the last two weeks I have had my very own sweatshop of 1 happening.....me, machine, coffee, music. Job done, ready for delivery- happy days.
Today, I began prepping for the Winter Art Bazaar on Sunday, June 10. Maitland Regional Art Gallery....10am-3pm. I drew thse guys on cardboard today and played with instagram, normally they are my bunting characters..... not really sure how I will use them yet but I'm working on that bit.... I'll let you know. I've covered the inside of one of my vintage suitcases with some pages from The Wizaed of Oz and I think I will do a couple more suitcases next week.
I'm thinking a bit of a storybook theme going on....mixed with my cut out characters.....
I'm linking up with Our Creative Spaces this week over at Village Voices... do pop over.
This newest addition to the craft department at Coco's would have to be, hands down easiest kit like EVER. Not kidding. The kit contains enough materials to make 1 super cute wooden girl brooch. You just need to add glue, PVA or craft glue will do just fine. If your in a hurry to wear it I'd use super glue- be careful though. Super glue is mighty strong. Kids, don't use super glue. Super glue is not your friend. I digress.
All you need to do is glue the brooch back to the back of the super cute wooden girl. Hey, it does not get any simpler than that. If you use PVA or the like leave it overnight to secure properly before you wear it. If you use super glue and have not glued your fingers to the brooch and the super cute wooden girl you could pretty much wear her straight away.
Handy little hint- thread some leather on the brooch back and wha-la you've got yourself a neato necklace too. How every crafty with hardly any fuss.
The kits are in store now and are $6 each.
Masterchef is back. In our house we love it. We have loved it from the beginning, we get suckered in. I love Julie's cookbook. I was glad Julie won. I was shattered when Marion was sent home, gutted infact. My phone goes off with text messages..... We have Merle's cookbook too, those are our first attempt of her Chocolate Eclairs- they are heaven.
it is indeed one of our family favourite shows. We love Gary and George and sometimes Matt. Mr Magoo believes we are semi related to Matt Moran- the things he believes are quite astounding sometimes. We all have our favourite contestants and argue and giggle about them.... it's like we know them. We cook some of the dishes and we can't stomach some of the other recipes.
What the small do best is pretend. Evey meal and I do mean every meal I am judged. Yep I live with Gary and George, Matt is apparently sick most evenings, some mornings he is around as one of the smalls pretend to be two judges. I am judged on toast and nutri-grain, fairly simple dishes but somehow the flavour still explodes in their mouths!! I am judged on vegetables, meat, spag bol, leftovers, baking and pizza, infact if we consume it I am judged on it.
Friday night is usually Friday Night Nachos at our place, we love Smokey BBQ Chicken Nachos. I like the beer I have with it. Well tonight we had Friday Night Nachos. Matt the judge was sick and I apparently am competing for a coverted white apron...the top 24. Oh please....
Tonight I played along a bit more than usual, maybe it was the beer.... I indeed went to Tasmania for this challenge, milked a cow, like as if, and churned that milk to make cream then added lemon to turn it sour and then popped it into one of Curtis Ston'e Coles containers for judging, cause you know how Coles is a sponsor and all. They believed it.
The apple and reasberry cordial - did you make that? well, yes indeed, again in Tasmania I picked the apples and rasberries blended them and created my very own cordial...... are you getting the picture? My judges look, very closely at the food. They smell it. They need to know the name of the dish, they like to know if I'm happy with the presentation? They liked the crunch of the Nachos chips, the cheese was sufficently melted and that sauce, mmmmm......
Tonight I hammed it up for them, I (badly) pretended to be crying.... I told them this is my passion, my dream..... just give me a chance I said, I will not let you down..... They deliberated, for a long time and then I got a Yes from Gary. Phew, cue the tears...... George, please George, I deserve a white apron.....
Its a YES from George..... I scream, I'm standing so I jump up and down, I am fake crying thank you, thank you, I run through the house to find my other invisible competiors to tell them of my sucess, the judges yell..... You've gone the wrong way!!! So I run back screaming the other way.
