Darling Dahlias

Hello there! 

 I thought for the last day of summer in would be a nice thing to share some beautiful blooms that my dahlias have produced over the last month or so.  I have really tried to be more consistent with my care of the dahlias this season and the plants have rewarded me with the best display of flowers that I have ever grown.  Such bright and showy flowers really speak of summer to me. I hope they keep blooming for a few more weeks, I will be dead heading like crazy to try and get another flush of buds. 

So, are you looking forward to Autumn?  I'm a bit sad to see Summer go, it always seems the most relaxed season to me, and I love the long days, but it will be nice to have the cooler months again and all that cosy crochet time in front of the fire. :) 

Have a great day everyone, I'll be back with some crochet to show you soon! 

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random happenings

1 + 2.  Th Emu Plains Market on Saturday.  It was a great way to spend the afternoon and evening, a big crowd and fabulous stall holders, my sister the florist, made some little jar posies for my stall this time and they really added some lovely colour.  Lovely to meet a few readers of this little blog too! :)

3. It's been pretty hot here recently, so I like to give my chooks a little treat to cool them down.  They adore cold watermelon from the fridge, their heads were in a pecking frenzy! 

4. Close up of one of the jar posies my sister made, I got to keep this one! :) 

5. Great thing about Summer - cherry season!  So delicious and shiny. :) 

6 + 7. Some of my recent crochet makes, I haven't been showing much crochet over here because I seem to always be making the same things and I don't want to bore you silly! lol.  I promise to make something different soon! :) 

8. A bit of colourful yarny love to put a smile on your face, so cheery and bright, this Nikkim Cotton is so lovely! 

9. Earlier today, bushfire in our town, this is looking over our back fence.  A lot of huge smoke clouds that would billow up very dark and dirty, then billow up very white and fluffy, it was weird and scary. A bit too close to home for my liking.  One house was burnt down, but it could have been a lot worse, we have fabulous CFA and fire brigades around here, and the community really pulls together and looks out for each other. Makes me proud of our little town!  Heres hoping there are no more fire dramas for Crib Point this Summer. Fingers crossed.

How has your week been?  

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Summer Sunday

Hello there!  How are you? 

How has the week started for you? Mine is looking good! 

I like to do the odd post about other non crafty things we have been doing, and thought it would be nice to share the  sunny and happy Sunday we just had......

This last week we have been having some lovely Summery warm weather, almost hot actually, which is nice, as I don't feel we have had a real Melbourne Summer this year, it has been far too cool.   On Sunday we had a little road trip down the West Coast looking for 'real' surf beaches. (Apparently the surf beaches we have locally don't rate!).   My middle son Andre likes a bit of a surf, so we took his board and went looking for waves.   

Max at Torquay

Our first stop was Torquay where I did some people watching while the boys had a swim.......

......I thought it was funny how these people looked ready for a walk in the snow while the water was full of swimmers :) .........

......this little plane flew over a few times, it looked good against the blue sky......

.....there were loads of learner surfers at this beach, it was very choppy though, so not a lot of wave catching was happening, but every one was trying hard and having fun! :)

Then we drove on to Anglesea where the beach was a little less crowded and the waves were better....

....I love the cliffs around this beach, this is my husbands hometown so we have spent a lot of time here when we were younger and it's always nice to go back for a visit.......

.....Andre took his board out and had some fun catching a few waves, he is getting quite enthused about surfing so we might come down here again soon......it 's a nice change from gaming! 

.....he was very happy with his new wetsuit, he stayed completely dry inside it and said he was not cold at all.......

It was a lovely day out, and I got a lot of crochet done on the drive! Bonus! :)  We used to do day trips much more often when the boys were younger, but as they have gotten older doing their own thing more, it has become a rare treat to have them with us. Even though we were without Jesse who had to work, it felt a bit like old times, so nice!  

Do your children still do day trips with you?  

Or are there becoming rare family days, like for me? 

It does make me nostalgic for the time when my family where little, but then again it is great seeing my boys grow up and become more independent.  I think I will just really enjoy spending fun days with them when they happen, and maybe plan them a bit more often!!

