Lemony Goodness

I love lemony things! Lemon scented soap, lemon syrup cake, hot lemon drinks for sore throats and lemon butter.

I have a massive bag of lemons and lemonades from my sisters tree (Thanks Linda!) and I put 4 lemons to good use today and made lemon butter (or curd if you prefer). The recipe I used is fro Hazel Dene and you can get it here. I used Mum & Dad's eggs too!

Four jars!

I also have a massive pile of weeds to show for my day today and that IS immensly satisfying. I pulled so much chickweed! Too bad I can't sell it! I have Wednesday off this week and am planning on spending at least a couple of hours out in the chickweed patch.

Yesterday I made a pioneer outfit for Amelia, looks better than I had hoped, but more about that tomorrow as I get my pioneer girl to model for me!

Hope you had a good weekend!

Making a Birthday Present

Today has been a productive day. I have a friends birthday coming up this week and I was able to get the majority of it squared away.

I made this eco bag -

My sister gave me the material and I got the pattern from Zaberry's blog, you can get it here.

See? It rolls up!

I also made her a coin purse and have a jar of homemade jam and a bar of homemade may chang soap to add. All going well I will finish her scarf tomorrow night and be able to pop it all in a recycled bag for Thursday!

And speaking of birthdays, mine was early this week and I want to share the fabulous mixing bowl my parents got me. I have been after a massive bowl for ages and all I could find topped out at a 4L max, but behold this baby which holds a whooping 7L!!!! And it red and pretty!

And I have to wrap an arm around it... Oh I love it!

Smugness is not Attractive

Especially when it is totally not warranted!

I recently read The Winter Of Our Disconnect by Susan Maushart and was smugly shocked at how
'connected' she and her three teenagers were. How could they be allowed to stay up all night with laptops? Sounded so extreme.

Then yesterday, thinking about the book, I took a quick inventory of our home's technology.

3 Widescreen televisions
1 Analogue small television
2 DVD players
1  make that 2 laptops - thanks to the free one given to Year 9 students
1 iPhone
1 iPad
1 Android pad
1 Nintendo DSi
1 Game console
and 1 $29 mobile that I bought after my one died and I didnt want to spend $100+ on a new one.

Who is not so smug now? Ummm that would be me. Worse is that I know that there are people out there who will read that list and think the same as I did about Maushart's house.

I could try to excuse it by saying hubby works in IT so we kind of got some of that stuff by default, but it doesn't excuse the fact that we have come to rely on it to check ideas, enable homework or just to entertain ourselves. My kids don't sleep with DSi's, laptops or even tv's, they don't have mobile phones or are on Facebook - no, not even the 14 year old.

But we do use it alot, probably not more than any of our peers, but lets face it that really isnt saying much is it? Lately I have weaned myself of the PC and have been doing more craft/quilty stuff, both kids have taken up a new hobby each, Wes is doing archery twice a week with Dave and Amelia is learning piano. Since archery has arrived on the scene Wes' gaming is much much less and he has let his online gaming subscription lapse without tooo much whinging. I am taking that as a positive.

I am pushing for a more balanced life! How is your technology inventory?

Quilting Maths

I am still working on it!

The Quilt?

Here is the pattern I think I am going to go for. I am hoping I can resize to fit a king size bed, the one in the picture is from Homemade mag and is only 137 cm square!

See how the darker triangles are attached to the lighter ones and make squares of dark and light? That's what I am going for.

So far my materials are -

Love this paisley - 1 m

This is actually a medium taupe-y colour - 1m

This is a pale green colour - 0.5 m

What do you think?

Soft Soap

I did a batch of soap up yesterday afternoon and I used a higher than usual vegetable oil content, as I was just using up the odds and ends of what I had.

It took at least 4 times as long to get to trace and when I turned it out tonight it was softer than usual. I am just going to leave it a few weeks more than normal, it smells and looks cute. I am going to have to put in an order for more smells, they all sound so great that if you don;t check yourself you could go waaay over budget!

In other news today for $2.50 I got a linen tea towel, a book and this fab linen table cloth from Vinnies! It shows all the sights of the Gold Coast but not one theme park!

It depicts a more quaint Gold Coast with people having dinner being labelled "night life" and highlights being walking on the beach and fishing,  a little 60's snapshot!

Obsessed

Yeah it is confirmed that I am addicted to the cushions as you can see here;

and here.

I picked up some retro material at a garage sale for the back of this one for $1.50, there was about a metre and a half in the piece. Do you love it or hate it?

The part I really love is the cutting out and sewing together. I think I maybe ready to do my quilt, my king size bed quilt. I have the material but have got to find the pattern that is just right. I want it to be browns, greens and aquas. Choc Minty!
Took the kids to see Brave today. I am not surprised so many people just wait till the DVD is out now, going to the movies is a financial commitment! Luckily my two kids have Movie Membership so they were $8 a pop but my ticket was $14.50 to see a kids movie! Then a small combo, sml popcorn and can of drink was $7.50 each - Total to see movie (an hour and 20 mins long) was about $46. Kids thought it was good but I think charging an adult to see a kids movie,when they are clearly chaperoning is wrong! Rant over.

I am off to make soap!