Favourite Things Friday-The Delayed Edition

It's been a completely insane week at Maison Pyjamas.  I haven't been around at all  to comment on and visit your blogs or even respond to email. I fully intended to write an FTF post this evening based on my day today and I've just realised I'm halfway through and it sounds like I'm talking swahili. Which would be kick arse awesome if any of you spoke swahili but I'm pretty sure none of you do.

Sometimes I take on too much. Sometimes I over estimate my ability to juggle 10 things at once.  It's simply not possible to work fulltime, have people over for dinner Monday and Tuesday , go out for dinner Wednesday , have your parents arrive to stay one day early on Wednesday, cook, clean, shop , make sure you know where you've hidden your clean undies, generally live life and still manage to blog when you're organising an emergency banquet dinner for your entire family  at your house for your father's 70th birthday on the same day you're hosting High Tea because your Dad had a surgical procedure yesterday that rendered the idea of the family going out to celebrate his birthday completely untenable. It would appear that there are limits to even my endurance. 

All of this is my waffly way of apologising for not having a FTF post  for you this week. For not being around to comment on your posts and for not being a great blog buddy this week. For not responding to your emails  ( Hey Kristie - go easy on that chocolate babe) and in general being a very unexciting blogger. Sometimes life happens. And it's completely out of my control.

I'll be back on Sunday with my High Tea Post. I'm so looking forward to sitting round with a cuppa tomorrow and scoffing down some  lots of cake. I've conned Sister Of Pyjamas into bringing her famous scones. I'm seriously thinking about having them scientifically analysed so I know how to make them - they're that good and she wont share the recipe. I hope you'll find time to join me and show me what High Tea looks like at your place.

 

PS. On the up side now you know I keep FTF totally real. It's not written in advance. I don't have back up posts that I've polished and made deliberately funny and honed and crafted. Surely that's got to earn me some brownie points right?

Pyjama Party Sunday

Fueled by 9 Little Debbie Snack cakes and a pack of Hershey's nuggets for breakfast  (those things are as addictive as crack I swear )  I spent some of today making a test block for a Christmas quilt. This is based on a Kate Spain design called Flurry.  Mrs. Seams Inspired , Little Miss Sunshine and I have decided to do the same quilt at the same time as a kind of mini quiltalong. You can get the pattern here as a free PDF download if you want to join in.  

And because the test block was not a disaster I decided to forge ahead and start cutting fabrics for the  real blocks. Yes ! It's July so that must mean the start of some Christmas projects....Thea and I are planning a Christmas stocking assault in a couple of weeks.

I finished the Dresden quilt top which was not without swearing when the sashing didn't line up and I had to unpick it. Several times. I hate sashing that has to match up.

I sewed all of the sashing onto the BWR quilt too.  I just keep liking this quilt more and more.  Maybe I'll keep it for myself.

Mr. P made me a light box so I can trace my stitcheries without taping paper and fabric to the one window in our house that gets good light for about 15 minutes a day. It works beautifully!

I've been thinking lately I'm utterly sick of myself. I look like a dag, I dress like a dag and I'm turning into a middle aged dag. Gone is the bloom of my youth and I'm firmly stuck in frumpy-ville. Time for drastic change.

That is me...raw and without the benefit of makeup, my straightening iron or photoshop yesterday morning. Even I didn't know how bad I looked until I saw this photo.

I've been contemplating a new look for the last 18 months but haven't had the guts to do it . Yesterday I took the plunge. 3 hours and many bucks later this was the result. Now I just need to start wearing makeup.

And that sums up my weekend. To check out other people's weekends hop on over to Marg's for a peek at Pyjama Party Sunday.

To all my American friends Happy July 4th for tomorrow. Have fun eating fried chicken and hot dogs and watching fireworks.

P.S. This post has absolutely no sparkle. I'm down with a rotten cold and I'm completely devoid of vim and vigour unless it's Hershey fueled. Oh! Did someone say chocolate?

The Sweetest Thing I Ever Saw

I'll see you all again when I'm completely pruney from standing under the hot water until it runs out...

PS. Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends. Have a butter tart for me eh?

Favourite Things Friday

I want to say that hot water is my favourite thing this week. Unfortunately I wouldn't know about that since I still don't have any. And I'm pretty sure if I don't have any by next week I'm going to go into total meltdown....I have houseguests due to arrive next week and it's going to be interesting for us all to get clean using a 1.7 litre kitchen kettle.

I know some of you will be wondering if I'm a Stinkasauras by now . I want to reassure the world that I am indeed still taking showers. My in laws live close by and we've been using their hot water . All I can say is I would have made a sucky pioneer because it would have  involved washing in a creek in cold water. I understand now why personal hygiene was so lax in the olden days.

