Christmas at moi house..

As each passing days goes by I sneak more and more of my Christmas decorations out!!!! Some are very new such as the tilda angel and Santa Claus in the top picture.And the Cherry Menlove Christmas stocking swag. ut then there are old favourites like the next two.
My husband keeps giving me dissaproving stares but he knows better than  to say something.!!!
 I am in the middle of a million log cabin scrappy squares right now, I am on a trip to sew all my scraps into quilts. I have been on Bonnie hunters site (she is a quilter who loves scraps). So much choice. My favourite on her site is sisiters choice, but i have already used that pattern with my last venture into "using up all my stash" I hope i get further this time!!! Theres NO room in our closet!!!(More dissaproving stares from my hubby!!)
Short and sweet, much to do, days are long and hot at the moment, kids are in the pool every night  summer is here!!!!

A little bit of this a little bit of that

Ive always said that crafting is a meditation for me. I feel that it really keeps the woves from thedoor so to speak. And so with recent ill health and Docotrs help i have been crafting like crazy. Obviously the magic time of Christmas is closing in and my Christmas spirit is raising to the fore. This is one of two Christmas puddings made. I actually bought a pudding bowl with a lid which is such a pleasant change from my normal ill wrapped abstract sided thing that i usually come out with each Christmas after wrapping in calico and boiling. Last night we ate the second one of these as I hadnt tried the recipe that came with thw bowl . It was nice, sure but i will be tweeking some changes before the next one...and yes i did say the next one. I love making these. The GHIU (gorgeous hubby in uniform loves his Christmas puddings)

 This is a origami with fabric tree. I made up all the little pieces at work but just couldnt understand how it could work out...it did!! It was my second Christmas decoration to go up..

 This was my first. An advent calender from Spotlight which really is totally unlike the sort of thing i normally buy BUT it was at the time that i really needed to sew (My meditation) It has been filled with candy canes in which only a few have disappeared!

Upcoming projects include a Santa and Angel doll doll I am making (Not without much difficulty) by designer Tone Finnanger...gorgeous gorgeous desighner Ive just ordered her Christmas book....

A scrappy log cabin quilt. I have to say IM LOVING this I just cut a million 11/2 " strips and sew them on to the centre piece cutting off the ends to fit as I go. SO easy and So relaxing.

Ive also finished a the Christmas present quilt I made for my brother. Ill post pics soon.

Weather is SO HOT. GHIU just yesterday filled up the pool and the girls have been swimming in it since. Georgia has rather an important audition this afternoon...Im hoping she doesnt cough her way through it..that water was freezing.

Talking of the girls they have just finished the Wizard of Oz production and are onto the Christmas Production at the Hastings Operatic Theatre next.. Ilove that we are back in the world of theatre!!

The vege garden has gone wild. Warm temperatures and a lot of rain has made the garden go bananas.!

Happy temperatures to yo wherever you may be

Love Cherry

Life in my winter farmyard

Vege garden No 1 and 2



Urkkk a sqelch skurge here..

And a sqelch skurge there..can you see my newly potted raspberry orange canes, some new compost in the tub and two lots of hidden doggy doo compost in the tyres..

No Ginge!!! Not by the little baby brassicas..Bad boy (our neighbour who is growing tulips has had to net then as they come up she said our cat is not always welcome!!!!)

Christmas: Head chook and proud of it

The girls enjoy the old brassicas I pulled out this morning

Sad chook who is three by now enjoys some reprieve from the mud and squalor

Aforementioned mud and squalor

The GHIU (Gorgeous hubby in uniform) answer to mud and squalor...le chateau du corrugated iron..

Impossible to contain the muddy back yard with giant golden paws galloping all over it..

