(Blogger rant below is neither work nor child friendly – I should have said something earlier… sorry! It IS funny though!)
A year of contentment. A year of family. A year of home; lucky to be happy & healthy. A good year. I hope I can swing another.
Happy New Year Peeps!
From Punky AND Me!
So a lovely reader has emailed me to say that she has two different prints of my little fishing guy; and we desperately want to know now who he is, how many different prints there are & who the artist is… so if you have any idea, please comment!
Have you ever seen any of these before? You know I’m not one to get you to jump through hoops normally, but a re-tweet or seven won’t go astray…
I hope you all know by now that green is the new black; it’s probably easier these days to recite a list of friends who aren’t growing something edible in their yard or on their balcony than a list of those who are, & I think that is just so great.
We’re getting back to the natural of order of things, connecting with the earth & where our food really comes from.
This is our potato harvest. It’s about 20 kilos… I think I’ll be rationing the spuds from here on in…!
Another thing that’s growing almost all on it’s own is my wall display of random thrifted goodness. I didn’t intend for it to get any bigger when I started with two frames & two plates, but it’s happening anyway.
I found this wonderful little guy fishing yesterday for $1 at the one opshop that was open. From the frame & the picture all I can deduct is “old”; any idea of the era, vintage expert types?
I wonder what the next addition will be…
If Mr “Everything handmade is really crap” says this is cute, then it must be so.
I wish I could say I came up with the idea, but I saw it on a fabulous new-to-me blog called Dee-construction & knew I had to make it. I’ve taken down the Christmas decorations already & the walls were looking decidedly bare.
The background & the bunting are made from an old issue of Frankie I had lying around, & the frames are (surprise!) from the oppy.
A.d.o.r.a.b.l.e.
Makeup?? MAKEUP!!!
It’s so hard to get good help these days.
See you after the big day peeps – have a great one. xx
I knew I wouldn’t get around to making anybody any gifts this Christmas but instead of feeling bad about it I just bought a few things instead; I found all this except for the dino-teddy on Etsy & have re-discovered my love for it. Yeah I like Regretsy, but it has been clouding my perception of what really is a showcase of great artistic & creative talent. Please excuse the clipped pictures, I only thought to take photos when I was upstairs wrapping & there isn’t a whole lot of room up there at the moment!
I have to start with the dino-teddy. I found him at the oppy last week when it was just Spence & I & Spence loved him at first sight. He’s brand new; there were a lot of knitted toys altogether, I think perhaps one of the volunteers made them especially for Christmas. He’s so cute & weird, I am happy for him to be Spency’s Christmas present from Mama.
This brooch is for my Gran, also known here as the brooch addict. She gave me two old hairclips yesterday that have little coloured stones inlaid, when she handed them over I said, “It’s a wonder you’re not turning these into a brooch” & she admitted she had considered it.
An apron, oven mitt & chef’s hat for Punk – something I did briefly consider making but then I saw this set & it was perfect.
And finally Punk’s Christmas dress. Inadvertently Punk’s Christmas outfits for the last 3 years have been handmade… I think that makes it a tradition.
Now I better get out of here… we’re off to see Santa!
I can’t say I’ve bothered too much with wrapping my Christmas presents in the past;
Wrapping is my least favourite part of Christmas, it’s too much like a chore usually, since I tend to leave it to the last minute & have a whole evening of of mashing things into crumpled paper & lathering on tape ahead of me on Christmas eve, but I’ve been making the tiniest of efforts this year, both on the gift presentation front & trying to get the bulk of the wrapping out of the way before it’s too late & I just want to go to bed.
My “effort” consists of wrapping in either tacky Christmas paper with a contrasting band of kraft paper, or wrapping in kraft paper with a contrasting band of tacky Christmas paper.
Revolutionary stuff.
I was going to make some Christmas tags but I found a pack of paper doilies & thought they’d look cute instead… then I just started adding random things here & there, ala Pip’s instruction in this super sweet video.
Do you like gift wrapping? Do you go all out or are you like my dear sweet Mr, who’s usual attempt at gift wrapping is folding over the bag that he bought it in?
I know I said we weren’t going to have a “proper” Christmas tree this year, but since Spence has been pulling the fabric one off the wall anyway, & Punk has been enthralled with every Christmas tree we pass, when I saw this old plastic tree complete with vintage baubles (the type of which I honestly haven’t seen for years & years) at the oppy for $5… well.
It’s smaller than the tree we have so I was able to put it up on the cupboard away from my grabby babe & I can’t tell you how happy it has made me!
If you’re going to have a plastic tree, you might as well have one that screams it from the rooftops first of all. This tree doesn’t pretend to be a real tree, it says “I’m plastic. I have hard spikey plastic branches & a trunk moulded to look like no wood you’ve ever seen. Deal with it.”
Then there is the Santa. I don’t know if he’s supposed to be a tree topper, but he’s bloody perfect as one.
And the baubles. Oh, the baubles! Look at the colours! I had to re-thread about half of them, they either had no cord to hang them or had already been restrung on elastic bands that were so old & brittle they broke into pieces when I picked them up.
A couple of little old ornaments make it, I think. My thrifted deer has taken his rightful place on a Christmas tree, he didn’t like the mantle where he couldn’t even stand up properly.
And that is our Christmas tree. It makes me smile every time I look at it. It is going to see years of happy Christmases now, I hope it’s already had many.
Punk is big on the colour “rules”, which is a shame because she looks really cute in blue but would choose any shade of pink over it every day of the week.
It’s also a shame because I made a pink, red & white wreath for her door & wanted to make one for Suspence in Red, yellow & grey, but I was told in no uncertain terms that “Blue is for boys, it has to have blue on it”.
Lucky I like it.
I was trying to make My Poppet’s pom pom wreath two nights ago but I got sick to death of making pom poms (You need A LOT!), so I took a break to make the cardboard circle to attach the pom poms to. Once it was cut out I decided I might wrap it in yarn so that I could sew the pom poms on, but once I started with that I decided to make something different altogether.
If you’d like to make one (or two, or more) it’s super easy:
