REVAMP NEEDED: URGENT!

And hello world! I am back to haunt you. Hopefully with a little more style, wit and literacy skills than your average ghost!
And as my title suggests I am going to attempt a new look as well as some new subject matter.
I am going on a little adventure. Yes I have been dreaming of this event for a while now, as you all have probably figured out by my sudden love of pinterest, castles and foreign places!

Thanks to a friend who, when asked ''Can I carry your bags?'', said ''Yes!'' I will be on that plane departing Melbourne airport on July 1st. With me will be my sometimes lovely and some times annoying computer tablet. With which I hope to give all of you a running commentary of my travels.

My destinations are rather numerous, but to answer that question in a broad sense I am to be traveling to the....

 

 USA

and then to the United Kingdom

Scotland

 Ireland

 (possibly) Wales

 Dubai

 
and then back to my home down under.

This blog post was supposed to appear a month or two ago, but was severely neglected in pursuit of planning, life, work and a rather bad case of procrastination. Now my hope is to update you all regularly as to my plans, mainly to allow me to develop the habit of blogging again because I have been told in no uncertain terms that I must keep my family, friends and colleagues abreast of any and every moment.

Now I must dash, as my fingers are just now realising that winter is hard on the heels of our just past summer!
I hope to get things better setup and working more smoothly soon.

Around the World: No. 4 Bavaria

Ok, so this is probably my favorite! But maybe not my number 1, just because if I am travelling I want to travel somewhere easy first. Such as an English speaking country!!!

Please excuse my newly found like of Pinterest.

What would have to be my favorite building in the world (so far).

Source: toppics.justfreight.org via Meghann on Pinterest

Love, love, love! <3

Source: weheartit.com via Eva on Pinterest

One more castle picture!

Source: citypictures.net via Alyssa on Pinterest

(Yes I have a slight fixation on this ^ castle... I admit it!)

Source: k39.kn3.net via Claudio on Pinterest

Around the World: Place No. 2 Spain & No. 3 Greece

I dont know about everyone else but I have always been fixated on these little towns on the edge of a cliff, with all the houses whitewashed and almost an extension of the ground (well they kinda are!).
Adding to the list we have...

This is Spain vVv

Source: slki.ru via Gaynell on Pinterest

And this is Greece vVv

Source: goo.gl via Tatum on Pinterest

Around the World; Place # 1 Canada

Hey! Ok so I am dreaming a little but I really want to go to Canada on my 'round the world trip'.

And I have decided that to prompt me into some research I am going to share with you a daily snap of where I want to go. Maybe I'll create a map or something.

Source: tumblr.com via Alberta on Pinterest

Hello !
Yes it has been quite a large section of time since I last wrote. For which I am guessing I should be saying how very sorry I am... But! My blog my rules ;).

At the moment my Christmas history is boring and filled with sickness stories and visiting. All I will say is that it was both calming and hysterical. And you can make what you wish from those bare bones I give you.

I listen to powerful music, most probably too loud for my poor eardrums, telling me to follow dreams no matter what. They assume you know what your dreams already are.

I am still writing, still drawing, still sewing, and to add to that I am still cutting weird shapes out of fabric and sewing them together to make something (although the last piece I showed to my was promptly called 'Interesting' and then 'Imaginative'... Yes I think they were long words for 'Ugly' or 'Weird'.). I plow on through the half hearted attempts of praise and plan to make something new today.

My darling Mother, has herself and yours truely booked to go to a large market sometime soon (I think Febuary), so I am crazily making things to sell.

Between times Mother and I have been milking cows at a dairy, every morning and every evening. Speaking of which, it is now time to leave.

So I bid you farewell!

A few words, here and there, a list.

Early morning

Rain falling outside my bedroom window

Finished cup of coffee

Piano music

A Google search on skin allergies

A comment to a post

Country Style magazine

A pretty new note book

10 minutes till I have to leave to go to work

Secrets and truths

A heart hurting and a heart on fire

A smile

A prayer

Life goes on.

Have a good day everyone!
I leave you with a favorite photo of mine

Why is it?

*Chuckles*
Why is it that when I am actually supposed to be typing up my 10 page (and growing) production journal, I get the urge to write a blog post after not writing for a couple of months???

