Wintry Days

We have had the most amazing weather over the last couple of days. Thunderstorms, endless hours of pouring rain, dark skies and howling winds. It's classic Winter weather, the kind that keeps us indoors. I used to hate Winter but over the last couple of years I have come to love it. I love Winter food, and curling up on the couch with a blanket, and layering skirts and tights and boots, and the fireplace, and mulled wine!

I thought I would share some of the things that have brightened my Winter day, today.

Flowers from my family. The small bouquet is one that Miya picked me from our garden, and the large one was picked by Nath as he walked down to the Post Office to get our mail. I love having fresh flowers on my kitchen windowsill to make smile while I am working.

We stripped the carpet out of the kids' room today, as it was old, stained and still had the faint scent of cat and cigarette smoke from the previous owners. The floorboards underneath are not polished and are pretty marked but I actually like their rustic charm. We picked up a loft bed from Freecycle so we have moved Miya onto that one, Eden onto the pink bunk and Brannen will stay in his cot for now. The loft bed is great because we can utilise the underneath of it as play space. The kids love their updated room.

I am working (slowly) on a patchwork bedspread made out of vintage bed sheets. It is taking me forever to cut the hundreds of squares I need but it will look beautiful when it is done. I bought the most luxurious cotton/bamboo blend wadding for the inside so it will be a lovely warm bedspread (that may not be complete until next Winter!)

 The sight (and smell) of fresh, homemade bread baking - you can't beat it. Even though I don't eat it, being gluten free, I still love having bread baking in the kitchen on a cold Winter day!

My Ongoing To-Do List

There is always much to do around here. It can feel like as you tick one item off 'the list', three more jobs pop up. Whether it be housework, keeping lunchboxes filled, garden maintenance or keeping up with the work that animals create, it can be difficult to stay on top of things. I often tell Nath that I can only be awesome at three things at once, and I am definitely looking forward to having him around more!

Some of the things on my list currently are.....

Mucking out chicken pens, and putting the old straw etc onto our compost heap. This weekend we are also doing another cull of our young roosters and old chooks and moving all the other chickens into the one pen up the back. The driveway pen will be dismantled so we can build an enclosure for our goats.

Sewing up a flannelette doona cover for our bed using vintage single bed sheets that my mum gave me, cut into patches. I have finished making winter doona covers for the girls - simply by sewing single bed flat flannelette sheets together.

Finishing (I hope) the curtains for the kids' room. The curtains they have in there currently are a wee bit short and let too much cold air in through the gap. Poor Eden sleeps under the window where the draught is.

Filling up the freezer with bulk-cooked lunchbox goodies.

Weeding some more of the garden.

I'm coming to an acceptance, even a love, of winter clover. It can stay.

Bottling kombucha and making yoghurt.

My kombucha 'mother' is reproducing!

Enjoying the cooler weather! While it is nowhere near as cool as it is going to get, I have been getting into the swing of autumn with blankets in every room, apple with cinnamon sticks and cloves simmering away on the stove, chicken and puy lentil pies for dinner last night, and wearing my slippers around the house! I do think the cooler months are fast becoming my favourite time of the year.

Getting out for a bike ride. (Brannen and I - mostly me, he enjoyed the ride from the back of my bike - rode 12km of hills today to a friend's house and back. The fifteen extra kilos that Brannen provides presents a fairly hefty challenge in getting up and over those hills!)

And, sigh, tackling the ever-growing pile of washing.

What have you and yours been up to?

The Play Patch

A little doll I made for my lovely niece.

 As both of my growing-up-too-fast girls are off to school this year, Brannen and I will be finding ourselves with some time on our hands! I have decided to finally give a long-term goal of mine a good go.... establishing a little made-at-home business, selling some of my sewing projects at markets and swap meets.

Taggie Ball

Introducing The Play Patch. This casual little venture will see me sewing up lots of 'play resources'.... toys, games, dress ups, playroom decorations, toy storage bags and the like. I have enjoyed making some of these things for my own kids and their friends over the last couple of years, and would love to spread some imagination and fun onto other families too! Most of what I make will be from upcycled or thrifted fabrics, and all a bit one of a kind.

