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

WET AGAIN

We had a couple of days brief interlude from the rain but now its back, just in time for the markets and my planned weekend of visiting garage sales and this big native plant nursery with friends.
Its cooled down a bit, quite pleasant. I'm sooo longing for winter and temps of 40 and 50, its a pleasant 70 this morning but will probably rise to 80+. The days are starting to cool down a bit (not quick enough for me though). Theres still the danger of cyclones right through to the end of March.

My foots okay, nothing broken just bruised and sore. It didn't stop me climbing up on the chair again. Cos someone had put the steps back in their proper place for once and I couldn't get them down.  I found one of my little Wade things on the net. The buyer wanted $38 for each of them so I thought I'd better get them cleaned up - now I know where all those beetles that fly in every night go to die.  They date back to the mid 50's (the Wade not the beetles) and I think I payed $5 for the pair of them about 6 years ago. I also identified a Wade cruet as well from the 50's but I paid $10 for that in an antique market in Brisbane 4 years ago.  I haven't found anything remotely like the pink Johnson Bros teapot, the design on the lid I think is from the friendly village series which was done over a few decades.  I've been through the entire sites of Go Antiques and RubyLane, now I'm cruising through etsy.

I got the most beautiful cross stitch flower book from the library yesterday and they have a gorgeous daffodil and tulip in it and there was also a primrose/primula in it. I'm so glad we get the books for a month now. I'm making a start on the Primula one this morning.  It should cover 20mins to get everything together and maybe make the first stitch. I can't wait.

Jan