So that is a quick foray around the "farm'. I enjoyed taking these photos today. I sat down with the chooks for ages taking photos and talking to them. Christmas left everyones company to brood a bit in the box but it was all a SCAM as I checked after and there wasnt a egg and she was there for a good twenty minutes. The last two days have been extrodinary with five eggs each day. As most of the chooks are now over two, one or two in moult, feeling the cold etc etc we have been well down, so ten eggs in two days is fantastic. here comes some more bacon and egg pie methinks! The farm is just so muddy and sqelchy and gumboot only territory. I look at it this time of the year and despair a bit but then i think of all the things that await in the next few months. Im not sure if we will see this summer here as we are hot on the trail for a property and have decided that if we have to go up country then we will down grade the car to a cheap 1.5 or so and learn to live within our petrol means. The GHIU has a company car as he can have callouts and odd things and so it will be running only one car.
Last weekend I thought Id found the property. it was 2 acres on a napier road, and had pig pens (On concrete) 1/4 acre of not bothered about asparagus, two pet ducks(who lay), a pet goat(Not a nanny unfortunately) , a huge chook area and shed, and enough room for this bloke to bring on some calves each season. GHIU would not even comprimise as it was on a very busy road (The main Napier/taupo road at the begiining and the traffic and trucks would drive him mad) I thought we could comprimise for now as it was AFFORDABLE...but no. He promised me that he knows there is the perfect property for us and I have to trust him as he has uncanny and excellant esp skills..or what i call his woo woo abilities.
So while we are here I am thinking of the potato plots i have been working on, the strawberries i have just planted out the front, the lettuce garden I will plant out in the wine barrel full of delicious compost and also some more fencing to protect this all from the marauding chooks when i free range the,. Despite my elaborate fencing system they still managed to get into the vege garden the other day. Hokey is the worst. She is one of our young ones and she stalks the fence lines forever looking for a place to make her escape..including into the neighbours. Her "sisiter" Pokey is the sweetest little thing in comparison. Hokey will be a future leader I think if she ever gets the chance to stage a rebellion, shes just that type!

Beetroot and Schoolhouse quilts

Despite it being a very cold Winter...actaul days of frost hwere the chickens trough and parts of the swimming pool were frozen solid!! I have still had great delight in out vege garden. in our bigger garden we have a lot of brassicas: now either past their best or very young and not growing with any verve, we have some gorgeous healthy looking broad eans begiining to flower. I got a complete shock when i pulled out what i thought would be ay carrots and came away with giant monsters that had split down the middle (but very tasty they were that night our first ever carrots!!!) But the best performer in the garden has got to be our beetroot. These are only some I pulled (the rest still in the ground). I fancied a bit of bottling and found a chutney in the good ole Edmonds book. Well It is delicious...especially when eaten with bacon and egg pie.....

BEFORE:

 AFTER:

Im thinking of making some more (I do love seeing all the produce bottled and ready for use over winter)

So I finally gor some of my quilting Mojo back. In amidst the frenzy of scrapbooking I really suddenly felt like just stitching away at something. I soon found a schhol house block quilt I hadnt finished and with only one trip to Spotlight (!) I have just completed it. I am quite please with it if i do say so myself!! 

I am currently cleaning out my closet in time for our "move" (SO close to finding somewhere now!) and have so far come across six pieced tops to quilt.....I actually desire to quilt the school house blocks, but need in the closet jumble to find my quilting hoop. After all it IS winter and what better way to spend inside than with a quilt.

It is the school holidays and I was so ready for the break. I love having the girls at home and just doing what we ant. We went to see harry Potter today at the movies. Actually I thought it would be heaps more expensive than it was. I enjoyed it but almost went to sleep..darkened room, warmth, my girls by me but quiet...the conditions were just right!!!!

As I write it is raining rather biblically...my poor chooks..I do feel sorry for them in this weather.however the ghiu made them a lean too and they go under there and see even today that they had made a dust bath in the corner!!

Ive also been watching reruns of the GOOD life that programme never fails me..I laugh, get inspired, the girls love it as much as I...why isnt ther anything on like that now.Right now the way things are going back to basics would be a great time to have a sitcom about self sufficiency..well I think so anyway.

