Good news.....

This is the good news or should I say .... great.... fantastic .... super.... news, what a terrific time we had, much side splitting laughter, lots of eating ( home cooked of course) and lovely company. Quilters Rest best place for a retreat with great friends.

This was our greeting at the "Quilters Rest" for the weekend retreat, wine, cheese, crackers and dip....mmmmm from the left.... Tereasa, Diann, Lynda, Jenny, Teresa.

My room and I didn't even have to share.

Great sewing room.

Breakfast and it was terrific as was all the food.... no cleaning up or washing up.... thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Caught these 2 chatting.

Love the rustic craft shop.

View from our rooms.

Looking back to our sewing and bedrooms.

 Diann very busy working out her quilt.

This is it put together, fabulous.

Jenny and Teresa enjoying an early morning cuppa and the view.

Another quilt top completed by Diann.


Thank you girls I had a great time and a huge thank you to Marion and Alan for their hospitality for my first ever retreat, hopefully more to come.

Norfolk Island

     

Well here I am to bore you with our holiday pics, this is the beautiful view (I say with tongue in cheek) its not quite like the photo in the brochure .... its supposed to be a great view of Mt Pitt......  very unhappy with the motel, so I'll say no more about that issue but I will be letting our travel agent know but we decided to put that behind us and enjoy our little holiday.

Here we are on one of our tours  (holy cow we do look old .. oh yes thats right ... we are old)

It is a very beautiful Island even though they have been in drought for some time but rain did come in the last 2 days we were there and unfortunately for us we had a  tour booked for a Sunset Island Fish Fry with entertainment (overlooking the scenery below) and it rained of course so we had to have it in the golf club which lost the mood but the fish.... locally caught.... was terrific.

Views from Mt Pitt, raining again so photos weren't great, must be lovely on a good day.

We did a tour of Government House and the grounds there are beautiful... green with lovely flower beds so different from the rest of the Island.

The walls are the only thing left of the convict prison.

Emily Bay...... well part of it at least.

The folks at the old cemetery had a better view than we did.

And last but not least here I am .... yes you guessed it.... stitching what else would a good crafty girl be doing on holiday!

You are lucky as I do have more photos but I wouldn't want you to suffer all of them, you might not come back again to visit me so I guess you could call that a snippet of our trip.

Thanks for dropping by.

News at last !!!

Here are the birthday girls .... Teresa and Tereasa..... we were celebrating their special day on our craft day (Tuesday) they are very busy opening pressies and as usual lots of fun and laughter.

Naturally we had to have birthday cake, we couldn't put the right number of candles on the cakes as we might have burnt the place down ..... ooowa that was naughty.....Laurel and I made the cakes as they each needed their own to blow out the candles.

Mary checking out the gifts. 

This is the little bag I made for Teresa and she was so happy with it.  Its called   Sewing  Case  .... pattern  by Debbie Magee that I showed in my last post...... but I  turned it into a mug bag.

This is the pressie I made for Tereasa and I know she was very happy with this, its also a pattern by Debbie Magee called Heart Keep Pincushion, I really like her patterns.

We went on a holiday to Norfolk Island last week and I couldn't resist getting these cute little soap cupcakes for my stitching friends, the guy at customs took them out of their boxes to make sure they were really soap, gosh they look so real almost good enough to eat.

I'll pop back tomorrow to show a few piccies of our little trip.

At last ..... something to show !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here it is a project finish.... at last...... at least I have one thing to show for February and it will  probably  be the last as we are off to Norfolk Island on Sunday for a weeks holiday and we are really looking forward to the time away but I'm taking a bit of stitching with me as a girl cannot go anywhere without her stitching. I do have a couple of secret swap projects but unfortunately they will have to wait  for a March reveal.

This is a photo of a wonderful little project by Debbie Magee .... an Allways Stitchin' pattern called simply "Sewing Case" its just beautiful and its now being used as a sample in my friend Tereasa's  blog..... shop  Homespun and Beautiful ....  so its on holiday too, don't you just love the fabric.

