sweet lime, sunfrocks & sunsets

Dresses waiting to be completed.

My little sunfrocks are totally made from upcycled fabrics & they have been selling really well of late , so I had better get a wriggle on to get these babies finished. I retail them at a fab local store named Mooch Inside which stocks gorgeous art, lifestyle items & super spunky fashion. Mooch inside is very soon to get their online shop up & running ..Yippeee!!

Sweet limes from our garden.

It has been a great year for citrus fruit...washington navels, valencias & blood oranges. We also had loads of mandarins & these Tahitian limes all picked from the trees in our back garden....Mojito anyone??

My corner view at sundown.

This is the view at the end of my street. I snapped this shot at sundown about a week ago when walking home around the Bay, I disturbed the three pelicans who were eating scraps of fish left behind by local fishermen & they took off across the water. Ahhh serenity, I love living here!

summer dress on a winter's day

It is a cold winter's day here where I live, one hours drive north of Sydney on the east coast of Australia. The temperature reached a high of 14 degrees Celsius. I know you Northern Hemisphere folk must be laughing at the notion of that being a cold day, but it has been grey & threatening to rain all day. It may sound all very bleak, but alas the wattle tree is flowering at my front door & all is screaming out golden & sunny in my view.

I just love wattle with it's cute little fluffy balls of yellow & it's tiny weenie buds ready to burst. It really does cheer me up & bring a lot of life (bees & native birds) into the garden this time of year. All that yellow provides a great backdrop on which to hang one of my latest dresses that I have designed & made. It's a little girls (size 3) summer dress in a light weight flocked voile.

I have been working on a few pieces for a handicraft project to be initiated in Afghanistan by a wonderful charity named Mahboba's Promise. They will be taking my designs & samples along with those of a couple of close friends of mine over to Afghanistan where Mahboba has set up schools, orphanages for children & refuges & a workroom for Afghan war widows. The idea is for the women to sew & embroider garments & home ware pieces to allow them to be financially self sufficient & to maintain their traditional handicraft skills. It is only early days for this project & it will be a steep learning curve for all involved.
One of the friends of which I am working with on the Mahbobas Handicraft Project is Jane of Focalpoint Home. Jane has just started her own blog Focalpoint Home & I would love you to pay her a visit & offer a little encouragement , even advice if you wish. Jane is super clever...a trained Interior designer & florist (her beautiful work above) & she now has a successful business importing gorgeous pieces from Tunisia. Go Janey!!

holidays...pumpkins..& pretty pancakes

My Son with his snow buddy.

Hi there, just when you thought I had dropped of the face of the blogging earth....I'm Back!!
We took a weeks holiday & it was such a great thing to do this time of year to break up that mid year bogged down feeling. My husband's youngest brother has become engaged to be married & finally had a party to celebrate..so we drove near 700kms to visit his family in Albury N.S.W. A lovely time was had catching up with family & looking around town. My children had so much fun with their cousins, especially the day we drove another 120kms from Albury to Falls Creek for a day in the snow. It was the first time ever seeing snow for our kids & they loved playing in it for hours. We hired some toboggans which we gave an absolute huge workout going up & down a snow covered gentle slope...I kept stealing them from the kids to do some crazy stunt tobogganing. We even built a snowman & decorated him with pebbles & my beanie...which resulted in me having a bit of a cold damp head for the rest of the afternoon..well worth it though.

Home grown pumpkin

Why am I showing you a photo of a pumpkin? Well because I grew it myself in my own backyard. It was quite an accident to be growing pumpkins as I dug a big hole in the earth to plant a banana tree & threw a heap of vegetable scraps in the ground to give it a kick start, which it did but also a few weeks later started to sprout a vigorous pumpkin vine. Delicious tasting soup & a couple of serves of yummy roast veggies came from this little baby.

The pottery dog looking thingy in the background is named Herbie & was a part of my 1970's childhood. He is from South America & is used to grow alfalfa sprouts. You fill him with water & then place seeds in the groves on his exterior. Within no time the seeds sprout & you can harvest them for salads & sandwiches..Lots of fun!!

