Surprise trip!

After some quick juggling of plans, I decided on Monday to take the girls for a short trip back to my home town, particularly as we wont be going there next week for Christmas. We stayed at my mum's house and had a great time catching up with a lot of my family and it was so worth the effort! I was hoping to take some photos of mum's home, but after three battery changes, my camera was still playing up.....will be going to the camera shop to get it sorted out before Christmas. I did manage to get some nice shots in the vegetable garden, so here are some more pics of flowers and vegetables!

As you walk down to mum's garden, you are greeted by a gorgeous row of sunflowers lined up along a fence made of old galvanised iron sheets...

Mum (otherwise known as Ma Ma) follows the rambling garden pattern - ie. no set pattern, which she believes helps to confuse pests (she does not use sprays at all). Here is mum with Miss Chooken. The poor scarecrow is face-down in the strawberry patch, he needs a bit of work :)

Mum with a handful of strawberries...

Red cabbages all in a row...

Spring onion flower, such a gorgeous form. The flower head is nearly as big as an orange.

The shard or rainbow silverbeet.

More rainbow shard, yellow variety too.

Cornflower...

Artichoke...

A squash flower...such a pretty star shape.

Bean flowers...

Some of our bounty, a basket of strawberries and Miss Chooken pulling some carrots.... I need to get her into the garden more - when I asked her to pick some carrots, she was rifling through the carrot tops saying "Where?? Where are they mummy? I can't see them!" "Yes, you have to pull them out of the ground".


Miss Chooken and I also solved the mystery of Ma Ma's plucked radishes. Mum had been finding her radishes pulled up sans the leaf-tops. Miss Chooken spied the neighbours' horse reaching over the fence and helping himself to the radishes, but he was actually knocking the radishes on the fence so they dropped onto the ground, leaving the young leaves for the horse to eat. Clever horse!

Mum's farm cat Tom Tom. Yes, a cat on a hot tin roof :)

Miss Sunshine liked feeding the chooks and ducks...

Some of the old girls.

What a great time we had, family, sunshine, fresh air. It was hard to come home, but we were missing hubby/daddy and it is always good to sleep in your own bed. Now I have the weekend to catch-up on Christmas preparations and some laundry. What are your last minutes jobs to do before the holidays?

Christmas Craft for the Craftless #1

I love hand-crafted goodies, be it ornaments, food, furniture - you name it. However, I am not that crafty.....love the idea of it, just not so good at the application of it, lol. But this year, I was determined to do some fun, easy Christmas craft with my daughters, that did not cost the earth. I have a great children's activity book from the late 1970's that had a recipe for modelling dough and it brought back very fond memories of my mother making us dough dolls. They were beautiful - I believe mine had a red ribbon and a white dress. I have been inspired by gorgeous white ceramic ornaments, some of which I mentioned here.

I have also been inspired by paper-craft, especially the "use-what-you-have-around-the-house" kind, as demonstrated by stylist Megan Morton in the Christmas edition of Australian House and Garden. Although my attempts are base-line basic, it looks good on the tree and has been fun to do with my children :)

Here is Miss Chooken gluing paper patty-pans together to form a cute white chain for our Christmas tree...

Note the patty-pan chain forming in the background.

Next we had a go at the modelling-dough:
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 cup salt
1/2 cup water
Mix till smooth, roll out and cut desired shapes, remember to make a hole with a skewer if you want to hang them.
Let dry in a slow oven or at room temperature for a few days.
Once completely dry, paint, decorate, varnish...whatever is your fancy!

Above - the uncooked ornaments. Once dried, they are a slightly whiter colour. We decided to paint ours as that is more fun for a 4 year old, but I think they would also look great spray varnished and adorned with red ribbon.

Patty-pan chain nestled in the tree also.

I also had a go at making some simple paper ornaments. Cut out 4-5 strips of paper of your choosing. Join each strip end-to-end. Loop each circle through each other and join with a decorative pin. On the opposite side to the pin, thread through cotton or ribbon to secure and to hang. I used some of the dough-beads Miss Chooken and I made out of the left-over modelling-dough. Cute as.

These decorations don't get much cheaper and were lots of fun to make together. I hope to do a similar paper-ball for the place-settings or Christmas day, but if you had letter stamps, you could have a go at stamping someones name on a dough-tag as a place-setting, would look really sweet. They probably wont last for next Christmas....the paper will get squashed, the dough will eventually go mouldy.....but I love the proud look on a child's face when they see something they have made on display - priceless :).

xxx

Real quick - some nice finds!

ok, so I am meant to be packing etc for the weekend trip, but I stopped in at the local op-shops this morning on the way back from one of Miss Sunshine's many medical appointments. Picked up a few nice things and quickly wanted to share! Nothing has been cleaned up, but you get the idea...

First up, inspired by Eddie Ross' recent adventure, I rummaged (seriously, it is two ramshackle sheds behind a church!) and found the collection of silver and wooden spoons. Also a pink hand-bag for Miss Sunshine (not shown). The silver ones are pretty beat-up (not sure yet if they will be ok to serve with) but I will give them a good polish and see how they come up. Now I need to learn more about silver marks/stamps. The wooden ones I grabbed because I love wooden spoons! I like to wonder what recipes they have contributed to, who's kitchen they lived in, who's bottom they may have smacked (lol)...etc. I want a nice white ceramic pot to display them all in. If you have any ideas of how else to display wooden spoons, let me know! The $3 total I paid there also included the mid-60's edition of an Australian vernacular book. I am a bit obsessed with Aussie slang, so I have been keeping an eye out for an older book like this.

The second stop was at the Salvation Army where they are far more aware of how to display and what to charge for the goods. However, I just couldn't go past the white and cream queen sized heavy woven cotton bed spread. I love these old things and this one was in great condition so for $10 I snapped it up! The brass candle-stick matches one I already own, so it was too good an opportunity to not grab it and make a pair (and it was only $1).

I was also thinking of Christmas time and my "green theme", and I could picture the (rather ugly) green cocktail glass, put to much prettier use as a dish to hold sweets on my Christmas table. I also grabbed the little silver cake (maybe cheese?) server and the (not so vintage) glass cloche. I think it was a cheese cloche (?) and I am not keen on the two-tone wooden base, but thought I could either paint the base (white or charcoal maybe?) or use the glass dome on a white ceramic plate stand to present Christmas tarts or similar. Or maybe leave the wood plain? It is about the diameter of a large bread/side plate. Any other ideas? I would love to hear your thoughts! So all up I spent $20 - I think my favourite purchase is actually the retro bedspread :)

A touch of green...

I mentioned here my burgeoning love affair with this shade of green, but I am really starting to find a lot of inspiration for how to include it in my home. It sure doesn't hurt when the images include my sort of styling too! Yay! for Nibs for sharing this one, it made my day :)

Seriously, how supremo is that bathroom??? Probably too "rustic" (read "ridiculous") for the hubby and I am sure my ole granddad would have ask why I was bathing the children in a cattle trough, but I *heart* it muchly!

The little kitchen nook is so sweet and rang a bell after reading about Kimberlee's penchant for indoor plants this summer over at the gorgeous Brown Button. I like the pots sitting in an old crate too, would look nice on a patio courtyard or veranda.

from designer Gudrum Sjoden via Nibs