So now all the excitement of the last two days has sort of died down a little, its time to start getting back to normal.  Well as normal as this household gets anyway.  The weathers wet and miserable again so gardening is out. My youngest and his girlfriend turned up yesterday and I managed to get him to finish trimming off the trees behind the shed. So now I have this mountain of branches in the middle of the back lawn.  I might potter on the verandah and repot some plants up.
I'm still managing to do 20 mins a day craft, I finished my gloves last night. I got a pair out of one ball of Carnival Soft yarn, its just under $3 a ball so thats not bad.  I think with these and the wool pair I did last year I should be right for the next few years, considering how often we get really cold weather they will not get a lot of wear. I still want to do another pair of socks, masochistic I know.
I need to finish the cross stitch I started the other week. What I really need to do is finish the ufo's that have crept up again before I start anything new. 
I want to start on my new embroidery project, not sure yet wether it will suit prim naive or the more traditional embroidery, perhaps somewhere in betweeen. I love jacobean/crewel work but it can be time consuming on a large design and I love thread painting but that will definately be too time consuming for what I have planned.  I can see two designs coming up now and sitting here at the puter is not going to get them down on paper. I will probably keep putting if off and making excuses like I normally do.  As I am typing away a couple more ideas have sprung up but I really don't want to go there - Applique. 
I'll make a start my sharpening my pencils and rescuing my colours from the grandgirls toy corner.  The desk in the craft room has to be cleared as well, but that means all my threads have to be sorted and put back and that means I might as well finish the cross stitch first and a couple of embroideries. See.....I managed to find that excuse not to make a start on the new project.
I'm trying very hard not to jump into Family Search today.  It is so tempting to just go look for one more clue in my search for the ancestors.  I need to find confirmation on one of my great great grandfathers I think I have finally found.  Its a wonderful feeling finding someone from your past and when you find LIVE reli's its even better no matter how distant the common ancestor is that you share. 
Should I or should I not go garage saling today, theres only two down in the paper.  I would need to put petrol in the car first, and theres a new second hand place just opened up on the edge of town as well I want to check out. Do I ignore the bills piling up, do I ignore that voice of reason that was so good when it came to not going to the Spotlight sale, but what if I miss that elusive bargain of the century I've been searching for, that perfect piece.  Grrrrrrrrrrrr.................


Jan

End of March already

Where has the time gone.  Not much happening craft wise. I seem to have slowed down though I do still do my 20 mins a day.  Easter just like christmas has crept up on me.  It not something we really make a fuss of. Maybe I will have the family round for lunch on Sunday, depending on my mood. I'm not feeling very sociable at the moment.  I'm in my grumpy old woman mode. 
I want to lock myself away from the world and just craft away to my hearts content, no stopping to cook meals or talk to friends. No cleaning or shopping. Its not going to happen so I might as well 'suck it up and deal with it Princess' as my friend would say.
I whizzed round the supermarket this morning, making chimichangas for dinner tonight. Got everything I needed and more while I was there.  I'm going to put the meat on now so it will be cooked enough to shred later.  Then I'm going to find a couple more ancestors to add to my family tree and then settle down while the meat is cooking to an hour of crafting. I have the house to myself for the first time in ages so I am taking advantage of it.


Jan

NEW SHOES

Since I was so determined I was going to come home with a new pair of shoes I practically tried on every size 6 - 7 in the shop.  The pretty trainers with the rose print on were too tight so that was a big disappointment.   To me the shoes that RIVERS sell are a bit quirky, but I decided that quirky was okay - suits me down to the ground in my present mood. So I got a pair reminiscent of little girl shoes. I've always shied away from them in the past but yesterday I bit the bullet and tried something new.  I also got a skirt, a pretty brown swirly skirt with beads and embroidery on, reduced to $29 from $59.  The op-shops turned out to be a big disappoint as far as rose themed items went. Not one thing. So I bought 2 pretty shirts and a cute little pot bunny.  I also bought a cotton overshirt that had aged very well, the faded colour blending perfectly. At a $1 I thought it was a good buy and I plan to do a little surface embroidery around the neckline, nothing too pretty as it isn't a pretty shirt.  I bought a new handle and lock for the bathroom door - no more yelling out to visitors - Put the big wooden duck behind the door.  Now all I have to do is find a capable man to fit it for me.  Actually I am probably quite capable of fitting it myself.

