Happy Chrismas Public Holiday

I have been a bit neglectful of my blog lately. I would like to claim that I was busily creating fabulous Christmas things to send out to everyone, but I completely underestimated the time it takes to make most of the things I envisioned making. So, I have quite a few half finished things and its already the 28th. As a consolation, I will start posting tutorials in the new year on my dismal attempt at a handmade Christmas...
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I must admit that my slackness is in part down to good ol procrastination, a skill I refined down to pure art while studying. I have been keeping busy doing a bit of sewing. After making the bird cage cover, I had some left over fabric that I thought would make a good dress. I thought I would have a second go at the shirred dress previously attempted that had disastrous results. The good news is the end result actually looks like a dress, the bad news is it would only fit a 7 year old. Hurrumph! So at some point I am going to attempt a third try, hopefully ending up with a dress that both looks like a dress and fits.

For Christmas we got the first proper rain of the wet season and it rained and stormed for hours. I tried to video the impressiveness of it all, but it doesn't quite translate too well. How frustrating that when you try to take a photo of an amazing sunset or video rain pouring down, it ends up disappointingly puny. Of course the thunder was always off cue no matter how often I tried to include it, and don't get me started with the lightning. The old show biz tip of never work with children or inclement weather certainly is true (wild animals on the other hand were no problem, photo above). Ah well, video attached of boring rain if you're interested...

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Time is running out!!!

It was with great optimism when I sat down to start writing out Christmas cards so they have some chance of making it to their destination before Australia Day, only to find its last days for online shopping. Damn! How did that happen so quickly? Oh yeah, its the 15th already.

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I have to say that online shopping is no substitute for the real thing, with the small joy of not stepping in spilt sticky stuff on the floor or having numerous children (and sometimes their parents) walking into me whilst wandering around looking in the direction they just came. I don't really understand this, and I might add its not just at Christmas either. I am not so short that its hard to see me, especially when I am wearing my work clothes with reflective strips. All I can say is a steel cap work boot beats a rubber thong any day, mwah ha ha ha! (that's an evil laugh by the way).

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In the meantime, we are getting into the Christmas spirit. I was thinking of getting Jack a tennis ball for Christmas, but he already has everything...

Christmas procrastintion

The past few weeks seem to have flown by. Last time I looked it was September! I am starting to despair that I won't get all my Christmas pressies finished before July next year. As cards start to arrive I am starting to have the panicky realisation that I had almost forgotten about sending them on time this year (last year I promised myself that not only would I send out cards on time, but I would even make them! Ha, I bought a box of them today).

Then in true procrastinating fashion, I made a cover for the budgie cage rather than write out Christmas cards. I was pretty pleased with the end result and it seems to work in keeping all the husks in the slidy tray. That's one task out of the way that I have been intending on doing for the last year and a half. Now, back to the Christmas presents...

Secret Christmas business

I am a bit late in posting this, since I planned to post something on Sunday. I got all caught up with making Christmas presents that I lost track of time and had to walk Jack in the dark. This is always awful since the mozzies are horrendous and I always end up looking like I have some sort of horrible tropical skin disease with the huge number of bites I get (and yes I do use aeroguard- which is its own horror after I found it had leaked and melted the plastic bucket I keep it in).
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Anyway, the point is that although I would really love to post a picture and share my latest crafty endeavour- I can't because it will ruin the surprise for pretty much all my friends and family. So I will wait until after Christmas before I post the pictures. I am thinking I will do my first ever tutorial on how to make these really great... items (am I hyping it too much?).
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In the meantime I thought I would share this great recipe for bircher muesli. I don't know what is going on with photos in blogger since they keep coming up sideways. I figure it looks much the same sideways as it does the right way around so I am not going to bother trying to fix it.
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Ingredients

• 1 cup rolled oats (I use the quick cook stuff)
• 200mL apple juice
• 1 green apple, peeled and grated
• 2 big desert spoons of greek yoghurt
• 1 small handfull each of hazlenuts, pistachio and wall nuts- chopped (or any combination of nuts you like, just make sure they are unsalted)
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar (if you like it sweet)
• Honey

Method
The night before; pour the rolled oats into a bowl and soak it in the apple juice
The next morning; mix the grated apple and yoghurt into the oat mixture and pour into two bowls. Sprinkle the nuts, sugar and honey over the top and serve immediately.

The ugliest skirt in the whole world II

A while ago my work changed uniforms because the colours were wrong. I ended up with a heap of ugly work shirts and thought I would make something out of them since I was never going to wear the shirts again (I was told they are great to wear to the disco because of the reflective stripes, but I don't think thats the look I am going for). I was thinking of making a bag out of them, but after a troubled week looking for a skirt to wear after work, I thought I would have another go at making a knee length skirt out of my work clothes.

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I chopped the green bit off the bottom of the shirt and removed the reflective strip. I cut off all the bits that weren't a skirt and stitched it together. Viola! Ugly skirt take 2. For about 5 seconds I pondered stitching it back on along the hem so it could be a disco skirt, but it is already ugly enough.

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I didn't use any patterns or anything, I just made it up as I went. I even re-used the buttons to make up the waist band- a complete accident that worked out quite well. The whole thing will be a lot easier and less stabby when I am able to construct my own dress form out of old newspapers and duct tape. I'll be waiting for the Chrismas holidays for that though, since I don't know anyone here well enough to ask them to wrap my up in gladwrap and sticky tape...

My kingdom for a plot

Its 7pm, I am tired and just want to eat chips in front of the tv. Why did I start this NaNoWriMo? Why is it that I can only ever seem to write the beginning of the story and not the middle or the end? Is it really only the third day? Argh! My plot has abandoned me.....

Later that evening...

Its 8.30 pm and I have somehow managed to get the wordcount goal of 1667 words done for the day. Not only that but it only took 58 minutes, and I was stuffing about updating my ipod at the same time. Ahhh, smug mode :-D

Puns with buns

The weekend was an almost-got-it-right weekend. I tried to make some bread rolls, unlike last time I tried this I actually got the dough to rise. However, I baked them too hot and ended up with little bullets of something that is hard on the outside and squashy on the inside (I was thinking a knight, but that's a little bit tasteless). So I tried to convince the dog to eat them and he gave me that unimpressed look he gives me whenever I try to get him to eat something strange and slightly inedible, like tomato or small pebbles. He looked at it then started scratching his bum (I was going to say buns, but it was a terrible pun). He is a hard food critic but honest. Next weekend I'll try baking them at a lower temperature.

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So I moved on to my quilt project I started last weekend. I learnt that although polar fleece is cheap, it is hard to sew straight. It moves around, a lot, while you are trying to stitch it. As you can see from my wonky block, its not all that straight. I figure I'll cut the wonky bits off later. I am kind of out of the instructions and into the wild making it up as I go territory. I am sure it will all work out fine.

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Being impatient I have put the twirly blocks (as I call them) with the ducky blocks to try to get an idea of how great it will be when I make another 11 twirly blocks. I am sure quilters must do this all the time in order to admire the work in progress... or perhaps they don't procrastinate like I do. Anyway, here is my procrastination, it is starting to look like the picture in the magazine...

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I also wanted to mention that as it is November 1st, I have started my first unofficial attempt at NaNoWriMo. I am also pleased to be able to smugly announce that I have achieved the daily word count goal of 1,667 words a day. Not bad, and I even have a plot planned this time. They say that's important in a novel. And, I won't even post the crap I write here so you don't have to be subjected to my terrible story writing. How lucky!