Love to you all Keep warm and dry

Love Cherry

doggy compost and other interests..

I am interspersing this post today with several pictures of recenet scrapbooking endeavours. I had to improvise for the royal weddingone as I could find no union jack or royal m,emorabalia to make some pages up...

I really love Becky Higgins Project life however I cannot get it at the moment in NZ. So I found these pages at the scrapping shop and have bought a few. They are great and its means I can catch up on my scrapbooking AND keep things in chronological order. This is my first one....

 And the other side..... With these you can be creative or as boring as you want. And the varieties of photo sleeve types are many..

Here is double lO I did at scrapping class the other night...

Then we finished early so our lovely tutors ran around and at no further cost put togehter another few bits for us to do this simple but effectiove LO....Another few photos from this year put away now and I feel SO on top of things.!

 From the beginning of the school year another WR Memory Keepers photo sleeve completed.:

 I need some smaller photo sleeves to store these wonderful treasure handed to me today after school:

Ill buy some tomorrow when I attend a four hour layout class. Four pages in four hours..:) Four baby pages..just what I need for the as yet unscrapped million and one baby photos.

And on to news from the Urban farm. The chooks are laying about four to five eggs a day. There is a bit of moulting going on although sad chook is now growing back lovely silky  feathers and looking years younger than her two and a half years!! This is CHristmas, leadre and general pretty girl showing me how sick she is of the murky muddy chook yard. I managed  to put a bit of sawdust and hay down inbetween rain showers but there is still plenty of mud to cover up.

And the broad beans are bolting...

The beetroot and Rhurbarb are running...

The brassicas are blooming...

 I know I post a lot of my hobbies here ut this blog is also meant to be about our ongoing challenge to find more ways to be frugal, eco friendly and self sufficient as we can. And on that note i introduce this new consept to my blog....



 I have a giant labrodor..and for the past five years of hios life I have been cleaning up after him....ugh..hate that job!!! Anyway normally i have to dispose of this at the dump..and its a hassel anyway i do it. Plus its really unenvironmentally friendly what with the leechlates and the plastic bags and the whole landfill issue...and its a hassell. But recently i read about making a doggy toilet by adding septic starter to a barrel especially for the purpose. When I looked at this further i discovered that some people actually make compost with the doggy doo. NOW this is a pretty funny subject. Some people rave about this and some people DONT!! I fugured I would give it a try. NOTE this compost is not for the edible garden!! Anyway the idea is to only put the doggy doo in and add earthworms. I have been doing this and adding both red wrigglers and earthworms, aies and giants...we have plenty of both. The first lot of tyres was full, so I covered it over and began another. The other day after only a week unattended and covered I pulled ack the cover and the heap was HEAVING with worms, who all dissappeared under the surface at the sunshine. I cannot tell yo how happy this made me. IT. IS. WORKING. Woo Hoo!!!! I hope I havent made any one sick!!
Ill now post a pretty picture to make things all better..

Anyway take care.

The first game of the netball season is on tomorrow morning (before scrapping course) but rain and not just any rain but heavy rain is forecast.

Whatever the weather have a happy weekend

Love and happy gardening

fom Cherry

News from down on the (urban) farm...

I was reading a great simple life type blog here

and there were pitures of the chickens on this particular urban farm, with good and evil listed. It gave me the imputus to get into the yard and remember my camera to take pics of my girls. It has been raining really hard today and for the first time is fire starting cold so the chook pen is in a bit of a state ...(just warning you)

First up is Sad Chook. Somethings up with sad chook the grande dame of the yard. Shes eating, and drinking, occassionally pecking the young guns and looks bright and cheery enough, BUT something is up. I just feel it. Hopefully it is justthe moult. Sads has feathers poking out everywhere but a lot of glossy ones now to replace her rather dull old brown ones that living ina cage the size of a mouse trap gives you after righteen months..... I thinkshes responsible for laying the monster eggs every four or sodays and Im sure her laying has mellowed off. Im pretty sure its the moult and my GHIU can just stop making knife across the throat gestures when I mention it.... my poor babies. They will die as god intended. Hopefully falling off the perch replete and happy..

