Frazzy Dazzles

Spring is springing all around us. I can’t help myself. My mind is turning to food.

Food, food, food, food!

To look at me you would agree, I am the least ‘in need of food’ woman for miles around!

But nevertheless….today the kids and I bundled ourselves off here…

Our new local farmer’s market to get a bit of inspiration for dinner tonight. The kids LOVED it there. There are rustic cane baskets to carry your goodies in. No need for little flimsy see through plastic bags for each vegetable….yay! There were fresh apples being given out free to eager young hands and there is a walk in cool room that was a source of endless fascination. What more could you want?

We left with our goodies and full of ideas for a vegetable laced meat/tomato sauce to pour over our pasta tonight. We are only having ’soft’ foods at the moment. The Golden Child lost his fifth tooth last night and he’s still getting used to that gappy, gummy feeling that lingers for days after a tooth departs. Not a good time for steak!

We came home and had a bit of a play in the backyard. Mostly with the chickens. Our hens are…well….loonies! Rose…

follows the children around muttering under her breath for them to pick her up and take her with them. She’s a ’special’ little hen. The likes of which I’m sure we will never come across again. She’s delicate and a very social creature. She craves and seeks out human company. She’s almost dog like! She’s lovely.

I have been inspired by Gemma to show you their ‘dwelling’. I am even going to do it in all it’s post winter glory, spidey webs and all!

My hubby made it years ago and it has served the girls well. Not quite as spectacular as the beautiful abodes Bethany found here! But it serves our needs. The nesting box is a ‘design re-think’. The other one didn’t cut the mustard long term. This one is an old bucket (la de daah!) with the bottom cut off and magnets holding a dog food bowl on the end (oh dear me!). But it works. The fact that the bucket and the bowl are a perfect fit for one another screams to me that it was meant to be!

The kids can whip the bowl off and get to the eggs (assuming Rose ever gets around to laying again!). It works for us.

Actually the whole hen house is largely redundant most of the time because the girls just sail around the garden getting into mischief and dust bathing anyhow!

When the trampoline had been jumped on and the hens had been hugged we headed in for some baking.

Banana muffins. Dad won’t eat them…but I will!

This rolled on to cooking dinner. As decided earlier in the day we cooked our sauce while the pasta bubbled away in rolling boiling water. It’s a bad night time shot..but you get the idea.

With soft bread and eaten by candle light it was a wonderful end to our day.
I enjoy the school holidays so much. I treasure this time to have my chickens tucked under my wing.

I appreciate the opportunity to keep my little man at home with us.

I know it will be all over and we will be back to the new term in less than a fortnight…but for now we are loving it.

Tomorrow I think we will do a bit of kiddy craft and maybe start to plan the vege garden for the year. It just feels like we should be planting something!

Hope you all had a lovely day.

Jen

I spent a large part of last week being caught up in things that I would have preferred to have heard about rather than witness. It has left me feeling somewhat jaded with the world. Somewhat on edge and and out of sorts.

So I thought I would take a few minutes out of my day to post about the good things that I have in my life at the moment. Maybe I might be able to harness a little of that good mojo that I know must be floating around out there in the ether somewhere!

First cab off the rank is my family. We spent a wonderful day yesterday. School holidays have just started here. We aren’t going away for a holiday so we planned a little day trip to get things off to a positive start. We went for a drive through the countryside past paddocks of baby lambs and fresh grass butting up to full dams. Life looked good!

We went to a Cherry Blossom Festival at a beautiful Japanese Garden.

We saw gorgeous Geisha, beautiful bonsai and the children got to be outside, enjoying the fine spring weather flying kites..

And sitting back watching the world go by. No place to be, not clock ticking away our time to just be with each other…

I am also feeling incredibly lucky at the moment to have such a lovely group of friends. People who I admire, appreciate and enjoy spending time with. Near or far my friends are a lifeline sometimes. An anchor to sanity when things seem mad. A reminder that perspective often comes from the words or experiences of others. Where would I be without them?

Spring arriving has also blown a wind of possibility into my creative thought processes. I am looking for ways to embrace the change of season. Soulemama posted a simple skirt pattern the other day with a link to oliver + s to get the pattern for free. Its been so much fun. Simple, easy to interpret and quick to achieve a finished product. I must have liked it because The Little Bush Princess nearly has one for every day of the week now!

The first little skirt was a trial, follow the pattern and see what you get kinda skirt.

It was light, summery and pretty. I was hooked!

