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

Five eggs a day keeps the grumpies away

I am hopeless at keeping in touch...So much have I been up to that Im going to subtitle whats been happening. First up the...

CHOOKS

Well, really I love these girls. presently we are getting five eggs per day!!! So much for the people who thought my "old" chook wouldnt lay at all/much. She is still called Sad chook although Im guessing she is pretty happy. She lays the biggest lovliest multicoloured eggs youve seen! I can spend hours out the back just watching the chooks and digging up worms etc for them. I noticed last night as they had their supper of mash that their crops were ENORMOUS. Like goiters out the side of their chests. I dont know what they eat in the garden ut its obviously good for them. they also enjoy all the scraps plus the morning cereal milk that the kids leave behind in their plates.  Say what yoiu will but its working!!

HOMESTEADING
 I had a marvellous moment the othe day as I embraced the feeling of living here happily withour ackyard urban farm until land comes along. No longer was I worried about leaving it to late to enjoy etc. I really thought Im happy to have land when the time is right and make this an awesome backyard semi self suffiency project as we go along. I think Ive been inspired by the folks at uran homestead here    Plus ive just found ou they are Kiwis !! Yah!
So on that route, we have tried two bottles of our cider a month apart. Im sure that they did not improve within a month of each other. well try another next month. If yoiu are a fan of the seventies show the Good Life, think of the Pea Pod wine they made. by the looks on their faces that is similar to ours when we drink our cider. Ive sought out the advice of workld award winning winemakers in the district (Hawkes ay is the winw capital of NZ and has some of the best wines in the world and some of those very same winemakers children go to Twyfor School with my girls so...) but I fear this business with cider making may be a long term project to reach perfection. Next we are making ginger beer. One of the winemakers told us that a gorgeous yummy brewery who also do the most devine ginger beer use ginger powder NOT root to make it. A hint from the wise.
Next on the homestead is the winter vege gardens. My Pok Choi is blooming, lasting through sveral devastating frosts lately. (Brrr it has been soooo cold in the mornings). The cauliflowers, brussel sprouts and I think brocolli (it was a mixed pack) are slowly moving upwards. No sight yet of the garlic, both organically grown in Hawkes bay and non oprganically grown somewhere in Nz are peeking thru yet. Im so keen to see them as Ive NEVER had luck with garklic and threw away all aspirations and attempts years ago but Im going to have to be patient. Apparently they like lots of muck. i throw the chook poo daily on the garden and we will get some more gorgeously dried horse poo hopefully this weekend.
I have started the garden one tangerine tree in, one manderion tree to go. One bay tree to be replanted. The pot from the tangerine tree I have used to plant some new Temptation strawberries you can see them ehind the Choi. The other pot I will be using to plant some more new strawberriesd The picture is up the top!!! I cannot work this new system on blogger!!!!)

CRAFTING

Covered notebooks some partially finished..Christmas presents

Isnt this cool this is a christmas pressies. Using cardstock, envelopes and creativity (Not mine!!) I made this mini booklet. The remaining photos go in the envelopes that are the front and back cover. I lOVED making these!!!

And scrapping..Ive done quite a bit these are just some of them. Notice I have found out how to distress with an inkpad. I have gone distree mad!!! Love this technique and all I had to do was ask the lady in the scrapping shop!!!

And finally.....

I have finally got around to this wallhanging. I need to get a finish on this one. Its fiddly and a pain but i do love the finished project.

My finaly note for the day. Some boffin wrote that nzs are too inward thinking about other countries due to the prolem of isolation. personally i dont see isolation as a problem, infact Id like to be more isolated. Scondly we havebt got the problems of the iother places in the world..if that is a result of inward thinking and isolation them hurray for those two factors i say. YEAS!!!I was really offended.

Love for now from :need to build a bridge Cherry

Updates

So in the theme of The Good Life" I pulled out a whole lot of pittos and hebes and now this area will be for the fruits. Currently it has a small rosemary plant, an orange tree , a b oysenberry and a bay tree. The aerea has been liberally covered in horse manure because essentially previous to this there were lots of stones and a it of dry eaarth. it looks like nothing at the moment but this place is a work in motion!

Then there is this that the GHIU made for the veges. In the middle is the swing (for the beans to gfrow on). This swing for a long time redundant now seems to be popular again (typical!) ut too bad it is now in the middle of the vege garden and soon the garden will be filled up with compost and soil. Awaiting spring..

