that while our northern hemisphere pals are experiencing ridiculous levels of cold and snow, we are having ridiculous heat here. Most days this week have been over 100F. I’ll send you some sun if you send me some snow and maybe we can get the weather tolerable for all of us.

My husband saw Hot Cross Buns in the stores this week for Easter. All I have to say is WTF!!!! Apparently they are there because of consumer demand. Exactly which twits are demanding Easter arrive three months early?

I’m going to round up my week from this post , because I am going back to work tomorrow (boo hiss ) and will go back to having about 10 free hours a week in which to craft and quilt….I have sooooo enjoyed being on holidays. (insert long and wistful sighing noise here –making sure you use an Australian accent for authenticity)

Gobble Gobble coin quilt.

Cant find a backing I like for it, so it’s on hold. It’s in my WIPS and I’ll get to it (eventually)

Beaded Curtain tiebacks

Done, installed, and looking positively fabulous.

Mirror Mosaic

At last count I had earned myself about 21 years of bad luck with my mirror smashing, and I have one more to smash . It’s been too hot to glue anything here this week unless you want the glue to dry as it’s coming out of the “instant nails”gun. I don’t, so I’ve laid the pattern out and when the weather gets tolerable again I’ll glue it and go from there. Another WIP.

Possessed Vintage Sheet Quilt

Was on my WIP list , off my WIP list and is now back on the list . I unpicked all the quilting this week, unpicked the squares and re-sized them and am in the process of putting it all back together. If I get it together and STILL hate it – I’m warning you it’s popping up as a blog giveaway.

Kashmir HST quilt 

Nothing accomplished this week. I was too busy unpicking the devil quilt.

Mini Quilt and Pyjamas

Done! And those pj’s are oh-so-comfy. I spent about 140 hours in them this week.

Family History- I did quite a bit this week and found out some new things especially relating to Military Service of some of my ancestors. ( can hear you all snoring with boredom) William Wates remains largely a mystery and I think I’m going to have to dump him for a while and work on someone findable. It’s not like he’s going anywhere.

And to all of you that are on my blog roll , my Mum finally came onto my blog last night and spent 12 hours trolling all your blogs. She reckons you’re all pretty darn creative and she’s all quilting enthused again. She also understands why I spend so much time checking out blogs now!

Have a great week!

Just Chillin'....

In my holidays I get to live the life I dream about ...I love who I am during that time. Creative, completely calm, not juggling too many things at once, a go with the flow kind of girl, immersing myself in a project ( or maybe two )  I can just ...be.

These are the beaded tie backs I made yesterday for the master bedroom. The pair came in at under ten bucks. Suck on that Spotlight!- who wanted 20 bucks each for theirs and they weren't half as stunning.

I found this deco looking jar yesterday in my op shop travels,  that I'm using as a vase/display for some of our eclectic decorations. It was half price and cost $1.50 . Perfect!

I spent the morning smashing old mirrors into pieces for a project I'm working on. It was cheap therapy. I got the mirrors for free, so it was actually completely costless therapy.

I managed to sneak in some quilting as well.

I headed on over (methaphorically speaking) to my local freecycle group and begged for some filing cabinets. No responses yet but I'm hopeful.

I even got some housework and washing done and planned dinner. (Prawns with garlic parmesan cream sauce, wedges and salad- You're welcome to drop by and join us- we have two extra people  tonight so what's one or two more)

Seriously nominate me for sainthood.

Pinwheels

How cute are these fabric pinwheels? Sandi Henderson has the free download-able pattern on her website here . So darn easy too! I managed to do these three without hot glue gunning my hand to anything permanently.

 I'm still scheming how to get me some of that gorgeous Meadowsweet fabric. Nobody at the quilting show on Sunday has pre-ordered any into my home town yet and I can't find any Australian stockists doing pre-orders either. (Insert massive sigh here )

P.S. These pinwheels would also look so pretty in christmas fabric, but with so many other things on the go at the moment thats not going to be an option here!