The little things in life............

Yesterday Linda and I had a very pleasant day out.

In the morning we went to a regional quilters' gathering in Rotorua followed by lunch and a browse in some shops in the downtown area.

One of the shops just happened to be an op shop (thrift store) where I spied these lovely little doilies featuring crinoline ladies.

Not that we really need to add to our doily collection but these were far too nice to leave behind. The ribbon bows have been done in the tiniest satin stitch and the crocheted border is in pristine condition.

Just a little thing in life but something just a bit special to have at our place.

Something a bit different in our lives

In January of this year Linda and I made a decision to change the way we eat.

Encouraged by our brother we read It Starts With Food and decided to follow their concepts, based on the Paleo lifestyle, for 30 days.

The main changes for us was giving up sugar and all wheat products.

We haven't looked back.  We feel heaps better, sleep better, more alert and, as a bonus, we have both lost weight.

The only wheat based food we have now is a home made pizza once a month that Linda makes for us.
I was most surprised that the transition has gone so well.  Always been a bread lover but was aware it was causing digestive issues which have now disappeared completely.

Recently I found a recipe for bread that is wheat free and works for me.  If you would like to try a break from wheat but still want a 'bread' in you life you may like to give this a go:-

Preheat oven to 160 degrees celsius.

Grease or line a loaf tin with baking paper.

Place the following dry ingredients in a mixing bowl:-

75gm psyllium husks
40gm flax seed
75gm rice flour
2tspn baking powder
1tspn baking soda
1tspn salt

In another mixing bowl add:-

75gm melted butter
1/2 cup milk
4 eggs

Mix wet ingredients and add to the dry, mix well and place in baking tin.

You may like to sprinkle on top of the loaf a mix of 20gm sunflower seeds and 20gm pumpkin seeds.

Bake in preheated oven for 55mins.

Cool and enjoy eating.

Bread stores well in pantry for at least 5 days.

NB.  You can mix the sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds into the batter if you prefer but the baking soda may turn the seeds green (as I found) so I now put them on top instead.

Time for an inspection

Sometimes when our friend, Debbie, comes to visit she brings her grandson, Rex.

If they come in the morning, egg inspection is required.  He loves to collect the eggs for us, and if there is a surplus, sometimes he gets to take home a few eggs for his dinner.

On this occasion it was the afternoon.

No eggs to be collected but the hens needed to be let out for their afternoon run.

Rex was happy to let them loose. He also inspected for eggs, just in case, and then decided the coop was worthy of closer inspection.

I was advised it was a bit 'smelly'

Inspection over and time for contemplation - maybe a chicken keeper in the making at some future date...........

Is it just cat scanning or a love affair with new quilts?

Linda wrote recently about the very special quilt her internet friends were kind enough to make as a surprise gift.

Linda laid it out on the floor for us to have a good look at it and it was not long before CiCi was found having a lovely time introducing herself to the latest acquisition.

I am tempted to say she is 'cat scanning' but our Sweet Pea, friend Rochelle shared the following story about 'cat scanning' so now I am wondering whether cats and quilts are really just 'miniature' love affairs:-

A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinary surgeon. As 
she laid her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his 
stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest. 

After a moment or two, the vet 
shook his head and sadly said, "I'm sorry, your duck, Cuddles,
has passed away."

The distressed woman wailed,
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I am sure. Your duck is dead," replied
the vet..

"How can you be so sure?" she
protested. "I mean you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or
something."

The vet rolled his eyes, turned
around and left the room. He returned a few minutes later
with a black Labrador Retriever. As the duck's owner looked on
in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his
front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from
top to bottom. He then looked up at the vet with sad eyes and
shook his head.

The vet patted the dog on the
head and took it out of the room. A few minutes later he
returned with a cat. The cat jumped on the table and also
delicately sniffed the bird from head to foot. The cat sat
back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and
strolled out of the room.

The vet looked at the
woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most
definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck."

The vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and
produced a bill, which he handed to the woman..

The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "$150!" she
cried, "$150 just to tell me my duck is dead!"

The vet shrugged, "I'm sorry. If you had just taken my word for it,
the bill would have been $20, but with the Lab Report and the
Cat Scan, it's now $150."

http://FowlFanatics.com/

Worth closer inspection

Thank you to everyone who left lovely comments about this quilt top and its location.

I thought the pot in the foreground was worth closer inspection.

These polyanthus have done extremely well during the winter months by fronting up to all sorts of weather conditions.

