Clutter clutter...go away...clear the air...Namaste..

This week I have been in the process of de-cluttering the house...it kinda feels like I am getting nowhere fast! sigh.....Having said that, I managed to fill the front room with stuff which over the past two days has walked out the door with others who actually may use it, which is a good thing. With each item that leaves, I sigh a little sigh of relief. (And if one more person asks me if I got a new fridge I am going to scream OKay? Quite frankly, I think the fridge is now BORING, yes its clean but where are all my kids creations gone? HUH? Oh well, a clean canvas awaits them. Hehe!)

Sometimes I wonder how we manage to get in such a state of hanging on to things. Things seem to accumulate and multiply before you can even blink. Some things are certainly useful, others I just wonder how on earth they managed to weasel their way into my space. But with the de-cluttering I am finding a sense of lightness and the need to give away more. Its really quite refreshing to make some space around us!

I started with the kitchen, moved to the front room and school stuff and am now onto my craft/storage room (not to be confused with the actual sewing room which has moved, ahem). And it was in the craft room which also houses MY personal books that I stopped for a bit of a giggle.

The clutter is creeping onto the bookshelves........along with his Holiness who I hope will forgive me for placing him in the midst of my madness. When we were away last week I picked up this little book in an op-shop (I am yet to read it but could not leave it sitting in the junk!). Today I walked in and saw his lovely face peering out from the mess and had to laugh as I said sorry. I am on to it I tell you! I am passing things on. And I promise I will also pass on anything from my "stash" that I will not use in the near future. Sometimes its good to save things for later, but sometimes its better to give them to someone who can use them right now! Even my books! shhhh....yes even them. I have a nasty habit of stacking them in front so you can't see the ones on the actual shelf!



Anyway, I vow to keep clearing the way and giving what I can. I mean, how could you resist this face? I sure can't! NAMASTE!

(Hmmm having looked at the books on that shelf I could probably pass on most of them. My favourites are on the shelf above this one. Although some of these are interesting reads, some are really of no interest to me! Maybe I better take another look and pass them on.....sigh....oh I do so love books! They are right up there with nice squishy wool! yes they are!)

Have a great weekend everyone, keep safe! Much LOVE........


Hugs and smoochies xoxooxx

Facing ones fears in a cute kinda way.......

Last week I got up close and personal with a bunch of HORSES! So what I hear you saying, horse are nice and cute and cuddly even are they not? What is so strange about that? Well, if you don't know already, you better go and read this Fun Monday Post and then you will understand. (or at least you will get a laugh out of it any way!)

Karisma + Horses = DISASTER

So it would make a lot of sense to keep her away from them right? Hmmm....maybe not.....

I am happy to announce that I finally faced my fears, (being the animal smoochier that I am, it was not terribly hard) and kissed not one but FOUR horses I tell you! Yes four! (Pats oneself on back proudly).

So let me introduce you to them.

First we have Heidi, Okay she is not technically a Horse per say but she looks like a horse and is an adorable mischievous little pony if ever there was one. She followed us around a lot and gave us loads of smoochies, we had to draw the line at her eating our little peanut though. Mr Yakka kept her in line.


Heidi and Karisma talk serious business...like eating peanuts is NOT a good idea! Heidi lives at Oakvale farm, I will tell you about that another day.....


This lovely gentleman also lives at the farm and gave Karisma smoochies from the safety of a fence barrier. He ate from my hands and snuggled up and was very gentle. (Even when an emu who was rather put out at all his attention seeking deemed to kick him in the backside! How rude!)


Not satisfied with Karisma getting this close to horses, daddy and the boys decided to drag her off to Sahara Trails to meet some more horses. They did it on the sneaky so she had no chance to back out and ahem, run away.

First she met this lovely pretty girl, who gave her a sweet smoochie then tried to steal her bag. When she was told NO she then whacked her in the face.


The boys and daddy wanted to go for a ride, Adem was a little reluctant but soon got the hang of it and had a great time.



Zak as usual jumped right on and was rearing to go. The man did not believe he had never been on a horse before in his life. HE LOVED IT! And was disappointed that there was no cantering today.


And NO they did not leave her ladyship behind to mind the fort. She is the one taking the pictures atop her lovely, tired, hungry steed aka Bill. Who thought a munch on some grass would be much more preferable than carrying Karisma round the track. He reefed the reins out of her hands when she said no but in the end she got the better of him. No nonsense, but lots of pats and encouragement for good behaviour.