Yep, that's right, I am procrastinating... If you can procrastinate whilst actually doing the dreaded thing? I think it is actually the non-stop two and a half pages right ahead.

It actually feels weird to be writing, I mean really writing. Not just URLs, taking notes in class or even google searches. To be writing words that complete sentences which I am thinking, rather than copying something else from someone else's brain!

There are many things I would rather be doing right now. Such as being outside in one of the rare sunny days this week, working in the garden or going for a lovely walk with my great new camera (which I will be making a post about very soon!).

Anyway I am going to leave and actually have this post published, even if there isn't much to it!
Till next time :)

House sitting boredom

confused...

Here I was, just sitting down to get to some home work, a boring piece about Australian Standards and other great aspects of design. Happy, in my own little world, I had just had some great ideas for my project, I had just read a blog post about someone who went to Thailand to work at an orphanage, it touched me and it got me thinking that maybe I should be thinking about doing something. But I realised that I first needed to do my homework. I opened another Internet browser, our home page is the ABC News website.
The headline...

State of Emergency

Gunmen on rooftops have shot dead dozens of protesters at an anti-government rally in Sanaa after Muslim prayers, enraging the opposition.

Bloody clashes spark Yemen emergency.

The picture. A young man, who couldn't be more than 20, wounded and being carried. Blood all over his face. Eyes half open and vacantly staring at something above him. An arm raised as if his dying breath will still be to over throw his government. While the article goes on about the president and the country all I can do is stare at that face.

I am sorry if I have shocked anyone, I guess I just needed to say something. I cant say that I have a great sermon about this... this... moment. I feel confused and I guess shocked, saddened. And here I sit with my safe, secure and simple life.

If you want to read it for your self, here.

And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars....

Inspired...

So I was sitting here, late afternoon sunlight coming through the double glass front doors beside me, recovering from a coughing fit, listening to the music on my blog (just because I like it) and eating Parmesan cheese (yum), listening to and smelling Mum cooking lovely spaghetti bolognaise and I was inspired... To do what I am not sure, just to write I guess so I thought I would share this scene with you (and what else I have no idea!).

So I just did a google search and came up with these, inspiration pictures :).

The flowers because I want to make some to put on some clothes :D and the curtains because I want to make some for my bedroom and these are really pretty! (I think I will make some of the ones featured in the bottom left hand corner, just cos I have some straight old curtains already, just need a little prettying up!)

Till next time, bye!

150 posts - 2 (or is it 3) years

Happy Blogaversary to me!!! Whooo... I am sorry if I am not overly ecstatic, because for me this is just another day. I have failed to think of something of interest to inform you about that will amuse you, mostly because I woke numerous times last night to lay awake and cough. No, don't feel sorry for me, I have had more than enough people to say "Oh, I am sorry you are sick." and to look sympathetically at me while I am in the middle of a coughing fit, I have found that it does not make living any easier to know that someone pities you.

So today... the sun is shining, there is quite strong breeze around, the grass is green and in some places a tan or brown, the trees are starting to turn yellowy orange (some slightly red, by the type of tree), although the gums stay as olivey green in summer, autumn, winter, and spring, but the bush does spring to life in spring and early summer, with the glorious banksia's, 'bacon and egg' flowers, bright yellow and aromatic dog wood flowers, purple nameless flowers, and rare orchids that are everywhere sometimes there is a whole clearing that has a carpet of them... and now I am rambling.

Today is a Friday, tomorrow is Saturday, tomorrow is also a family friend's funeral, well not exactly but we are going to watch his widow spread his ashes... I guess that is a difference.

Again I apologise for my depressing state and I take my leave.

Till post 151.

cough, cough, cough

I am so sorry I have no updated sooner but there have been a few developments, first large one I guess would have to be that I am sick :(, with a high chance that it might be whooping cough because Sarah has it, and it happens to be highly contagious. Unfortunately it is not so highly recommended, it is a most unpleasant disease that I don't suggest that anyone else catches. All coughing and nose running and sleepless nights (I haven't yet to have any but Sarah tells me they wont be far away). So I have been banned from going to school and to Auslan, well not exactly 'banned' but I don't want to spread the germs so I have decided to let my teachers know and skip.

