On a roll

I've had bit of luck the last couple of days. Firstly I entered a photo of my youngest girl in a competition for an NZ eco friendly cleaning and beauty products company "Ecostore". Today on my facebook page I see that I am their big final winner and the photo of my darling girl is on their website. I'm absolutely rapt, I love their products anyway so it's exciting to get a wee reward for that (I think the prize is a few hundred dollars worth of goodies).

Check out www.ecostore.co.nz

And then the next bit of good luck is that I am now a published writer.....well, kind of. I wrote into one of my favourite magazines (Good magazine - see below) with a couple of handy home hints (eco friendly ones) and they published both of them. A big hamper of Soapnut products arrived on my doorstep (I've blogged about my love for them before here ) so that's pretty exciting for me as well. I've shared the love and given my workmates a sample of them to try to convert someone else to the soapnut love.

 

Not a very clear photo I know, but this is the issue they are published in ;)

I found a new art and crafty type shop in town the other day, with beautiful possum and merino yarns (guess where I will be heading next winter to stock up) and they had a sale rack with the most amazing Kiwiana tea towels. Naturally I had to grab a few for the caravan. Thinking that they will make great cushions for Towby - what do you think??

Anyway, it's the last day of winter here today. I'm so ready for warmer weather. We have been in t-shirts this week so it's not that bad here but still. Getting those jandals ready! The spring bulbs have erupted, the trees are starting to bloom and the nesting Kereru/Kukupa (wood pigeons) are getting tipsy on Loquats again so we have to be careful walking through the garden that we don't get knocked out by low flying (big) birds!

Bye for now xxx K

Tea Party Sunday

Yesterday was my big girl's 7th Birthday, so of course we had a chintzy tea party to celebrate. Now my eclectic child "gets" my vintage love, she was so proud of it all - but I think the other children were really struggling with the time warp they walked into .... Oh it was so cute. Individual place settings with a handmade crepe flower each, charity shop glasses (perfect size for the girls), pink lemonade, sweet treats, doilies and anything else that made my heart skip a beat on the day.

One of the biggest successes was with a recipe called "Pink Passion Lemonade" that I found here (courtesy of Pinterest). It's essentially not lemonade at all, but lemon juice with a few other things. My big girl loved it!!

Pink Passion Lemonade
Juice of 4 lemons
Juice of 4 Passionfruit
3/4 cup unrefined sugar
3 cups water
2 -3 drops natural pink food colouring (mine was a bit darker than in the original recipe - kids liked it darker)
Ice cubes

Mix all together and serve (in vintage cups of course!)

The girls also loved these dipped marshmellows - no recipe required, but they did look fabulous on the lollipop sticks I found at Spotlight.

Honey rice bubble slice also went down well with the girls - lucky we have plenty left over as it's a treat we enjoy.


Now the crepe flowers were fun to make, I followed a few tutorials that I found on the internet but none of them worked well for me so here is my own mini tutorial.

Crepe flowers

Cut 2 widths (about 5cm - make sure both are the same width and about 1 metre (or just over 2 feet) in length) and place one on top of another.  Sew close to the edge with the longest stitch possible, and the loosest tension possible. The crepe with sort of gathers as you go.

Roll into a flower shape that you like, mine were fairly loose (tight rolling just didn't work out right) and glue with a glue gun as you go.

 Especially cute with contrasting crepe. You could make big or small - it wouldn't really matter.

Oh so gorgeous. My daughter was fascinated with them - even gave me a great big cuddle to say thank you for making all the beautiful flowers.

The birthday was simple, yet fun. So much Chocolate!!!

And the birthday girl herself, can't believe what a wee lady she is turning into.

Just a wee teaser...

No time for crochet at the moment, have been super busy making things for my big girl's 7th Birthday Tea Party this weekend. I'm going over the top with vintage style and floral love.....Just thought you may like to see a wee sneak peak of a couple of the things I'm working on.

Weeeeee, I'm having fun making all this girly stuff, although the blue is in there as she has decided that she doesn't really like pink anymore - she is "way too old for pink".

Can't wait to put it all together on Sunday.

A better end to a rubbish week

My gorgeous friend Leah found Issue 1 of Mollie Makes for me here in NZ and now I have it right here! So excited - it's worth every bit of waiting. A newsagent in town is getting it in for me as well so I will have Issue 2 next week. Isn't it just the most lovely little magazine. I'm so inspired now.

It was just the pick me up I needed, to be honest it's not been a great couple of weeks. You know what it's like, sometimes it all gets a little too much. My car was smashed into (thankfully we weren't in it, but still it's not what you want to happen), my big girl got Chicken Pox for the third time (I've had it 3 times too - blame my genetics), and again my car (it mustn't have liked looking ugly and banged up) seized on me in the middle of town. Talk about expensive. Together with only having started a new job a few weeks ago it's all been a bit much. So this weekend while hubby has been working I'd had a lovely catch up with a couple of friends.

The hook has been getting a bit of a work out  - I'm starting to make some progress on my Granny Caravan Blanket finally. It's looking so bright and cheerful don't you think?  I desperately need more yarn though so I think I need to do a little on-line shopping. Do you think the credit card will thank me for it?? Maybe not. NZ readers - where do you buy your yarn? I like Skeinz. I'd prefer to buy local but we really have little choice.

I'm off to have a slightly earlier night now, hope you all have a lovely weekend


xxxx K

Floral Bouquet

Just another wee crochet show-off. I felt that my smaller 3 cup tea pot was feeling a little neglected so a little Spring Floral attention was in order, plus I needed a cheerful pick-me-up!

I've used a pattern from Tales from Cuckoo Land, it's such a lovely quick and easy project. The roses come from here. It all looks so perfect when teamed with pretty vintage china. Now I just need a Sponge Cake to go with it.

Ta dah - Yummy Cowl

I'm really happy with this. It's not a huge cowl but I'm not a big person so I didn't want to be swamped. It's in Grey, so really not putting much colour into my world but it's a colour that I like on me.

Cowl Pattern   (US crochet terms)
I did a foundation chain of just over 100 stitches. You could do as many as you like to make the Cowl as long as you think will work for you.
Crochet into second chain from hook, *1dc and 1sc in this stitch, then miss one chain. Repeat until end of row. Chain one and then repeat for the next row. Keep  going until it's as wide as you want - I did 11 rows.


I've doubled it over to wear it - and it was comfortable to wear all day today, and never got in my way at all which normal scarves have a tendency to do.

If you like the look of this, feel free to use this pattern but please link back to here if you do :)


I thought I'd share with you one of the lovely parts of living in the country. While out doing my nightly chores (feeding the chickens etc) I get to watch the new lambs jumping around like crazy (I call it the 5pm nuthouse) and the Cattle settling down for the night.

 
Fresh out of the oven are some yummy chocolate muffins for the lunchboxes and morning tea at work will hopefully put a smile on everybody's faces tomorrow.

More crochet to do... Tea Cosy time again.

Kylie xxx