I'll show you my crochet progress tomorrow, I think I am still on track to have this blanket finished for the market :) 

Have a lovely day everyone! 

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Cool.....

Well, if you live in Victoria, pretty much everyone has been preoccupied by the weather and in particular how hot it has been!  Today being the fourth day in a row over 40 degrees, our house has really warmed up and the only place to be was in the water.   So that is where we went.

And it was divine.  We are lucky to be close to the beach where we live, so some very relieving cool water is less than 10 minutes away.  It was particularly clear today and like a mill pond, we just submerged and soaked away the heat.

These photos make it look like we were on a secluded beach, but there were actually quite a lot of people around, it's just a long curvy piece of coastline so it's easy to find a bit of space to yourself.

....And then the cool change finally hit, cool wind blowing through the house, such relief!

I hope you found a cool spot to spend the heatwave!

Hot Sunday and a couple of winners

Hello!

How are you going in your bit of this big old world?

Around here Summer has done a bit of an encore, and we are in the middle of a heat wave that is supposed to last for 4 more days, it is seriously hot!

We are spending a lot of time in water, either at the beach or at my parents place in their lovely pool, or if we are at home a cool shower is the order of the day.  

We spent today having a dip in the sea at Point Leo and then walking up to my parents and jumping in the pool.  The beach was crowded with like minded people, cooling off in the beautiful clear water.

I think it has been one of the best years for swimming at Point Leo in a long time, the water has been like a tropical island and snorkelling has had really excellent visibility,  and although it is technically a surf beach, the waves have been tiny so you can just float around all day if you like!

Nights are a different story, restless and wakeful.  We don't have air con, so I just leave the windows open at night to try and cool the house down, which is less effective as the heatwave continues. 

But never mind, we are not doing much on these hot days, so it doesn't matter if I am going around half awake. ( It is also a long weekend here, so an extra day of lounging around for everyone, although my boys are going to a music festival tomorrow in the city that I am sure will be boiling!)

As you can imagine, not a lot of crafty action has been going on, it has been too hot to hook!

I am sure I'll remedy that soon though.

Pt Leo beach, umbrellas and tents galore!

There were plenty of bodies on the beach today, lucky it is a lovely wide sandy beach so you don't feel crowded.

Straight into the water for us!  Blissful

Yarny Giveaway Winners!

Ok, onto other matters, I'd like to thank each and every one of you who entered my yarny giveaway and left me such lovely encouraging comments about my new adventure in shop keeping, you are all truly wonderful!  You all deserve a prize I think, and I wish I could send you all a little something in thanks, but there ended up being quite a lot of comments, who would have thought!

So anyway, the ladies who won the yarn packs are :

Claire, who wins the pack of 7 balls with the pinks and blues

and Kate, who wins the pack of 6 balls with the greens, blues and mustard.

So congratulations ladies, and sorry to everyone else, but I am so glad you all entered, I think I will be holding more yarny giveaways in the future, I think they are a nice way to share the yarn love and thank this little community of crafters for popping in here and saying hello!

Claire and Kate, if you could drop me an email with your postal details, 

I'll get the wool to you quick smart.

Once again, thanks for joining in this giveaway and I hope you all have lovely crafty day!

(And stay cool if you are in Victoria!)

Talk soon!

xxxxx

Summer days....

Hello.

So, what's been happening at your place?

We have been enjoying some lovely warm days and evenings here, and making the most of the late sunsets.  I hear it is freezing in the Northern Hemisphere, very hard to imagine with the heat we are having, I hope everyone is staying warm and dry!

Max got a new game for Christmas called Finska, it is a Scandinavian game I think, a bit like bowls and bocci, you play it outside and lots of people can play, and you can pick up the rules in about 2 minutes. It is easy, fun and good for all ages

I was looking for something a bit old school for Max, as we have a very techno focused house and the boys spend a lot of time playing Xbox and the like, so this game was something a bit different.