The second little skirt had a pocket. It had too. You see The Little Bush Princess likes to be a marsupial. For this you need…yes…a pouch! Clothing and a dress up in one. Who could ask for more than that?

She could!

Apparently there is a rare and endangered species of marsupial that actually has two pouches(for those of you who are curious this particular kind of marsupial lives only in the imagination of our little four year olds mind)…correspondingly she needed two pouches for her next skirt…of course!

This simple skirt was starting to get more involved by the minute.

For the last skirt there had to be two, similar but not the same. One for her and one for her best friend. She is so generous with my time! Mind you. I could hardly begrudge her a little skirt for her best friend in the whole wide world.

And the last thing that I am feeling happy about (for this post at least!) is that a FANTASTIC farmer’s market has just opened up in our town. All local, a lot of it organic and affordable. I will try to get some shots for a post in the future. There are so many wonderful things on the wind.

I’m not going to get bogged down in the things I cannot change.

(no I’m not on a steps program!)

I’m sorry for the distance between posts.

Like Gemma says sometimes it’s like waiting for a bus. It’s either all or nothing. Unfortunately in the feast or famine stakes around here lately it’s been a bit on the lean side!

The Golden Child wasn’t well this morning and I decided to keep him at home. It meant a day at home for everyone. I am loathed to just sit them in front of the television for the whole day so we settled down with a fresh batch of play dough.

Are you sick of seeing my kids playing at the craft table with large blobs of coloured dough yet?

I shouldn’t ask that….you might say… yeeeeees!

There was also some drawing. Inspired by the fact that Hugo left today to go to his new home we drew pictures of mice and animals in general….

The children’s pictures are already hung around the house so you will have to be content with one of mine.

Oh and the chaps have joined the lasses. There is a bearded beau for each bonnie babe.

I was thinking that as little Gnomish chaps they would need little Gnome-y hats too….but now they are made I quite like them without them. I will have a bit more of a play around with them.

I don’t know whether to list them in the shop or not. I have a market coming up in about a month. Maybe I should keep them to pad the stall out.

I say pad the stall out…but at the moment they are the sum total of the stock that I have to hand….more stitching required!

That’s about all that’s going on around here at the moment.

What’s good around your house?

Thank you so much for your lovely comments and emails about my little Lady Beetle.

Had I known she would have such a lovely welcome to the world then I would have made her a year ago when I first drew up the pattern and slipped it into a drawer instead of making her (what a guilty secret to put out there!)….maybe it just wasn’t her time to shine (maybe I was distracted by something shiny and forgot about her)…but she’s here now.

I have been thinking a lot about the whole Etsy thing. I want people to get a package on their doorstep that has as much of my creativity infused into it as possible.

I want my monsterlings (and ultimately all of my little creations) to have some little tags to go along with them. I have been playing with some drawings that might go on to become tag art. Some days it’s easy to get ideas out on paper other days it’s just haaard!.

So far these guys are taking the lead but you never know!

Introducing Lady Penelope Beetle.

She is a sister for my Garden Warrior

and for Briar and her favourite little hen Thistle

I imagine these ladies to be spirits of the garden. My garden warrior is my tooled up fairy. Riding on her loyal chicken steed, she goes out into the garden to take care of business while you are busy at the sewing machine. She sees snails to the boundry fence and keeps the weeds in check. Her staff, decorated with the rewards from her toils is a sign of her experiences and knowledge.

Briar is a softer, sweet fairy type. She nestles her favourite little hen into the crook of her arm and sees to the flowers. Snipping and shaping the bushes, training the vines. Her little wings allow her to skim along the tops of the flowers.

Now Lady Beetle is joining them,

As usual she started with a sketch. Getting the ideas out of your head and onto paper can be the easiest and the hardest thing at the same time.

I think she makes a nice little trilogy to my ladies. She has an affinity with the beetles and the insects. She’s in between her sisters. Not to hard nosed, not too soft. She has a beetle shell shaped helmet and her jacket is evolving into armoured wings.

She has two under helmets, a soft underside protected by her armour.

Hard on the outside, soft on the inside.

Her body is striped like the belly of a little lady beetle and she has sprouted a pair of antennae to help keep her in touch with her little familiars.

Her button joints make her moveable and even posable so she is fun to handle and hold.

I hope that you like her.

I really should get around to writing up a few patterns for these girls! There is one for the Garden Warrior in the shop….maybe her sisters need to join her there.

Have a great day

Jen