In reflecting this week, (when I have been able to stay awake past 9 pm )  I have realised one of  my favourite things  is spending time with all of you. I have made some wonderful friends through the blogging world. Some of you I've met in person. Some of you know my deepest darkest secrets. Some of you have offered me hot water, Oreo's  and places to stay if I ever make it to the other side of the world. You've celebrated with me, pepped me up , made me laugh, commiserated with me, offered advice , shared stories with me and have let me take you on the crazy journey that is part of living at Maison Pyjamas.

Some of you know me well enough to be able to take the mickey out of me and know I'll let you live. This arrived this week as a surprise gift . I think it's well established I'm more carnivore than herbivore. So this is a deliberately ironic quilt.

That Little Miss Sunshine would take the time to make this as a joke shows the level of friendship we have. I actually almost wet my pants from laughing so hard when I unwrapped it. Yes that's right . Blogging is responsible for me having poor bladder control- and for letting me meet one of my best friends.

And that name!...I'm not convinced that vegetables really are peaceful entities at all... they're put here to torture me.

One of the other things I love about blogging is being exposed to all sorts of different cultures and people. Australia has a fascination for anything "overseas", probably because we're so far away from everything else that it all seems very exotic. This week Larri sent me  "America" in a box! A heavy,very full box...with lots of things in it that I've only ever heard about.

Apparently grits and collard greens are as much an acquired taste as vegemite.

I'm going to feed the Kool Aid to Little P ...5 minutes before he's due to go home. Apparently it's 100% sugar.

 Oreo Heaven.

I'm going to practice talking American so eating all of this is all the more authentic.

Friends, blogging , generosity , diversity , mail , surprises. They're my favourite things this week. And a huge thank you to all of you for sticking around and sharing all of this with me. I appreciate each and every one of you (and not just because some of you are my personal Oreo Pushers)

High Tea

I've had horrible thoughts recently that I may wind up one of those women who slipcovers her sofa in plastic for fear it will get dirty.  I already insist people don't use my sofa cushions as actual cushions. They're for looking at - not using. Duh, I don't want them all crushed.  But it's just a hop skip and a jump to a plastic sofa cover from not using the throw cushions and  I don't want to be known as the crazy sofa lady.

I recently showed off some of my china collection . I freely confess I think tea cups are way too classy for someone like me to use every day. So they sit in my kitchen dresser, looking pretty but neglected.   One day I'm going to die and all the beautiful things I've been so carefully treasuring are probably going to end up at Goodwill or in a rubbish bin somewhere. And I'm going to be looking down from heaven (see how I neatly assume that's where I'm going ?) and I'm going to be seriously annoyed with myself that I didn't use my treasures in real life. And I'm going to haunt the person who chucked them but that's beside the point.

I need to take drastic steps. My china is taking up valuable space I could be using to hoard fabric and I've decided that action is necessary.  I'm creating an excuse to use them. I've decided I need to do High Tea so I can use all my pretty things at once.

One of the things about High Tea that really rocks is cake...and scones...and petit fours and other things that are bad for you  but apparently if you eat them at high tea they have no calories. It's a fact of the universe.

So I'm planning my high tea party for the weekend of July 9th /10th and if you'd like to join me with your own high tea party you're more than welcome. I'd love to see other people's teapots and doilies and pretty tablecloths.

You all know I'm really doing this for the cake don't you?

Pyjama Party Sunday

This post is  brought to you by Little Miss Sunshine and Pyjama Party Sunday. The hottest Sunday linky party. Pyjamas optional!

 

Our hot water service exploded in the small hours between Friday and Saturday so when I went to jump in the shower early Saturday we had no hot water. Joy! You may recall our thermostat went in October and we spent 5 days without hot water during which I whinged loud and long. Thankyou-it's a talent.

Saturday was spent in a frenzy of trying to get someone to come and tell us that our hot water service was completely stuffed and that it was going to cost several thousand dollars to replace. I completely understand  that we need to do something about carbon emmissions and switching to more ecologically friendly energy for the fate of the planet but when the price of a hot water system goes from 1500 bucks to nearly 4 thousand because of it - Im less concerned about the environment and more concerned about my exceedingly slim purse. To add insult to inury we only replaced the hot water service 6 years ago so I'm not a very happy camper. If it wasnt about 5 degrees here at the moment I'd give cold showers a go but unfortunately that's not an option since I dont want my bits to ice over. Meantime I'm popping over to my in laws to get clean and ensure my hair remains cootie free. It's just like camping and we all know I'm a 5 star resort kind of girl.

My plan for Sunday was to sew like a crazy demon. Pressing seams makes me crazy so that part of my mission was accomplished early Sunday morning. Scarily, my iron kept making cracking and snapping noises. Im going with the idea that the iron  thinks it's really rice bubbles (snap , crackle, ) and will wait for the POP before I really worry.   If I stop blogging unexpectedly  it's not because I've decided you aren't worth the effort- it's because I've been electrocuted.

