of bags and flowers

So, big news. Spectacular new. Absolutely monumental news. I have decided to learn to sew. *insert audibly gasp here* Let me validate that by saying that sewing intimidates me. The few times I’ve had the courage to venture up to those whirring machines, I’ve been thoroughly scared away. Once, even, my 8 year nephew at the time told me what I was doing wrong. 8 years old! I am still a little sheepish about that story. Anyways, my darling mother has tried to teach me a couple of times over the years but I always quite vehemently refused. Maybe too much domesticity for the 14 year old me.

But now that domestic and me are usually in the same sentance quite comfortably, I have decided to tackle this. There is one problem though, see I have Vanderven blood running through my veins. See, that means that I want to do everything I try perfectly. Which does not go very well with learning to sew. Hmm, ah well, we’re also not ones to be scared off easily. So when my dear friend Nathalie invited me to join her and some friends who get together and sew once a week,I borrowed Amanda’s machine (she has good intentions just like me…must be a sister thing!) and toddled off to sewing group.

I looked at my machine, and then at Nat, and then back at the machine. She sensed my distress and helped me out, so I learnt to thread a machine, and different stiches and back stitching and a whole plethora of words that I hadn’t known before. I sewed a doo-hicky as my first project. If you can think of a use…let me know!

Then came The First Project. Yes, a real live sewing project. Tracey had a simple bag pattern for me to start with, Nathalie helped me with picking fabric and before I knew what had happened is was…Real Live Sewing Time. Soon the fabric was cut out, and like a baby bird hopping from the nest I started to sew. I pressed seams and pinned them, I backstiched and unpicked, I muttered and huffed all along and only a mere 6 hours later (note sarcasm…it probably should of only taken 3) it was finished. Just promise me you won’t look too closely at the seams!

I had a few stripes of extra fabric and I wanted to make a flower to sew onto the bag. The one’s online were all a bit complicated – needing glue dots and whoraah to finish, so I kinda adapted my own version of a fabric flower. I’ll post the step by step instructions tomorrow. Mostly because it’s so handy when other people post tutorials, I feel like I should give back

Stumbleupon and Old T-shirts

So my dear friend Nathalie put me on to this website called Stumbleupon. Basically, you set up an account and choose the things that you enjoy. For example, I choose crafts, DIY, sewing ect as things I’m interested in. Then you “stumble”  through the internet. They find websites/blogs all things exciting to show you and you can like the website which saves it to your account, or you can stumble again to find a different website. be forewarned, it’s incredibly addictive! So by doing this i’ve found a ridiculous amount of things that I want to try. But today I will share with you some things that you can do with old t-shirts. I plan on trying these all at some point in the future…and if we suddenly have no t-shirts to wear anymore, I’m sure I can find more at the shops

First one: t-shirt bracelets. Basically you cut an old t-shirt into strips and then wrap around bangles. You can get both the bangles and t-shirts from the thrift store. super cute and super easy. Two descriptions I like to hear together!

Details

Two: incredibly cool looking scarves. Again, strips of old t-shirts stretched and knotted together to make these:

Swiped from the talented people here. They obviously died the t-shirts before making the scarf so you get beautiful colours. I’m addicted to scarves, so this makes my heart warm!

Last, but not least, and definitely my favorite – the t-shirt rug. Yup, you heard me. rug. Yes this is time consuming and…well time consuming but we have 8 months of winter to look forward to. What better way to spend a snowy winter?

instructions are here. so many ideas!

 

Falling Snow

So winter has arrived, a good foot in the first few days and steadily more…

 

since then we have bought  a lovely second-hand christmas tree and just the other day we finished decorating it. It really is truly wonderful to be able to have this wonderful time of the year with snow

 

Falling leaves

So fall has come and gone in a hurry, felt too much like it was a cool summer all the way up until it snowed.

 

But during fall some fun things happened…. most importantly pumpkin carving.

 

Scott celebrated his 26 on the 26th of october, a golden birthday i belive is what it’s called. We decided to throw him a surprise party  the planning of which was going really well until his friends came to visit from b.c the weekend before his party was schedualed to be held. Scott was very insistant to his beautiful wife nathalie that she should bake a cake and have some friends over. nathalie kept stalling him, and making huimming and hawwing noises about nothing, trying to get him to forget the idea but scott wasn’t so easily swayed. So that night, when we were all hanging out at Ric’s Grill to watch scotts first gig there, we decided to throw the party the following day.

 

scott was royally surprised, and we had a royally fun night. wii was played, pumpkins were carved, there was some dancing, there was some singing and there was alot of food and cake! (don’t worry family in oz, i did learn soemthing from you all after all!)

 

this first set of photos is when tys and i did a dry run of pumpkin carving. he did mario (surprise surprise) and i did a love struck pumpkin

 

 

Our new car

Yup, thats right. we bought a new car this week!! It’s a sexy black ford focus (yes, tyson is still having heart palpatations about buying a for, but he will get over that i’m sure!) 2004 hatch back. the clincher of the deal (is that even the right word?) is that its only got 62000 on it.. so she will be ours for a good number of years. best part is i get to drive it all week… oh, did i mention its a manual? yup, thats right. christina can drive manual. o-rah-ha.

living room photos

So our living room is more or less finished. The lamps are from the thrift store, nothing new paint and a lamp shade can’t fix! The curtains are bought and will be put up soon, so will post another picture when thats finished. The painting is my newest. It has part of 1 Cor 13 written down the side.

Wedding Photos

So the wedding photos are in…they were all spectacular so it was hard to choose which one I liked the best! If you want them, just click on the photo you like so it opens up in a new window, then right click and save it to your computer…

Photgraphy by Kelly Monster

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Raymond

On saterday afternoon we packed up the cars, loaded up the triplets and headed to Raymond Lake, about an 45 minute drive away. i definately feel spoilt with the crystal waters around Rockingham after seeing their lake! not to mention that the water is colder then the australian water is in the dead of winter. i supervised from the boat while the boys went skiing and a bit of barefooting.

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Richard and Michelle’s Engagement party

Because Edmonton is too far away, we decided to have another engagement party for Richard and Michelle down here. Kevin and Laura were the wonderful host, and we had a fun and relaxing evening around a fire with good food and good friends.

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living room finished

with much hard work and such like things, we have finished painting our living room! our feature wall is a charcol grey, perfect back drop for all my future paintings. our new furniture should be here in the beginning of august, so until then we make do with a coffee table!

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