Linda has been faithfully tending to them and they have responded well to her care.

Camelias

The camelias at our place range from the softest pink to the deepest of reds.

One tree, tucked away amongst the others, has cream coloured camelias.

They are lovely to look at but it is very hard to find one to pick that hasn't got brown spotting on it already.

Today I managed to pick two, but there's already signs of brown happening.

Nice to have in the house, even if it is just for a day or two.

What's that happening at our front door?

Today I was trying to get together a nice photo of my latest quilt top and put it up on the wall just outside our front door for a photo shoot.

I wasn't entirely happy with the photos I had been taking and so walked away to check out letter box. As I walked back decided I liked the quilt from this viewpoint.

You may remember this was my 'nice bit of fun' from the 16th August.  Linda also showed images of it on her blog yesterday.

My 'nice bit of fun' has now become a completed quilt top.  Very bright and fresh and yet there was a time when I would never have worked with white.

Not possible for cat scans on this occasion but CiCi did feel the need to check things out.

Love those button jars

We have a rather large assortment of buttons at our place.

The extra large cookie jar was an op shop find and it has proved to be an ideal container for our collection which has accumulated over a number of years.

For the most part the jar sits on a shelf in our quilting studio but every now and then we find someone has a need for buttons and so out it comes.

Always a lot of fun to go through and share, lots of memories stored in these buttons.

Two of our Sweet Pea ladies, Andreena and Debbie, have been making Christmas ornaments and need buttons as a centrepiece.

The buttons were spread on a tray and they were able to sort through and take the ones they fancied.

We have given a lot of buttons away but sometimes we sell a few. Linda has some listed on Trade Me at the moment.

Although our numbers were few it was still an enjoyable morning for our group.  You can see some images of the show and tell from today on Linda's blog.

A nice op shop find

We have had hens at our place for over eighteen months and in that time have received a bounty of over 1800 eggs - not bad for three hens.

Originally we had four hens but just before Christmas one of them, Miss Penny, went to the big hen house in the sky.

The three that are left have continued to be faithful egg layers and we have been enjoying the fruit of their labours.

We have often said it would be nice to have a special bowl on the kitchen bench especially for the eggs.

It has taken a while, but last week we found this one in an op shop for NZ$3.00.

From the markings on the side and bottom I thought it would be nice to find a little more out about the bowl.

The inscription on the side, Le Petite DeJeuner, appears to translate as small kitchen bowl.

I looked up the inscription on the base of the place and Le Comptoir De Famille France have a comprehensive range of household wares.  A similar bowl to the one I bought sells for Euro 13.90 which equates to approximately NZ$22.00, so I suddenly felt quite pleased with my little NZ$3.00 purchase.

Spring is just around the corner

Late in autumn I planted daffodil bulbs below pansy plants in tubs on our patio.

The pansies did not really do that well during the winter but the daffodils are beginning to show their beautiful colour.

The mountains, with all their snow, would like to tell us that winter had not yet left us but the daffodils seem to be saying that spring is just around the corner.

Taking time out

Temperatures plummeted in the Taupo area this week and we have had a number of frosts at our place.

Our local mountains have had some of the best dumpings of snow for this winter season.

They look very impressive from our place but today we decided to take time out to get a different view.

We went to our favourite coffee store for take out coffee and then drove to a scenic lookout on the other side of town.

A totally fresh aspect, with much more of Lake Taupo in the foreground.

Great coffee, great view - so nice to take time out to enjoy what we could so easily take for granted in this lovely part of the world.

Isn't this a nice bit of fun

Take a couple of pieces of contrasting fabric - these ones are 10 inches square.

 Make 4 half square triangles from the two pieces of fabric and piece them together into an hour glass block.

Cut the hour glass block into 9 equal squares.

Turn all of the pieces around and suddenly you have a star block - now isn't that a nice bit of fun.

Here's my first four blocks pieced together - so far so good.

I plan to piece 30 blocks so I hope I still feel like it is a nice bit of fun by the time I get to the end.

Now this idea does not originate with me.

It is called the 'Disappearing Hour Glass Block' and you can see how to create this here in much more detail from the Missouri Quilt Co.:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXggafOP230

Hopefully you may be inspired to have a bit of fun too.

Precious new life

Not so long ago, Linda and I had the privilege of visiting with a newborn baby and his parents at the local hospital.

Young Jaxon is the latest grandson for our Sweet Pea lady, Debbie.

