The house is quiet ....

School went back yesterday after the summer holidays.  So after 8 weeks or so of kids running around and lots of noise, the house seems very quiet today!  Amongst all the chaos of getting ready for school, I've managed a few makes this week.  I made this wee tea cosy on Sunday night and stayed up too late finishing in - but thankfully Monday was a public holiday so being a bit tired was ok!

It was inspired by a visit to my in-laws on Sunday as their garden is amazing just now and full of colour.  So a flowery tea cosy it had to be!

It's a cutie from all angles.  I even found the perfect coloured flower button to use too. 

Darling Bella decided that while it was being blocked on a folded up towel, that it would make a perfect place to snooze.  It looked so funny - as if she was minding the cosy!!  My very own crochet bodyguard.

I came across the most amazing recipe during the week that intrigued me so I had to give it a go.  It was on a very random blog hop that I stumbled across it but I can't remember where the initial link came from!  This recipe is fairly easy to make - it just required time really, not a lot of effort.  But boy oh boy it was worth it.  I couldn't wait to have a good old taste test.

So scones were made, dear friends were invited and pear butter was sampled.  The smell was amazing even before it was tasted.  I love this scone picture - it looks as if it has a wee face and is smiling!!!  Or is it just me going mad?

I also had a go at making some earrings with some new jewellery bits and pieces I bought here.  I am absolutely thrilled with these and talk about easy to make.  The hardest bit it deciding on what image you want to pop in the middle.  I have a pile of little snips from magazines that I have started to keep.  These were from a picture of some china I love.  I lost one of my favourite pairs of earrings outside the hairdressers last week, so I'm pleased to have some new favourites to replace them.

These are another pair - using a less matchy but same style image.  Love them!  I have a few to make for friends now but once they are done I'm thinking about starting a little shop on Felt which is a gorgeous website for handmade goods.  Perhaps tea cosies and jewellery?  I love making things and it would be fabulous to sell some instead of keeping everything for myself!

Yesterday was my treasure shopping morning with Miss 4 and I was lucky to come across this stunning book.  It's a children's book written about historic periods but the story is told through 4 different dolls houses.  It is beautiful!  Each dolls house is a pop-up so you can see inside.  Then it has pages and pages of lift up secret flaps or letters in envelopes to unfold.  I can't wait to sit down and read it with my children - it's truly gorgeous and only $6.  I can't believe what a bargain this was and I'll treasure it forever.

 The front doors open and you can peek in all the windows.

 Secret notes are dotted throughout.  The images are beautiful.

Lots of tactile treats to discover.

Before I go, I just wanted to say a big welcome to my new followers!  It's great to have you here and it absolutely makes my day whenever I get a new comment.  All the lovely birthday wishes I received last week were just amazing - thank you.

Also - I have received some lovely blog awards this week from Rebecca, Barbina and Shelley.  Thank you so much ladies - they absolutely made my day!!

Have a fabulous week.  See you again soon.  I'm hoping to have some really special pics to share with you next week.

Leah
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A blast from the past!

We are well overdue for a good Spring clean so this weekend we decided to deal with the piles of boxes we have in our attic, before our ceiling collapsed under the pressure! Amongst all the junk were two boxes marked 'toys' - one from my childhood and one from my husband's. It was so lovely to open them up and discover a box full of memories. I can remember getting this Knit Magic from a relative for Christmas when I was about 7 or 8 years old. I adored it and whipped up many tubey scarves with it! I gave one to my teacher Miss Drew and she genuinely seemed to love it. In hindsight I realise she was probably just a really good actress!! I never managed to make the delightful slippers as seen on the box, maybe when Miss 4 is a bit older she can have a go at it! This was probably where my crafty obsession started.

And as for this hat, well it's interesting...

I took a quick pic of this and then hid it away again as my two would probably destroy it in seconds. I still can't quite believe that after 30+ years, this tiny plastic set is still intact. I had to pop my crochet hook in there to show you how dinky everything is. There are little books in the bookshelf that come out, the drawers open and the radiogram cabinet (not a CD player in sight!) opens too. I absolutely loved this when I was little.

