October 31, 2010

Not letting the grass grow under our feet!


We're all unpacked and are loving our new home!  The first and most necessary room:

 Our new lounge room:


All the pictures etc are on the walls:


The treasures arrived safe and sound:


The garden seat is in place:


I reckon we have not let the grass grow under our feet!

My husband, however, says he can actually SEE the grass growing under our feet - at about a rate of 1 inch a day!  We had forgotten how quickly everything grows in the sub tropics!  The view from our family room soon reminds us it is time to get the mower out:


I'm still waiting for shelves to be built in my craft room and I've been trying to find everything I need for the class I am teaching at the Craft Retreat next weekend.

Meanwhile, the mail has caught up with our new address:


Australian Country Craft has published my Christmas decorations - can you find them on the front cover?


Here they are on the inside:


And how brilliant is this?  Hazel has already completely finished her Gifts of Grace quilt!  Well done, Hazel, and thanks for sharing your photo.


... and stay tuned - I see that I'm up to 95 posts.  I will have to do something special to celebrate the 100th, won't I?  ... Now, if only my shelves were built, I might be able to find something for a giveaway ....

Happy stitching!

Val

October 24, 2010

There's no place like home!

Just a quick post to let you know we are in our new home.  The move went fabulously well and everything has fallen into place beautifully.  We have done heaps of unpacking, had the painter in to change the colour of about 8 walls, had quotes for some built-ins, ordered a blind for the bedroom so it can be dark enough for me to sleep, set up most of our computer gear, broadband etc, gone away for the weekend for one of our grandson's birthday party and are just loving waking up and not being cold! 

We are really enjoying our new location and met three lots of neighbours on the first day.  I would love to show you some photos, but can't download them from the camera at the moment.

I do, however, now have the photo of the finished Gifts of Grace quilt so here it is:


Better do some more unpacking!

Thanks again for all your well wishes.

Regards
Val

October 17, 2010

Free Pattern - Gifts of Grace Block 9

It's time to give you the last Gifts of Grace block - Block 9.  It's a bit sad to think we've come to the end of the series.  I have really enjoyed designing and sharing this project with you.  Our last block is Self control - able to marshall and direct our energies wisely.

Here is what the block looks like:


I do hope you like it.  As usual, it can be downloaded from my website hereI will leave all the blocks available for a couple more months, so tell your friends if they want to download them for free, they will need to do so soon.

Of course, I will love to see photos of what you do with the blocks.  I will show you how I finished mine off in a couple of weeks when my computer is up and running again.  I plan to have one or two free patterns for you in November and December before we start another BOM in 2011.  Well, the ideas are in my head at the moment and I'm hopeful they will become a reality! 

............................................

Now for our big news - we are officially homeless!

At the moment, we are of no fixed abode!!!!!  Sale of our house went through on Friday last week, and for two days we have had nowhere we could call home!  Tomorrow, Monday, we take possession of our new home, which will be very exciting, as you can imagine.

On Thursday last week, the removalists came and packed all our earthly goods into two containers.  They did a fantastic job, very professionally and very happily.  We could not believe how neatly they packed the containers and how smooth they made the whole process.



And here are all our things being driven off to be put on the train to travel the 2000+ kilometres to our new home.



Meanwhile, we too are heading north to lovely Queensland, a journey which is taking us three days by car.  We're almost there as I write this - only a few hundred kilometres to go!  If all goes to plan, our goods will be delivered Tuesday morning and we hope to sleep in our new home Tuesday night.  Then comes all the excitement of unpacking and finding new places to put all our gear!

Thank you to so many of you who wrote such lovely comments and e-mails, wishing us well and praying for us in our big move.  I know you understand that I haven't been able to thank you all individually, but be assured I have really appreciated your care and support at this time. 

Blessings
Val





October 10, 2010

Pardon the Nostalgia

I hope you'll pardon my nostalgia trip this week.  It's just 4 days to "Uplift" day when the removalist arrives with two (Yes, 2!) containers to pack all our earthly goods ready for railing up to Queensland.

I think everything is under control, with a list of jobs as long as my arm to be ticked off this week - packing up the computer, printers, Hi Fi equipment, morning tea with neighbours, final mowing, trip to the dump for the last time, etc etc.

We have had three Farewell functions over this weekend.  Our local Birdwatching Club (of which DH was President and I was Secretary for a number of years) put on a dinner for us on Friday night.  It was a beautiful time saying goodbye to very good friends who have taught us so much about bird life and nature.  Then last night we were treated to a fabulous dinner attended by work mates, some of whom we have shared our lives with for almost 20 years.  They are very special people whose involvement with us has gone way beyond the 9 to 5 workaday world, people with whom we have laughed and cried through the highs and lows of life.  Then today our Church put on a luncheon to farewell us. These people are like family to us so it was a rather teary occasion. We will miss them heaps.

So here is a final goodbye to our idyllic situation at Goolwa on the Fleureu Peninsula. 

We have lived just three houses from this beautiful River Murray:


Pelicans have been a daily joy:


We have enjoyed the view of the rolling hills:


Been blown away by the amazing birdlife:


and walked along the beach, enraptured by the overflowing beauty of the ocean:


 And one of my favourite memories: This pair of swans were doing their courting dance.  They were swimming together, matching each other's every move in wonderful synchronisation.  


Suddently they separated and turned around, coming towards each other face to face with feathers fanned out in a perfect display.  It was an enchanting moment and you can see why I chose this as my profile photo!


 We have been greatly blessed!

Regards
Val



October 3, 2010

Garden Dreams

When we built our home eleven years ago, I dreamed of having Wisteria totally covering our pergola area, looking magnificent in Spring with those gorgeous pendulous lavender blooms, followed by shivery green leaves to give shade in Summer, then losing everything in Winter to let the warm sunshine in.  And that is how it has been happening for all the time we have lived in our beautiful home in Goolwa.

This is one of the things I am going to miss when we move in just 11 days time:


Loads of lavender loveliness:


Each little part gorgeously perfect:


And to complement this magnificent show, we have a wall of Jasmine as the backdrop:



The perfume is all-pervading.  Can you smell it?  Can you hear the bees humming?


 This is one of my Garden Dreams that came true!

 
I called one of my favourite patterns "Garden Dreams" and it soon become my most popular pattern. It is a perpetual calendar with seven mini quilts for the days of the week, twelve for the numbers and a heart month indicator, with a fabric-covered box to store all the spare bits and pieces. I gave it a workover this year in totally different fabric and it is appearing in this month's and next month's issues of Country Threads magazine.


I still love the original version too.  If you don't have access to our wonderful Australian magazine, then you can purchase the pattern here (either version).


We held our Garage Giveaway yesterday with lots of people coming to relieve us of our 'excess baggage'.  We were able to send $230 off for the Pakistan Flood Relief, so we were quite thrilled about that.

All the packing is complete, apart from the hundred and one 'last minute things' that can't be packed yet.  I'm ticking off all the jobs on the list one by one, and plan to start tackling the cleaning this week.  With so many built-ins in our house, there are plenty of shelves to be wiped over apart from the dust behind all the furniture!

I had planned to do a little bit of hand stitching at night, but it's the same story every night at the moment - fall asleep as soon as I stop!  Hope you're doing better than that!

Regards
Val