I've been featured!!

Some of you may remember this little sea fan I framed a while ago..... Well it got featured on the lovely Maya's blog - completely coastal and I was a bit excited when I found out!

I've been a fan of her blog for a while and love all the beachy ideas she gathers for us to look at so when I was checking out the latest posts I hadn't read yet and saw a picture that looked a bit familiar it took me a minute to catch on, then I did a little excited dance.

So there you go, a lovely suprise and it made my day!

A quick update on the mess that is our reno, we have had a bucketful of rain and the last bit is taking a bit longer than we thought. All that's left is to finish building the bookshelves and put the floor down and then all will be revealed! (might take a while so don't hold your breath)

Then I am itching to get stuck in and do some sewing as I have some gorgeous fabric that's waiting to be made into a throw and a table runner and there's also some curtains to be made.

The list just keeps getting longer!

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside....

When you can't be right next to the seaside all the time here's the next best thing!

A nice reminder of what's nearby waiting for our next visit. I had made one of these a while ago that I gave to kindy for the Mothers day hamper we raffled and wanted to make another one for our place. This time I changed the colours from deeper blues to more bluey greens to more closely resemble the water around our area.

It has some little shells sewn onto the sand at the bottom that finishes it off nicely and a piece of driftwood to hang off.

(Pattern is from a book called Skinny quilts and table runners that I found in our local library)

Bugs Birthday Bash!

Littlest Fish (who is known as Bug) turned 2 on Sunday. After persuading her big sister to let bug open her presents by herself we ventured over to Nanny and Poppy's house for some morning tea. (cheese, gherkins, strawberries, biscuits and some kabana thrown in for good measure. These are all bugs favourites.)

After that we thought a trip to the beach was in order before lunch. It's only 2 minutes down the road so we had plenty of time. The water was so lovely and warm that a swim was a must. It started off as just paddling along the edge then quickly turned into jumping over the "waves" then just became getting wet.

They had lots of fun and were nice and hungry when lunch time came around. And we made sure to leave enough room for some cake. Bug was more interested in playing with the figures on the top so we saved her a piece for later.

So bug had a lovely day and slept very well that night!

Not much has been done around here of a practical nature lately as the most I've managed to do is some Kindy paperwork due to contracting a horrible case of man flu. (it was more than just a normal cold so it must have been man flu)

Hopefully next week will see us back on track with the painting and lining of walls!

What the?!!!

This funny red thing is a starfish! We hit the jackpot at the beach this morning and found not one but two lovely starfish. We have seen them on the beach before but they are not something you come across very often. There is a particular spot that is exposed at low tide where the more interesting creatures seem to gather. As well as getting to check out these beauties we found quite a few large sand dollar shells (none of them had anything in them, they hide in the sand when alive) and an interesting looking sea slug. It was really exciting for the little fishes to see the starfishes and we watched the star shaped one bury itself back in the sand without noticeably moving, it just seemed to magically sink before our eyes. This was definitely a special beach walk.

Now for something completely unrelated, a cot quilt for a new little baby that was born recently!

Little Ebony arrived a few weeks ago and had to have a pretty quilt for her cot so out came the rotary cutter and the ruler and this little beauty was put together. It didn't take long to make and is a simple 9 patch block alternated with a feature block. It was nice to sew something again and a princess dress has just been requested by oldest fish so it looks like a bit more sewing will be done!

Ain't Life Grand!

The weather has been quite lovely and we have been spending a bit of time at the beach enjoying the sunshine. The sea was sparkling yesterday and looked like lots of little glittery dots were dancing on the surface. We had a big play and littlest fish decided to have a faceplant in a puddle so since she was all wet they ended up having a nice little swim. (luckily I am a most talented see into the future type person and had spare clothes and a towel in the car)

The park that we like to go to is right on the beach so we normally go and have a few slides and swings before heading down onto the sand for a bit of treasure hunting. Then on the way back we have to stop again for another play. We are back to normal today after having some time off over the school hols to play with our visitors and hopefully after some cleaning and boring housework type stuff is taken care of the painting and rearranging can recommence!

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)

Winter? What Winter?

Apart from a chilly breeze that had us looking for a jumper this morning it has not been very cold here yet. We're still waiting for our winter to turn up and give us a chill. The beach has been lovely lately and there is still a bit of driftwood left that hasn't been washed away after the cyclone left us a giant stack to sift through. So we'll keep enjoying the mild weather and hope all you folks down south can manage to keep warm somehow! (some driftwood creations are in the making and will be posted soon!)

painting update and some driftwood letters

Remember my kinda recent post about our bedroom transformation? Well I finally got around to taking a pic of the other wall in there. There are four 8 by 10 prints hanging up (one set either side of the big window, the other set either side of the mirror) that are all handmade. The two prints by the window are shots taken on the beach (blogged about earlier, one is a heart drawn in the sand, the other a heart made with cowrie shells on the sand). The other two are simply word prints done in paint shop of things that are relevant to us (one is a humerous quote about our family and the other is a list of the places we have lived).