He weighed in at a very health 9lb 9oz and is doing very well.

Linda and I both got to give him a cuddle.

Lovely to see his Dad, Adam, being very hands on and changing Jaxon's clothes for him.

We took along a gift for Jaxon, a quilt panel that Linda had machine quilted and to which I attached magic binding.

Mum and Dad were very pleased to receive the quilt and have already put it in his cot in readiness for Jaxon.

Someone to watch over me

I am not sure why, but I have never been very fond of traditional angel images.

On the other hand, if I see one that is a little bit on the 'crazy' side it suddenly has great appeal for me.

Our local quilting group, Taupo Quiltmakers, recently held their quilt show and had a sales table.

I found this delightful angel and had to bring it home.

She now hangs in my bedroom - someone to watch over me.

Even better, I found out later that one of our very own Sweet Pea ladies, Margaret, had made it and donated it to the sales table.

Margaret makes some wonderful hand stitched items and so I am very pleased to call this one my own.

Going round and round

Life has been a bit topsy turvy for us around here in recent times.

However, things seem to be moving along and recently I received a lovely card and note that was very special to me.

I had been asked by my son to make a baby quilt for someone he used to play basketball with and it was to be in the team colours, black, white and orange.

There is not always the opportunity to get to see these sort of quilts being used but here is the photo of little Zoe enjoying tummy time on her quilt.

Mum and Dad were very happy to have received this gift and it was lovely to have it acknowledged in this way.

Man in action

If you have been reading my blog for a while you may remember when my brothers, Norman and Alan removed a tree from a garden using Norman's car.

You can read about their exploits here, just over two years ago.

We have had a walnut tree on the border of our property which is not particularly well located so we asked Norman if he could take it down for us and today he set about the task.

He is taking up the challenge little by little.

So far so good, we look forward to the final result.

Secret Society

Our Sweet Pea group have been involved this year with a number of secret projects, so much so I suggested to the group this week that maybe we should call ourselves the Secret Society of Sweet Pea Stitchers.

One of our group, Andreena, turned 70 this week.

She and her husband have been away for about eight weeks, travelling the South Island of New Zealand in a camper van and only returned about a week ago.

In her absence the remaining ladies of the group embarked on making a series of Swoon blocks in order to complete a quilt to gift to Andreena for her 70th birthday.

At times we wondered if we would get it together in time but somehow we managed it.  The blocks came back to us.  I pieced them together, Linda quilted them and then I did the binding.  We got there with just a day or two to spare.

The quilt measures 90 inches by 90 inches and has been hard to photograph.  I did the pink block in this image which shows off Linda's quilting very nicely.

You can see some very good further shots of the quilt on Linda's blog.

The baby has been born

I have received advice that the baby has born - Zoe is her name and so the quilt needs to be sent on its way.

I generally pass quilt tops to Linda for the machine quilting but as this was a small quilt and Linda already had enough to be going on with I decided to quilt this on my domestic machine.

Simplicity was the name of the game and using a zig zag stitch it all seemed to work quite well.

It is Sweet Pea day tomorrow so I will take this for show and tell before sending it on its way.

Round and round again

When I was busy making half square triangles to make up into Round and Round blocks I had a request come in for a baby quilt.

Last year I had a similar request.  My son asked if I could make a quilt for a friend who was having a baby.  They were acquainted through playing basketball and he asked that the quilt be made in team quilts - black, orange and white.

You can take a peek at the original one here.

The latest request was for the same team colours but in a different design.

How appropriate that I was working on the Round and Round pattern.  It occurred to me that I could make just the one block, add a border and cornerstones and so another baby quilt has taken shape.

The baby is due before the end of the month so machine quilting has begun.

Cats and bed making

I don't think Kaiser ever misses the opportunity to 'assist' with bed making.

He seems to have a sixth sense about what is going on and loves to be with you right through the process, even if it does mean he gets buried under the bedding.

In the end he found himself tucked in at the foot of my bed with the sun from the window just touching the tip of his nose.  Perfection as far as a cat is concerned, I am sure.

On this occasion I decided to put a different quilt across the end of my bed.

I bought this quilt at a garage sale in Sydney a number of years ago.

Even then it had seen better days but it had a charm about it I could not resist.

It needs to be folded to hide the parts that are perishing but it is still worth exposing the really good pieces of applique.

White backgrounds to quilts is usually more associated with modern quilts but part of the charm of this vintage quilt is the white background.  Everything old is new again, or so it would seem.