And here is my 18month old battery hen "McScrunchie" In just three days she has cheered up immensely and her comb and wattle have even brightened. She is separted now from the others (vicious hoods!) in the day hours. I have packed a lot of reading on caring for ex batts on the net and raced out this morning to buy some mash for her. Which she ate with much alacrity. She loves worms and can spot a worm from a mile away that has been thrown at her. GHIU spent the day with her yesterday digging above vege garden and so she had a lot of worms sent her way. It is WONDERFUL and HEART warming to see her coming out of her shell (Boom Boom) . She now spends time stretching out her wings and flapping them about. She has begun to dust bath in small increments (thou not in the soft dirt part of the garden ). And she has gone from a few tentative little maybe scratchings at the earth to quite a rigourous scratch aroudn this afternoon!!. Honestly she is developing all those instinctive things with just a few days. I mean lock a person up like that for 18 months in those conditions and theyd need extensive pychotherapy and some time in a straight jacket! I would love to adopt more but cant do that until we have more land to work with. She hasnt laid yet, but I dont expect her to..she needs a good REST! This afternoon i alsocaught her twice charging away the chickens that were going for her mash. Hopefully this is the beginnings of the end of her subsurviance towards those other bully chooks of mine!

And talking about those brown horrors, there is nothing funnier than watching them devour their porridge. Porridge goes everywhaere, in the air, over each other and all over their faces. truly a delight from the sim,ple things at the simple life.

happy simple living

love Cherry

Im back

...not that I was ever away as such. Georgia went to camp and took the camera then when she came back the camera became lost in the unorganisation and general clutter that is this house. But today, hurray i found it!! So what has been going on in the Good life tiny farm?  Actually nothing thrilling. Today Autumn made its presence felt with wind and rain and cold. Im glad as the chook area has the flies excited and I wanted some rain to calm it down. i have bought myself some gumbboots for the upcoming sludge that winter will bring there soon!

Happy Christmas!!

I love that the egg compartments (we have two fridges) are full. Check out monster egg at the back. Someone drew on him!! I have no idea who gave birth to this but it was oblong and bigger than monster egg #1  ! We also had golf ball egg which was a replica of the golf ball that is always in there...but GHIU ate it before I found the camera!!

We celebrated Art Deco week at 150 year old Stoney croft house. Lots of Art Deconess there. Brass bands etc. The title of the event was When the dust settles.. For those of you that dont know in 1931 Hawkes bay was struck by a huge earthquake that decimated Hastings and Napier. When the buildings where rebuilt they were built in Art Deco design. Now all these years later we always celebrate Art Deco week in Feb (the earthquakes anniversary) It gets bigger and bigger every year.

Kaimoana (seafood in Maori). This is what the ocean reward you with if you dive every now and then. Beautiful huh? Just lovely with  aoli sauce once cooked. Having a FO as dad means the girls are not scared or unsure of sea food at all!!

  ALSO I forgot to get a photo of my latest project in my world of quilting. It is a raggy quilt made from old flannel shirts and jeans. I explained this all to GHIU how it is made and how the technique works etc, but when  I completed my first row he asked why the seams were sticking up in a mess!! Guess that just proves my opoint that when I start to talk about quilting all he hears is a loud humming in his ears.. Next time i will post some pics. That means that cuurently I have started (started only!) Sheepish wallhanging, two scrappy sisiter choice quilts, raggy quilt, school house quilt oh and five pieced tops to be quilted. I REALLY need a sewing room in our next house!! One can never have enought partially completed pieces can one?!
Til next time Happy sewing\

Love Cherry

It has started......

Here they are and here I go..the beginning of the preserving peaches season. These are very early Golden Queens. I had forgotten (since last year) how hot it gets in our kitchen, in summer, while preserving!!!

And since it is so hot in the kitchen I have decided to try to dry my Romas the old fashioned way (also some moments in the oven after I have used it ) and maybe finished off in the dehydrator.

And what else is on the window sill..Ah yes my ever growing pile of egg shells drying away and then to be crushed and fed back to the chooks or as a snail inhiitor around my plants or fed into the soil as a sweetener.

What you cant see to the far left in my laundry is the huge pile of washing/ It is enormous and the worse thing is despite this mountain there are heaps of other piles under beds etc.

Perhaps i should go to that pile now..

Wishing you happy laundry wishes

Cherry

The urban farm life begins...

GHIU has been busy measuring, cuttting, sawing, hammering and has made most of the chicken coop already!!! Of course I have been busy too.................

Its such a good feeling squirrilling away things, especially when the raw product has been in the freezer for YEARS! Straight from my freezer and from Aunt Daisys cookook for your veiwing pleasure..

happy bottling everyone-

Love Cherry

The simple pleasure of bottling

Arnt these labels cute?? For the first time I bought the Homegrown magazine and have vowed to continue to uy it. This one was on tomatoes and it is a POWERHOUSE of information and has these free labels to boot!!

