Tomatoes & beach bags

I've been loving the tomatoes growing in our garden. I have to pick them when they have the slightest blush of orange to them & ripen them in the fruit bowl in my kitchen so that the fruit fly don't get to them. Although not vine ripened they are still so sweet to eat.
I had a custom order placed for a beach bag similar to a tiny little bag I had made earlier last year featuring Red Riding Hood print & gorgeous tomatoey red flowers screen printed by Prints Charming.
I'm so happy with the result, it was hard to part with it.

feeling festive

Today is the last day of school for the year for my children, they embark on their annual 6 week Summer Holidays. As much as I'm pleased to have a break from the morning routine of getting them ready for school & prepping school lunches I must admit I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to fill the days so we make the most of our time together.

Last Saturday afternoon we drove two hours to Sydney city for the birthday party of a 9 year old friend of ours. It was great to catch up with the parents who are good long time friends. We arrived in the city a couple of hours early so we could take in the Christmas decorations & buzz of this time of year.

The photo above is of my two children enjoying the animated puppets & Christmas stories in the windows of one of the major department stores. Iremember being taken to see these same windows when I was a child.
This is my daughter spellbound with the new Christmas train that my mother/her grandmother dropped around in a surprise visit just the other night.
Yesterday I whipped up this sweet little Forest dress. Its size 3-4yrs & is so light & summery made from a nice soft cotton lawn with a delicate sketchy forest print. I hope it makes some little girl's Christmas a special one.
In Australia at Christmas Time it is custom to pick the native red Christmas Bush & place it around the home. As a child my mother used to take me along with her cruising the suburbs with a step ladder in the back of the car searching out Christmas Bush. The High School where she used to work was one of our best sources, we would try to pick a time when nobody was around, scale the tree & proudly venture home with our prized bounty of red foliage.

Wishing you all the happiest & most peaceful of Christmases yet.

Treasure your loved ones & get a little silly with it.

xxoo

visitor to my garden

This is my cloudy day sundress for a little girl 2-3years old. Love the Cloud Nine fabric such a great contemporary print & a beautiful weight to work with.

I love these tiny Liberty style florals, a really lovely Japanese cotton voile from Spotlight of all places, would you believe. I couldn't resist trying my hand at this dress style, I found the design in the Sweet Dress Book from Japan only the patterns were in adult sizes so I winged it, just cutting out the pieces by eye, & what do you, it worked. It has given me the confidence to try going a bit free form once again with the scissors in the near future. Love, love, love the delicate vintage lace trim that I have used along the hemlines.

Look at this beautiful little fella sun baking in my garden yesterday just outside my laundry door.

I just love the gorgeous colours & patterns on the skins of these Blue Tongue Lizards.This one looked very healthy & nicely plump around the middle, must be enjoying eating all the snails slugs about after the higher tan average rainfall we have had this Spring.

My husband informs me that this same lizard scraped it's way into his office this afternoon giving himself & the other two architects a fright as it crawled under their desks. Yikes, although quiet harmless they look so prehistoric.

Yum, just to make to you hungry, a picture of a very simple chocolate cake I knocked up for sweets one night last week from the Frankie magazine publication Afternoon Tea.

Yum diddly yum.

I call this skirt Daisy due to the sweet guipure lace daisy that once belonged to my Grandmother stitched onto the hem border. The majority of the skirt is cut from a Saffron Craig print consisting of diagonal stripes & snowy little trees. The result is unintentionally quite Christmasy.

HoHoHo not long to go!

Love this sweet little daisy.

Beets

Just pulled these from my veggie patch, my best ever beetroots. Hmmm now what to do with them? Better start googling. Do you have a tried & true beetroot recipe? Let me know it.

Sunshine Patchwork

I had a fun day yesterday pulling out my fabrics filed under patchwork. Still feeling a tad tropical from my last sewing session & post, I found myself chopping up lots of sunshiny yellow pieces & throwing a few animals into the mix. The result is a cheerful summer patchwork skirt women's size 10 - 12. I hope somebody is brave enough to wear it as it has been delivered to Mooch Inside along with my Pineapple Cushions.

Club Tropicana

Hooray today I had some sewing time to myself & I was able to knock up a couple of cushions for sean-the-prawn. As summer is drawing near I've been feeling all tropical & was excited/inspired to find this pineapple fabric in my ever increasing pile of material stashed away in my sewing area.

Club Tropicana is a great song by Wham although a little cheesy but I think that's the point of it. I was obsessed with it for about 5 minutes in the mid 1980's & it remains dear to my heart, hence the title of this post. Oh I bet you missed my long winded ramblings. I've missed waffling on in your direction. Stay posted as there will be a lot more new sean-the-prawn goodness coming your way. Ideas, ideas, ideas,coming out my ears!

Spring in my wild garden

My Nashi Pear tree in bloom, pretty little white blossoms & I believe some are starting to swell into fruit.

Garden looks quite wild from this angle. Yellow daisies, red geraniums & the sweetest smelling pink David Austin roses.

Banana trees giving us our second bunch of bananas. Still learning when best to harvest these.

Excited to grow our own bananas as they are still over $10.00 per kilo in the shops here.

Inside my netted veggie patch, netted from our chickens, possums & native brush turkeys.

Loads of silverbeet, beetroots, lettuce, rocket,water cress, brussel sprouts, leeks, sorrel, rhubarb, tomatoes, eggplant, capsicum & radishes all growing well.

This is Cluck Cluck one of our four chickens looking longingly into our veggie patch thinking of the feast & havoc she could reek in there.

Not a lot happening with Sean-the-Prawn at present as I'm working flat chat on the costumes for my son's school Musical of Uncle Crumbles' Mad Machine. Opening night is next Wednesday, so in a couple of weeks I'll be back at the machine sewing up many new creations for sean-the-prawn summer, & I can't wait.