Matching Pegs

Our family is having a very quiet Australia day, but I thought I would mark the occasion by sharing these photos of some regular visitors, these Rainbow Lorikeets, a favourite Australian bird.  Surprisingly they have been coming to plunder a conifer out the front which I think is “Thuja orientalis”.  They have been eating the small berry-looking-things that I think are actually female cones.  It surprises me because the plant is certainly not native, (as the birds are) but the birds clearly love it – as they are very thorough, and return regularly.

These two systematically made their way around half the plant – occasionally one would disappear into the interior, and it would look like there was only one bird there.

These birds remind me that we are very lucky to have a house and garden in one of the leafier suburbs of Melbourne, and lucky to live here in Australia.

Have you had any interesting visitors this Australia Day?

These are not quite as clever as some others I have seen on the web, (featuring mini knitting and made up as tiny terrariums) but I had lots of fun filling these glass baubles with some buttons, and some tiny felt offcuts, which I have been collecting all year.  I have 4 more left, and I am thinking at that they will contain tiny pegs.

I think I will string these together, to hang as non-seasonal ornaments, so that I can enjoy them all year round.

There has been quite a bit of last minute crafting going on, which means no time to take photos before gifting.  This kind of means the gifts don’t exist, blog wise.  I thought I would show you other versions I have made of the same things.

This is “Thank-you Flower, which I designed in February 2008.  I made these for the three carers at Occasional Care, in three different colour-ways.  The spots you see are all french knots.

I also made a version of one of these (which I first designed in 2004) for the Kinder assistant – I have made her a different one every year, which together make up a set.  This year’s one was gold, and said “Family” on it.  Others have been “Love”, “Peace”, “Hope” and the “Joy” one you see here.

The officially started the long summer school holidays yesterday, so we are going to have lots of time at home.  Thankfully it is not too hot yet, so we are really enjoying relaxing in the garden around our new house.  This little fellow (or gal) has been hanging out a lot in our yard too – a juvenile kookaburra.  He/She is often in the tree outside Rory’s window (where I took this photo) waiting patiently for his family to feed him/her.

I think if we ever named our house, it would have to be called “Kookaburra Hollow”.  Does anyone out there live in a house with a name?

After a spell of very hot, dry and unseasonable weather, we had a thunderstorm this afternoon and some big heavy drops of rain.  One of the locals decided to take a rain shower on my back deck .

There was lots of fanning out of wings and tail, and lots of shaking.  It was tricky to capture through the rain, and the window.   I know these are not the greatest photos, but what a thrill to be living up close with the Kookaburras (Which belong to the Kingfisher family).  You can read about the Laughing Kookaburra here, and down at the bottom right there is a link to listen to the laughing call.

In this very blurry photo you can kind of make out the pale “robins-egg-blue” coloured spots on his/her wings.  I wish I could think of a more accurate name for that colour, it seem rude to be mentioning Robins to describe a Kookaburra.

We have made it to the other side of the move!  We are still feeling a little chaotic, but the space is pure heaven.  The garden is much more native than our previous one, as we are surrounded by gum trees (eucalypts).  There is plenty of scope to put in ground-covers, shrubs and flowers.

The kids are loving having their own bedrooms – this is the one that Amelia chose, which is actually the smallest, she fell in love with the paint colour.  I think it is a little strong, but it does go well with her quilt and fairy wall hanging.

Some areas of our home are looking more set up than others – there are still lots of boxes everywhere – but it is so lovely to finally be able to display some things that have never seen he light of day.  This is a quiet corner of the lounge room that we are going to use when we want to get away from the hubbub to do some work on the laptop, or some quiet writing.

The lounge room also boasts the ugliest lights ever, strung low enough that several members of the extended family are going to have to wear hardhats to enter the room.  See those little specks of light on the ceiling? They are being thrown by the lovely mosaic bowl in the previous photo, which I was given by a dear friend for my last birthday (thank-you Leigh).  We are now calling it the reverse disco ball.

You can see it here with some beautiful roses that my Mum bought from her garden this weekend.  I believe they are “Henri Matisse” Roses.

Our new home is a symphony of those 80′s colours – pale apricot and mission brown, with quite a bit of woodwork thrown in.  Even the ceilings and doors are painted pale apricot -the same strength as the walls.

The meals area is the only living area in the house with a slightly different colour – a feature wall of textured dusky pink.  It is kind of growing on me, but Luke doesn’t think much of it.  It sure makes a nice backdrop to the beautiful flowers that our friends Rowena and Mark gave us to celebrate moving into our new house (thanks guys).

