Cat Scans

Our cats, Kaiser and Koko are well known for their habit of turning up on the scene when a new quilt has been finished and laid out on the floor.

They cannot help themselves they just have to come and lie right on top - these days we call it 'cat scanning'.

Linda recently made a scrappy quilt so that she could try out a quilting design called Baptist Fan.

She had no sooner laid out the quilt when CiCi appeared and promptly sat on the quilt to give it a 'cat scan'.

We were so surprised. Where did she learn about this? Has she been to 'cat scan' school?

The quilt proved to be a good sample for Baptist Fan design as well as an I Spy quilt with the wide variety of items of interest included amongst the scraps.

New From Old

A couple of weeks ago my sisters were out and about visiting a few opportunity/goodwill stores.

As they were leaving one of the stores, Linda, saw a table where everything was free. There was a basket nearby and in it a very sad looking old single bed spread.

It had a gathered fringe for the sides of the bed but the centrepiece was a long strip of hand pieced hexagons.

Linda brought the quilt home, washed it, stripped the gathered frill and cut enough strips from it for binding.

She pieced together left over pieces of wool batting and put the block of hexagon pieces on to the quilting frame and not too much later a new quilt emerged.

I just loved the colours and so I now have a new quilt for my arm chair.

Plum Blossom

Last year, when we bought our property we were delighted to find two established plum trees in our garden.

We patiently waited for them to ripen and we did so enjoy the fruit. We ate them fresh, stewed, and made into jam and plum sauce. We even froze some of the stewed plums but they have long since been consumed. We hope the plum sauce and jam last us until the next lot of fruit is ready for the same treatment.

The plum blossoms are out so we look forward to further developments:-











We found a really easy recipe for plum sauce in the New Zealand Garden magazine -

Digby Law's Plum Sauce

3 kg plums
2 onions
3 cloves garlic
1.5 kg sugar
6 cups malt vinegar
2 tablespoons salt
1 tspn cayenne papper
2 tspns each ground clovers, ground ginger and black pepper

Place all ingredients in a large pot and simmer slowly, uncovered, until onions are soft.

Strain out plum stones and discard.

Blend sauce in a food processor until smooth.

Return to the pot, bring back to the boil, pour into clean glass bottles/jars and seal.

Mature for at least a month to allow flavours to fully develop.

Very, very nice.

Quilting Group

With both of us spending more time closer to home my sister and I thought it would be nice if we started a quilting group of local friends with a common interest.

Today we met for the first time just to set up some general guidelines for the group and some of the ladies brought some show and tell:-

Rewa brought a quilt top she is working on for one of her grandchildren.












Debbie has been working on two nursery style quilts.

This one has been finished except for the binding.

Very cleverly executed in lovely, bright colours.








Maxie was working on an Irish Chain quilt top.













Andreena is in the middle of making a Christmas table runner.












Joanne brought a sampler quilt which she has finished up to the binding stage.

Lovely combination of quilted blocks and applique.









We are looking forward to many more happy gatherings before the year is over.

Golden Wedding Celebration

Fifty years ago a shy young eleven year old was asked to give her sister a horse shoe on her wedding day.









Fifty years later what could I do to make the celebration of my sister's golden wedding anniversary.

I took a copy of one the wedding day photos, changed it to sepia colour and printed it on to silk.

I found some cream vintage silk dupioni from a wedding gown for the background and cut a horse shoe shape from gold silk fabric.

I used fusible webbing to attach the photo and the horse shoe to the cream background.






I then embellished the lower part of the horseshoe with cream motifs, grub roses, gold beading, pearl beaded trim and silk ribbon embroidery.
















I then took the project to the framers and was very pleased with the box frame they did for me.

















Fifty years on and they can look back and reminisce the many years shared together.

Family Gatherings

As a family we have been very fortunate, in recent years, to have more and more family gatherings.

Sister Linda celebrated her birthday recently and all of our siblings were able to be there for her.

In this photo our Mum is sitting in centre, suitably surrounded by all of her children.

We had the event catered for at home with a sit down meal, leg of ham, roasted and boiled vegetables and salad followed by sticky date pudding and/or pavlova. Very nice.

Today's view from my bedroom window

Today has been wet and miserable but when I looked out my bedroom window this morning, the kayakers out for their adventure for the day.

Adventure tourism is one of the highlights to bring tourists to New Zealand, so I guess if you come this far, you make the most of the kayaking regardless of the weather.

The image is blurry because of the rain and the fact that it was taken through the glass of my bedroom window but I thought that capturing the moment was worth it.:-





Rather them than me.

Never get tired of that view

I think my sons think their Mother is a bit crazy the way she keeps on raving about the view from our home in Taupo.

Yesterday and today we have had crisp, frosty mornings followed by clear skies and the most fantastic views of 'our' mountains with fresh coatings of snow.

Just never get tired of that view:-

Three Sisters, Two Generations

Yesterday we went to visit to with our Aunt Grace who, today, will reach the milestone age of 101:-





The occasion meant she could be reunited with two of her sisters for the day:-





Aunt Grace is 101, Aunty Bettie (in the middle) is 83 and Lydia, our Mother, is 91.

