Big house, big bed

That house is getting bigger and bigger. I know it’s not going to last, but I quite like the way the structure fills with the early evening sun and glows yellow, spilling fragments of light into our house in new and odd places.

And all is quiet tonight – which is amazing because it’s Lily’s first night in her new BIG bed and it’s a very big event.

That’s the bed! The mystery object from last week. I found a cheap bed frame on ebay, found a place just up the road that powder coats stuff ($90!) and voila! Not quite the Cath Kidston beauty but it makes me happy and it was thrifty and Lily loves her NEW BIG RED BED. The quilt is a very old one from my childhood which I think is one of my Grandma’s very first pieces. It’s pretty loud, but sadly getting pretty faded in parts and is a nice stand in until I finish my bazillion other projects and make Lil a new quilt. Maybe it will just stay that way.

She looks so tiny in that bed. I tried to take a photo of her in it while Phil read her bedtime stories, but in every single photo she is a complete blur of movement -  she was tucking herself in, rearranging her pillows, moving her blanky into a better position, finding that her pillow was slipping etc etc.

And don’t forget those rabbits on auction!

Fancy a Marshmallow Rabbit?

Finally I have got a little bit organised and have sewn the buttons on my 5 Marshmallow bunnies and they are ready to go on sale, just in time for the silly season.

After lots of deliberation I have decided to list them on ebay rather than etsy as there are only 5 and I have had a barrow load of enquiries – so I couldn’t think of an easier way to let everyone have a fair go at getting in. Because of this, I am donating 5% of the sale of the rabbits to Oxfam Australia and it’s only a three day auction so I can get them off as soon as possible so that they will reach people in plenty of time for Christmas.

Please note that these auctions are in Australian dollars.

Lots more photos and details here.

Scrappy

I had lots of bits and pieces left over from making Amelia’s (still unfinished) quilt, and they are being put to good use. Over the weekend we decided that Tali (the doll for baby Georgina) needed a quilt to go with her new bed. Amelia has been working on a kind of freeform patchwork for a while now, and finally it had a reason to come together. She handstitched 12 of the 16 squares before losing steam and handed it over to me to finish, quilt and bind. I think it looks pretty spiffy! The collage is just a little fun thing she put together using a bunch of the left over selvedge scraps which I kept, thinking they might be useful for something someday….

NEXT!

Pip revolutionized my life today by introducing me to the Next button in Google Reader… read her instructions and enjoy! I was totally overwhelmed by all the blogs I subscribe to in my reader, and will often just return to my 10 – 15 oldest and dearest because looking at everything is just too much. But now I have started a-fresh. I haven’t gone the whole hog and deleted everything like Pip has done, but I have marked everything as “read”, and will enjoy hitting “next” from now on to flick through the most recent updates from all of my 236 favourite blogs (I can’t bear to delete a single one!). I have found so much inspiration in just one day using this new method. I am hoping this sense of being all sorted will last.

I have started thinking about decorating for Christmas (this year I am thinking of embracing the Southern Hemisphere Summer a bit more and decorate with a kind of Midsummer-fairy-woodland theme… though I may run out of energy, as is my way, and just cut out a million paper snowflakes again. They do look pretty). There is lots to be found to start me thinking and scribbling lists. Top to bottom: Mouse House and Family from Pottery Barn Kids, vintage wall art on etsy (sadly sold!) via How About Orange, a super cute mushroom ornament found on Sew, Mama, Sew, Heidi’s gorgeous card houses (she has the link to the templates on the bhg site) and lastly (and so cool) is a detail from Michelle’s beautiful Solstice calendar. Such an inspiration!

Works in progress

I am all over the place at the moment but it feels ok. I go where the mood takes me (which is quite often to the top shelf of the fridge door where there is a block of Green and Black’s white chocolate). So what am working on? From top to bottom: The hand quilting on Amelia’s quilt – that’s taking me a while. And I am still making lots of those punkdorf dolls. One for new baby Georgia, one for Lily, one for Amelia, a tiny one for Mirabel, one first cousin once removed Baby X and so on. The doll pictured is for new baby Georgina – the other’s neck was way too floppy and the puckering really annoyed me and this one is a vast improvement, (although, very annoyingly, the string inside the head which squeezes the face into the correct shape seems to have come adrift so she is still kind of wonky looking). Her name is Tali (until otherwise named) which is Tongan for “waiting”… she was almost entirely made while I waited for news of her birth. And under that? I am always working on the garden these days and I am waiting on capsicum seeds to germinate in my biodegradable toilet roll pots… I may have inadvertently overheated them. And below that are a couple of pieces of trashy old ebay finds which are waiting on the back porch for a lick of paint.

But the project that is exciting me most today? It’s not exactly a craft project, it’s more an exercise in project management. Here’s a little clue:

More to come later.