So did I like it? NO WAY! I still don't like the way they kick the horses or the things that go in their mouths. I am assured that it does not hurt the horse but thats not what the horse was telling me! I would rather walk along with him than sit on him any day! But, thats just my opinion.


It was nice meeting you Bill, Thanks for the ride but I think I'll walk from now on! Hugs and smoochies xoxoxox

Egyptian Pectorals

A few weeks ago we made some Egyptian Pectorals (necklaces). In ancient Egypt these would have been made using a technique called cloisonne. Gold wire was worked into a framework with lots of little compartments or cloisons. These were filled with coloured enamel (glass) paste. Then the piece was fired.

For our pectoral's we used clay, paint and beads

We started by drawing a grid of 2cm squares. Then we drew a picture of an eagle on it.


The idea was that you draw on the squares and then copy onto some clay but we cheated and cut the eagle out first.

We rolled out some self drying clay and then placed our eagle on top and cut it out carefully with a knife. Also cutting out two small holes at the top of each wing, so you can thread some string.


Next we used some plastic tools to smooth out the edges a bit and then left them to dry out. This took a few days as it had been raining a lot.



When they were finally dry, we painted them adding some gold decoration to make up for the lack of real gold.



Again we left them to dry, it was about this stage that Adem got fed up and left his for dead. (He had more pressing issues, like computer games to contend with).



Zak, keen to get on with it decided in his usual fashion to change the rules. The "beads" were supposed to be made from strips of paper, rolled round a pencil and glued then painted to match. He on the other hand could not see the point when (in his words) "There is a perfectly good box full of beads in mums stash that will do just fine! I will use them!" Okay then.

So, he threaded some fishing wire on and started beading.......



Being sure to match up each side perfectly.........Wallah......

The finished project.....





And of course the token photo that ensures mums weekly death threat IF she blogs this.....

What can I say? I aim to please :-)

Hugs and smoochies xoxoxoxoxxox

This project comes from the book 120 Great History Projects by Rachel Halstead and Struan Reid (An absolutely AWESOME buy!)

Just in case you thought homeschooled kids were NOT weird......

Of course they are! Because they feel secure enough to be so, and don't really give a hoot if any one else has a problem with that!

This week Zak learned a valuable lesson .......... Revenge is sweet my friend or in this case my little brother!

You see about six months ago, upon coming home from a trip to the beach and heading upstairs for a shower and getting dressed, in his usual fashion, he got distracted and did not quite make it past his computer.

He discovered that he could record himself doing silly things and then watch it. After recording several funny little stints, he then asked his brother how to be rid of them so no-one would see. His brother told him to put them in the trash and that was it.

Later his brother retrieved them from the trash and installed them on our main computer so that we could watch them later and then promptly forgot about them.

Yesterday morning, there was an unusual amount of very loud laughter coming from upstairs, not only had the little skits been re-discovered but lo and behold TC had her hands on them and Oh was she up for some fun. By last night the more embarrassing of the funniest two was all over TC's facebook page and of course on you tube.

So what did he learn here?

1. Under no circumstances should one trust ones siblings alone to get rid of the evidence, especially when one happens to annoy them and play practical jokes on them as a regular past time.

2. Don't record stuff in your speedo's!

3. Under no circumstances EVER threaten your mother with death if she blogs this! This pretty much seals your fate as you know that YOU would totally do it if the tables were turned and SHE knows that too.

Without further ado......Introducing (from the archives) Zak torturing his computer.........




From a homeschooling perspective, he taught himself everything, from discovering that the eyeball on top of the computer was looking at him to recording and of course making up his own creative little movie. He has since learned that one must also DELETE the object from the trash if one does not want anyone else getting their hands on it.

After realising that begging his sister not to you tube this was not going to work, he is now interested to see how many hits he gets and whether anyone likes it. LOL So if you happen to watch it on you tube please say HI, it will make his day!

Hugs and smoochies xoxoxox

So much to catch up on...

Just a quick note to say all is well, I have so much I wanted to post this week but had a little accident which rendered my right hand useless. I suffered a rather nasty burn across four fingers which of course meant NO knitting or crochet! The devastation of it all! Woe is me! LOL! Seriously that was the only thing that upset me. I have all this new beautiful wool and all I could do was look at it. I was so bored!

Today I am able to type a little but as I don't want to tear the remaining blisters, I am going to be careful and leave the typing for another day. Hope all is well in your part of the world.

Hugs and smoochies xoxoxox

Just for a change......

