Tea towel challenge

Although there's only a couple of days left, have a look at Jenny of ELEFANTZ and you will see she is having a January Tea Towel Challenge.

I bought some tea towels at the Christmas sales with full intentions of making some aprons and Jenny's challenge has made me pull my finger out and get to work.

Headed off to Spotlight on Wednesday to buy bias tape. Came home and cut out the arm parts and pinned on the bias. That's when I realised I didn't have any green thread to match! So another trip to the shops on Thursday. If you need to buy thread, don't bother heading to Greensborough Plaza to buy it. No-one sells it there!

Here we have Austin and Nelson modelling the aprons. They seem to like them! Austin wants me to make one just for him. I think I'll have a look in the linen cupboard. There's sure to be a suitable one in all of those souvenir tea towels I have collected over the years (and never used!).

Blue Tongue

Late last year, we had a large storm and our chicken house collapsed. Needless to say, the chickens now have a new house.

On Tuesday, Noel, Austin and Nelson were clearing up all the wood, tin and chicken wire from the old house and they came across this blue tongue lizard. We have seen him around before. He's our silent pet!

If you're wondering what's in Noel's ears, it's cotton wool as he was using
the electric saw to cut up the wood!

Belated Christmas dinner and Kris Kringle present swap

Last Saturday I went out for dinner with the girls from NOTY for our very belated Christmas get together and Kris Kringle present swap. We went Thai in Eltham and ended up dining by candlelight later in the night as the power went out! Luckily we had already done the present swap.

I received this lovely "welcome" canvas from Claire. If you go to Claire's blog Matching Pegs you will see a sneak peak of my canvas in her tutorial.

My only problem now is where to put it? I don't want it to fade so I need to check if the late afternoon sun will hit it under the verandah next to the front door. If it does, I may need to put it at the back door (where most of our friends come in anyway!).

The Dragonfly and Gerbera

Here is a wall hanging I made for my friend Wendy. It is a copy of the tattoo she has as a memorial to her daughter, Elise. I was very sneaky and had her sister Leanne take a photo of it which she emailed to me. I was then able to duplicate the picture.

This is a close-up of the dragonfly and gerbera.

What a hot day!

Today the temperature got to 44oC and didn't we know it! It was still 38oC at 9pm! And it was certainly hot during the night. I don't know what the lowest temperature was.

Noel and the boys went down to the pool.
It's great having the local pool only 150m from home!

Ginger found a cool spot under the cooling vent.

Here are two of the budgies cooling their wings.

Lucky the Lovebird was lucky enough to stay inside in the cool.

Billy the Galah was also lucky. As we have evaporated cooling and
his cage is near the back door, he managed to get some of the cool!

As for the my girls, the chickens, they disappeared for the day and turned up home after 7pm!

After tea we went for a drive to the Memorial Tower at Kangaroo Ground.

And we watched the sunset.

Rings, rings and more rings

As some of you already know, I've been working on my Double Wedding Ring quilt. I've now got 12 rings together and have started piecing ring number 13. We spent the day yesterday at Kinglake watching some cricket matches. It was very pleasant sitting in the shade with a cool breeze, piecing some "melons".

I've prepared rings 14, 15 and 16 and my aim is to get these put together by the NOTY retreat in August (am I aiming too high?). I'll then decide if I need to do another row of rings.

Fun at msac

During these holidays we are doing lots of little day trips. So far we've been mini golfing, ten pen bowling, swimming and Wednesday we took the boys to msac (Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre). They had a great time in the wave pool. It turned out to be the day they also have the inflatable things going at the pool. There was a crocodile kind of thing for them to climb over and an inflatable slide from the second highest diving platform of the tower. Needless to say, that after about 5 hours at the pool they were exhausted.