They are cracking themselves up laughing. That's the best bit. I compose myself and we then sit and eat, back in the normal surburban house we live..... and we are all smiling. Grateful for our dinner, grateful we can all pretend together. That was fun, they said.
And Yes it was.
Grateful has moved over here, go ahead and have a look.
Coming this week to the Teeny Tiny Techy Department. A crafty DIY project for your iPhone 4. If you're the stitching type and you love your iPhone you can stitch yourself a one-of-a-kind iPhone cover. How totally groovy is that?
This uber cool kit comes with 1 silicone iPhone cover with tiny perforations, quite like a needlepoint canvas, three different colour threads, a needle and a little book full of ideas to stitch your little heart out or you could make your own design. The possibilities are endless, and if you get sick of your design you can always restitch something else.
They come in a variety of colours white, pink, blue, green,black and orange.
I do think it is a very lovely marriage of craft and technology. And if your mum needs an über cool crafty mother's day present you could stitch her something totally for her. Yep, cool idea indeed.
They are $18 for the complete kit and will be in store this Wednesday.
Today I set myself a colouring in goal, check, done.
Time for fun. My favourite blog at the moment is a beautiful mess. It is all sorts of awesome and amazing. It is always full of wow. A couple of weeks ago the girls posted a DIY on clear iPhone covers. Neato, super neato, very cool idea. You can see I like that idea. They posted a tutorial over here. Cool, huh.
So, I got in the mail this week some clear iPhone covers. I have limited crafty supplies at work but I do have some old Frankie's and other books and scissors so that is a good enough start.....You know I have issues with patience.....
So after I had coloured my quota of Inspirez bunting today I let loose with the scissors and hole punch (it works just dandy as the camera hole cutter) and here are a couple of interchangeable covers I now have. I love the pink moose girl. She is from the Frankie magazine. She is a tad groovy, so she is perfect on my phone today.
I had a smallish brain explosion with the singer sewing machine ad, put the camera hole on the wrong side - derr me! Almost did it again with the Moose girl but, but realized just in the nick of hole punch time! Phew.
You could use just about any paper or maybe fabric, depending on the thickness.... I will test that so we'll see. Origami paper would look fab and cause it is usually quite thin I would be perfect. Imagination and a few supplies, that's it, you have a neato project for the weekend. Have fun.
side note - my last creative space was partially inspired by a beautiful mess too. The doily dream catcher.... It is still a work in progress.... I must make friends with patience for the completion of this one me thinks...... That in itself could be interesting.
Anyhow, for all things creative swing on over here. I have already had a squibs hence why I'm a little late with mine!
Olive is currently adorning my window. My window is tinted so I've decided to pop stories on the window. I still have groovy stuff in my window but I also have funny little stories. So here is Olive's.
Olive the Owl girl is a dreamer. She is a dreamer of big dreams. Her head is often in the clouds. The clouds remind her of marshmallows. She especially likes pink marshmallows. She can fit 5 in her mouth and still chat! She likes chatting. She would chat all day if she could. Her best pals are Randy and Rex, they are a pair of squirrels, they are ACE. They know secret squirrel stuff like how to climb into a rainbow and how to find a four leaf clover. They love Olive to bits and bits cause she is good and fun and always dreams the best dreams. She is going to be famous one day but today Rex and Randy think she is fabulous......just fabulous. X
(apologies for the photo)
Here is Olive in colour- she is part of my original artwork Inspirez Bunting too.
I adore this blog..... I'm hoping my creative space will look something like this whan I'm done, with my own spin on it...bits of red....
My other creativeness has been inspired by this blog, I adore it too.
Miss Muffet has indeed been road testing these sweet little cloud (aka fibre fill but cloud sounds so much better) and lavender sweet dreams pillows.... it seems to be working.... so far, so good.
Hope your week has been creative, over here is.
Today we went to The Show, The Wauchope Show. Bar The Royal Easter Show this was my very first show.... I'm not real country, like the first thing to hit the senses was the horse poo, poo and I are not friends. I blew air up my nose as we past the horses. The horses were beautiful and amazing, the poo not so amazing. I didn't wear my boots for that reason, I know it's a show and you should wear boots but I wore my sparkly converses instead, not very show shoe attire but I like them.