I have to say it has been a big hit!  We have been having games of Finska after dinner, and it has been a great family time.  The game is surprisingly compelling, easy to play, yet taking some skill to be good at, so it is feeding our competitive spirits, and the boys are getting into the challenge. ( So am I, my boys have to play well to beat me, I am discovering that I am quite competitive!! lol)  We have also taken it to the park and played it with friends in teams, which was fun too.

Have you heard of this game? I always like it when I find something new to me that is a hit in our house, often Christmas presents are 5 minute wonders.

...the chickens like that we are outside in the evenings at the moment, they have found a new spot to keep an eye on the action.  (and just to prove that I 'keep it real' on this blog, check out the amount of crap we have in this part of the garden, it's my 'dump everything that I don't want to look at' area.  Must clean it up one day!)

The Summer holidays are nearly over (sob), the boys are starting school next Wednesday, so things will be back to a routine, so I am trying to soak up the last few days of non-routine, I really like no routine!

We are spending a lot of time at the beach and my parents place ( who have a pool that is lovely on windy days), so plenty of reading and relaxing going on, not so much crochet and crafting.  I am trying to write down ideas for things I want to make this year, to get more organised and be more productive and less procrastinate-y.  I'll see how well that works out for me!

Hope you are enjoying the last days of school holidays if you're in Australia and have school age kids!

If you live somewhere else, I hope life is just as good for you too!  :)

Talk soon, see you later!

PS.  Happy Australia Day for tomorrow!

Summer bounty......

tomatoes, tomatoes, everywhere!

(sorry you crafty ladies, this is a bit of a garden joy post today)

 Sooooo..... we have heaps of these in the garden at the minute, I just love a good summer glut of tomatoes, beans, raspberries, or whatever really, it makes me feel like a good gardener and a little pleased with myself, if I am honest with you!! haha...

It's the reward at the end of the whole long process of sowing a seed, nurturing a seedling, feeding, caring and protecting a little plant till it grows more robust, then anxiously hoping the little fragile flowers were visited by the bees you encourage to frequent the vegie patch, then remembering to keep the watering even and abundant so the fruits/ vegetables swell and flourish and the plants stay healthy and can fend off the insects that want their share.........

A million things can upset this journey from seed to harvest. It is hard to maintain the vigilant attention your little plants require for the whole growing season.  

This summer a bed of freshly sprouted carrots and spring onions that were just pushing their first leaves out, were fatally set back when we went away for the weekend and it was hot for a couple of days. Boo Hoo

 My garden suffers from my sporadic attention, although I have tried very hard this summer to be more consistent in my vegie gardens.  I have been pleased with my results - lots of tomatoes and other things, enough to mean we can get our vegies from home, for the most part, through out summer. Yay!

don't they look pretty!!!

After all that is the reason I garden in the first place, the joy of picking your own stuff!

OK enough gushing....I just love the garden!!

 (kind of like I love crochet, I am an all or nothing type of girl) 

And then you have to do something with it all.  There is only so much you can eat and give away to other people (who have gluts of their own), before it starts to rot on your benches and leak all over the floor.

Apparently I am not to worry that they have risen in the jars - it means that they have made a good seal!

  

So that's what I did yesterday. Got out Mrs Fowler and preserved up a storm!  Just chopped up tomatoes, but very satisfying all the same.  There are a few jars of dark ones, which are my Black Russians, and the rest are Romas and Grosse Liss I think.  15 jars in total.  

I have another lot ripening at the moment so I think I will be adding to this later in the week.

Anyhoo......there is a lot of this going on around these summer parts at the moment, just thought I'd give you a little peek into my kitchen and garden, show you what I've been up to, hope it wasn't too boring!

I am starting a new little bit of crochet too, so will show you all soon.

See ya!

Sunny morning....

 Hello. 

Just a quick post today, taking a moment to enjoy a lovely summer morning the other day.

I have moved my little red table to catch the morning light and it is so nice sitting there for breakfast at the moment.

Hope you have a sunny day too!

PS Thank you, thank you, thank you to all the lovely ladies who have passed awards onto me recently, I am thrilled that you thought of my little old blog, and you are all so kind!