Second bit of news, I now have a room of my own so there may be some decorating posts coming up :D. I have been making some very simple but very pretty kinetic mobiles. I had heaps of shells from our very few trips to the beach so I decided to make my collection a bit more interesting and using one of my other collecting passions for ribbons and some very rustic sticks (that I collected from our drive way)... annnnd *insert drum roll here* the rest you will see in a later post!

I have also been painting (fun! except for the mishaps) which will also be in another post.And I am sorry I just cant think of much to say so I am giving you all the post I ideas I have had in the last little while.

Well this is post 149 out of 150, and tomorrow is the day! I am not really sure how or what I will come up with so that you guys wont be bored out of your skulls but I guess I will have to come up with something :D.

Till then!!!

Late Summer and Early Autumn

As much as I love this time of the year, I do not really like the part where you wake up in the morning dreading to get out of bed because it is chilly and there is no warm fire to snuggle up to with a hot cup of coffee.

It is hard to believe that it is almost the end of summer! The change of seasons represents a change in my life, in reflection I can see it. Early this summer I had thought that just by being happy I could make this summer to be the best, so many plans and ideas I had on how to make a wonderful and happy summer. I guess first of all I had no idea that we would spend most of the summer cooped up indoors because of rain, second I had no idea that circumstances around me would change so drastically that my entire world would be turned up side down, I didn't foresee that I would be sitting here in this moment writing this.

People come and go, we change, lives around us are affected by their actions, endings, that should have been seen coming, arrive and we are surprised by them. Beginnings have profound affects on me, ones that I had not expected.
As I read not long ago, We cannot know the whole story. We cannot see what is ahead but with the grace of our God we can accept and deal with whatever comes.

A new post soon. I will put some photos up of the changing of seasons.

Its raining, its pouring...

The old Pig is Snoring!

I walked out our front door the other day to find this.

She is not a very pretty specimen and she doesn't know about being tidy, but she does send us into fits of laughter every now and again.

There is no way better to sleep than half off the bed.

She was so very tired...

I think she thought I was the paparazzi or something, she was not happy about being photographed in the middle of her nap.

I was not kidding about the rain, it has been raining quite heavily here for quite a while, the last couple of weeks it has only left off for a day or so. We are dreading more flooding, not for our sakes because we don't get very affected by the rising waters as we are a long way away from any major rivers or creeks. But I do feel for the people who have farms on river flats. And anyone who lives in rising water range of a river.

I will fill you in on my trip to Sydney next time! Till then.

To my readers

Well I have 15 days till my blog anniversary! Two whole years :) wow! I do hope that you have enjoyed them.
Anyway I have a little plan... I have 5 posts till I get 150 posts, soooo I have decided that I am going to try and get to 150 in 15 days. I hope this makes you happy as it means you will be getting a few posts in a short time (not months and months like it normally is!).
This is my plan! Enjoy me while I am here!
15 days and 4 posts to go.

Its a new day.

And apparently a new post ;).


Christmas has come and gone then the new year came with little fuss and no grandeur. But some small news gave more excitement and also sadness... My oldest sister is leaving our home, our community, our state and the country. She is moving to Sydney to be a nanny for a well off family in a rather rich suburb. I wont tell you which one just cos she mightn't want all of you knowing :). We will miss her quite a bit and I suspect that she will miss us a lot as well. It will be strange without my biggest sister around.


To those of you who miss my blog posts I am very sorry that I haven't been diligent with my blog, but I wont spend much time lamenting this fact or that will be the entire contents of this post.


Yesterday, in honor of Ayala moving away from us we decided to go for a bit of a tour of our area, it is commonly known that if you live somewhere you are the last ones to see the local attractions so we decided to make the move and see some of our local wonders!

We drove a lot. The most obvious direction was into the mountains, we have some magnificent mountains right here in our back yard (ok, so slight exaggeration, but still pretty close). The highest mountain in our large but small country is sitting some 100 kilometers away from us and we had never climbed it. Thankfully we didn't climb it yesterday, because that is one big hill! I think I would have gotten half way up and collapsed (or wanted to at least). Instead we drove, visited a few very small towns where their roofs are on a very strange angle for a very obvious reason.