If I don't get new shoes today I will Scweam

and I'll scweam and I'll scweam and stamp my feet.

Yesterdays trip to Mareeba was cancelled yet again, my son turned up at my friends early in the morning to do her mowing and pruning and since we had been nagging and nagging him to do it and the weather was perfect we cancelled our shopping trip.  If we had been younger and fitter I suppose we could have gone in the afternoon but by then it was 90 degrees and neither of us fancied the journey and shopping in that heat.
So today we are going to be two determined little old ladies. We will get there, come rain or shine.
We've given ourselves a project - paint our garden pots, so we're going to the second hand shops to see what they have we could use as pots. Then the op-shops and then we'll end up at the store where hopefully we will have money left for shoes. 
I have given myself a challenge today - to buy 4 rose themed items and not spend over $5 for the lot.  I am so in need of 'pretty' in my life.  Having three boys and a husband who wasn't into frilly and pretty (though to give him his due he did like fossiking around op-shops and garage sales with me) I was overrun with masculine things. So now I only have one son at home I can gradually start prettying things up.  I am hoping that all the prettiness will get to him and he'll move out. Aren't I a horrible mother.

Well better get a move on, pots to wash, clothes to hang, shower, get dressed and prepared for a big shopping trip.

janjan

midnite ramblings

Why was I, at just gone midnight frantically vacumming. I'd had my UK crime fix - The Bill, Blue Murder and then an episode of Midsomer Murders I don't remember seeing before so it just gone midnight when the tele went off. I walked into the bedrooom and there suspended about a foot over the bed was a big spider, closer inspection revealed it had made a web from the top shelf in the wardrobe down to a bed post back up to the ceiling back down to the diagonally opposite bedpost back up to the ceiling and then to each of the other bedposts and was proceeding to weave a gigantic web over the bed.  I did briefly consider sleeping on the sofa but as the vacumm was still on the bedroom floor I set to, the spider fell onto the bed and went under the cushions, I was waving the vacumn around in the air trying to get as much of the web up as I could, the spider tried to haul itself up what must have been an emergency line and I homed in on it.  Just in case it had a mate it was weaving the web for I ended up vacumming all the nooks and crannys and then spraying surface spray all around with one quick last spray up the hose of the vacumn (I wasn't going to let the little pest creep out and get me in the night) Sod the ozone layer just this once, there was no way I was going to sleep there unless I knew I wasn't going to be attacked by a giant spider.  When I finally got to sleep it was very fitful, every little itch woke me and I was looking around for spiders.

The day started off sunny but its just gone overcast, so I'm not going to work in the garden today, I've decided to have a lazy day (I really mean it this time).  I finished the primula cross stitch and have started on crocuses. I went in to town yesterday to get more threads, came home made a start on it and then went back to town for some plant pots and potting compost. I potted up some Cordylines and Mother in Laws tongue.  M.I.L's tongue has just been declared a noxious weed in Queensland just when I've finally got it growing well in a garden bed, so I dug it up and potted it in a big terracotta pot.  I moved pots around on the verandah and made a nice little sitting area.  I did the washing, folded and put away everything.  So today nothing really needs doing. 

So now I'm going to go and continue being lazy.


Jan

NO NEW SHOES

My friend was feeling under the weather again, so I decided we'd leave it till Monday as I didn't want to go over to Mareeba by myself. It was our planned girls day out.