Butterfly pancake.

Can you believe your eyes?! My husband is great at making pancakes, & being the creative soul that he is, he loves giving a bit of a twist to the traditional. He often makes spider or jellyfish shapes for the kids but I think this is one of his best... the butterfly. All done by turning the pan to run the mixture in the right directions...love it!!

Things of beauty

We have had our fair share of rainy days lately..great for the vege patch but not so great for Mum's of young children. Anyway, this morning was lovely & sunny, just perfect for a wander around my backyard for a little self garden admiration. I couldn't help myself, I had to snip off a couple of my dahlias to bring inside. They really bring the house alive & I love how they look in this little Japanese vase that was an op shop find last year. The colours in this photo give me a bit of a Frida Kahlo, Mexican vibe. What do you think??
Glad I brightened up the house as down comes the rain again!!

I love these tiles, they are all handmade & painted in Tunisia (North Africa). The colours are so exotic & dreamy, & these ones in particular have an amazing crackled glass glazing that give them a lovely lustrous finish. A great friend of mine Jane Tryon, imports them & many other beautiful items into Australia through her business Focal Point Designs. Jane's fiance is from Tunisia & he has just been back there buying up stock to fill their gorgeous gallery/ shop Bouddi Gallery at Hardy's Bay. The shop is very near to my house so I'm often grabbing a coffee & dropping by for a chat & a look at any new stock she may have. It's great to have some pretty places to visit in our sleepy little seaside suburb.
I have been a little distracted recently with family life & community responsibilities kicking in...I really must get cracking on my little label...more sean-the-prawn soon, I promise!!

I've got a golden ticket

My beautiful boy turned 7 yesterday and he had a party straight after school with his classmates & some others at the local park. It was a lovely sunny afternoon with about 25 or more children running around, playing in the park, blowing bubbles and eating way too many lollies from the faulty pinata that fell to the ground and was clubbed to death. The cake was yet once again another masterpiece made entirely by my husband, who I would have to say is extremely cake proud & tries to up the anti each year. This year he surprised our son with a Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory (Roald Dahl) cake, he even made a faux Wonka Bar with golden ticket inside!! Crazy stuff but very well appreciated. 7 is a great age. I remember being 7 & telling my Grandmother that I wanted to stay that age forever...sometimes I believe I have..well, I'm sure my inner child is 7.

Vintage roses..custom hat heading for Germany.

Front view of Coffee & Roses fully reversable sun hat. West German pottery vase in background.
Back view of hat taken amongst my frangipani trees.

A couple of weeks ago there was an Etsy Conversation email waiting for me. It was a request for a custom made version of one of my vintage style reversable sunhats. How exciting my first Etsy custom request, & all the way from a lovely lady in Germany. The customer told me that she would like a hat in pinks & creams, so I hit the op shops & trawled through my fabric stash until I had some options to photograph & email to her. She suggested her favourite two from a list of eight possible choices, then told me her hat size/ head measurement & boomshanka the hat was complete in six days. I have posted it up on my Etsy store today for her to purchase. I hope she likes it!? I do.

while we are on the subject..

Pincushions, pincushions flying around the globe..will they get the love they need nobody knows!(don't be alarmed...this not a serious attempt at poetry).

This is the sweet little pincushion I made for the Foxs Lane pincushion swap. I made this little lovely for Little Betty Designs whom I'm told loves the colour red. Firstly I patched together a lot of my off cuts, then I stitched the heart shape & stuffed. After that I stitched ribbon around the outer edge, made a cutiepie ribbon & button bow, then lastly decided (too much is never enough) it needed some cream coloured running stitch detail. I was very pleased with myself for posting it off 4days before the deadline.

Above is the totally spunky pincushion that I managed to win in a dorothy bills give away. Thanks so much Eleesa, I love everything about it. The green vintage fabric is just the kind of thing I weekly scour the op shops for. Lady you have a great style!