It’s too early for pruning, technically speaking. Purists would tut.
But I figured the rain was just about to decimate them anyway. It was a rescue mission.
… and a day of tidying up the garden leads to one very happy outcome. No, wait, make that two very happy outcomes… the first being of course a nice, newly neat and tidy garden. The other is lovely big new FREE floral arrangement for the house! Doesn’t everyone keep the prunings for a really big and dramatic floral extravaganza? Seriously if, like me, you are not a prima ballerina, then this is the best way to get gratuitous and regular fabulous floral displays happening in your house.
My outfit today serendipitously matches the new floral arrangement; so I took another arty, hand-held, looking-down-to-my-toes shot of my outfit, like Kirsty did the other day too. I’m thinking we should start a Flickr group together, and call it Selfie Foot-Shots, or the Navel-Gazing Fashion Bloggers Society, or something…
I just wanted to say a very big thank you for all those kind comments … I read them all with so much pleasure and felt very much supported and loved by everyone. You are all so lovely!
It is so very silly how the smallest drop of vitriol in amongst a whole crowd of sweet and kind comments can somehow be so disproportionately effective in bringing one’s spirits crashing down, intellectually we know it should not be so but we humans are sensitive creatures and it is just so. So silly!
So, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart and wish to send you all a big big beautiful bouquet of gorgeousness right back at you!
Thank you so much for all the gorgeous birthday wishes!
I was very spoilt, and I would love to share the beauty of my birthday bouquet with you. Please enjoy!
I wish I could share my birthday cake too, made by Cassie. It was quaite delicious 😉
Like many households in Perth at the mo’ we have lemons. Lots of lemons. We are overloaded with lemons. We have lemons coming out of our ears. To say I have lemons on the brain is no exaggeration!!
Last week I was sad to see one of the boughs on our lemon tree starting to snap from under the weight of a gazillion lemons… so I salvaged all the ripe lemons off of the bough and got this…
D’ya wanna see something scary? Even after harvesting all those lemons off just one branch, the tree still looks like this…!
So I am on a mission to USE LEMONS…!
I have made lemon curd. I checked out recipes on the net and found this one, but then made up my own recipe, which uses the whole egg rather than just the yolk. I consider this to be a far more usable concept in cooking 🙂
Lemon Curd
rind and juice of 4 lemons
6 eggs
1 1/2 c sugar
125g butter
Lightly whisk the eggs and sugar together in a saucepan, then add the other ingredients. Whisk continually over a medium heat until the mixture has thickened to a custard-like texture then allow to cool in the pan. Decant into sterilised jars.
I’ve made about twenty jars of lemon curd and given nearly all away to my friends; and they have been surprisingly appreciative, especially considering most of us have lemon trees 😀
Cassie devised this clever idea…
This is mango jelly, made up with the juice from the lemons plus water up to volume, and poured inside the hollowed-out half lemon shells to set. It can be eaten by scooping the jelly straight out of the half shells, or cut up into wedges like this. Looks quite pretty on the plate, don’t you think?… Clever and delicious!
Floral arrangement…
I know I know, this isn’t really “using” lemons since they too still have to be consumed at some point. But one may as well enjoy the visual beauty of laden branches too, yes? Alongside there is my newest knitting project, hehehe…
I hesitate to mention this last one, since I get a “look” from everyone irl I have mentioned it to… I am also drinking a lemon a day… without any added sugar. I fully realise how strange this sounds but honestly I am enjoying it now. It only took a few days to get used to drinking unsweetened diluted lemon juice but now I am acclimatised I cannot imagine going back to adding sugar ever again. I used to add sugar to my lemon juice, but it always bothered me. I decided I would wean myself off by gradually reducing the amount of sugar I was adding but then I just decided to go cold turkey. And it worked! I am getting a good shot of vitamin C, without the extra sugar. I am cool with it now.
Juice of 1 lemon, diluted up to a glassful…
I think it is important to note, I am NOT expecting my family to drink unsweetened lemon juice. For now it’s just me 🙂 For my family, I have been baking a coupla lemon cakes each week. It’s a good thing everyone loves them…. 🙂
And we are slowly getting through those lemons!
Incidentally, does anyone know a good limoncello recipe?
Now perhaps I should start thinking what to do about this…
I like the clashiness here. A reminder that nature can beautify anything… The rose is a late autumnal bloomer from my garden; some litterbug chucked the Coke can onto our verge and in the act of picking it up to toss into the recycling bin I suddenly saw artistic possibilities. We don’t actually drink the stuff ourselves 😛
And below; quinces from my parents’ garden.
That classy platter is actually an old fan guard/cover that I picked up off a neighbour’s verge in a council toss-out. Pretty cool, huh? Fair dinkum, best neighbourhood recycling scheme ever conceived!
So next, I am participating in me-made May, and we are travelling later in the month.
Now I’ve had some thoughts about blogging during me-made May; and I would welcome your feedback, please! In the past, I have posted an daily outfit picture, and blogged a few thoughts each day. I find this an easier way for me to keep motivated and keep going with it.
But I have read quite a lot of negative feedback on other blogs about the apparent boredom of “having” to look at people’s daily outfits; and if the blogger is participating themselves, lots of apologising about the “posting overload”, whatever that means. I’m bemused by this; since the feedback on the me-made flickr group is always the polar opposite; that people really do like having a bit of a squizzy at everyone else’s daily outfits. I know I enjoy sneaky-peeking into other peoples self-stitched closets and sharing a bit in everyone’s daily lives, too!