And then I came to a fabulous retro bag that my nana had made for me and inside was my beloved Daisy Doll. I never wanted a Barbie, I thought Daisy was the bees knees. She's looking like she's had one wine too many in this pic but don't you love the flared pants and platform shoes. You can tell what era she is from that's for sure!

Mr 7 was beside himself when he spotted this box amongst his Dad's treasures.

He just about burst when he opened it up to find all these old cars.

And then he got to the Lego box - oh wow talk about excited. I'm guessing that after school today I'm going to be helping build a rocket to go with the moonscape base.

I have been making progress with my ripple blanket and also the African flower blanket. But I am also trying to squeeze in a few more tea cosies for presents. While the small folk were having an early dinner yesterday I sat with them and made this little cutie. It's a tiny little teapot so it only took a wee while to make this cosy. I had to giggle, Miss 4 asked me if I was making a poncho for the teapot! She's kind of right really - it does pops right over the teapot's head!

So a Teapot Poncho it is!!

How gorgeous is this little skirt I found at the op shop for Miss 4? It's very full and so very girly.

And it's reversible! She whips it off and flips it over all day depending on her mood.

Well that's enough from me. I'm off to have a cuppa and a ridiculously delicious red velvet cupcake with a crazy amount of icing on it - mmm mmm. It's not a cake you hear much about in NZ but I was keen to try it out after hearing about this flavour on lots of US tv shows. Oh wow - amazing!!!

Have a lovely week everyone. I'm hoping to catch up on visiting your lovely blogs this week after a week of not feeling too flash. See you again soon.

Leah
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My week of vintage love!

Wow this week has gone so fast! Last weekend was a holiday weekend so we had Monday off - which makes for a short, quick week. It was also the first week of the school term after two weeks holiday and boy am I out of routine. It's funny how your body clock gets used to school pick-up times, but this week I am constantly checking my watch! Hopefully by next week I will feel back to normal. Anyway - I am making good progress with my new blanket and I am loving every minute of it. As promised, I am tying in ends as I go which is soooooooo much better. I am truly converted. So for every 10 or so flowers I make, I join them up. No threads, no mess - you gotta love it.

I'm really enjoying having a fairly limited colour palette too. I popped back to the wool shop this week to get the next installment of wool so hopefully I have enough now to make a decent sized bed cover. I will just keep going until I run out! I love that my local wool shop is happy to hold wool for you for several months so that you can guarantee you'll get the same dye lot etc. My Mum was telling me the other day that that was how she bought her wool when she was younger. It's a brilliant system.

I have to show you a few little op shops treasures I got today. I bought two of these wee lime green pots/bowls for $1 and have popped a mint plant in one of them. I read during the week that having mint plants around the house will keep flies away. Now that we are coming into finer weather (although you'd never believe that if you could see out my window just now), I will give anything a go to keep those little black critters out of my house. I hate fly spray and am trying to reduce chemical usage around the house - so fingers crossed these lovely little plants do the trick. I'll keep you posted!

Now this is actually an old op shop purchase from maybe 2 years ago. Sadly when I bought it there was no cup to match.

So in the meantime I used this little cup which went fairly well.

But this morning I walked into my favourite little op shop and I spotted the matching cup sitting there on the shelf, all alone, just waiting to come home with me and be with the matching saucer and plate. So $3 later and I was a very happy girl! I love being able to complete a set even if it does take years. This is my new favourite set and I can't wait to sit down and have a nice quiet cuppa with it.

It was a pleasure to add it to my mix and match collection of china. All but maybe 4 pieces have been bought from second hand stores over the last 2 years and I adore each and every piece. I haven't spent much at all on any of it - I think only one piece was over $20 actually - so this is my cheap and cheerful collection.

Still on the op shop finds but with a bit of a story first. I went to see a fundraising screening of Breakfast at Tiffany's during the week. I absolutely love this movie and it was fabulous to see it at a beautiful theatre on the big screen. I well and truly fell in love with the orange coat worn in this scene and sat there jealously watching it. Well ....

