I have that horrible sick feeling…

5 years ago we holidayed in the UK and I loved the textured wallpaper that lined the walls of a few of the places we stayed at. It was like puff paint – raised and spongy – and there were some beautiful designs.
I was so excited when we went into a hardware store (I have no idea why we did that on our holiday!) and discovered rolls of wallpaper that you could tear off small samples for free! I collected a sample from every roll and carted it with me for the rest of the holiday, planning to do something with it when I got home. For 5 years it has been sitting in the cupboard waiting until I finally had an idea for it the other day. But when I went to the cupboard to get it out I could not find it. I have searched high and low throughout the house and I cannot find it anywhere. I had a big cleanup last year before Maya was born and I now have this vague memory of discussing with Sean whether I was actually going to do anything with the wallpaper samples or not. And now I can’t remember for the life of me whether I threw it out or put it away very, very safely. I have that horrible sick feeling I have thrown it out. Of all the junk in our house and of all the things I could have thrown out. Sigh…

Our Holiday

We recently spent 5 days in Callignee at Mum and Dad’s and we all had a great holiday. (This is going to be another one of those long photographic blog entries!)

We had a few very hot days watching beautiful fluffy clouds..

And we spent most of our time out in the cool shade of the paulownia tree which has flourished since the bushfire… There was lots of water play (Mum and Dad have a spring fed dam so no water restrictions were breached)…
There was some pegging fun…
Lots of laughing at “silly grandad”!
Moments spent watching Maya learn to roll (and at only 16 weeks!)… Note the quilt she is lying on – one of Mum’s many beautiful handmade quilts.

There was some climbing up charcoal trees…
And falling down charcoal trees… ouch!
Followed by some sprinkler fun to wash off charcoal…
Sean helped Dad put the roof on the woodshed…
And Dad spent some time staring at his new shed (a bit like the in colourbond ad) … Although the woodshed is not quite complete, it’s a big milestone for Dad to have that done. But there is still plenty of other work to be done.

Khye enjoyed our picnics for afternoon tea every day – particularly when they involved biscuits…
Kiera had stacks of fun running around finding sticks…
We saw some great light shows. First was the neighbours garden filled with Christmas lights… Apparently they won the best Christmas lights in Callignee – not too much competition this year with most residents still rebuilding after the bushfire.

And on New Years Eve we were treated to this fantastic “nature’s light show”…

I managed to catch a lightning bolt!

And yes this is lightning!

New Years Day we went for a drive up the road to Tarra Bulga National Park – one of the last remaining temperate rainforests in Australia. The bushfire just missed the Park, so it is a lush green oasis after being surrounded by the devastation of the fires.
There are many pine plantations on the road up to Tarra Bulga which were not so lucky and burnt in the fires, and unlike native vegetation, pines do not regenerate. But the native trees around Callignee have now well and truly sprouted and are looking really fluffy dominating the bush once again with green…

So how were your holidays? What did you do?

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year and hope that you had lots of fun too!

Holiday fun

Here’s a collection of images and sound from our holidays.

This was a last minute burst of sewing before christmas for Khye’s toys – it’s a bag that opens flat on the floor.

Some christmas pressies - how lucky am I?

Daddy’s little helper

The leather owl I made as a gift for mum

Khye ready to go “nunnel” (aka tunnel) hunting

nunnel hunting with Grandma

“more more nunnel”

Grandma’s garden is looking beautiful at the moment.

a fantastic op shop fabric find – a zebra just had to be made!

Sean has been very busy doing a wonderful job to transform our pink kitchen into a white kitchen.

This is the last thing I saw before leaving for work this morning.

And lastly I was going to post the most beautiful rendition of twinkle little star, but I had issues (we don’t have a USB2 port to download stuff from my mp3 player – stay tuned though, I will post it as soon as I can!)

Happy new year!

We’re back…

And it’s nice to be home but it would be nice to still be on holiday too. It was a beautiful, sunny 28 degree day when we left Maroochydore and as we were coming into land at Melbourne the pilot announced it was only 15 degrees!!!

We had a fantastic holiday. We stayed at Glen Eden Beach Resort in Peregian Beach, a cute little beach town about 10 minutes south of Noosa. Khye wasn’t too happy about the beach – I don’t think he liked the waves and he kept a very close eye on them to make sure dad wasn’t swept away!

We encouraged him towards the water,

and tried to distract him with the shells on the sand,

but he wouldn’t have a bar of it and walked away waving bye-bye!

We did lots of driving (usually while Khye was having an afternoon sleep in the back) and lots of walking. We went to the Eumundi Markets and the Peregian Beach Market where there were lots of art and craft stalls and I got loads of inspiration. We stopped off at lots of playgrounds for Khye and he had a great time! We also did the touristy things and went to the Big Pineapple,

and Australia Zoo where Khye loved the crocodiles, elephants and the tigers. He was so excited to see this one come rushing up to him at the window!

There was lots of wildlife at the resort including a snake that decided being inside our apartment was pretty nice and these brush turkeys that Khye enjoyed chasing!

Anyway the holiday just feels like a dream now. We had lots of fun and there was no sewing! (I’m getting stuck into it now though – only a week till the next market.)

Market Update

We had a a beautiful day for the October Market – not too hot not too cold, but we did get sunburnt. I need to get some shade for my stall for the summer months. I had Sean with me which was very helpful ‘cos it was very busy. The elephants proved to be popular again this month and the octopuses attracted a lot of attention.


The octopuses are made from wool or wool blend and are soft and squishy! The underside of the octopus is made from cotton or polycotton fabric remnants. The face is stitched securely onto the octopus making them suitable for children and the skinny legs make it easy for little hands to hold and carry.

We’re off on our first family holiday soon! We’re off to Noosa and maybe we'll see some real live octopuses. We are really looking forward to a break away from everything and looking forward to spending lots of time together. And I promised Sean there would be no sewing!