HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

((Well I stole this pic from google images and didn't realise it said "from Trevor"!! LOL ))

I would like to wish all my blog readers a wonderful New year and all the best for 2010.
Blogland has really opened up a whole new world for all of us and I have made some wonderful friends - some I have met and some I have yet to meet!!

Take care and here's to a great 2010!!!

Hugs
Anita

Oh...the curtains!

Oh here are also some before and after shots of the curtains that I made for Colin the Coleman Camper. They were much darker than the old ones so kept a bit of light out in the early morning due to the fact that QLD does not have day light savings! They also look much nicer that those horrid 80's ones LOL

We're Back!!!

My three weeks holiday is over,sigh, and I was back to work today (unfortunately!). We had a lovely 2 weeks away and have had the last week at home catching up on things.
We had a fantastic holiday, visited some beautiful places. As you can imagine I have lots of photos so won't put them all on here, just a couple, and then will put up the links to my online albums if you want to see the rest of the pics.
From Sydney we headed up to South West Rocks just for a night, didn't want to drive too far on the first day as we haven't towed for a while so wanted to take it easy.
This is the view from our site there.

We then headed off to Byron Bay for 3 nights. We have only ever passed through here, once stopping for a swim, and have always said we wanted to come back here. Great place, great beaches, great food LOL. We couldn't believe how many people there were there, the Caravan park was full every night. We had a great site overlooking the surf beach so even though it got hot there, we had a lovely breeze all the time.

Link to pics from Byron Bay: http://picasaweb.google.com.au/craiganita/ByronBay#

After then it was off to Noosa Heads in Queensland. We stayed in a lovely caravan park on the river. As you can see the water was absolutely gorgeous, such lovely colour and so clean and clear. Here again we had a sea breeze so it kept the temps down a bit

.http://picasaweb.google.com.au/craiganita/Noosa#




Here we spent a lot of time just relaxing by the water, swimming , reading and just lazing about. This was what we both needed! We did do a couple of trips, went on a day trip to Fraser Island.

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/craiganita/FraserIsland#

That was such a great day, just amazing scenery. We also went to Australia Zoo. If you ever get a chance to go there, definitely go. I wasn't fussed on going (not being an animal person LOL) but Craig wanted to go. We had no idea what to expect and thought it might take half a day but we got there at 9.30 and left at 4.30!! It is the most amazing place, the nicest zoo I have ever been too. It is very interactive ( even I fed the elephant!) and so clean and every little detail has been planned out carefully. Of course the whole message of Conservation comes out as well as allowing people to enjoy the animals.

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/craiganita/AustraliaZoo#


A trip to the local patchwork shop had to be squeezed in as well!! We won't mention that we got lost and it took us almost 2 hours trying to find this place!!! But it was worth it, of course LOL
We finally had to reluctantly say farewell to Noosa and head back to Moonee Beach, near Coffs Harbour in NSW. We treated ourselves to 3 nights there in a great cabin - was nice not to have to go for a trek to the toilet during the night!!http://picasaweb.google.com.au/craiganita/MooneeBeachCoffsHarbour#

Then it was back to a very hot Sydney outer suburbs with no sea breeze!! Definitely know where I would rather live LOL

The Holiday

Today we are off on a long awaited holiday - yay!! We are heading up the coast to Byron Bay for a few days, then on to Noosa Heads for a week, then Coffs Harbour for a few days on the way home. We will be away for 2 weeks. We haven't had a proper holiday for over 2 years so we are really looking forward to this. This is also the longest time we have left the boys at home, 5 days has been the longest. One of them will be fine, the other is a bit of a worry !! Those that know them will know which is which LOL
See ya in a couple of weeks!!!

The Bag

Last week I made a bag to take away on holidays. I wanted a bag I could put across my body ( like a messenger style bag) so there is less strain on my shoulder from carrying a bag when we are out and about all day. I made it from natural linen and some Amy Butler scraps . It has a really long strap so didn't bother getting all that in the pic!! Not the best pic, it was a bit windy.

The Shower

The last 2 weeks have been chaotic here with shower renovations and preparations for a holiday. The shower turned out to be a bigger job than we expected. We had someone come in and redo the shower but Craig had to replace the door frame and some of the frame inside the wall that had been soaked through from the water that had been leaking. The slab is still quite wet so we still have part of an open wall into our bedroom. Some of the gyprock had been soaked as well, so that had to come off and will need to be replaced. That is going to have to wait until we come home from holidays. Once the wall is redone, we will have to repaint the bedroom (finally, have been after this for ages!) and the carpet replaced. At this stage we have just cut out the patch of ruined carpet and put an offcut over it. SO still some work to come! But we are off on holidays on Monday so will be able to relax then LOL


This is what the shower recess looked like after the tiles and wall were ripped out, that open wall is into our bedroom. You can see a bit of wood coming down that doesn't reach the floor, well that was the door frame and it was all rotted away. You can see how soaked the concrete slab is.