I know it's not identical, but I found this brand new pattern for $1 today and I think that the style on the right could be made into a fabby orange coat for me. Even better, the pattern says it's Very Easy - two important words when it comes to my sewing ability!! So over the next few weeks I am going to have to sneak a peek into a few fabric stores and try and find some orange fabric!

Still on the vintage theme but this time a purchase off Trade Me (our version of Ebay). This stunner was $20 and she arrived today. I am thrilled to bits with it and can't wait to use it.

I just love how these old bags fasten. I feel very classy just holding her over my arm. I think that I should be wearing that stunning orange coat, gloves and a hat when I use this bag though!!! I sometimes think I was born in the wrong era. I would love to have been around in the 50s or late 60s.

Well that has sure been a lot of vintage love going on. I am going to say goodbye now and go and make a nice cup of tea, in my new cup of course, and maybe a nice fat piece of caramel slice to go with it. There goes the diet ...

Have a fabulous week everyone. See you again soon.

Leah

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A winning week.

My gorgeous wee Miss 4 came home from kindy earlier in the week bursting with pride that she had made this all by herself! I think it's absolutely adorable and a pretty good first effort don't you think? She cracks me up though as she refers to anything crafty as 'knitting'. Anytime I have my crochet hooks out, she wants to help with my 'knitting'. And so it was with her kindy sewing - she corrected me and told me it was again 'knitting'!! Who am I to argue with the mind of a four year old?

I had some lovely news this week - I was the lucky winner of Pixie's 'slightly wonky if not a bit odd Dickie bird' giveaway!! Thank you so very much Pixie - your lovely wee bird will be right at home here amongst my other slightly wonky and odd things!

I haven't achieved very much in the way of crochet this week, but now that I'm starting to feel a bit better I will get back into the swing of things! My granny blanket is progressing slowly but surely. Each week I look at it and think I'm done but somehow I then change my mind and convince myself to do just another few rounds! So each week I take a picture, but because I'm using the same rotation of colours, it looks exactly like the previous week so I don't bother popping a pic on my post. I will wait until it's complete which shouldn't be too far away hopefully. So to keep me inspired and motivated to move on to the next project, I treated myself to some gorgeous wool this morning. I am planning on making a bed cover using an African flower motif and I am bursting to get it started. This Ashford Tekapo wool is a delight to work with - I've used it quite a bit before. I really have to finish the granny blanket first or it will linger in my basket forever. I am definitely not the most patient person in the world so this will drive me crazy!!! The African flower blanket is to replace the hexagon one I started. I will have another go at it in the future but I just couldn't get excited about it at the time.

I had a fabulous op shop find on Saturday which has completed my little mix and match set. I started with this fabulous teapot (which had no lid for some reason). It belonged to my Nana and I had always loved it. About a year after my lovely Nana died I managed to find a lid for sale on Trade Me which was the perfect partner to my teapot. Then I found the cup in an op shop about two years ago which I used quite happily on its own. But a quick pop in to my local op shop at the weekend completed my wee set. Sitting alone on the shelf for all of $1 was the saucer I needed! Well worth the wait!!!

We had the most crazy hail storm yesterday - completely out of the blue. With it was spectacular thunder and lightning, according to the newspaper we had 581 lightning strikes! The hail was so dense that our property was absolutely white in some parts - more so than when we had the freak snow storm last month! Here is a shot of our front garden/garage - it was so beautiful but so flippin' slippery. It happened about half an hour before school pick up so you can imagine the fun we had walking home. When we got home, all Mr 6 wanted to do was eat it - so instead of being the spoil sport I usually am - I said go for it. Just eat the white stuff on the top. If you get to the brown bits - stop! You really don't need to eat dirt for dinner. He then decided to collect it in bowls and try and sell it to passers-by! Strangely enough he had no takers.

I love this picture of Miss 4 in her very pretty Spring time dress and gumboots!!