Simple Princess Tutu

My first stall will be on February the 16th, so I will be very busy getting my stock together before then. I am only doing markets this year, not orders, just in case I find it hard to fit it all in. I don't want to disappoint people by not meeting order deadlines.

Wishing Hearts

Some more pics of the types of things I will be making:

Playroom/Garden Bunting

Peek-a-Boo Bags

Fabric Travel Chalkboards

Capes

Fairy Wings

Soft Toys

Doll's Nappies

Fairy Crowns

Lego Bag/Mat

Lego Bag/Mat

I'm pretty excited, and a little bit nervous, and starting to feel that little panic that comes with having a lot to do in a very short amount of time! I have so many ideas of other things I could make, but need to start small, I think, and hopefully the first market will be a success!

If you live in WA, you will find The Play Patch at the Bakers Hill Swap Meet on February the 16th. Come and say hi!

Cheery Christmas Creating.

It is such quintessential Australian weather here at the moment.... hot and steamy one minute, dark and stormy and humid the next. I love sitting at my sewing table watching the summer storms roll in over the hills, bringing the hint of a cool breeze with them. I know that very soon, this pattern will even out to long strings of very hot and dry days and we will long for the relief of a summer storm or two!

Sitting at my sewing table is something I have been doing a lot of lately. Our handmade Christmas preparations are going swimmingly and we are all well into the swing of all things festive. I have enjoyed creating things for our home that we will love pulling out of the Christmas box year after year, and I love getting the kids involved in making things, too. They are little for such a short time, and I know it will be very special for all of us to look back on the things they have made during this time, in years to come.

Some of our makings:

The kids' crafting table!

Putting up the tree.

The 'holly' the kids made... from leaves out of our garden and old baubles.

Christmas lanterns we made as a family.

Mary and Baby Jesus

Together with Joseph, under the tree.

Peace bunting I made at my sewing night last night.

Joy bunting, hand stitched onto hessian flags.

We hope you and yours are having a merry, meaningful lead up to the Festive Season!

Making Christmas Fun!

December is finally here and we have well and truly got our Christmas on in this household! The 'Creativity Room' (the argument about whether it is our music room or our sewing room is ongoing....) is a hub of activity (and mess) and we are churning out Christmas projects, gifts and decorations. We still have Eden's birthday to go (in eight days - eeek!!) and probably should be sorting that out first but we have sort of been swept away by all things Christmas.

As a lot of the things I have made are gifts for people who may be reading, I won't post about them until after Christmas, but I can post about our decoration-making!

I made this wreath after going to a friend's house and flicking through her Christmas Better Homes and Gardens-y type mags. Being the cheapskate I am, I took photos of all the ideas I wanted to try and this wreath was one of them. I can't remember which magazine it was in, but that's ok, I'm about to tell you how to make it!

Take a wire coathanger and either snip off the hook part with wire cutters or bend it round on itself, then form the rest of the coathanger into a circle.
Tear strips of Christmas-y (or any colour, really!) scrap material into strips of about 3cm by 20cm. Tie the strips onto the wire circle, bunching them up really tight to make a nice fluffy, full wreath. Snip the ends of the strips off quite short, as long ones will make the wreath look a bit droopy. Don't throw the snipped bits away! I'll show you another thing to make with them in a minute.

When the wreath is full, tie on some string (and maybe a couple of bells) to hang it up with.

Now, for dealing with the snipped bits. I threaded mine with a very large-holed needle (one of the big blunt darning needles is fine) onto some twine, with a few beads along the way. The material sits quite snugly on the twine so you can space it out as you please. It makes a lovely fabric Christmas garland!

We have also been doing quite a bit of Christmas craft with the kiddies, including the 'craft swap' that my friends and I organised between ourselves. I'll fill another post on that in a few days.

Hope your Christmas planning and preparing is going well!

Rediscovering Home

I'm sitting at my sewing table to type this, looking out onto our deck, and beyond that our (somewhat dishevelled) front garden, and beyond that, the green rolling hills that mark the beginning of the Avon Valley. It is a warm and sunny day today, but I am wondering if the weather is fooling us again, and one last cold snap is around the corner. Pretty soon the hills will change from rolling green to sunburnt brown, the blossoms will fade from the fruit trees and summer fruits will take their place.

