Crafty Easter Weekend

This cross-stitched picture only took me four years to stitch, and then spent another four years sitting in a bag. Yesterday I went to the Warehouse (a big sell-everything store kinda like Walmart in the US) and picked up a $26 frame and spent an hour framing the picture myself. The hardest thing was making sure that each side had the same amount of white space as the other side. I'm really thrilled with how it looks on the wall. The silly thing though, is that this picture would not have worked in the lounge of my old house as it had wood panelling, but it looks stunning in our present home!

Here's a closer look at it. My oldest son described it as being very 'Anne of Green Gables-ish' which is pretty cool since LM Montgomery is a favourite author of mine. It's called Good Neighbours and was designed by Paula Vaughan.

On Saturday I did my first scrapbook layout in nearly a year. It kinda shows too so I won't post it here. lol. Now that I've done the one I feel like doing more but at the same time I feel totally inadequate with coming up with my own designs. Much easier with knitting and cross-stitch where you simply follow a pattern! I'll have to do some scrap-lifting I think. Maybe a mini album, something small and following a scheme. Maybe next weekend. 8:)

Yes, We have an Easter Tree!

Ok, nothing handmade on it, but I'm willing to bet it's the only Easter tree in New Zealand. The kiddo's decorated it with sparkly eggs that we brought from Spotlight while away in Wellington. It's been re-arranged several times and by the time I took the photo the tree was looking a little worse for wear. Totally inspired by the Easter trees out in blogland, mostly US ones.

Hope you all had a blessed Easter.

An Unexpected trip away

I've been mia as we got a phone call from Hutt Hospital asking me to bring Alex up for his next operation and we had to leave almost straight away. There was no-one to look after the other three kiddos so we ended up having an unexpected holiday in Wellington. It's not fun really to sit in a hospital ward all day looking after one sick child and three other active kids. But they did extremely well. After Alex's operation we had some fun time together; exploring Te Papa (Wellington's museum), a day trip to Palmerston North, paddling in the sea at Eastbourne, and the favourite with everyone, jumping on the giant pillow at the holiday campground.

I took the kids back to school on Thursday only to have the youngest kiddo not wanting to go (very strong-willed child), and in the failed battle to get her inside a boy came running past me and straight into Alex which meant a trip to the drs and an emergency x-ray. It wasn't a good day really.

While we were gone my Mum watered our garden for us. The no dig garden is looking pretty good. I've weeded it about twice since I made it up nearly two months ago. The lawns however were horribly overgrown. It only took 2 hours and three times filling the lawnmower up with petrol to get the job done! I'm saving the lawn clippings for when I extend the no dig garden in a week or two.

We also had fun visiting the op shops . My kiddos know they can't expect new toys other than at birthdays and Christmas, but if they find toys they like in the op shops at bargain prices they will usually make a deal to do some extra work to be able to buy the stuff they want. Youngest boy got a cool spiderman car for only $2.50, oldest girl got some pony books, and youngest girl brought a bag of toys for only a $1 that had some neat girly stuff she liked. I manged to find some books to read and some pairs of knitting needles, and also brought the girls a couple of toys. While the kiddos generally don't like me visiting bookshops and craftshops with them in tow, they will tolerate op shops as they never know what they can get. Cheap entertainment. lol.