Two of my best gifts this year were a bushwalking guide book and a new, wee camera. 

So I have been testing them out – the beauty out there is simply stunning and we have enjoyed the two wonderful walks we have been on so far. 

Just check out these amazing photos – most from my new point and click, a few from my Honey’s digital SLR (I did say to him I was a bit disappointed he took better photos than me (we took the same scenes a few times)…so I will just say it is the difference in the cameras – or it could be he is better than me…???!).

 

 

 

 

 

And our absolute favourite moment – watching a pod of dolphins surfing!  Weren’t we just blessed?!

 

(PS – all of these photos are as the cameras took them (except for some straightening of horizons where needed.  I didn’t need to do anything at all to those colours!).

 

 

 

 

 

I remember lastyear that I wrote we got a Christmas miracle in the form of visiting wild birds.   This year it is Christmas Cannas:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This plant is from my Aunty’s garden and she planted from her mum’s (my grandmother), so these two blooms are so very special to me – a Christmas miracle sent from heaven.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

And since it is within the 12 days of Christmas, I am not late with either greeting :-).

We do hope you enjoyed your celebrations as we did.  Our Christmas Day was full of joy and relaxation – and you can’t ask for more than that!

This year’s Christmas Tree:

 

Isn’t it lovely?!  It needed a bit of re-inforcing to hold its shape, but that is to be expected.

I made new Christmas stockings this year – using a hand crocheted lace tablecloth from my Grandmother’s house – they turned out just as I pictured them :-)

 

Oh, and you might notice an impending hearth upgrade…yep, a few more courses - just so the stockings can be hung at a good height – these things are important you know?!!

This year, we decided to focus on desserts ;-)!! 

They were superbly yum!!  (Made by the eldest, she is a fantastic cook!).  And of course, we would have saved you some…but…

In recompense, I leave you with a Christmas photo of our beautiful Pepper:

Wishing you all the best, from our family to yours!  XX

All I want for Christmas is….

To not pick up any more pavers!!!

Still, can’t complain about the price ;-) – more freebies - for paving up to and around the clothes line…one day…

And we picked them up just in time…Michael has a pretty big cut on his finger now courtesy of the electric sander, so he is out of action for a few days.  

I am very happy that I have always insisted on a full house clean before we put up the Christmas decorations. 

It might have taken a tad longer this year but it sure worked for me with everyone helping and doing such a good job!

Some rooms are still a work in progress of course…but there is red and green and sparkle out in the clean ones already J.

Very happy to have the Santas out and looking forward to choosing our tree soon.

You know I like to try my hand at growing our veges from seed - quite unsuccessfully so far...

So, I reckon one of my challenges is that I don't have a green house to protect them and keep them warm as they start of - so my Honey has built me one!!  :-)

I was expecting a rough knock-together, but I should have known better!  This one is gorgeous, don't you think?

So I have already put it to good use by re-potting the heirloom tomatoes I started last month. 

This year's seed-raising experiment has been to start them off in soil blocks.  I am certainly finding it is easier to keep them moist so hopefully that is a good thing.  They don't seem to have grown any quicker but I do think next year will be the year I get going great guns!!!

So we missed a few weeks of feeling well enough to do much, so there is some catch-up to be done.  It is starting now-ish thankfully J.

We celebrated a belated BOO! in early November.  The kids are keen on Halloween because of the treats, dress-up time and decorating/crafting opportunity – all good things to enjoy.  Since our kids are the only ones on our street we confine our trick or treating to our own front door LOL!  It is still great fun and we were very happy to take advantage of a pupil-free day to do some fun Halloween decorating.

  

You will find almost everything via this post – so much I loved (bat template link, skull print out, jar labels) so I downloaded and enjoyed J.  The kids were very happy to have responsibility for the ink distressing of the labels and bat cutting out.

Some people noted the scariest thing of all in our display – the C – e – l – e- r – y.  My kids knew immediately what it meant though – it gives me the creeps – YUCK, YUCK, YUCK, YUCK, YUCK! 

Each year we love to carve a pumpkin and we have gotten in the habit of trying to carve a famous “Jack”.  It is so much fun – I hope you recognise this year’s inspiration!

 

Ooh, and friendly spider tablecloth inspired by this one J.

Our other yearly tradition is to eat our “Jack” and I was keen to roast the pumpkin seeds and see how yummy they were.  Verdict – yummy seeds J.   This was our very first year of a “proper Halloween pumpkin”, so it was a bit of an unknown how Jack himself would taste.  Verdict – roasted Jack Skellington – yummy too!

School holidays have long gone, but they did involve a fair bit of yard work, as I promised the kids ;-).

Piles of sticks for bushfire cleanup.  We will run these through the mulcher (we need the mulch more than the environment needs the wood smoke from burning the piles).

Strawberry patch planted – this involved sifting the sand to get the gravel out (yeah, that was pretty heavy, hard work); adding compost and mixing it in, then planting and watering/settling in with seaweed brew.  The strawberry plants were gifted to us from our neighbours – thanks so much Sue and David J!

And while we were there with the seaweed brew, I used it (in combo with some fish emulsion) to add some lovely nutrients to the fruit trees.

Because I love photos of our flowers for bees, here they are:

The bees are also loving the leek flowers. 

 

We are pretty happy to be providing for our food producing friends J.

I will stop looking at card blogs after I upload this.

Still inspired by the Double D challenge and followed links to this fun card so I had a go at doing something similar :-).

Don't you just love getting up quite early in the morning and finding two beautiful Christmas cards posted on blogs in your inbox??  :-)

So I was inspired to join in the Double D Challenge again.

Who could resist when you see such a beautiful card as this?

And I took my layout inspiration from this gorgeous one :-).

Here's my quick card. 

Getting excited for the red and green and sparkle to come :-).

The evolution of a gallery wall.

When I contacted Kristine to help with the interior design for our lounge room, it was mostly because I couldn’t picture what to put up on our gorgeous, massive, white wall.  I asked her to help with the size, positioning and a colour scheme for wall art.

After a few back and forward emails and suggestions from her, we settled on a gallery wall.

But as I was looking for images to include, and searched the internet for inspiration, finding prints of gum leaves that felt “right” just wasn’t happening…I realised that I would feel more at home with an eclectic collection of pictures and prints, that way I could use some of what I already had.

So, I asked Kristine to help me with colours and frames for the eclectic look instead, and she came up with this beautiful design and helped me with exact sizes and everything!

So I printed off this image and after analysing quite a few online eclectic gallery wall images that I liked, I came up with a list of images that were personal to me so would be meaningful to have on our wall. 

This is my list:
Botanical illustrations
Botanical prints
Family photos
Words/inspirational quotes
Upper case letter/Initials
Clock
Mirror
Signs
Shapes

From here, I narrowed it down to what I really liked:

Antlers; icon; quote; family photo; native plants; butterflies.  Since I already knew my colour scheme – whitish/gumleaf green/autumns – I just had to hunt around my house for items that would work.

Then I hit a bit of a snag – most of the frames I had and/or found in the op shops were not big enough – oh well, I plodded along and spent a few weeks setting them out on my table to see how they looked:

I had fully planned to put them up as a continuous gallery on the wall, as Kristine had depicted, but when I got the first four on the wall, it was very apparent that they were dwarfed by the wall – so some on the spot position and frame changes have led to this being the gallery wall of the moment:

I really like these items so it is lovely to look at them and acknowledge why they are important to me.  I am not sure this will be the final incarnation of the gallery wall though, because this is all only on the left of the fireplace – so my problem of what to do across the wall as a whole remains – but I think I have a vision developing as we progress decorating our lounge room J.