This time of the year brings with it its own set of tasks and rhythms. We have been busy clearing old piles of mulch, wood and scrap tin left by the previous owners, preparing for snake season. The old Hills Hoist we got from Gumtree has been cemented in, ready for the warm weather to hit so my washing can finally be dried in the sun. Garden beds have been dug out, and are waiting for the last of our spring planting to be laid out. Corn and beans are in, as well as potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, radishes, spinach.... and our ever expanding line up of young fruit trees are waiting to be transplanted into the ground out of their pots. Compost beds have been built, as the compost and mulch will get our gardens through a long, hot summer without using too much water. The water tank is connected and will be used purely for the gardens (we are hoping for another couple of days of rain, though, to fill it!)

We have our first brood of quail chicks, now. Nath is looking forward to raising them up for their eggs and their meat, but for now they are just cute little balls of feathers running around the bottom of a cage. When they are a bit older, they will live in a large run, but a cage is fine for now. We also have some new unsexed young chickens. The girls will join our layers and the boys will end up in the pot.

I have been busy preparing for Miya's fifth birthday party next weekend. She is having a garden tea party, and there is much to do to get our garden in order. I have sewn fifteen metres of bunting to string up, and have cleared the local opshops of their teacups and saucers. Next week, I will be busily baking little cakes, biscuits and quiches for the day. Miya has invited ten or twelve little friends over, some new and some old, and is very excited.

 

All this work around the home helps remind me of what is truly important in life. I feel like I lost my way for a bit there, being on holidays, then moving house immediately upon our return. Money has been thoughtlessly spent, food is not being planned and enjoyed the way it should be. This seasonal change of rhythm reminds me to take an inward breath in my daily life, and focus back in on home and the family. To slow down (again - isn't it funny how easy it is to hasten pace with the rest of the world, and how difficult it can be to slow our lives down when they get too frantic?) and enjoy just.... being.

I have made a few decisions, the last couple of days. I miss my buying ban, and the freedom it gave me from being weighted down by stuff. I am revisiting my buying hierarchy:

• Make do
• Make
• Freecycle/Pay It Forward
• Secondhand
• New, but locally handmade
• New, but Australian made and/or Fairtrade
• New, made overseas, but Fairtrade and supporting communities.

I am also returning to my food philosophy of eating only unprocessed food. This has been tricky. I have definitely grown used to not-good-food-choices in recent weeks.

And, I am staying home more. Rediscovering home, the place of my soul's content. Rediscovering rest, and the joy of completing the little tasks that keep this home ticking over. Finding time to create, and play, and read.

Kind of like spring cleaning for the soul.

Makings.

Today, it is so wild and windy here, the kind of blustery spring day that takes you by surprise after a string of nice weather. Nath has the car at work today, so the kids and I are rattling around the house listening to the gusts blow things around outside. So far, the deck cafe blinds have unravelled and are flailing about, and one of the doors has come off the garden shed. We have also lost a branch from our newly blossoming stone fruit tree (I can't wait to find out what kind of stone fruit it is!)

The kids are all either in bed sleeping (or singing, in Eden's case) or busily crafting (Miya). Craft time is treasured time here, and I have loved the opportunities recently to whip up a few craft projects of my own.

We recently acquired a very old piano, and with it came a tired old piano stool. I covered it in a lovely grey and white fabric, then made a runner for the top of the piano to match.

 

I then got together some contrasting remnants I had in my fabric stash and made a matching cushion....

 ...and then I made another one, because cushions should always have friends....

I have also reupholstered my tired old rocking chair. It has earned a makeover, having been my preferred place to sit since I was pregnant with Miya.

I've had my 'make' on in the kitchen, too, with my first attempt at making chocolate from scratch (using cacao butter and cacao powder) (it was delicious!)...

... as well as bliss balls using fresh dates, cacao powder, pistachios, rice malt syrup, coconut oil and coconut.

The girls spent the morning making necklaces using beads from all my old jewellery....

... while Brannen made a mess.

What have you been making lately?

xx