My latest Decorative Painting

This afternoon I didn't go over to the sns shed. Horror I hear you say!

I spent it at my painting desk trying to finish off the lid to my special memories box. When I first saw this special box in a painting book I knew that I had to do it. When our son died I kept one tiny outfit and I have a couple of small items from my granmother who has now been gone for 5 years and this month I received a very special letter from my DS Jen and its going to be put into this box along with the others and any more that I collect along the pathway of my life

... and I hope its a lot more even than the step at my back patio, which is all of 3" high and I fell over it this afternoon on my way back from shutting my girls in and landed heavily on my right knee. I was carrying some twigs and dead leaves to put into the fireplace to give the fire a good start, well they went flying everywhere and you will all be proud of me I didn't say any bad four letter words. I hope 'frig' isn't one, cause I said that many, many times.

It is now 2½ hours later, the fire is burning merrily and the darn knee is still hurting, it's not swollen or anything and I can put my considerable weight on it, but boy I don't think its going to be a good night.

Anyway that's enough whinging from me. Here's the lid of my special box, its probably going to take me another few weeks or so to get the rest of the box finished.

I'm still there

... in the sns shed of course. I thank my DH every time I open the door.

This is the cat panel that my craft group did together. I sewed the buttons on today and one of our talented ladies is embroidering the label and should be finished by next Tuesday ready for attaching to the back. We don't plan to present it to Kolan Gardens until September when all our ladies will be back home from holidays. This afternoon when I closed up the shed I meant to bring over all the relevant data out of the magazine to tell you guys. I forgot!! Nothing new there!

Thought you might like to see a sunset from my front door.

I've almost finished sewing the backing together for 'Trev's Quilt', but even though DSIL bought all that was on the roll, 1m, we have run out so if anyone knows where we can get .75m of a Michael Miller Fabric Pattern C - 2592 Gear Up we would be eternally grateful. Right now I need a 24½"x 2½" strip to join the last 2 blocks. I can join up all my scraps but will only do that as a last resort, but then we will have to look for something to border the blocks.

DH left home yesterday for Murarrie, Brisbane where he picked up Phil and then leaving Ian's ute they travelled in Phil's Land Rover to Samford to Ed's home at Highvale where they spent the night leaving this morning for Biloela where they are having -0°C temperatures. There is a national antique machinery show on there this weekend and they are staying there until Sunday when they head for Gracemere and a antique machinery auction on Monday. If there's nothing there they will head for home that afternoon. So at the moment I'm HOME ALONE — the silence — the simple meals, spaghetti on toast, boiled egg with salad, BLISS — the time in the sns shed!!!!!

Wonderful Time

I just love it to pieces. My s'n's shed of course. I spend most afternoons and sometimes even get to spend most of the day in there.

At the moment it is blowing a gale in Gin Gin and has been for 3 days, usually on the third day it has blown itself out but not this time. The weather report says it will be blowing all week. It was blowing so hard today that I dried my washing in the drier and I just remembered the last load is still in there. Darn it!!

Today I finished quilting the Kraft Klub of Gin Gin's donation to the local nursing home — a wallhanging of cats, then I sewed the binding on ready for the next person to sew down. I also worked on the backing of Trev's Quilt, you wait till you see it, I think it is quite appropriate for a 50 yr old fireman. My DSIL Lyn found some more fireman material on the Sunshine Coast, this time it is clothing and gear and I have put it to good use. He He!!

I've also finished (including the label) my parents hanging that they will now donate to their church. I am quite pleased with it and will take another photo to upload here and also to put into my quilters diary - which I must start. I have a photo album in which I have a few photos of stuff I have done but not too many. I must rectify that. Mum and Dad are staying with us until Friday and were really thrilled with the hanging. I photographed them all snuggly in their pjs.

I've also been working madly on my ¼" hexagons and I find that they go together fairly quickly, I mean how slow can you go when they are only that big?

We have friends staying with us at the moment. Hans and Marg - he is Dutch and she is English and they are wonderful. Hans has been helping Ian do a few odd jobs, like put the end wall in the caravan shed, paint the front wall of Ian's shed green, restore a couple of huge kegs that was Ian's one day job. Here they are ready to start the shed wall.

.... and here they are celebrating the restoration of one of the kegs.

We also celebrated Dylan's second birthday last Friday and Saturday we had a small party for him where he got to blow out more candles. Luckily Katie made Dylan a special patty cake especially for him to blow out his candles ..... and he did, several times, each time spraying the little cake with spit, he hasn't quite learned to blow without spitting yet. We got to eat a piece of the cake in the foreground of the photo.