My peas are finished and my lettuces are doing great growing things in askyscraper direction. ut my tomatoes...it is there time to shine. As well as a few surprise seld seeded one in the front garden my Romas are looking healthy and gorgeous tho still green in the back garden. In fact they are positively triffid like! I am so looking forward to cutting them in half putting them in my underused dehyrator and storing them in olive oil as sundried tomatoes with a touch of garlic and rosemary. In this mood of tomatoes and preserving my GHIU reminded me that for the past five years we have several kilos of frozen tommies at the bottom of our deep freezer in the shed.!!! I immediately got to wprk and made two batches of pasta sauce using them. I used 10 kilos in all and there is now room again in the freezer (Interesting how much fish ait and UFOs I found in there as well!!)

Arnt they pretty??? Up the top is the strawberry and plum jam. We have so much jam now that Im going to go easy on it this season. I will put most of my energies into bottling the peaches and the pears instead, but they are a while away yet.

I have found this great new blog which I am going to visit often. It is frugal in nature and full of great tips , recipes and inspiration. You can find it here. This lady is also a designer. How di some people get all the talents? I love to sew and quilt and craft but I could never actually make something up from my head!

The weather has been unbearaly hot, flies are constant nusiances and we seem to be always out of flyspray and automatic ones seem to give up quickly..batteries?? Spray?? I give up..

Its such fun to read the American blogs ans see the snow and read how they are all copnquering the cold right now. it just seems surreal over here with the humidity and heat!!

happy bottling.

Loce Cherry

Ive fallen behind..

...Not just with my blog..but with everything. Im constantly amazed how other homes with children keep them so neat. I guess Im my own worse enemy. Im hardly Miss clean myself..although I love to be clean and organised but it is not naturally in my system to be so. So when the children right from a youing age and not being day cared used the house and its possessions as their play collatoral I didnt complain or say No. I thought they soon grow out of it or learn to play more with their vast collection of toys. Now they still do the same. I can leave my living room, forinstance and return a while later to find every ornament, photo frame, chair,rug etc etc now in new positions and joined with material and or threads from my ever constant sewing pile in their own private imaginary playground. And woe betide me for not loving this new arrangement or daring to dissassemble it. But on the weekends the house just turns into a big chaotic mess .. and can usually be found in the middle of it allclinging on to my sanity with needle and thread. So this is what I am leaving in my wake this week... firstly the next installment of the mystery quilt found here.


I loveapplique..it was my first love when I started very basic patchwork and primitive applique a few years back now. I found though that my love is not as strong as it once was, so making eight of these hearts is a little tedious. But I did get to watch black sheep as I did these few. Such a funny film..a true BLACK comedy.. The there is my ever present repo quilt.And Im quite pleased with this..though again a little tedious as other projects bite away at my unconscious and keep me up at night. So I attacked this with the sewing machine, just whizzed thgrough. The ran out of the red setting block material..oops. Not sure if there will be any more in which case this quilt will not reach its 60" by 60" lapquilt proportions. (This is the USA term forlap quilt...quite a lot larger than the other so called lap quilts I have made..)

Oh this is a simple thing. My gorgeous girls picking me posies of end of season Dahlias. I havent had much of apresece in the garden this season. But these dahlias are gorgeous inside as a posy. My first garden of our first home in Te Kuiti was filled with roses and flowers..and they allended upinside in vases...Now the opposite is true..bless my girls for seeing th beauty in these and bringing them in.

My quilt I made for the victoria fire survivors is now in the care of this patchwork shop. I am returning next week to offer my yservices for more quilting help andreturned home with this quilt to bind.I dont know what the material was in the bindingbut there were many cries of pain as the blunt end of the needle ended upin my thumb!!

I got a fright when I realised that the singing competitions are only a week away. Georgia has gone very anti them (Good one pushy Mum..) and hardly even practises. I just pray she remebers her words. The one thing I dont want to happen out of this is for her to come away completely put off.

Its late now so I say good night...yah extra hour of sleep tonight..

Happy daylight saving

Love Cherry

Things that make me Happy..

Things that make me happy:

Alex doing her homework and reading so well now...despite severe dylexia.

Patricia Cornwell latest book "Scarpetta" I had to stay up until the wee hours to finish this one...

And using my old repo fabric in my repo quilt. Actually it was quite heartbreaking to take the fabric out of the brown wrapping so I took a photo.. Now of course I wish Id bought bolts of the stuff while it was in front of my nose ..Anyone reading this live in KeriKeri?!