And then theres the ever gorgeous Christmas, UNdisputed Queen of the pack. She lays her cute little rown eggs every day and looks such a sight with bare feathers sticking out of her bum like pieces of straw. Bless her shes sucha little character. She is small but mighty. Look at Hokey next to her. Shes hoping for some green scraps (they had last nights left over stew a couple of hours efore at lunch so neednt look so hungrty and needy)

Here are the girls in their muddy yard . I really want to put some straw down ut the stuff Ive got is so full of grass seed and I have nightmares using it in their nesting box as it is of grass seeds embedded in bodies and inhaled down throats into lungs (this happened to our labrador Sam ....Marleys younger dopier brother..) .

From the back we have Sad Chook,Hokey, Pokey, Christmases bum, and Shelley (fitting the evil label in this photo) helen Cluck is out of shot.

 So that sums up the Animal side of the farm. Now onto the winter garden..

 Bok Choi and (can you see them) our onion seedlings are up!~!!!! First time we have ever grown onions!!! (musnt get too smug too early obviously)

Nasturtiams and beetroot, baby brassicas and (below the ground) hopeful broad bean seeds.

And just when you thought it couldnt get anymore photographically more exciting. The brassica patch interspersed with celery, spinach and the last of the basil..

 Of course i couldnt finish with out some scrapping.  last Tuesdays class was this double layout. I had just torn my muscle in my shoulder and was in pain, but nothing comes between me and my scrapbooking outings..

You can tell though that this is not my bestwork. I really was in pain and the rest of my body seemed to be in sympathy with the shoulder and so I made lots of boo boos. Ive yet to write in the little tags we made to fit behind the photos, Maybe some writing will lift this L/o

I was speaking to our gorgeous tuor who comes up with these l/os and she uses her granddaughter as a model in her layouts. She said that she had about elevan albums of her that she had used. I told her what a great legacy she was leaving her and that when she was older she would treasure it. Then I thought Golly am I doing the same thing!??
I have another photo of a layout of my father duckshooting from years ago and it was in a truly AWFUL layout I did a few years back. I have redone it and was quite pleased but my camera battery just died before I couldl get it to this blog.
Check out this sketch too. I want to use it soon..
Happy scrappin, good living and frugal thoughts
until next time
Love cherry

Project life

I thought I should show you that i do do other things..other than scrapbook!!!! Its just that scrapbooking has been my addiction of late. UT before I talk of other things I am desparately trying to get hold of Becky Higgins Scrapbooking project life kits..anyone know where to get them in NZ??? A few years back I had a chance to buy one ut as I was still only dabbling in scrapbooking (fabric having taken over my life) I dint by one. NOW my local shop or any shop around here doesnt have them.... Has anyone else been invilved in them...I have beenn looking on You tube and Im afraid that i may just have become obsessed....again....

With the Project life I could happily scrap delightful but everyday photos such as this one of Alex ...And a million more I take and dont want to keep in the packet or put in a doozy old album (please Im trying to get everything into scrapbooks OUT of those old photo albums)

 So to other happenings on the "farm"...investing in these gorgeous days of Autumn we have been planting out the garden for  Winter. Lots of brassicas, spinach and cabbage butterflies too. Still no sprays here and so we have lots of predatory insect swatrming too..its all good. In the second raised bed I have plante3d onion seeds( Which are up hurray!) and silverbeet..actually there is plenty of beet around growing for the chooks..just not that big yet. I am looking forward to putting in my garlic again and also broad beans. This is a picture of the first vegetable garden. You can see the brassicas doing their thing. I will be planting a lot more for winter yet.

