Saturday's News

                            {Part of our backyard that is still green despite the high temperature}

Hello readers

It's 8.52 am Saturday. I have been up and out of bed since 4 am. This makes for a very long day. I guess I am lucky it wasn't 2 am, another regular waking time of mine. Makes you wonder what the heck goes on within these bodies of ours. I feel that I have no control over the situation. I go to bed later or sometimes earlier, but I wake when I do, and not much I can do. Do you wake up realising it is far too early so quickly try to power the brain down again? Me too, but it mostly doesn't work. 

I had my daughter Katie sleeping over last night as The Bloke was over 1000 km's away in a coastal town. He went there to pick up the youngest daughter, who had thought she wanted to relocate to be nearer to her closest in age sister. After three weeks, she knew she wanted to come home. The Bloke, always on rescue duty, set out to collect her. Of course this is no hardship for him as he absolutely loves getting out of town and driving long distances. He packs up his old beloved four wheel drive and off he goes. 
This was a quick trip and he is driving home today. I told him to stay another day but he insists he needs to be back home to look after me. 
I do feel a little sad for our daughter who remains living away from family. She has her fiancee of course and his lovely family, but our girl, likes to be among her sisters too.

In other news, I finished my star quilt last week. I pieced it together last year and it sat in a basket waiting for me to be in the right mood to do it. It never happened on my own accord, but 'middle child"-(Her term not mine) Emily encouraged and supported me to tackle it. If you even need a coach this is the girl for the job. She set everything up for me so I could just park myself in the wheelchair and get quilting. It is rather a large quilt and after only a few blocks I was done I had to finish as the pain was immense. I felt ready to throw in the towel, but she wouldn't let me. In fact to help me along she faced her fear of the sewing machine and sewed some straight lines around the inner blocks. How about that? Emily has never been a 'sewer', yet to my utter joy and amazement she just sat there and did it. 

Anyhow here are a few pics. The Bloke, kindly offered to take the pics (well I asked he obliged). 

Well that's it for now, hope to write more soon.
Ciao

It's Hot out Here

Hello again. Two blog posts in one week-what is happening to me? I am only able to blog when my mind and body decides to work together for an all too brief time. It has been very hot here in Western Australia over the past weeks as we can expect with it being summer.
 My body takes an extra pounding when the heat and humidity bathe our outback city in it's steamy blanket. It makes it harder to breath for me and is not pleasant at all. The straight out heat is more easily tolerated by me, providing I don't move too much. So apart from reading numerous blogs, Facebook status's I tend too sit in my comfy chair and nod off. 

Today was a good day though as early in the morning my eldest daughter visited with her two small boys and I enjoyed the cuddles and watching my older grandson play and dance and follow his aunt all over the house. 

On my active days I might sew or paint. Painting furniture is my newest love. I have just about run out of objects to paint, but there is one six drawer cane shelf that I will be rejuvenating soon, maybe even this weekend as one of my daughters has the time off and she is a great support and really encourages me to give things ago. In fact she is so committed that she actually asked me to show her how to use the sewing machine and proceeded to machine quilt some straight lines on a rather large project I have had in the pipeline for some time. She is amazing I tell you. Mind  you her two younger sisters are handy on the paintbrush over the Christmas break and they both chipped in to paint the bed for me. The bloke too the pictures for me which I appreciate but styling the scene is not his thing, and the light was not in his favour either, but it will give you an idea. It have just noticed that there are waxing strokes on the foot board of the bed. They are not so noticeable in real life, but they sure show up in a photo. Looks like some work for me to do. 
In case your interested the paint I use is Annie Sloan Chalk Paint and the colour is Duck Egg Blue. Love it!
You might also be wondering about the bare concrete floor. Our carpet was very worn and stained and it was driving me crazy. Our bedroom has a sliding glass door that we access the side veranda through. On the veranda we store excess 'stuff' and we also have a spare clothes line when we need it, hence the thoroughfare gets a work out. We decoded not to put carpet down again and chose to put laminate flooring on the floor instead. We have that flooring stored under the bed. 
When the bloke gets a week off from work he will install it. Yay!

Well that's enough of my rambling for the day, hope to be back here soon.

Welcome 2014

Hi folks

Since it is the start of the new year I thought it would be a good time to start up my blogging. After such a long break it is more than possible that no one visits me to read. Fair enough. But if only one person comes to reads it is worth it, and I know at least one of my dear daughters who lives away from us likes to check in to catch up on my news. 

The past few months have been intense to say the least. Firstly there was the preparation for the arrival of our second beautiful grandson. He arrived on the 1st December, very conveniently in the morning. He and his mum came home late on the same day. 
Patrick Thomas is as gorgeous as his older brother and we are all enjoying cuddles. 

Christmas was a low key affair again this year. We were fortunate to have all five of our daughters in town. We chose to have the hot Christmas lunch with baked, glazed ham and all the veggies to go with it. Of course as is the tradition, we all ate far more than usual and so lazed around the rest of the day.
I must admit that I am glad it's over now and I look forward to the brand new year ahead. I turn 50 mid year. I can hardly believe I wrote that. Fifty used to seem very old when I was a child, but of course now I am rapidly approaching that milestone, I'm thinking how lucky I am to be here to celebrate it. I reckon I will have a party, plenty of wine and food and laughs.

I find the days passing quickly, even when I don't seem to have much to do. I spend a lot of my time resting and thinking. I tire very easily and with ongoing health issues it is always a case of going with the flow, more simply put I work when I have the energy to do it and sit quietly when I don't. It can be a problem though as when I do have a boost of energy and enthusiasm I try to do many things and very soon my physical limitations stop me.

Some of the crafty things I have been doing the past couple of months include, sewing, quilting, making birthday cards and my newest and most favourite thing painting! More specifically furniture painting. Who knew I would be able to pick up a paint brush and slap it onto furniture and pimp it up. For a long time I have wanted to make over my dark furniture. I came across some blogs from people who were using the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint to revamp tired or work furniture. I knew this paint was made for me. Basically it is a chalky type paint that you slap on without preparation and then distress and wax for a beautiful finish. I am not good at explaining it so if your interested best Google it.
To date I have painted my console hall table, lamp table, numerous cane baskets, and the biggie-,y entire bedroom suite. Well I didn't actually paint all of it my daughters and even the bloke helped with that project, cos it was far too much for me to tackle on my own. I chose ASCP in Duck Egg Blue-it's gorgeous. The first photos show my first attempt at painting a lamp table. I used old white, which looks great.

The following photo is the cane chest I use in my bedroom to store excess stuff. It was an ugly dark colour, a fairly cheap piece from Target I think. One application of ASCP and it was transformed from the ugly duckling into the beautiful swan.

I love this paint. True statement. It has allowed me to use my basic painting abilities to achieve instant, satisfying results. Yeah- fulfilling my creative need.
Once I can upload my other pics of my bedroom suite I can show you how it looks.
Now the drought has been broken I hope to be back more often.
Take care,