Lots of pressing, cutting and  sewing later and  the BWR quilt was finally laid out. There's more sewing to do yet ...but I'm making progress.

For one awful moment I thought I'd sewed the cat to the quilt  but he was just being nosy and putting his cat stank on it. Apparently it got the Mordecai stamp of approval.

And voila! The cupcake project is done.

Mid afternoon  I got distracted by the idea of a table lamp for the loungeroom.  Those kind of thoughts usually mean we spend the next fortnight  running round looking for a mythical lamp that only exists inside my head. I guess the universe decided to cut me some slack because I found this at the second store we went to.

And I bought these beautiful sparkly lights too. I now have so many lights in that room that the drug helicopters will pick up abnormal heat patterns on their infa red scanners and we'll probably be raided in the middle of the night by the drug squad.  

Dinner was home made pizza...rosemary with  sea salt and lightly drizzled with olive oil

And proscuitto  , potato, spanish onion and rocket

I'm going to leave you with something I bought with Little P in mind yesterday . Does anyone else see the irony of us making and eating T-Rex cookies or is that just me?

Enjoy what's left of your weekend.

Favourite Things Friday

I'm saying TGIF wholeheartedly this week. It's been a long week and it's not quite over yet . The antidote to getting through one more day of work  is to think about something that makes me happy and that must mean it's time for Favourite Things Friday.

I bet my Mum is laughing her head off right now because despite her best efforts in my formative years this isn't something I would have classed as a favourite until quite recently.  It's like it was  hardwired into me during kidhood and finally came out all these years later.

I have always done my quilt binding by machine, basically because I'm lazy and by the time I get to that point I'm itching to move on to the next project. About 10 months ago someone (I think it was Elizabeth ) convinced me to try hand binding this quilt. I wasn't convinced but I gave it a go.

I hated how slow it was but I loved the results and so, almost every quilt I've made since then has had the binding done by hand. As far as I was concerned hand binding was a necessary evil. Sure -it made the binding look better but was it really worth the time and effort?

Something has happened to me over the last few months.

I've come to appreciate the art of hand sewing. There's something quite relaxing about the time it takes and how you can let your thoughts wander all over the place while you're doing it.

And while I don't think I'll ever be a genius at it ...

There's something about just sitting , slowly, peacefully stitching that makes me feel like a proper sewing person.

Emboldened by my binding successes I've moved  onto different sewing pastures.

And then onto to something different again ...

And while the end result isn't perfect there 's something about talking a needle and thread and your hands and making something pretty that just speaks to me.

Now when I look at something like this - I don't see hours of slow, boring sewing.

I see an opportunity to create something with my hands and my heart. And it makes me feel closer to the generations of accomplished woman who came before me and used their hands in the same way. So I'm just going to puddle along , doing hand sewing whether I'm fabulous at it or not and enjoying the ride.

Feel free to link up and let us know about your favourite thing this week.

15 Minutes A Day-A Challenge with Kate

I had other fish to fry this week. Like wardrobe cleaning and household chores which took precedence over creativity. Bummer.  I hate it when I have to act all grown up and sensible. It stinks.

My week wasn't a total bust in the creativity department. I focused on making slow but steady progress on a couple of projects.

More work on  the black and white and red quilt , which really needs a name because I'm fed up with typing black and white and red quilt every time I mention it.  I've lost sight of where I'm going with this because  all I'm doing is sewing strips and pressing seams. Once I'm done with that part the whole top should come together pretty quickly. It's just excruciating getting there!

Cupcake anyone?   

  

The Dresden's were completely neglected.I feel like the Flying Dutchman doomed forever to sail but never reach port with that quilt. By hook or by crook I'm going to make some progress there this week or die trying!

I stared at some Christmas fabrics , played with them a little bit and then stared at them some more, trying to decide what I want to use for a couple of new projects. I think I have it all squared away in my head. It's almost July so it's time to start thinking Christmas sewing. Maybe then I'll actually be finished by Christmas! I like the idea of Christmas quilting much better than the reality usually. I have yet to make a Christmas quilt I adore. Maybe this year?

I took possession of some new fabrics for my stash which doesn't really count as crafting but I'm including it anyway, mainly because I spent some time lovingly stroking them and dreaming of new projects. I suspect Little P is going to benefit from this lot of cute-ness.

And Little Miss Sunshine donated some extra fabrics to the cause from her stash.

And in crafty mail news this week Lisa from Calicos in Bloom sent me this fabulous hot pad from a giveaway I won on her blog recently  .  Matches my kitchen perfectly. I love it! Thank you Lisa.

I'm planning a sewing assault this week.  We'll see how that goes. Meantime pop by Kate's place , Life in Pieces to see what other people got up to in the sewing arena this week.