buncha bananas

I always get a thrill when something new happens in the garden but this is a highlight. We've got bananas!!
And at 15 bucks a kilo in the shops at the moment (courtesy of cyclone Someone), we'll be RICH.
yaah ha ha haaa.

deprived child

This weekend we celebrated Bon's birthday with dinner out on Friday night, a big family lunch at home on Saturday and by taking 12 kids to Scitech and the Panetarium on Sunday. Man, i'm glad that's over - those family lunches can be so unruly...


...and of the five thousand presents bon received, this was her favourite.

happy bird day

I don't know, you leave a five year old alone for five minutes with some sticky tape and some toothpicks and some (ever abundant) wine corks and look what mischief she gets up to!
Too cute really



















And today is big birthday number 8 for Beautiful Bonny B.B. Yes eight! How did that happen?
This weekend is all hers.






But last weekend we did all the dumb things. We drank, we smoked and we partied like it was 1979.

proof the letterbox works

phwoah check it out wouldyer! I won a prize - something real that came out of cyberspace and landed in my letterbox.
And here it is. I'm chuffed.












and the other thing that's got me excited is this chair that i found on someone's verge. The base had colapsed and it sat at a precarious angle but i'm a sucker for that pearly green vinyl so i dragged it home hoping we would find another base to sit the chair on. Then Mr M had the genius notion of straightening it and filling the base with cement so now it's in the study getting cosy with the computer and the sewing machine - but not really getting moved around too much 'cause it weighs a ton.

earthly delights

I love the things that flower in winter

conventional coat hat

The Whiplash project this month is wardrobe surgery which is how most of my clothes come about so i thought i'd better get involved. I bought this old jacket from my local St Vinnies for the princely sum of two bucks but it was longer than i wanted so i cut a chunk off the bottom, hemmed it and added darts. It's been freezing here in Perth and i feel the cold more than most so i decided to use the leftovers to make a fluffy hat.







When i explained to M (the Man) the deconstruction/reconstruction theme he said that making a hat out of a coat was too predictable and conventional and what i should be doing was i don't know, fibreglassing an old shirt and turning it into a suitcase or something. Which apart from the fact that i've got enough suitcases isn't a bad idea.
In the meantime though, i'll be out sweltering in my new fluffy hat because - yep the sun's out and it's warm!

looking down and out

Planning our upcoming Big Trip has set me thinking about past journeys. Here are some scribbles i made looking out of windows in Spain, Morrocco and India. Thankfully i'll be taking a camera with me next time. All that doodling in sketchbooks is really for those non parental types

my favourite people

and of course there's Mr M too but he doesn't take such a pretty picture

phwash foosh blam aaaah!

Ugghh i hate cleaning. I've wasted valuable hours today cleaning the bathroom and bedrooms - with the girls back at school i didn't have an excuse for the squalor. But what gets me is i've scrubbed, slopped, vacced and mopped and i'm just going to have to do it all over again in three months time! It's cruel.

Someone gave me a Batman comic when i was living in Spain and i've carted it around for over 10 years (an easier and jollier read than Freud's 'Paranoia and Obsessive Neurosis' which i also have in Spanish) But a couple of weeks ago i saw something on the interweb about making bags out of woven magazine pages and was inspired to do this with it.





Yes i know i have enough bags, thank you for pointing that out.

serious craft committed

This week i've been involved in all sorts of crazy stuff.
I mean no beany kid should be expected to get about without a pair of crutches and a nice pair of earrings according to my girls...


and there's been button bouquets...


more silly hats and fun with our best friend the sticky tape...


the craft which always has to be produced after watching Playschool, in this case a 'lightbox'...


for which, thankfully, we have a ready supply of empty beer cartons...


and the silliest of all...


the mouse cozy.

holiday cheer

The first week of school holidays has been action packed. We've made about a dozen silly hats, been to the museum, produced nearly 3 kilometres of fingerknitting, shopped, visited, been swimming, backed the car into someone else's and spilt coffee on the keyboard resulting in three dead keys (i was responsible for the last two).
I'm expecting more of the same next week.

Happily, the garden is still there despite the dryest winter on record.

chaos theory

Before (natural state)


Two hours later (aaah...)


Five minutes later (natural order resumed)

flamenco satchel

I've been wanting to make a bag out all my left over bits of vinyl for a while and after successfully reupholstering my sofa cushions i thought i was up to it. When i noticed the Whiplash comp was all about bags this month i figured i had no excuse. But man, i'll never do it again! My poor 50 yr old (beautiful) Elna Supermatic really struggled with the multiple layers of vinyl and much swearing and sweating was required.
But, anyway, here it is, it's big, sturdy, red and blue and really comfortable to wear, so i'm happy. I've sewn a couple of my favourite 3D spanish postcards on to the flap and covered them with clear plastic and lined it with a hawaiian print.




As far as a category choice goes, tutorial and skill don't really apply so i guess i'm going fancy.