(I would post photos but it takes soo long that I end up forgetting about the post and go and do something else).

*Insert a day break, I was procrastinating*

After Cabramurra we stopped at a Dam, I can not remember which one (they all have names but after seeing four or five of these dams you forget which name goes with which dam), for an hour or so to take photos and to basically just stand in awe of the hugeness of it. I am sitting here picturing it but I can imagine it would be hard for most of you as you have never seen my beautiful country and if you have I doubt that you can imagine standing on a great feat of human engineering, to one side thousands of tons of water stretching for kilometers through long narrow valleys covered in gum trees but so steep so that if you can imagine a huge V with it the bottom of which is filled with water and with scrubbery (bushes) and gum trees covering the rest, that is almost what it looks like. And to your other hand is a curved concrete drop 100 meters or so to a small pool at the bottom. It is truly a majestic sight!

We stopped at another dam on the way home, slightly smaller than the last and an earthen dam, instead of concrete. The Tooma Dam.

To end the day we drove up a dirt bush track for what seemed an age. To laugh at an overgrown 4x4 track called Cherry Tree Avenue. We finally turn onto a smaller 4x4 track that took us down to Bunroy Creek, a secluded lonely spot with great beauty, really in the middle of No-Where :). Dad and Dan did some fishing, my brother snagged his lure so he left it to my Dad to catch us dinner but he didn't catch anything. We went for a swim, well that is every one except me (I hadn't been feeling very well), I watched as they had swimming competitions across the fast flowing current.

We returned home very late, about 8 or 9 PM. All very driven out, my stomach never allows me much peace when we drive through the mountains! So I wasn't a very happy chappy by the time we got home.

And that concludes our escapades through the Snowy Mountains and around about!

I will include my latest projects next time I post.

Till then :).

Some thoughts

Ok so I guess my readers have noticed I have a new play list *smiles*. The first song, although not a Christian song makes me think... not about the past as the lyrics implies but to the future. What do you think?

I have another favorite crafty blog, I have quite a few favorites but some of them really have that diversity of crafts that take them to the top of my list.

Please go and check it out!

This is the tutorial that helped me find this website.

I was looking for patterns for headbands to make and sell at the Twilight market this weekend and I found quite a few that I thought "ooh, now isn't that nice!" and this is one of them.

And here is another, I made this one with blue ribbon. It turned out so well, I accidentally messed up the ribbon and sewed it together so there was a twist in it, so I got to keep it (yay). And I do know that it is actually for a much younger girl but it is still very pretty and so very simple, it took about 15 minutes! This is not a very good picture of the end product (I will have to take a photo of the one I made and put it up).

Also while looking for ideas for what to make for this afternoon's market, I came across some very pretty fabric jewelry ideas (ones that I would like to try someday when I have a little time).

These were from a few different blogs and websites so I do not own these photos or have never made them or anything.

Well it took me a few days to get this post together but I guess at least I am here, and here is the end!

I will try to post more often. Maybe with some photos of things I have been making.

Something pretty I found :)

Ok so I was surfing the blog sphere today and on one of my absulute favortie crafty blogs I found this ;).

Dont you just adore them? I really want to buy the pattern and make them (maybe in winter though when I could actually wear them, bit hot now).

More posts coming soon!

A life worth living.

G'day everyone!
I am so sorry that I haven't posted in such a long time, although being reminded by my great friend Kate-Lynn that I had not posted in such a long time my blog was getting cobwebs. Thank you Kate!
Well to say the least I have been very very busy! As you can see below I have been sewing as though my life depended on it.
I finally finished my Design and Tech course for which I am very happy, although I will be continuing this next year just because I need to keep busy. I have uploaded the finished product of my labors somewhere below, it takes a lot of effort to move the photos around so they stay where they are.
I have been making quilts and dresses and in between times learning piano and writing the odd UN-rhyming (but soul searching) poem and starts of stories, I have also lived through the flooding rains we have had this spring. But more on that another time.
And now may I present to you, the second ever quilt I have finished! Very happy with it, although I had some people ask why I put such random bright colours together, I just shrugged and smiled, I love it.

Here is my most recent attempts at quilting, I started it last night and am almost finished, I have this absurd obsession if I start something I have to keep going until I finish it. I may be sitting there for hours and hours on end but I must finish, the result is some very quickly made articles.

