New Toys

Farmer Phil has bought himself a new toy for the farm! Well it's not really a toy and it certainly cost a lot more!!

This will be our new tractor to pull the spray rig. The old tractor we used to use for this was not powerful enough to pull the spray rig up the rolling hills on our farm.

It was delivered yesterday so it's still all nice and shiny! It won't take long to be covered in dirt though!!

More Hairy Panic!

After a few months of Summer this is what our vehicle shed (please ignore the mess!) looked like until I bought a leaf sucker thingy! It took a few hours to suck up every piece of this "most frustrating noxious weed under the sun", but I got it all. I'll still have to vacuum the shed every week because some hairy panic blows in every time you open the roller doors!

Debutante's Ball

Last week Farmer Phil and I were invited to a Deb Ball to support the daughter of our very good friends Janice and Greg. We had not been to a Deb for 16 years so it was lovely to see all the gorgeous young girls and boys dressed up in their finery.

I took some photos to show Emma to see if she would be interested in doing her Deb next year. After seeing the photos she's very keen to participate.

Anyway, we had a really great night after Farmer Phil had the week from Hell work wise! Let's just say that it was a very unproductive week with everything that could go wrong, DID!!

Emma's Birthday Quilt

I only decided about a month ago that I should make Emma a quilt for her birthday, so it was buy the fabric online quick sticks and get stuck into making it.

I cheated a bit by purchasing pre-cut charm squares to save time, I then sent the quilt top to Fabric 23 in Griffith to be machine quilted by Morganne, and I machine stitched the binding on instead of sewing it by hand.

It's come up really well and Emma loved it when she saw it. She only got a quick look at it this morning as she had to leave by 7am for the school bus, but it'll be on her bed when she comes home from school this weekend.

PS - Click on the photo if you want a closer look at the pretty Amy Butler fabric and quilt stitch pattern.

Emma is 15!!!!!

Farmer Phil and I are lost for words today as our "Little Emma" turns 15!! It only seems like yesterday that she was as cute as a button - all blonde hair and blue eyes!!

She was the most placid baby of all our children. As soon as she was born she did everything right and caused no fuss!

Emma loved it when we had sheep on the farm - she liked to help feed the poddy lambs. Farmer Phil and I thought we had a real farm girl in the making, but it all came crashing down when she became a teenager and had more important things to do!

Emma has always been a Daddy's girl, and of course Farmer Phil is a real sucker when it comes to his only daughter!! He couldn't wait to teach her how to ski, so when she was 4 they decided it was time. She never looked back and was more keen to ski than her two brothers.

So happy birthday Emma and thank you for being our beautiful, talented daughter - xx!!

Birthday Gifts

It's Emma's birthday next week and I wanted to show you a couple of gifts we've bought for her. The necklace and earrings arrived in the mail today from Etsy shop Lala Design Studio. They were very reasonably priced for sterling silver - the necklace was $36 and earrings $12. With the Australian dollar at parity with the US dollar it's very reasonable to buy from overseas at the moment.

Names on necklaces are very popular at the moment and this one is just a bit different to the ones I've seen in jewellery shops here.

As Emma is a big music fan I thought that these treble clefs would be perfect for her.

I'll show you all her presents next week - I've also made her a beautiful quilt from Amy Butler "Love" fabrics that I hope she loves!

Framing

I finally got around to getting some prints framed that have been sitting in my sewing room for quite a while just waiting to get zhushed up!

The first one is a paper quilt by Michaela Laurie that my sister Lisa gave me quite a few years ago. It's beautifully made with gold zig-zag stitching and really pretty paper pieces which measure about 1.5cm x 1.5cm. It's very intricate and would be very fiddly to make.

This one was a freebie sent to me by Kajsa from Syko in Finland. I ordered a set of her Christmas postcards last year to make into a Christmas tree shape on the wall. She didn't have one of the designs in stock so she sent me this apple print as a thank you gift. It looks great in my green, cream and red kitchen.

I bought two sets of these prints by Catherine Campbell from My Folklover. One set was for my sister Lisa and the other set was for me to have framed. The prints are called "Sometimes of the Sea" and "Sometimes of the Land". I thought they represented Lisa and I well as she lives at the beach and I live on the farm.

Another After Harvest Purchase

Here's my latest purchase - a Bobcat Fastcat Pro Zero Turn ride-on lawn mower. I've wanted one of these for a few years now to mow the outer yard around the house. It's taken a bit of getting used to - driving in a straight line was a bit of a challenge for a while, but I'm going okay on it now! The house yard has never looked so good!!!

Birthday Boy

Happy 45th Birthday Farmer Phil!! You don't look a day over 44!!!???

NB - poor Farmer Phil sprayed paddocks all day but then came home to prawns, a t-bone steak (his favourite) and chocolate mudcake! Ryan and Emma are home from school on a long weekend break so they teased their dad endlessly about getting old!!