The woodchop was cool, like cool, fast and man can those fellows chop....why most of them wear white pants is beyond me, the soaking alone to clean them would be days I think, maybe there is a very good reason for lots of people wearing white, as I mentioned I'm not a farm girl. I sat outside the poultry pavilion, not going in there nope, not.
I did go into the handmade and produce pavilion, that was fun. Scones and lamingtons and a smartie cake just like Mr Magoo's - he was inspired to bake for a show, so was I secretly.....there was knitting and painting and crotchet. There was big pumpkins and other fab veggies, I hope ours grow like that.
We watched the parade with the cows and goats and tractors and the showgirls on the back of the tow truck. The tow truck got bogged, which was a little funny but a fab shiny blue tractor did the tractor thing and towed that tow truck right on out of the mud hole it found itself in.
There was the sideshow alley, I like the photo of the clowns the best and Mr.Magoo got the magic show bag with little magic tricks, a whoopie cushion and those glasses you can see me dicking around on.
And that was the show, our first show. Thankfully the sun was shining. Oh and there was a duck race that involved geese, I'm not sure if anyone else noticed they were geese but they were, even if I'm no farm girl I know a goose when I see one or five! And there names were duck-under, duck-in, duck-out..... Suffice to say Mick their trainer was a bit of a country character. He made lots of people smile so that is good.
The Wauchope Show was good! I hope your weekend sun is shining and you are smiling.
busy....busy....
...making...colouring, cutting, cooking, painting, baking....busy, happy, working... blessed with ACE customers ( I know I've said that before but its like the truest of true!) These school holidays have whizzed by, life whizzes by....
sometimes you have to make time to play....or else you go insane....
but the Lorax was good, we saw it this week, I liked it alot. I like Dr. Seuss alot, you learn stuff without learning it. That is especially good for the smalls learning stuff without learning it. We watched Percy Jackson and the lightning theif, Mr Magoo is reading it at the moment and much to his inital suprise I know stuff, random I know but I know a little bit about Zeus and Medusa and The Gods!! Miss Muffet is reading The Lorax. It is good she says. She likes Dr.Seuss too.
The very new veggie garden planted Easter Saturday is growing....the weather has been quite hideous for children but the new veggies are adoring the weather cause they are growing like really, really fast.....some from seed! Yay.
...In the words of Ferris "life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in awhile you could miss it"
I'm glad we found time to stop and check out the scenery these holidays, even though it has been busy, busy, we still had time.... oh and we played some humdinger UNO games! We like those too.
...so this week I'm grateful for being busy but also grateful for finding time out... life's great balancing act.... one of my all time fav Dr. Seuss books...Oh, the places you'll go...read it you will be glad you did.I hope your hoildays were grand.
Pop over to Maxabella's Grateful or Village Voices lots of lovelies hang out there.
It's no secret that I do love cooking. I love baking the most, baking biscuits, cakes, slices lots of sweetish stuff. I often say if someone would pay me I could bake all day. There is something special about preparing and sharing food and drinks.
My cousin shared her famous (in her own rite), delish pizza dough with me a little while ago and another friend shared her fabbo pizza oven recommendation and joined together I have had the best time mixing, kneading, kinda throwing and preparing pizzas. Nothing flash, tried and tested favourites but super crispy, lotsa cheesy and all sorts of YUM.
This weekend we have shared pizza with Aunts, Uncles, Nana and Poppy, brothers, sisters and noisy excited, massively excited cousins. All hovered around the pizza oven. My cheeks heated up I think from the stone plate on the pizza oven, I do not believe it was the Smirnoff! Others disagree.
So this week I'm grateful for the sharing of meals and laughter and drinks and cousin concerts and bad singing (by me!), the catching up that goes with that.....seeing family that we don't get to hang with often enough.... and of course the pizza.... grateful for the memories made and good times shared.
Pop over to Maxabella's or Kidspot to share your grateful or just have a read, it's always lovely. x