Yesterday, I had thought I would give the knitting a miss and rest my hands. After spending the morning in the garden and then the majority of the afternoon hanging out with the boys, I ended up researching a few herby and garden type sites. I ordered a couple of new books from Isabella Shipard that I don't have yet and then after dropping by Kel's blog and seeing her latest crochet project (which she just happened to say was from ravelry) well........I just could not help myself and decided to have a go at crocheting one of the little projects in my queue.

Im not sure if I mentioned it before, but I have never really learned to crochet properly. I was taught to do a basic treble stitch so I could make blankets and that was it. Most of what I have done has been made up as I go with the hope of it looking okay. Like the edging on those slippers the other day.

When I made the baby sling last year, I tried to follow the pattern and it did not turn out too bad. However, upon starting my project yesterday I learned quite a bit. I learned that I was doing some things wrong, I learned how to decrease properly (yes I actually did this wrong on the sling, even though it worked LOL). So how did I learn this?

Well the pattern I chose was the Little Darling Shell Cap kindly posted by Teresa who not only offers free patterns but very kindly has video tutorials on her blog! I watched a couple and thought ahhhhhh, oohhhhhh, as you do and then got stuck into it. I ended up staying up until it was finished!

Here is my effort..........



It is supposed to fit a toddler but mine turned out more the size of a newborn and is very cute. I am thinking I will make a flower for the top to dress it up and I am also thinking a little dress would go nicely with it. I do believe in my usual "wing it" fashion I could just make one up. I could see it with a little white skivvy underneath. Yep, there is another project for my queue.


So without further ado! I am off to get creative. This morning I have been crocheting arms for Mikos jumper which Bella keeps pulling off her so she can sit on it! Ah dogs, gotta love em!

Have a great day everyone, hope the weather is better in your part of the world. Still raining here!

Hugs and smoochies xoxoxoxxo

Confessions of a Neglectful Gardener........

Yes! I am talking about myself. You should see the state of my garden right now. Not good. Apart from all the rain and the dogs chewing and digging where they never did before. Well there is also the fact that I have not been too attentive. Too much knitting maybe?

Mint

I failed to plant winter crops and pretty much left things to the faeries. That is not always a bad thing as the faeries decided to grow loads of basil, catnip, tansy, new mint, a few extra elderberry trees, parsley and what could either be a pumpkin or a zucchini plant all by themselves. Yep, they don't mind at all when I keep my nose out of things. The down side is, after all the rain, its gotten out of hand.

I think I mentioned I wanted to convert it into more of a natural permaculture type garden a while back and I have been slowly pulling up the grass and getting rid of it. I plan to close off the small patch of grassed area and open up the vegie patch, so rather than having an organised vegie patch there will be layers and things growing together rather than in boxes or rows. Zak would also like to add a fish/frog pond and we need to build up some areas.

The only problem is, it takes time. I am the only one in our house who will normally touch the garden. If SB had his way, it would be concrete so no maintenance at all :-(. Of course Miko just loves to help but she kind of gets in the way a bit.

So my aim is to get things on track and move as much as I can before spring when I will plant more vegies. For now I am moving trees around, trying to decide what to keep and transplanting herbs so I can get more of them growing as ground cover etc.



Today the boys helped me a bit and we moved the madarin tree right into the middle of the vegie patch where there is full sun. It has not grown much since we got it so obviously was in the wrong spot. I also moved one of the elderberry trees. We pulled out some yucky weeds but kept the good ones. And we cleaned out the chicken poo to add to our compost and collected snails (which much to Zaks dismay became chicken food). But they are cute mum!!!! NO NO they are not! Not when they eat my garden they are not.

Here are a few pics of some of whats growing despite the neglectful mama......

Yarrow

Parsley

Tansy

Cat Nip

One of the stray tomatoes...
(this one is growing outside the garden and Miko loves to pick them and eat them)

Does anyone have any idea what this is? It popped up all by itself in abundance and I have no idea, its pretty though...........

Here is a closeup...........

Well, its nearly time to cook dinner, its been a very busy day today between bouts of thunder and rain downpours. There was time to draw some eagles and cut them out in self drying clay. (will show them when they are finished). I also redesigned a small childs cardigan into a dog jumper (thanks Mum and Maureen for bringing it round) for Miko. The whole time I was pulling it apart I was apologizing to who ever knit it in the first place, but Miko is so cold and it would take far longer for me to knit another one in her size. I saved all the buttons and gave them to CG for her stash, sewed it up to fit and she is nice and snuggly warm now. She loves it. :-)

Anyway, enough from me for today. Hope everyone is safe and warm where ever you are! Hugs and smoochies xoxoxoxxoxo