The chooks are laying up a storm we get between five and six eggs most days. I think sad chook is responsile for te monster eggs we get every other day..bless her!! Hokey is very lame but seems healthy and happy in every respect so Im crossing my fingers for her.

We have all been sick, georgia has been having unexplained severe stomach pains and Alex has been under the weather. I had a night full of terrible headaches so its a day of work and school all around!
The weather is beautiful. No photos UT we have had heaps of monarch butterflies from our swan plant. The first lot ate the plant clean seemingly overnight and died. I cant believe I didnt go down to the nurasery and buy another plant??!! But the plant came back to life and now the second lot are preparing to fly off to wherever it is that they fly off to. it is a glorious sight and one I should be photographing for project life..Help someone please!!

Take care and enjoy the changing summer to Autumn  Winter to spring season wherever you find yourself,
Love Cherry

Grateful for

A short while ago I was lolling about in the pool in this beautiful hot day and it was bliss...I would really have liked to take a photo of the view of the cool blue water with my tippytoes floating upwards but it is dangerous to take a camera into the pool and besides who could be bothered?! So instead i came in cooled down and refreshed grabbed a popsical and snapped this photo from my computer area window (which also happens to be the bedroom). yes life is good and i am very very grateful.

With love

Cheerily Cherry

This is how we do it in NZ

I know that quite a few of the blogs I read are in America and the UK and I see all the snow and all the frozen lands there..but this is how we spend Christmas and the New year in NZ.!!

As I write it is midnight the only time to do anything other than swim is at night....it is too hot. I am sunburnt on the back of my legs...silly me. The girls and th GHIU are all a nice brown colour!

Tonight we went to the river and the GHIU set up a fire where we cooked susuages and roasted marshmallows. The girls swam around and as the sun went down the little trout began to jump. it was great!

I am busy trying to finish patching my Flyaby quilt, my machine is now upstairs where I usually hand sew. This is to give me more time to actually finish off these UFOs this year.  We'll see.

It is late so nighty night

Love Cherry

Our Kiwi Christmas

There are some things that stay the same year after year...tradition..and i love it. Sometimes you start a tradition without even knowing it when it is done the first time. The photo below is a mailbox in the rural outskirts of hastings that is dressed up like this a few days out from Christmas. The owners have been doinf this for a few years now and I knew I had to capture it on film asa this has become one of our Christmas icons. It is normaly there when we pass it to pick up our Christmas tree which is another couple of miles down the road.  And wouldnt you know  it the images folder on blogger seems to be doing its own thing!!Oh well next time maybe I can get the photo!!

And so Christmas Day arrives and it is hot..really hot..but not humid..a miracle! After  a large lunch and dessert that lasted for a few hours, several games of cricket, children running around with their own games, we headede to the river down the road to cool off.

Alex chose this shirt for her Daddy...everyone liked it.

 And then boxing day came around and it was into our own pool for the girls..their are no photos becasue mum and Dad had completely passed out from exhaustion and heat and humidity(again)....

The day after boxing we all went to Napier to good friends for a delicious tea.....our fourth ham so far..and Ive lost count of the pavlovas consumed. Before all this we went to Ocean Spa to swim..honestly it is so hot the only place to be is in the water.

Today it is very humid again and I am waiting to get into the pool after this post. It is VERY windy and our Park is a major devastation of broken limbs and felled greenery. I tried to get the wind in this photo but it may be hard to see..

 And then the wind blew in this flash flood of a storm!! The girls are in the pool and loving it.

 Playing a new Monopoly game . Santa left this for Alex . It has a electronic credit card system instead of cash and when you pass go you get 2 million!! Georgia has bought lake Taupo and the Waitangi Treaty grounds. It is at this point that The gorgeous hubby in  uniform takes interest...We are having a game tonight.. I hope to win some farm land....

I sewes a whole lot of ornaments..none of which Ive been able to post :( but this one did, I hand made the wreath and stamped the card and rustically finished it off with baling twine!

Til next time

Swimmingly yours

Cherry