Articles by Andrea

Haven’t posted for a while, what with it being summer and all, but mainly because I’ve been working on my application for the OOAK craft show for Spring 2011 (hope I don’t jinx it by mentioning it here!)
The application for this craft show is extremely important, as are the photos. You only have one chance to impress the judges, but with the following photos, from an extremely talented local photographer, I think I have a chance.

The photos are by Rebecca Lozer, check out her website and blog.

We spent a fun evening in my garden, and now I see the place in a completely different light.

I adore what she did with my dresses, but even my garden shed looks amazing!

I’m taking the next 10 days off to disappear into a tent here. We stayed there in 2008, for one night, 2 weeks before moving into the house we live in now. By the time we had erected our tent and got the beds ready, it was getting late, so we went into the nearest village for pizza. While we were there a tremendous storm blew in; we watched a fantastic lightning show from the deck of the village store/pizza joint/movie store before returning to a very soggy tent. It had leaked all over the boys beds, so we did the best we could for the night (i.e. giving them mine and my husband’s MEC sleeping bags while we hunkered down under various blankets.)
The next morning I surveyed the site, which looked like it hadn’t seen sun for weeks, and was not going to get much this week, and said to my husband “I can’t do this”. We packed up and went home, with my husband’s only comment; “that was a very expensive pizza”.

I am a lover of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, and would like my house to adhere to his philosophy: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”.

I have made a start with my front door and sidelight, which really needed some kind of window covering, but I could not get around to installing sheers….I tried once and actually cut the fabric incorrectly, which is not a great advertisement for someone who makes clothing to sell…but I think it was more Freudian than that!

Inspired by this wonderful notebook, my good friend and fellow Milton Artisan Lena made and installed this for me:

This image lights up my day when I come downstairs every morning, because it is even more beautiful than I envisioned when we discussed installing it. Light shines through the window and casts shadows of gingkos all over the pillars in my dining room. Now I just have to get rid of everything else that is not beautiful or useful (which is a little tricky with 3 kids who have a love of all things plastic!)

The notebook was made by Maya, who has kindly given me permission to blog about the inspiration behind my window. Thanks so much Maya, and please let me know when you have more of those notebooks in your etsy store, they went too quickly last time.

Thanks to the virtual hat, aka random.org, we have 2 winners, Martina and Michaela.

Congratulations, I’ll be contacting you soon for your mailing addresses. Thank you everyone for visiting me here, hope to see you again soon.

Thanks to my friend Sue, who is extremely regular at posting on her blog (unlike yours truly), I have pulled my finger out (unpleasant English expression) and written my first blog post in way too long.   I have been busy reading lots of other blogs, and full of good intentions to write my own, but have been stumped for ideas that I wanted to write about.

At least I’m giving something away in my next one!  I have signed up for the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway, which starts on Monday 16th May, so time to go rummage in my fabric closet for a couple of fat quarters, and perhaps something I have made too! Here’s more information if you’d like to join me in the giveaway…it’s never too late to do a little spring cleaning.

Ironman turned 4 back in January, and we had a woodland fairy birthday party for her.  She is all about fairies, glitter and other sparkly things, but we had as many boys coming as girls, and I didn’t think they would all want to be dressed up in pink wings and flowery crowns, so the woodland theme allowed for bugs as well as fairies!

I scored some bug wings left over from halloween at our local dollar store, and made antennae from hairbands and styrofoam balls.  The girls wore flowery crowns and butterfly/fairy wings.

We spent the week leading up to her party making decorations and party favours.  For party favours, Ironman and I made fairy playdough, thanks to this recipe. In fact, a lot of the inspiration for our party came from this wonderful blog, including the toadstools.
We also made coffee filter flowers and butterflies, which I used to decorate the table and the light fixture, these are really easy to make, although I ended up doing most of the flower assembly, as Ironman lost interest early and went off to do some colouring!

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More to come later, we still need party food and games!