This is what it looks like now on the bedroom side. We have just covered this up with plastic for now until we can get to repair the wall properly.

Here is a pic of the new tiles, we tried to match up with what we had but they were 21 years old so matched up as close as we could to colour. But we picked out this gorgeous mosaic border tile which I love.


The floor, you can see we had to get bigger tiles that what was originally there ( you can see the original tiles that are on the floor). The colour is a little darker but blends in quite nicely.
I also had this little foot rest put in so you can rest your foot on when you are shaving your legs - how cool!Oh and these pics were taken before we have cleaned up the tiles properly, the tiler didn't even do that!

Doin' the happy dance!!

The caravan curtains are finished!! Yay!!!
I have sewn up 10 panels of fabric, sewn on 116 little plastic tabs that go in the special tracks and sewn 10 tie backs with velcro then attached them to each curtain panel ( so we don't lose them like we did the old ones!). Whew!!!
AND I got to sew them on this machine -
How cool is this!! This belonged to Craig's mum, who passed away almost 33 years ago, so I doubt it has ever been used since then. It has been in our garage for the last 21 years unused. But we cleaned it up, gave it a drink of oil, plugged it in and off it went! It is solid metal and goes like a dream. I used that to sew the plastic tabs on the curtains as I was worried that my Janome wouldn't like them. It went so well, I finished the curtains off on that machine.

Curtains will go up in the camper next week, so will have some pics then.

Just over a week until we head off on our holiday - can't wait!!
A couple of weeks ago we discovered our shower had been leaking into our bedroom. So we have had have the shower ripped out this past week. We only have one bathroom so this has been a real pain! We have also had to remove part of a wall and some carpet in our bedroom that has been damaged. The tilers are coming on Monday to start tiling the shower so hopefully won't be too much longer that we have to use the bath!

Take care everyone!

Fabric & goodies

Here is the fabric I bought when I was in QLD. These ones were from Bargain Box, great buys for only $12 meter. Also found some "Aussie Quilters Muslin" - feels lovely and soft, perfect for stitching.

These are the gorgeous fabrics from Patches. Some "Darla" FQ's and some "Clementine" FQ's - both ranges I have never seen here. And she had some lovely linen, so of course I had to stock up on a bit more of that!
These books & patterns I bought from Cath, been wanting to get these books - so glad I did they are just beautiful.
These were my prizes in the games we played, some lovely patterns and a cute recipe card booklet and some kitchen knick knacks. Thanks Khris for putting all of this together.

This was the bag & wallet I received from Khris in the secret sister swap, her and I have very much the same tastes! Her & Naomi also gave everyone a cute little notebook holder and credit card holder, and a little zippered pouch with some first aid essentials in it. If you click on the picture you can see the cute fabric with bandaids on it!

C-R-A-F-T Retreat

Now, this is going to be a really long post with lots of pics!!

Last week I flew to Brisbane on Friday and met up with 10 other members of a Yahoo group that I have been part of for a couple years. I flew up from Sydney, Khris & Naomi from Adelaide, Sharon all the way from New Zealand and the rest were from Queensland. Helena picked me up from the airport - thanks Helena! - and we drove to Ipswich where we met up with Khris, Naomi, Sharon and Jeanette for lunch.

We went to Mt Alford Conference centre about 1.5 hours from Brisbane. What a gorgeous location!!





We spent the weekend dabbling in some crafts ( I learnt to crochet!) and just hanging out and getting to know each other.




The food was all catered for and was absolutely delicious!!



There was also some frivolity with some games organised by Khris . Thanks Khris! As you can see a great time was had by those who joined in!

We had a Secret Sister Swap and here are some pics of what the girls received.





Of course Khris never wears pink or lace!! LOL - but she is obsessed with Owls HAHA

Here is my crocheting, it is 3 times bigger now!

It was hot enough for a couple of swims in this beautiful pool:
On Saturday afternoon another dust storm came through with incredible winds. Even after the dust cleared the winds howled all night, no one got much sleep!
This photo below was taken with the flash on and you can actually see the light reflecting off the dust particles.

Helena came prepared!!
After we left the retreat on Sunday afternoon Khris, Naomi, Sharon & I headed back into Ipswich and stayed in a motel for the night. On Monday we went shopping! Here we are at Bargain Box in Ipswich. Great shop with all patchwork fabric for $12 metre!! Needless to say we all left there with large bagfuls!!
(It was the 2nd visit for the other girls who went here before I arrived LOL)

We also went to Patches at Indooroopilly, a beautiful store, with all the latest ranges. The lovely lady there was kind enough to take a photo of us all together.

I had the best weekend, thank you to everyone who put the effort in organising it. It is amazing how you can become such good friends just by chatting on line and then when you get together it is as if you have known each other forever!! Thanks girls!!
Oh, and C-R-A-F-T stands for Creating Really Amazing Friends Together!!