30 December 2013

Etsy Shop Change

Etsy introduced earlier this year the ability to have instant downloads for digital files.  I haven't had the time or the inclination to do it until now.  But there was a couple of times recently with our bad phone/internet when I was struggling to meet my obligation to email the files and this would have got me out of this pickle quickly and easily.

Over the next few weeks/months I hope to have all my patterns as digital downloads from Etsy, which means once you pay you can download the files.  At the moment I don't think BigCartel offers this (they may I just don't know about it but I want Etsy working first).

The day was perfect today for walking.  Coco got a walk this morning... she hasn't been on one for a couple of weeks in the lead up to Christmas.  The first 2 pictures were from that walk, I wanted to get the sale boats that you could see clearly way out to sea, but they are just specks on the horizon with my iPhone.  The local creek is starting to recede but they are forecasting rain later in the week so it may be short lived fingers crossed... our lawn could do with a water.   Later in the morning I headed to the beach again this time with the rest of the family.
 I expected the beach to be a lot busier than it was, but I don't think people lay and bake like they use to when we were young.
 The ocean was a beautiful shade of blue green today.

27 December 2013

Christmas Over for another year

It took me a few days to recover from my Trip to Melbourne, I don't know if I caught something on the plane or if the year just finally got to me but I felt awful from Friday through to a massive migraine on Sunday.  And I was going to do so much on Sunday... managed the food shopping and that was all.  It didn't matter that the floors weren't washed nobody noticed well at least they didn't say anything.

Melbourne was busy and I went to my favourite shop and made a purchase or two.


Just love the packaging.  I did a lot of walking on Friday the pedometer said 12km so that might have been  why I was a bit tired when I got home.  I managed to pick up a few more little gifts for the kids.






















Tuesday I knocked off work early and just got stuff ready for Xmas day, most of which not needed as the family didn't stay for tea.  But the trifle went down a treat.


Yesterday Squid decided that we would paint her room now.... so this morning I am off to buy paint as we now have all her bedroom furniture in the lounge room.  I have a couple of other errands to run as well.. I have some Christmas money to spend.  

18 December 2013

Xmas Celebrations

The year is slowly winding down.  All my xmas shopping (non food items) is done.  Everything I can cook before hand has been done (fruit cake, mince pies, white chocolate xmas rocky road, chocolate apricot balls and cinnamon and ginger nut mix).  I’m not stressing about xmas lunch, it is pretty much all planned in my head and there will only be 7 of us for lunch so no big deal.  I read in the paper that they expect it to be 27 on the big day …. as we have to have a hot lunch (MIL’s rules not mine) I will at least survive the kitchen. 

I’m off to the hairdressers  after work today for the Christmas DO and nails buffed and polished, then off to dinner with the quilting girls before getting up at the crack of dawn for a flight to Melbourne for a work show and a spot of shopping.

I’m heading to Luccello on Friday for a look around and apart from that have no plans for a couple of hours but I am hoping to find a few stocking fillers in my travels.


There was no sewing for the girls this year apart from the buttons that make the closures for these jar surrounds.  The jars are full of homemade goodies and the surrounds were one of the projects form the Artsy Christmas Class I did recently.  The bags have a few different bits and pieces… like a brooch from curly pops shop and one of my favourite summertime T2 teas, a few more goodies that I picked up at a couple of markets that I went to recently.

The labels on the bags I found on Pinterest and they are a free download and are great to label homemade goodies.

I've scheduled this for the time we will be sitting down to tea so the girls get a surprise.



10 December 2013

Very Proud



It was Year 7 Graduation last night. As I have said Maestro has had a bit of a year of it this year and last term he didn't even want to go to graduation. But I told him it would be a special night and he wouldn't want to miss out on it, it wasn't about his teacher it was about him.  We shopped for his outfit after going to the pictures during the holidays so I didn't make a big deal of it.

One of his friend's Godfather owns a few luxury cars and she offered quite a few of her friends a ride.  Maestro likes cars so he jumped at the chance and he was really looking forward to the night. We took some photo's and left the 4 friends to head to the hall.  Maestro played it up for the cameras getting out of the car and we will probably be able to show that footage at his 21st.


Here he is getting his graduation certificate.  We thought that would be it.  But when the end of the night's awards were handed out Maestro and 2 of his friends from the car ride each received an Award, for Science (Zac), Resources (Sophie) and ICT (Maestro) not bad odds out of 100 kids.  I think it might have even made the year worthwhile…. not quite…but it was great for them to get some recognition for their achievements of the year.  


03 December 2013

Renewing My Creative Soul

Can't tell you how much I have been enjoying sketching and painting this week.  This is my first attempt at one of the projects in the Twelve Artsy Ornaments of Christmas there are a few more that I want to try but getting some of the supplies as I have said has been a bit difficult.  Did a trip to Spotlight on the weekend and they had zilch of anything that I could use and what was there was pretty cheesy.

On the weekend I got an email from  Christy Tomlinson (the host of the Twelve Artsy Ornaments) advertising her sale.  A lot of her classes were half price so I enrolled in a couple.  The classes are with Junelle Jacobson and the picture here is of one of her projects.

I am just about ready to enrol in Life Book 2014 and that will be a year long course but it doesn't start until 1 January so I am feeding my Creative Soul with these short courses first.

We put up the tree on the weekend and I got all my ornie swaps out to decorate one of my wire trees.