Crafting with Paper

Earlier this week, on a blue-sky day that made you smile just looking up, I had a fun day out with friends, playing with paper.  We made flowers, punched shapes and we learnt some new paper tricks.  It was just a short drive from home to the Yanakie Hall.

 

Old Community Halls are fabulous aren't they?  They're generally filled with sporting memorabilia in the form of premiership flags or shield plaques, often a colourful, painted mural, sometimes with a stage where you can imagine the entertainment that's been given over the years and always with the Queen smiling down, gives such a sense of local community.

 

 

The idea of this day was to make a frame for a photo to sit in, but I adapted mine to be a page for a scrapbook.

 

 

 

 

Looking for the right photo to pop into this "frame" page and a few words and she's done.

 

Wishing you a fabulous weekend.

Trudy

Ever heard of Geocaching?

I hadn't.  Not until recently.  You?  Now, with my family peeps, we are official geocachers, along with the other 5 million worldwide!!

It all began about 12 years ago.  How did I not know about this?  Let me explain exactly what geocaching is, just in case you are where I was just a week or so ago.  Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt where you use your global positioning system (GPS) to find caches hidden by other players.  These caches are hidden in over 200 countries all over the world and even in our little country town!  And I've been walking around in blissful ignorance.

A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name and may also contain items for trading, usually trinkets of little value.

We set out the other day on our first geocaching expedition, just a quick little drive from where we live and we found our first cache!!  It was such a thrill.  And look, this is what we found.  Inside was all sorts of tiny treasures.  We took a couple, and left a couple for the next geocachers to find.

What a fabulous way to spend time outdoors, going to far flung corners of your neighbourhood, playing sleuth, revelling in the thrill of the hunt and finding treasures in the cache if you're lucky.

There are difficulty ratings, apparently some caches are underwater and others can be 50 feet up a tree!!  Think we'll be sticking to the easy ratings for a while.

Are you a geocacher?  Do you have some great stories to tell, to share with a novice?

Cheers, Trudy

Days 7, 8 and 9

Continuing on with my photo-a-day challenge, here are photos from the last three days, and the words are 7. natural, 8. at night, and 9. something I do most weekends.

 

 

 

We've been having some crazy weather here in South Gippsland the last few days, wind bringing branches and whole trees down, and it's also been raining gumnuts, and I just can't resist picking them up.  Love the different colours and isn't the green amazing?

 

The second photo shows a little corner of our sitting room with piles of books at the ready.  Our night time generally means lamp light.  I love lamp light or candles and find overhead lights way too bright.

 

And, yes most weekends I am very lucky and get breakfast in bed.  I know a lot of people don't like breakfast in bed, something about the crumbs in the sheets or something, but it is one of my favourite things indeedy!!  This morning I had some chocolatey pops on top of my seriously healthy cereal.

 

Hope you've had a happy weekend.

Will be back soon with crochet, craft and quilting!

 

Trudy

Photo-a-day Challenge

This is fun.  And makes me take more photos!!  Here are the next three days' photos.  4.  in my letterbox.  5.  bright.  6.  every day.

 

Okay, I should confess, the first photo was staged!!  Wouldn't it be a fun mail day, opening up your letterbox and having all those letters, postcards and parcels spill out?  I think I would do a happy dance.

 

The 'bright' photo was taken in our house, in an unrenovated room, soon to be Girl 1's bedroom, but at this stage has no light covering, just the bare bulb and yes, it's bright!

 

And finally, something I do every day.  Every day I open my laptop, hit the go button and connect to the world.  I love it.  Best Present Ever was this laptop.  It has changed my life, changed how I go about my day, changed how I stay connected with people.

 

Have you taken a photo today?

 

Bye, Trudy

Mixed Stitch Stripey Blanket Update

These colours are so luscious to work with, I just had to share some colour with you today!

 

  

That's all.

Just colours.

And crochet.

And new-to-me stitches.

 

Wishing you a lovely mid-week day.

Trudy

Finished Project for August

Just a few day's late ... I've been a bit distracted, but here is my finished project for August.  It's a funny little house pincushion, designed by Sue Spargo, but with a lot of tweaking by me.  I was going for a bit of a Dutch Colonial look as in the picture below ...

... but something happened along the way and I ended up with this!!

Not one of those projects that at the end gives you a moment's smugness at one's personal achievement, oh deary no!  This was more like "grrr, wonky stitches, mumble, mumble, seams don't match, mumble, mumble, I could have done that differently, better, etc. etc. ..."

But my list of unfinished projects is one project lighter, so onwards and upwards.

Wishing all the wonky stitches away.
Trudy

Photo-a-Day Challenge

I have decided, for the month of September, to join in the photo-a-day challenge over at Fat Mum Slim.  Each month Chantelle puts up a list of words, one for each day of the month, and the challenge is to take a photo to fit the word, or a photo of my interpretation of the word.

I thought I would post three days/photos at a time, so here are my first three photos for the first three days of September.  1.  me, now.  2.  father.  3.  far away.

Hope you're enjoying a bit of sunshine in your neck of the woods.  It's blissful here today.
Trudy