On Friday we were reunited with Lotta, who spent the week at my Mum and Dad’s while we moved.  She is also loving the new space, and we are all happy to be together again.

I will be back to show you more as the house is unpacked.  Hopefully I will have a sewing area to show you soon, once we have created a cutting table – we have great plans that involve 2 kitchen cabinets from IKEA and a door.  Stay tuned.

When Amelia was born (over nine years ago) I planted this beautiful rose to commemorate the occasion.  When later we moved (twice in 9 months) the rose came with us in a large tub.  This time we are leaving it behind, as it will be a little complicated to extricate, and there is no obvious place, in the sun, to plant it at the new house.

Today I cut these, the first roses of the season, to enjoy them in our last days in our little house.  Their scent is divine.  If I end up finding a suitable spot at the new house, I will track down an Oklahoma (A rich, dark, red, hybrid tea) rose to plant again.

If not, I will still be able to enjoy them, we will pass the house daily on school days, I just won’t be able to pick them.

We move in 8 days – I am not sure when I will post again – this moving business is hard!  Perhaps when I next post it will be from our new house.

Rory lost his first tooth today, with very little warning.  Unlike the way his big sister deals with loose teeth, I think he helped it along a fair bit.  It is amazing how much the loss of one tooth changes his appearance.  I took this photo of Rory in front of our Scarlet Oak, which matched his school shirt perfectly.

I often take photos of my work, using the foliage in the garden as a backdrop.  Inspired by this practice, Michaela decided to direct a little photo shoot of her own.

This is her Angel-teddy in two of her poses.

I had a fabulous Mothers Day on Sunday – I was spoilt with a wonderful breakfast, (bacon and eggs, toast and tea) and a delicious afternoon tea of banana cake and choc chip cookies – all made by my wonderful family.  The kids choose presents from the school Mothers day stall that they had really put a lot of thought into, and Michaela ate me some lovely chocolates.  That’s right – Michaela made me some chocolates at kinder which were hidden in the house with her big sisters help – chocolates I knew nothing about.  I learnt about them when she appeared and told me……

“there are only 2 left Mummy”

“2 what Michaela?”

“2 choccies”

Either there was only a small amount of milk in the chocolate, or Michaela may be starting to grow out of her milk allergy, as she seemed to have no adverse effects from her surreptitious snack.  Oh well – it is the thought that counts right?

Another great thing about Mothers Day was that the sun was shining on us, and our washing – I have been a mother for almost 9 years – I have maternal priorities that I just can’t hide.

How was your Mothers Day?

Life has been moving at full tilt here in the Matching Pegs household, as we move on towards the end of the school year, and Christmas.  We have had lots of visitors, both human and avian, and several dramatic events.  The past week included a car accident (single car) out the front of our home, which would have resulted in a car in our bedroom, if there was not a crash barrier on the nature strip.  The occupant was not injured, but was clearly suffering the effects of drugs or alcohol, and rapidly drove off in a barely drivable car – despite offers of assistance.

On this Saturday past, the wettest day of the year, there was a large fire in a house in the street behind us.  There was so much smoke (you could hardly see the back fence of our place) that I started to get pretty nervous about the precise location of the fire.  I would have guessed it was only about three houses away (it was more like 10).  I keep thinking about the people that live there.  I don’t know much about them, but I know that they were not home, and the fire was electrical.  It turns out a friend of ours saw the flames, stopped his car and called the fire brigade.  From the look of the house and the amount of smoke I would imagine that they have lost pretty much everything.  It would be so devastating.  I keep imaging that it might have been Christmas Tree lights, and  I am glad we do not have any.

On a cheerier note, here are some of our avian visitors.

The Rainbow Lorikeets are frequent visitors, especially while the prunus is covered in fruit.

We also have a lot of noisier visitors……….

One of our human visitors was a friend of mine from school, who I had not seen in about 10 years.  It was great to catch up and meet her brand new baby.  I whipped up another bunny for baby Charlotte, (see top photo) slightly larger than the first.  As soon as Michaela saw it she asked to have one for her in green.  Instead of making more softie friends for Michaela, I have been sewing Christmas bits and pieces, including these little present bags – my alternative to wrapping paper.

None of the kids are getting enough sleep as Christmas excitement reaches fever pitch.  We have seen every stalling tactic in the book at bed time this week.  Michaela is so wrung out from the pre-Christmas excitement that she fell asleep under her bed the other afternoon – I felt like going in there to join her.

How is your family coping with the pre-Christmas excitement?

