Tuesday, April 17, 2012

spring cleaning

The Easter break is over and Rebe is back at school. We miss her for the 4 hours she's away, but the boys and I are not sitting twiddling our thumbs, oh no, we have been busy!

Baking in the mornings to have something good and rewarding to nibble on during our elevenses.

Banana bread yesterday and gingerbread today.

We've been picking our first salad of the year from the green house; lettuce, rocket, spinach and radish. Oh so tender and delicious!

I finally bought us an A4 sketch pad to start a nature diary. It lives on our nature table and we log anything we fancy in it,

The weather, things we have spotted, pressed plants, observations, dates we planted things and so on. I would love to keep this up all year round as it would be so interesting to compare year to year how the natural world around us ebbs and changes with the seasons.

I want to introduce you to the newest member of our family, my new baby:

As yet nameless, but isn't she a beaut?! I am so delighted, I have been working on a borrowed machine for (oops) more than a year and I finally found a machine I liked and wanted, and my dear parents got it for me as a very early birthday present. I wanted a work horse; nothing fancy with electrics and lots of switches and knobs to it. I finally found this website, and they were brilliant, I rang the office up and gave them my list of requirements (straight and zig zag stitch, very hard wearing, a light and NOTHING ELSE) and the lovely lady on the other end recommended me 2 machines they had in stock. They delivered to Ireland for a very reasonable rate, it is serviced and has a year long guarantee. I am so delighted with it and so far it is working beautifully :-)

To match my new machine, I decided that our bedroom (where I sew) needed a good tidy up,

lots of hair yarn, buttons, notions

fabrics, all organised (ish)

threads and needles drawer

a little bit of my yarn stash

My spring cleaning has spread throughout the whole house. I feel very energised at the moment and have been working hard to catch up on a couple of years worth of sleep deprived non-cleaning.

This is one of the last pieces of cowboy fabric given to us by Nicole. It was too cool to cut into and I just couldn't think what to do with it. Then I remembered that one of my favourite ladies uses lovely fabrics in embroidery hoops to decorate her home so I stole the idea and we made Benny a cowboy picture for above his bed.

He is so pleased with it and it was so simple and easy to do. I am thinking I might get some more hoops and make more :-)

I still have a lot of cleaning to do, but I am defenitely in the midst of a spring clean and it feels really good (but I am guessing my period is a few days away because I always have this big need to 'clear the decks' a few days before)...still I'll take advantage of the hormonal cleaning tide.

I'll leave you with a picture of my latest custom order that I finished:

Her momma called her Lily :-)
hugs x

2 comments:

  1. Congratulations on your new edition. She looks lovely!

    I also feel envious about your beautiful garden greens. We have not planted any yet.

    Spring Blessings!

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    Replies
    1. Hi Hannah, thanks :-) I keep seeing fiddleheads in the woods and thinking of you :-) The ones here have a kind of brown old leaf type thing on the outside of it, are they still eddible? I keep thinking I should give them a try! hugs L
      x

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