Close up

The entire quilt, named.... Garden Paths

Ahh, my Design and Tech dress. (please excuse my face expression, it tends to distort when I can't breath).

In the process of design and production. And I ask you to excuse the mess in the background, it is hard to keep things tidy with only half the shelf space you need.


*Smiles* I am in love with this quilt! I know some people might think its too over the top and bright but I adore it.

And the beautifully even squares on the back, I am glad I got it right!

And I will try to get a written blog post up soon, I don't know when but hopefully not as long as last time.

Till next time,

Kathy

Photos!

Ok so I know I haven't posted on here and I really need to give my self a good yelling at but I guess that I might just make it up to you guys by uploading lots of photos :).

I have a lot of photos to add seeing as though it has been a very interesting little while. So here they are! Enjoy!

First things first :). We have a few new babies! This is the newest of the new. Born on the 1st of July at roughly 6 AM, a beautiful baby girl. Who hasn't actually got a name yet even though she is a month old, lol!

Determined not to be the smallest of the pack, she decided it was now time to GROW. And as of yet she hasn't stopped :).

Not only did she grow in stature but also in personality! She has turned out to be a rather cheeky little rotter, although getting cuter by the day :).

Mmmm noms!

"Ayala! My noms weren't good enough. I'll just have to have Mums too!"

Did I mention that we had a 'few babies'? These are mine :). T bootiful lil bubbies, aww they is soo cute! It was soo funny, when we took these photos, they had just gotten out of their pen because we were trying to make it little pig proof (it wasn't working)! But they kept getting out and getting out. This one day we fixed the fence then came to get them and we chased them around and around the yard. We finally gave up and decided to try getting them with food instead. When we came back they had gotten so worn out they had decided to go for a nap, it was so cute cos they just flopped down and went to sleep :) awww.

Yeah well they couldn't stand to be the smallest either! So they grew(and grew, and grew and grew!)!

We took a trip to Melbourne :). In Federation Square we found this. We wondered what it was till we read the sign (lol). It was an art sculpture (yup I know!) it had tiny little solar panels on it and it was all wired up so that when the sun came out it would move as the sun moved across the sky. As it was only 9 AM and you can see the sun on those buildings over behind it, we planned on going back to see how it moved but we forgot. Anyway it was interesting.

Oh yeah this is a big TV screen, that they show important things on like the Soccer World Cup (lol) and elections and things. We weren't sure what they were showing on it at this particular moment, but it looked kinda boring and we had to keep moving because we had shopping to do and we were LATE! :)

Ok so we weren't so late that we couldn't get something to munch on :).

SBS building :). We tried going in but they hadn't opened and you needed to wait in this humongous line up so we decided against it :P.

The Yarra River. We were actually watching the rowers practice but anyway you really cant see them in this photo.

The City!

Dangerfield :O! Ok so you guys wont know what this means to me so I will tell you, in my course, I sent my project (a 50's style apron) off to my tutor and he sent it back to me and told me that 'it was very Dangerfield'. So we were sitting at a tram stop waiting for a tram staring blankly at the building across from us when I read the sign! I was soo excited, but there was a problem, there was a great road between me and that store :P. I don't know about you but when you are waiting for a tram and there is a busy Melbourne road between you and someplace you want to go and you had almost been run over by a group of crazy cyclists (because of our crazy less-than-street-wise sister) less than an hour before hand you think more than twice before crossing a busy Melbourne road just to look at a shop for two seconds before dashing back across that street, between cars, to catch a tram. Yeah you guessed it, I missed out because we never came back :'(.

BTW we were waiting for the tram when our crazy sister decided to be even more crazy and embarrassing and act like a tourist, which we were and probably obviously so, but we WERE trying to fit in a little, and take a picture of us. Both Sarah and I were trying hard to stop her, although I look happy I was getting annoyed and very embarrassed!

Oh and this is another thing I have been doing, it was a project that I did a long while ago, to my horrible brown chest of drawers :). Don't know if they look any better half painted but hey I gave it a try.

Well that is about it, hope you enjoyed my boring and also rather exciting account of my life over the past little while :)

Till next time I feel like entertaining you with my presence!