I had a good talk to the ladies at the Quitling shop in the country that I haunt here

and she was saying that the USA is quite a way ahead of us in quilting trends (No..!!) and that we were just getting on the repo bandwagon and could expect the shelves to fill up with repo fabrics soon (Yah!!). In the meantime I was getting a bit sick of sewing little two and a half nine patch and four patch squares and so I bought some repo fabric in red for the setting rectangles. Ill have to post a photo. The original stated pink but I have used red and hope it works!!

Im off to School camp for threee days with Georgia ..Ive always wanted to be Camp MUM!! We are going not too far, just to Cape Kidnappers to study the Gannet colony , the stars and the river life. I am DREADING climbing the Cape. I may have to bring my lumber arthritis/hip pain/ archilles heel injury into play when infact I will be stopping simply because I will be STUFFED!!!

I expect to come back sleep deprived and needing several days off.

Keep happy , campers

Love Cherry

PS Hello Ngaire!!! Glad to hear you in the comments. I would love the mags!!! Yes we are at the same phone number...awaiting that big change when the country beckons finally. Youll have to fill up your blog with your life. Its so great to catch up via the blogging world!!! Hope yoiu are all well, and Im glad you read my blog!!

Ive been in the garden

The front of the garden to be precise. Its been very hot, very dry and the front of the garden has been full of weeds and in much need of water. So I set to and discovered in our compost heap a nice pumkin (I think its a grey pumpkin). Thats whats so great abouit a compost heap all these surprises arising. Normally I may replant them but mostly just pull them out but this pumpkin can grow out quite nicely without doing any harm.















And then i remembered my Roma tomatoes which at the last look (embarressingly long ago) were bare. But now they have gorgeous shaped tomatoes. Just perfect for my sundried tomatoes. This
lovely kiwi blogger had a great recipe for drying and preserving sundried tomatoes and I was inspoired to grow these Romas after reading of it. But I wonder if it was on her old blog? Oh well Ill have to do my homework after this. Her blog is great though for simple living (my favourite kind of living)














So I was madly watering and suddenly all these cute little praying mantis insects arise from my lavender crop. They were everywhere. Then I got a bit worried as they are fantastic garde friends as they eat the predators. Unfortunately they also eat each other..as one school Mum discovered when she found two mantis , put them in a jar for show and tell at School and couldnt work out how one of them had escaped by the next morning. (I broke the bad news!). So I semi sprayed water over them when they got to close trying to scatter them apart from each other (there were babies and they would be gone in one quick killer grip) . After a while I left them to it but I hate to be the bringer of tragedy in the garden.

And these are coming together so quickly. Ive even started to soley handstitch them infront of TV at night as they just grow and grow with alacrity. Very exciting.

So sad this end of the country. A family friend was murdered. I have known many to die youing..but never a murder. It has sent my hairs up on end reading the details in the paper. He broke up a fight outside a country pub. Someone either stabbed him in the car or drove him offf the road and stabbed him there. Last year his father died suddenly, the year before his brother was killed in quad bike accident coming into the farm off the road and just prior his dear Aunty died after a long illness. It just seems quite unbelievable. and I remember this farming family well and feel so sad.

Sadly yours

Cherry

Heard from my babes mouths..

Georgia has her friend mary over and her, mary and Alex are happily (mostly) swimming around and dive bombing the pool. I was sitting by the pool sewing (naturally) when I got the giggles listening to the conversation ensue:
G: Lets pretend we are sisters.
Alex: I want o be the baby Waaaa!!
Mary: I want to be the older sister.
G: No I want to be the older saister!
A: Waaaa!
G: So Im the oldest sister. Right?
Pregnant pause
A" Waaaaaaa
M: Okay lets be twins.

G: Yes..but Ill be the older twin
M: Awww Cant I be the oldest twin
A: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa
G: Ummmm Okay
M: Yah thanks Georgia SO Im the oldest twin?
G: Yeah..but I be the twin that acts the oldest.

Honestly when you take the time to slow down and listen to your children it does surely bring a grin to the face.
In our group of friends we are all wishing we were younger than we are. I wonder when this happened!

Here is a fantastic blog that embraces simple living off the grid and living co operatively with the Amish. I am hooked. Due to dial up connection here, it takes forever to see all the posts so I have only scratched the surface of this blog. I was so impressed with the Amish way of ALWAYS helping their friends, even when visiting and NEVER leaving their friends out on a limb, practically and financially. If you love simple living or need inspiration to contuinue simple living in this crazy fast world we live, grab and coffeee and read. Naturally I got this site from Rhonda at down to earth. I read everything she recommends!!
Simple living everyone
Love Cherry