Oooooo yes I nearly forgot its an OPAM....

One last finish !!!!

This cushion is a "Rivendale Collection" pattern by Sally Giblin called "Buttons" I've had the stitchery done for a couple of weeks so it was about time for it to be finished and as usual Sally's patterns are a pleasure to make. Oh goodie another OPAM finish too, just squeezed this one in lol.

Just in time !!!!!!!

Well here I am again with another finish for the OPAM cutting it a bit fine but I guess the end of the month isn't till 12.00 tonight so all is good. I love this cushion...might give it to my Mum for Mothers Day I think she would love it and  would look so good on her bed. The cushion  is called "Heartfelt Wishes" and the pattern is by Crabapple Hill , just beautiful and as always a pleasure to make a project that doesn't have any mistakes, its now a sample in my friend Tereasa's shop .... here     ....  Homespun and Beautiful  blog .....   she has kits available for it there.... just a little plug for her lol.   I had a bit of fun playing with the ruffler attachment ( also available at her shop) on the machine too quite easy to use once you get the hang of it and certainly much better than pleating it all by hand thats for sure.

Yummy

This is a very yummy fruit slice and I don't feel guilty about eating this one  I found the recipe in the diabetes magazine, my hubbie is a diabetic and its an easy recipe to make so that makes it even better.

Fruit Bars.

2 cups Puffed Rice

11/4 cups oats

30g sunflower seeds

40g sesame seeds

100g dried apricots

100g sultanas

60g rice flour

1/2 cup golden syrup

1/4 cup honey

Place puffed rice, oats, seeds, flour and fruit in a bowl and mix well.

Place the honey and syrup in a pan and heat gently until runny.

Stir through dry ingredients.

Press mix into a lined tin 20cmx20cm.

(Tip: this will be easier if your hands are wet)

Bake at 180c for 20 mins until brown.

Leave to cool in the tin.

Store in the fridge in an earthight container.

Makes 20.

 They don't last long here, not very healthy if we eat them too fast though.

No other news or stitching going on at the moment maybe later I hope.

Another finish.....

This is the quilt I showed earlier, finished at last. I made this for my hubbie... Gavan.... for his lounge chair so its plain but I do love these fabrics, it was from 1 layer cake  ... Blessings .... love it.

Woohooo another finish.

On our "Friends in Stitching" group we have a birthday swap, each member gets a printed stitchery of which you can make up into any project you like, this cute stitchery is the one I recieved and have now finished. I was very lucky as the hanger, cotton, stitchery pattern accompanied the printed fabric, thank you girls.

Capital "T" block

This is my version of the "T" block that we are making for a BOM in our Friends in Stitching group, there have been so many different fabrics used and all are terrific.

A few bits and bobs

This is the swap gift I made for Teresa in our "Friends in Stitching" group, its a Debbie Magee pattern called Heart Keep Pincushion, she loves everything vintage and I think this is the perfect gift.

Well 2010 is here and I'm off to a flying start.... craftwise that is..... here are a couple of projects that I was  working on  last year, I thought it best to finish these first before starting new things.

These cute stockings are from Moda Bake shop Box ....honeybun strips  so

now I'm early for this christmas lol.

This is a Bronwyn Hayes pattern called "My Little Teahouse"  I do love her projects so much but I cringe when I see another one that I want to do...... but I do them anyway maybe I'm a glutten for punishment. Does anyone else have a problem with them or am I a bit dopey ?

Front

Needlecase

Back

This quilt is for my hubbies lounge chair I made it just before christmas and put the borders on today, will show a better photo when I get it quilted..... soon I hope.

A great time and gifts too.

I'm a member of an online group called "Friends in Stitching", we had a christmas swap and   Lynda was my  partner,  these are the gifts she made me..... Wow they are great, the clock is fantastic and of course she knows I love dolls so here is  "Faerie Noelle" isn't she cute... love them Lynda thanks so much.

How cute is this little girl.

Christmas lunch at our house this year, we usually have a salad but  we went all out this time and had a baked dinner..... fabulous.....just love christmas.