So please tell me, what are your thoughts? Do you tune out during the me-made months, or do you, like me, enjoy a daily sticky-beak at all the self-stitched goodness?
A lot of participants are talking about how they are going to up the ante this time. I am opting to go ALL me-made, and mix-it up with a different outfit for each day like I always have for these challenges, and truthfully I don’t think I can up the ante more than that! So I will try to aim higher with my photography, and do my best to capture beautiful and/or interesting images each day. Sound fair? 🙂
I am pretty up-to-date with posting my recent creations, with only one new thing up my sleeve, yet to be photographed. It has been a very productive month for me 😀 but this is going to be offset next month when we go away. So, although there will not be stacks of new things over the next six weeks, I am hoping to post some lovely scenery on my blog here, along with my hopefully groovy-doovy outfits.
And I am sure going to try my best to keep it up during our travelling schedule, later next month.
And after all that, an addendum; the abysmally astronomical additions for April…
Ivory Trench Coat
Outer fabric; a gift from my friend C, from her late mother’s stash
Facing fabric; $14.81
Lining fabric; $21.43
Pattern; McCalls 5525, used before
Buttons; $4.20
Total cost; $30.44
Curtain skirt
Outer fabric; a gift from my friend C, from her late mother’s stash
Lining; leftover from the trench coat above
Zip; $2.20
Pattern; Vogue 1247, used before
Hook and eye; bought a new packet of 3 for $3.45
Total cost; $5.65
Leatherette skirt
Fabric; $57.98
Lining; $6.99
Zip; $1.42
Pattern; Vogue 1170, used before
Started one new overlocker thread; $1.00
Total cost; $67.39
Clipped Wings, a top
Fabric; I’m not sure since I bought this last year, guestimating $20
Pattern; drafted from Pattern Magic 3, which I have used before
Total cost; $20
Sapote cotton cardigan
Yarn; $62.70 (bought during the 30% off sale, yay!)
Pattern; used before
Buttons; $5.40
Total cost; $68.10
Gingham PJ’s
Fabric; $17.45
Elastic; 1.05
Buttons; leftover from another project
Total cost; $18.50
Ultramine corduroy skirt
Fabric; $7.01
Lining; $4.19
Zip; 0.99
Pattern; Vogue 1170, used before
Thread; $3.20
Started one new overlocker thread; $1.00
Buttons; from stash
Total cost; $16.39
Strawberry Pink jeans
Fabric; $13.21
Zip; $1.99
Facing fabric; recycled old PJ’s
Jeans button; from stash
Total cost; $15.20
The running total for the first third of the year; $633.04
… I’ve been getting out in the garden. And engaged in some brutal hacking garden maintenance. But I felt sad about those fallen sprays of soft and velvet-y grey-green, and gathered them up, and made an arrangement. Quite nice, don’t you think? I think sometimes the obvious beauty of flowers blinds us to the quiet and subtle beauty of plain unadorned foliage.
Alongside there; a knitting work in progress 😉
And just to prove that my kitchen is not merely for show (although everyone including my family might be forgiven for mistaking that one) I have been baking…. A friend had an important birthday and I hosted a birthday do and made a cake, and y’know what? fortuitously it was delicious! I was so proud like a mother with her new baby I took a picture…
Pink Velvet Cake (recipe from the Australian Women’s Weekly “High Tea” cookbook)
There! It can be seen that I do occasionally dabble in activities other than sewing!
But back to important matters…
In sewing news:
I’m getting behind on my documentation… I have three new things to show here 🙂 I am just awaiting on the right day to take photographs…. you know how I am a bit of a perfectionist in such things. It’s not like I am going to just slap any ol’ hideous me-photo here on the internet… And realistically, it has just been too darn crazy-hot to actually wear any of my new creations yet, and I like to actually be wearing that thing on that day or I feel like a bit of a fraud. Silly, I know… as it is I have been boringly wearing the same-old-same-old little summer things and I am getting. Sick. To. Death. of my summer wardrobe. I’m dying to get into some of my new cooler weather things! But we are expecting a nice cool change today, so soon a “new thing” picture shall appear. I promise.
I received a very cool and very generous gift recently from the very talented Shams. Thank you so much Shams!! I won’t show details here just yet… but I will at the right time. Sorry to be all mysterious, but results will appear in due course… watch this space!
Also, the lovely Mary awarded me the Versatile blogger award! Since I already have this one I won’t repeat myself by doing it over again, but if you want you can click on those award buttons in my sidebar to read the things I have written about before. Thank you so much for thinking of me, Mary!
Now I’m going to have a minor rant give my considered opinion on something that is bothering me heaps lately;
That hideous new word verification thingy. Is the new system not the most teeth-grindingly awful thing in blogworld at the mo’, or what…. Does anybody else agree? Whenever I go to leave a comment and that blurry, blended-together, ridiculously illegible as well unintelligible, thing pops up… well, half the time it’s so damn difficult to work it out I have to have a couple of goes at it before I get it right. And … “prove you are not a robot”? What the heck? that’s a little bit rude… Honestly, it seriously saps the will to comment… I removed the word verification from my own blog months ago, even back when the word was still relatively easy to figure out and I haven’t been spammed or had any (intentionally) rude comments yet.
Here’s my feeling; the sewing and creative community is nearly always so kind and supportive, do we really want to put obstacles in the paths of people who might merely wish to say a kind word about our new creations? So I respectfully suggest that if you do have word verification attached to your blog then you might consider removing it for a while and see how you go.
It might not be as bad as you think 🙂