It was the perfect afternoon to come home, light the fire, get cosy and do some baking. I kinda made up this recipe and it actually worked out. Anything with chocolate icing has to be good really. The kids loved them.

And just because everyone is Rugby World Cup mad here at the moment, we iced some biscuits with what is meant to be the Silver Fern and Rugby Balls. Again, the kids thought they were fabulous so that's all that matters! As a grown up - black icing doesn't seem so appealing.

I am still in catch up mode with visiting all my favourite blogs but am slowly getting back into my routine. Can't wait to see what everyone has been up to. I hope you're all having a wonderful week. Take care and see you again soon.

Leah
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My week!

I think I need another week in Fiji ... I'm quite certain that is what I need. But alas, I'm home and to top it off I've not been feeling great. I was sick while we were away but it got worse on our return. Nasty chest problems - yuk. The small folk and my husband made me stay home and rest while they visited his parents on the weekend. So it seemed the perfect time to sit down and watch some terribly trashy TV while I made a gorgeous cowl. I had fallen in love with this wool last week and knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. A few hours later it was finished - super easy. And it's just the most perfect thing to keep a troubled chest warm and toasty. I have worn it everyday this week and have had lots of lovely comments.

Here is the wool/yarn - it's made in the UK and it's really lovely to work with. Super soft and snuggly and not the least bit itchy as it's a wool/acrylic mix.

And here is the cowl...

I absolutely adore the colour mix of this wool. Pink/purple/pale green/pale blue/grey - beautiful.

I couldn't sleep this morning and was up far too early so I decided to make a little headband for Miss 4. Her kindy was having a 'black' day today to celebrate the Rugby World Cup starting here tomorrow and to show their support for our All Blacks team. We had managed to put together a black outfit for her to wear (a real mission when she really only likes pink and red at the moment) so she was super excited this morning when she got up to find a new headband to go with the outfit. I am guessing their day will be spent getting face painted and practising the haka! My two can do a great rendition of the Ka Mate haka. For you lovely overseas folk who might not have a clue what I'm talking about, the haka is the challenge the All Blacks perform before a rugby test match. If you'd like see a haka, have a look here for one example. Now I'm not a huge rugby fan (sorry Dad!) but there is something about the haka that really gets to me and makes me proud to be a Kiwi.

A few weeks ago I was the lucky winner of a giveaway over at LeeAnn's Lovables. I was so excited to get home this morning and find a parcel waiting for me. I am so, so happy... this book is just stunning and I can't wait to start making some of these designs. There are some fabulous wee rectangular designs which look great so I shall start with them. There were also three beautiful hooks in the parcel - which will be put to very good use! Thank you so much LeeAnn - you've made my day!

Now I've been trying to get some decent pics of my op shop clothing finds but I am rubbish at getting good shots without everything looking wrinkly and horrible even though I've spent ages ironing (did I mention how much I hate ironing?). So I have crossed that off my list and will in future either have to just describe what I've bought, or show a close up pic of the fabric or something like that. Better still, I could learn how to photograph things properly I guess?

I did however manage to get a semi decent pic of a skirt I treated myself to this week. This one is a new skirt, not one of my op shop bargains. I did get it on sale though which is fabulous! It has quite a retro feel about it and I think it reminds me of an apron someone in my family had when I was a child - do you know what I mean?

Better still, it is printed with a hand-dyed/painted look about it with lots of little blobs of colour here and there to shadow images. So it will be perfect for me when I inevitably spill something on it - you'll never notice the difference!!! Brilliant.

Now for an op shop treasure. I thought someone must have made a mistake with the price tag on this one. $9 for this pretty piece! I have lots of lovely old bowls but I've never found one with a matching lid so I was totally thrilled to spot it. I can't wait to use this on the dinner table soon.

I had to pop this pic on too. My darling girl Bella, who is my constant crochet companion. Except for this particular day when the sun decided to come out. She spent the entire day following the patches of sunlight around the room and plonking herself down wherever the sun was. Ah - the life of a very spoilt cat.

I hope you're all having a fab week so far. Take care - see you again soon.

Leah
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