I decided to go grocery shopping instead and feeling energetic I decided to walk beforehand and check out all the op-shops. Parking spaces opened up for me just as I got to them, roads cleared of traffic just as I wanted to cross over. I found a nice pair of pants in one shop with a blue ticket half price sale - that meant only $3, but there was another ticket on it for $3 so she halved that, so I got them for 1.50.  I had ditthered over buying a t-shirt in Millers last week it was marked down in the sale to $8 from $20 I couldn't decide between the pink or green and I finally decided on the pink, but in the op-shop today they had the green one, never worn for $3.  Then I went to another op-shop and got a vintage crochet pattern book for 20c.
I walked back to the car and went to the store and got a parking space straight away - under the shade cover and facing forward.  The day got even better when i was unpacking the grocerys and found I hadn't been charged for the chicken breasts.  Considering how many times I've been overcharged I reckon we're even.  My son was even in a happy mood as there is the chance of getting on a training scheme.  I got on the scales and I've lost half a kilo. So, can this day get any better.

EASY DAY - YEH RIGHT

Why do we do it. What is it with us women. When we say we're going to do nothing and have an easy day why don't we mean it.  What we really mean an easy day on top of all the things we do to run a household anyway. The washing, the ironing, the putting away, then the thinking up meals, the shopping, the preparing a meal. Weeding the garden, dusting, cleaning out cupboards, decluttering, vacumming.  Are we so afraid that if someone comes and says 'and what did you do today' and you reply "oh I had an easy day today" that they are gonna look around the place and say"yep, it sure looks like it".  I'm long since past caring about that.  But whenever I say I'm going to have an easy day I seem to find extra energy to get big jobs done.  Perhaps an easy day for me is one where I can get extra jobs done - but at my leisure. If I want to pull everything out of the cupbaords and then go and sit down for 20 mins stitching then I can. If I want to leave the vacumm in the middle of the room till I get a fresh burst of energy to finish then I will.  Which is exactly what I did yesterday.
Though leaving the vacumm in the bedroom doorway wasn't such a good idea as I forgot it was there at bedtime and went flying.

But today - its an easy day.  Shoe shopping. Theres  big shoe sale over in Mareeba and thats where a friend and I are headed in about an hour.  Which means I better get a wriggle on and get showered and dressed.


Jan

EASY DAY TODAY

The worst thing about laundry is that just as soon as you fold it, put it away there it is back in the washing machine.  I tackled the mountain of clean clothes early this morning and sorted it all out and then put it all away.
Yesterday we managed to get out to my friends garden - WOW. She's been busy, its an amazing place, we felt like we were touring round a botanical garden. We managed to get a few cuttings as well.  When I got home my son had mowed and just left a little for me to do.
Today I think I'm going to take it easy, quielty cross stitiching, maybe read a little. Tomorrow we're going over to Mareeba to see a another friend and do some retail therapy.  This week has been really busy and its nearly the weekend again. Where is the time going.

The wine never got opened I got so stuck into cross stitching I nearly missed Greys and then continued to stitch while it was on.  Should finish it today.  Trying to get out to my friends place again today but it looks like the rain has settled in for the day. Not much fun out in the rainforest when its wet and damp.

The laundry cupboard badly needs sorting out and theres a great big pile of clean washing to sort and maybe one or two things to iron.  I need another big project. Perhaps I'll dig out a couple of ufo's and see if I can get them finished.  A couple of rose ones I started when Mik was still alive so its about time they were done and dusted. My yarn box needs a good sort out yet again.  So if I clean out the laundry cupboard I'll reward myself with 30 mins in the craft room.

Jan

I finally did it

Big sigh of relief. The dolls pattern is all finished and sent off for submission. Now we play the waiting game.
It took all day - to retype out, triple check, add the photo's. I refused to leave the computer until I had hit that send button.  I don't think I had lunch and I've only had one coffee today. So I deserve a proper coffee for all that hard work.  Actually I have a bottle of wine chilling but I'm going to save that for Greys Anatomy later tonight.  My son cooked a beef casserole for dinner which was very edible, unfortunately he left me the washing up to do. 
So now I'm going to settle down to do a bit of cross stitching.

Vicky, if you go over to my other blog I've done the first installment of our move to australia, I know you wanted to hear more.

Jan