We already had the mirror sitting on the drawers but it seemed a little dark after our nice calming makeover so a friend suggested I dry brush a little silver paint over the frame to lighten it up. It worked so well I dry brushed all the black metal draw pulls as well! And the silver works well with the soft blues and greens. So that's our bedroom transformation complete now!

Onto some other random stuff now, Here's what you can do when there is a huge stack of driftwood on the nearby beach. I managed to find some funny shaped pieces to form a word (okay I cheated with the 'E' and had to use a bit of glue) The possibilities are endless once the glue comes into play but I wanted to try and make something as 'natural' as I could.

And finally, this is what has been keeping me busy of late. It's called shorewood and is a lovely grey/brown/driftwoody sort of colour. The main living areas are going to be painted this colour as I continue on my tranformation efforts. So to recap for anyone who is interested (that's you family and friends!) The bedrooms are all some similar shade of pale green/blue now (biggest fish didn't get a paintover yet cause her room was done fairly recently). The rest of the house will be shorewood and the kitchen is white and pacifica (turquoisey green blue) for a pop of colour.

The room out the back is being worked on (slowly) but I'm hoping to get most of it done in the next 2 months as I don't have to work weekends as much for a bit. Will show you some pics when there is a bit more progress made.

That's all for now! Happy painting/crafting/blogging!

Some beachy finds!

Here's a couple of recent finds from our nearby beach. The Nautilus shell had me jumping up and down when I found it. It was hidden under a huge pile of driftwood that we were looking in (that was the reason we were at the beach, after the cyclone came through our beach is covered in mounds of lovely driftwood) and I poked it with a stick as it looked a bit like an eyeball all half hidden by everything. Then when I realised what it was, I did a little happy dance! I don't know if they are a common sight further south but this is the first one I've ever seen up here and boy was it a great find!

This sea fan was also found recently and after letting it completely dry out, I cleaned it up a little (brushed off loose bits of outer coral stuff) and framed it in a shadow box frame. I had to glue it onto the backing with a tiny bit of glue on a toothpick and waited impatiently for it to dry to check if it was held on enough.

More beachy finds are still to come! And there has been some major painting going on around here lately (pics to come soon) as well as some mega news (well I think so anyway).....

The building has begun on our rumpus room out the back!!!! Yay!!!!

Mr Fish and Poppy Fish started on it today and put the framework up on one side and a window in. I am sooooo excited that it has begun finally and hopefully all the wet weather is finally behind us.

Drift, driftin' away.....

Okay, so I haven't been doing much sewing but I did make something instead of painting another piece of furniture (you can hear Mr Fish breathing a sigh of relief in the background). I saw a gorgeous mirror with driftwood around it in a Better homes and gardens mag a while ago and kept it in the back of my mind. After about 3 trips to the beach recently we had a bucketful of driftwood (had to be fairly straight bits) to get started. First I painted a square canvas that was lying around a brown colour, do you think I can remember what I originally bought it for!?

Then I stuck a mirror that used to be in littlest fishes room in the centre with double sided tape. It's one of those cheap mirrors from the warehouse so I wasn't worried about wrecking it if things didn't work.

And then I started playing around with how to put the sticks on. I had in my mind a round looking shape (a bit sun like) but quickly decided that required to much fiddling with angles and was a bit tricky so I went with a simple square shape instead. After snapping a few to fit them in the gaps I glued them down and added a few more pieces to the sides when the top was dry.

The finished mirror came out pretty good and you can't really see the canvas unless you're really looking for it. Being on a canvas it's not as heavy as it would have been on a piece of mdf or ply.

(the picture you can see in the mirror is on the opposite wall, I thought it framed the painting nicely!)

Posted on My house of giggles

Easter at the beach

Things are back to normal now (almost) after having a 4 day long weekend for Easter. We went to the beach a few times over the break as the sun was out (sort of) and it hasn't been raining. Oldest fish was delighted to see her park was almost back to normal after being trashed by the cyclone (tree fixer people and swing fixers must have been working hard) and apart from feeling like the roof is gone because the canopy that shaded the park has been stripped pretty bare it is all good. It was a bit overcast when we went but that was great because it wasn't blindingly bright. Littlest fish had a ball playing in the water and tried to put all the sand balls the crabs made in the collecting bucket. We did some drawing on the sand and found lots of driftwood and bits of coral. All in all it was nice to go back to the beach after all the wet weather.