Thank-you so much for all the lovely comments about my quilt, the whole experience has been quite a thrill.  I am not sure when I will ever get the time to write up some more patterns for my things, but it is definitely something I would love to do.  All I really need is a housework/dinner/washing and homework fairy, and I will design up a storm.

Today I decided that it was high time to start getting ready for Christmas – after all, Rory has been practicing his narration for the prep Christmas concert for about a month now.

The kids have been hounding me for some time to decorate the outside of our house for Christmas, (to keep up with one of the neighbours).  While I am not really into the whole flashing lights thing, (or large blow -ups of the big man in red) I thought I had an achievable idea to try.  Thing is, I am not really sure I pulled it off.

I bought some purple tissue paper, and florists wire to make Pom-Poms to hang out under our front verandah. I have made these pom-poms before, they remind me of our red geraniums, which flower in ball shaped clusters.  I chose purple because it was the regal colour associated with the baby Jesus, and also because it would show up well against the red brickwork, and the green plants.

I know the paper in these photos looks blue, sadly it is not a photographic trick or a problem with the colour settings on your monitor – once I separated the layers of paper (which were labeled purple, and looked purple in the pack) it turned out they were, in fact, blue.  Not a Christmas colour at all.

But I digress, I made 9 different Pom Poms following Martha’s helpful instructions, and hung them from the beams of the front verandah.

They look quite nice swinging in the breeze, even if they are distributed in a slightly lop sided manner – I didn’t want the ones on the edge to hang too low, where they could get wet from some occasional rain – however, they do not look Christmassy, in any way at all.

Something that will look Christmassy is my Christmas Angels that I am making to give to the kid’s teachers at the end of the school year (in two weeks time).  I cut them out yesterday, and now I need to start working the child labourers, and get them stuffing the small bodies and limbs.

Finally, here is a purple that really is regal, an Ivy Pelargonium called “Royal Night”.  I have been on the hunt for a nice purple “geranium” for a while, and I was very happy to see this one at the nursery today.  This one has a cascading form, that is suited to hanging baskets and window boxes.  Perhaps I will hang it up in a basket on our front verandah, and then something out there will be purple.

I started this quilt 31 months ago in March 2006.  It has been quite a labour of love, and it is very close to completion, as I am now working on the binding.  I hand quilted around these words a few days ago – it could have been the motto for the whole quilt, and, it seems, the entire week.

In the past 24 hours the Matching Pegs household has been hit by a tedious irritating problem that we have all had to deal with, (a member of the family asked me not to be specific).  The problem is not serious, but not dealing with it promptly would make our problem multiply, if you catch my drift.  So I have been practicing my deep breathing and remembering to be patient.

When I was shopping last week for the binding for this quilt, I also picked up some binding and backing for my Chez Moi – Charisma quilt.

The red fabric (which is for the binding) is a perfect colour match, because it is another Chez Moi fabric, but this time it is from the Posh range.  The green fabric is a plain green homespun – it doesn’t match quite as well, but it will be used only for the backing, and it goes well with the binding.  I am toying with the idea of marking a design on the backing, and free motion quilting the quilt from the back, but I am not sure if my skills are up to it.  It might be a good way to learn.

Today Michaela and I were enjoying the afternoon spring sunshine, and blowing bubbles, as well as our cares away.  A little wander around the garden turned up a surprise, a ranunculi from a few years ago, growing where I thought they had been finished.  I thought I would share it with you.  I hope your week is full of happy surprises, but if it is not, I wish you patience.

I have a small collection of teapots on my kitchen windowsill.  There are 3 (I said it was small).  I have been drawing them for my mug-bag design, and now I am drawing them up neatly in Illustrator, so much fun, (the pencil part more than the computer part).

The design is most likely to feature this bamboo handled one, as well as one of my butterflies and a cherry blossom.  I think I will start cutting out paper copies of these drawings at different scales to work out where I am going with this.  I just wish I had a super-teacher to teach me how to use the parts of Illustrator that I need to use.  I keep thinking in a tech drawing, auto cad kind of way when I am using it, and it is the wrong way to approach it.

Here are adorable photos of two of my kids.  It’s my blog, and I like to admire my handiwork – I just gave them both a haircut.

Michaela is going through a skirts and dresses phase, hense the skirt and pants look.  I cut her hair to angle in at the back.

I am no hairdresser, but I think I did OK.

Rory told me a minute before I took that shot that he would only pose if he didn’t have to smile.

I love my son so much that I took both he and Amelia to see Star Wars, The Clone Wars this afternoon.  I almost fell asleep.  Next week we are going to see Wall-E, which I am really looking forward to.  Tomorrow I am taking Amelia to have her ears pierced – so I will probably be posting her new look tomorrow.