The Fishes have returned!

I'm back! After having a bit of a break from blogging and just doing stuff without thinking about keeping a record of what I'm doing I have returned.

It was good to have a break and just focus on little things and to be honest I had lost my bloggy mojo for a while. Now I've had a break from it, I'm keen to continue on and get back into it.

So does anyone remember the cupboard I was going paint an eternity ago? Well it is done and is in the dining room being used. It now contains all the fishes playdough, paper, pencils, craft stuff, painting gear and other bits and pieces. It had a couple of coats of Antique White U.S.A in a semi gloss and I changed the two door knobs in the middle (they are the same ones the buffet/hutch thingy got when it was painted).

I finished quilting my three hawaiian quilts finally and they now hang above the cupboard in a row. I enjoyed doing them but was glad to have them finished as they had a lot of stitching in them. I hot glued some balsa wood to the back and hung them with those sticky velcro picture hanging things.

The darker turtle one below has been very lightly padded in the turtle bodies. It is very hard to photograph it but it has a slightly raised effect that gives it a little depth. I cut a slit in the back and poked some stuffing in then stitched them up again.

They are all raw edge appliqued and I went around the edge twice to make sure it was nice and secure.

So there you go, one painted cupboard from the tip shop all finished and put to good use. I made the runner from squares of blue and green batiks and its longer than I normally make to cover nearly the whole length.

Hope you like it! I promise to be back very soon!

Some new prints and some b-b-bunting!

As well as a new bedspread oldest fishes room has had some other new additions. (That's little fish on the bed, she HAD to be in the photo). This is her birthday bunting that I made for her out of assorted pink and green prints with some rainbow ricrac to hang it off. I cut two triangles out of each print and sewed them together (wrong sides facing) and pinking sheared the edges then stitched them onto the ricrac. Quick and easy and pretty.

The other new addition is a group of various prints in some white frames. I have been accumulating white frames for a while as there was a plan in place to make a display wall out of them but since deciding on a different idea for the wall they have been sitting in a box waiting for inspiration to strike.

I got a bunch of them out and played around with positioning them (using pieces of paper the same size and some blu-tac) until they looked okay and then filled them up. Having the bits of paper on the wall made it easy to position the nails/hooks/sticky things that would hold the frames up. When she came home from school and found it she was very impressed. I got bonus points for putting some mermaids in the mix.

Have you made any little decorative changes lately?

Stairway to heaven? Depends if you like fabric...

I'm still here. We've been a bit bust lately so the poor old blog has been neglected. The house (outside) is painted on three sides. If the rain would go away it would be painted on four sides.

We have been doing some major pruning and cleaning up in the garden. It just needs some new mulch to finish it off (if the rain would go away it would be all done).

I've been helping out in Stacey's prep class with some literacy activities and some pottery, I have to act surprised when I get my Mothers Day present.

And in between all this I've made a couple of table runners to fill up my ladder.

I made this ladder ages ago out of some cheap pine and dowel with an idea in my head that it would look good leaning against a wall with some table runners draped over it in the dining room.

It's now full but that probably won't stop me from making more when I feel like it.

I like table runners, they are quick and don't take heaps of fabric and they are easy to quilt!

So we now have some nice runners to hang on their display ladder and add a bit of colour to the dining room!

Here's another new addition to the dining room, she's is hanging above the doorway to the adjoining sewing/computer/TV room. She's wooden and comes from a shop here called The Inner Labyrinth. I wandered in on one of my infrequent visits (not a shop to visit with a two year old) and saw her hanging on the wall and next thing you know, I'm taking her home.

She is lovely and I'm glad she came to live here. Stacey thinks it's cool having a mermaid hanging on the wall, Mr Fish just rolls his eyes.

I've got plans for one more wall in the dining room and then I think I'll be done with the main decorating. I'll show you when I get around to doing it. Promise.

Hallway is complete!

The hallway walls have been painted and the trims all finished for a few weeks but because it is a hallway and is rather boring to look at I have been waiting til it has something in it to make it more interesting before I show you!

There have always been 3 holes in the wall at the same distance apart and on a slope and because someone took the time to measure them and get them lined up I figure I'll take advantage of that and keep them where they are! So thank you previous house owners, you've made hanging things a little bit easier. There used to be 3 little wall hangings in the hall but they were a bit not beachy and a little bit daggy (I can say that as I made 2 of them).

I wanted to hang some different things after painting and decided to do one frame and two other things (not that I knew what the other things were when I decided this - details, details)

The framed picture is one we were given last xmas from Sand (little fish calls her that so she shall now be known as Sand, plus it fits with the beachy theme!) It is a very nice photo of us (the Fishes) at her wedding and as we don't have that many photos with all of us in (someones got to take the picture!) it is nice to have on display. It is also a good reminder that we scrub up alright when we bother to get dressed up, despite Mr Fish being the only one to have any shoes on, well it was rather muddy! The frame was a standard 8 by 10 that I painted with a brown paint then one called shell white which was rubbed back giving it a distressed old timber kind of look.

The other 2 things turned out to be a lovely "shells hanging in a net" type of thing that I found at a shop called Inner Labrynth (I was nearby at the bank doing some Kindy banking and it kind of beckoned me over to look at it). It clearly wanted to come home with me as I had to take the two little fishes into a store that should only be ventured into alone (lots of lovely but breaky items that little fishes should not stand close to, or even breathe on). They managed not to break anything, though there was some touching of some items and I held my breath for the duration of time we were in the shop.

And the other thing that was to hang in my hallway thus making it interesting again was a driftwood hanging made on the front lawn with Poppy's drill (or a driftwood xylophone as little fish proclaimed) which was very easy to make. I'm still not sure what I am going to do with the wheelbarrow load of sticks left over so I forsee some more projects (maybe another mirror?) to use them all up. The little hanging is made from some short sticks and is hanging off a curtain rod bracket in the kitchen (the curtain was taken down for painting and I kind of like not having one there now, though the brackets can stay as they make good hanging spots.

So there you go, now I just have to figure out if I can make a toilet look interesting enough to show you! (that's the other room that has been painted recently)