The used to be two more sisters, Dorothea and Marjorie, so it is nice to think the remaining three can still get together from time to time.

In addition there were three sisters from our generation as well:-





Yours truly on the left with sister, Barbara, in the middle and sister, Linda, on the right.





We got to have a cake cutting ceremony although we understand this was to be repeated with other family and friends today.

Where is my five star treatment?

The cats at our home live pretty well, in fact, I think they get five star treatment so how come Koko was found licking the condensation off the window on a cold and wintery morning:-





Koko gets fresh, lukewarm water every day so why did she think the service was not good enough or was she trying to give us lessons in the window cleaning department?

Considering the windows are ceiling to floor the window cleaning could take quite some time.

The things that cats do........

Cici's coat has become quite glossy and more 'orange' since coming to live with us. Linda wanted to capture a picture but was totally ignored by CiCi - you have never truly been ignored until you have been ignored by a cat:-







Have you ever had a 'cat scan'?

If Linda puts out a new quilt on the floor to get a better look at it you can be absolutely sure that either Kaiser or Koko will appear so that they can have first turn at lying on the quilt.

We know that all quilts that come to this home have to be 'cat scanned' before use. In this case Linda was showing me a quilt that had been given to her by her quilting friends for her 60th birthday and Kaiser appeared on the scene:-

The fingers of frost...........

This was our front lawn one day this week.





It was after 9am and the fingers of frost were still receding.

A bit nippy first thing, but what a lovely day that followed.

Home again, home again

Three plane flights and many hours later, I finally arrived back in Taupo from Dallas.

The skies over the North Island of New Zealand were clear when I flew in and there were magnificent views of the mountains.

In the morning I woke and this was the view from my bedroom window:-





It was frosty and misty, but it was home and it felt good.

The day did clear, revealing views of the river and mountains - I never get tired of this.

Flowers and such

On my previous visits I have tended to come later in the year when the blooms of summer were well past.

I don't recognise the plant but I have seen a lot of the following in the streets and front yards of properties, mostly in hot pink, but also in red, white and purple:-








The photo is a bit blurry but there is a rhododendrun growing just near the swimming pool:-

Making the most of those opportunities

Looking back on my blog entries since being in Dallas there has been a little lesson for me in making the most of photo opportunities.

The cat that came to visit one morning has never been seen again, no more frogs and only one more sighting of a squirrel.

The size of David and Lisa's backyard does not seem that large in comparison to the size of the house but there was still room for a planting of a grove of trees and today I counted 12 of them with another 6 alongside the pool:-





The trees provide a nice, natural barrier between the house and neighbours who are not too far away.

Could this be the beginning of bigger things to come?

Three years ago David began creating a computer game with a playful hero called Frogatto. Over the past twelve months he has given it more serious attention resulting today in the release of the game by Apple as an application for iPhones.

Just another benefit of having my iPad with me. We are able to see an early release image of the game in Australia.

Garage Sale results

After going to the quilting garage sale on the first week I was here I had a real urge to do a bit of stitching and so this:-





became this:-









I just need to put borders on as well as use the four left over blocks as corner stones and I will have a very nice lap quilt to remind me of my adventures in Dallas.

I would have liked to finish the top off properly while still here, but I have already sent the rest of the fabric on their way and it may just be that they arrive in New Zealand before I do - now that would be a nice surprise.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

and we have lots of pictures to share:-

David's birthday when friends came over on the Saturday to share the evening with us:-

You can find the images here.

One of the gifts that David received was a father/son project which meant that Jackson ended up painting some model cars.

You can find the images here.

Last night we went to The Magic Time Tunnel for dinner. A family entertainment style restaurant where the waiters dressed up as characters from well known movies/children stories. Our waiter was dressed up as Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean - other well known characters were Alice in Wonderland, Tinkerbell and Little Red Riding Hood.

Jackson ordered the children's drink in green but when it came he was not impressed. Kathy, however, thought the drink to be quite nice with lots of fruit juice.

David took my photo in the foyer looking at the would be bookcase. Each of the books were sawn off at about 3 inches depth but carefully place to look like the real thing. I wonder who had the job of deciding which books to wreck and fix in place.

There was an artist in the foyer doing caricatures for a fee of $5. Brennan thought it worth spending $5 of his allowance so that he could take home a momento of the evening.

You can find the images here.

The Birthday

Friday was David's birthday and we celebrated at home.

Lisa's friend, Amy, joined us for the evening. I cooked meat loaf, a favourite of David's and we enjoyed our time at home together.

The patio furniture was already a gift for David but there were other gifts to share on the night.

Jackson was only too happy to help David with his stash:-






and watched on carefully as the presents were opened:-

The Birthday 02

I had prepared a photo album for David with a combination of school records and family photos:-





Jackson showed a keen interest in every page of the album and was quite sure that all the photos were of Jackson on his own or with his brothers. I think he must see a family likeness between himself and his father.