Boxing Day Family Gathering

It was a few days ago that I travelled up the highway again, on a very hot summer's day for Christmas celebrations with my side of the family. The family is getting larger each year, as grandchildren marry, and have children. Mum and Dad have 5 children, whose ages range from 47 to 64, and they  have produced 15 grandchildren, aged 12 to 44 years. Some of the grandies have married and now have their own children, and their are 13 of these at present. Another 2 are "on the way". There were 38 of the family present on Wednesday!! We enjoyed a lunch of BBQ and salads, all seated at tables at the home of my sister and her family. 

Obviously we don't purchase gifts for each family member, but we do the "kris kringle" thing so there is the anticipation of the handing out of the parcels. This is usually a rather noisy, but fun affair. 

The weather was very hot, so the swimming pool in the back yard was a popular place to spend some time.

Mum and Dad enjoying some "quiet time" in the lounge.

Miss Bridie enjoyed her jelly cup, especially the chocolate frog in the jelly!

Patrick was studying all the presents under the tree.

Miss Billie really enjoyed the paper, instead of the gift.

Studying the shiny ball intently, it looks like she is standing up by herself, but she was holding onto the plant pot with her other hand.

I made this many years ago, and am pleased to see it on the wall in my sister's house.

I slept well that night, after enjoying a lovely day with my family, and know that I am really blessed that we all place importance on this annual gathering. 

The garden is a full time job this week, with the hot weather we are having, but I have been rewarded with a lovely harvest of some of the beetroot. Also picking zuchinni's and bokchoy. The tomatoes have lots of flowers on them now, so looking forward to tasting them. And my dahlia's are all coming out into flower, and look so pretty.

That's all the newsfromjude for now. I hope to be back with a bit of a summary of 2018 tomorrow, in between a bit of preparation for a small news year eve gathering. There is lots happening here this weekend, with that baby sewing happening, but will report on that sometime soon.

Blessings, From Jude

Dancing with Daddy

I am hoping that this video works for you, of Miss Billie dancing, and she is almost 10 months old. 

Blessings, From Jude

My day!

While I am waiting for the last sprinkler to be finished watering the front lawn, I thought I might give a "brief" outline of how I spent my day!

Earlier this morning I posted a Christmas message, and spent time reflecting on the reason for the day, and did some watering of the garden. The temperatures are rather hot for the whole week, which is a shock to the system as we have only had an odd hot day before it dropped into cooler temps.

Then I had a video call with Miss Bridie and her mum and dad. She was very excited to show me her presents, and show me the remains of the carrots that she had left for the reindeer. Her mum sent me a video of when she first woke up, which is lovely to see. Almost like being there.

Then it was time for church, which was earlier this morning. When I returned home I pondered on what I would sew, and cleared the table ready for the machine. And then opened some boxes......
Maybe something in this box, but alas they were not quick projects and required more thinking than I needed today......

......maybe I could find something in here to load onto Max? No, they were mostly going to be custom quilting jobs, not quick!..................

I know this baby is coming real soon, could be in 2 weeks??, perhaps I should make that round quilt that I promised?? Where did I put the fabric that I brought back from the US? ...............Ahh, found it, needs pressing first, have not decided on a backing either, that's not going to be quick either!...............Note it's still on the ironing board.

                                 I remembered a charm pack I also bought in the US, that would be quick to sew the squares together...... then wondered what I would do for a border, and started overthinking the whole process...........and then discovered some fabric that would work with those squares, if I left the pinks out??........   (sorry can't get rid of the lines!?)

By this time I was a bit tired, and thought I would have a little nanna nap, and come back to it.
A half hour and I was revived and decided to have a cuppa and piece of christmas cake and sit in the pergola before it got too hot. While I was there I had 2 more video calls to DD1 and DD2 and families. It was great to talk to them all and see their gifts and what they were all doing.

While I was sitting in the pergola, my almost 90 year old neighbour came over and played his guitar and sang Mary's Boy Child to me. I videoed him, and he was amazed when I played it back to him.

By that time it was lunch time, and my Christmas lunch was home grown zuchinni and beetroot, with some meat. It was just steamed in the microwave, and was yummo. (Also my first taste of yellow beetroot!)

I needed to boil some eggs for the curried eggs I have promised to take tomorrow, so put them in the saucepan to boil. I hulled the strawberries to go on the pavlova for lunch tomorrow.

 I should have wrapped the remaining gifts that I needed to take, but they were still on the table. I thought I might just have a cuppa, and sit at the table and read while the eggs were boiling.

While I was reading the book, the phone rang and it was DD3 on a video call, so I went to sit in the lounge chair in comfort to talk to her. Not a good idea, as about 3/4 hour later, I remembered those eggs were still boiling. Luckily not boiled dry, but too far cooked to be used!

By this time, I was exhausted (?), so had another nanna nap, and woke up about 4pm. My decision then was to sit and read that book, until it was time to put the sprinklers on again,, and forget any ideas of trying to sew anything.

End result of my day, is I did boil some more eggs and did not walk out of the kitchen till they were done. I did wrap those gifts that are needed in the morning. I have cleaned up the kitchen and dishes. And I did finish reading the book. The watering is done for today and bed is looking good.
It was lovely to talk to all my family "face to face", and attend church on our Lord's birthday.
And you have to laugh at all the other things, and just go with it!!

Tomorrow is another day,

Blessings, From Jude

Christmas Blessings

As we celebrate the birth of our Saviour today, I wish you many blessings for today and for the coming year.

I hope your day is a special one, whatever you are doing. I acknowledge that it is joyful and exciting for some, but not for all. I know quite a few people who are going through difficult times and wish you peace and comfort.

I received a video call from Miss Bridie last night, showing me the carrots that she was leaving out for Santa's reindeer, and she was so excited, I wonder if there was much sleep last night.

As our family Christmas has already been, I will be attending church this morning and then planning on a quiet day, and maybe even some bonding time with my sewing machine. Tomorrow it will be up the highway again for a celebration with my extended family.

Blessings to you all,
From Jude

In the garden.........

At the side of my house I have this rather large Kurrajong tree, and it does a good job of shading the pergola and that side of the house. It was there when we purchased the house back in 1998, and I love the trees, and listening to the birds come. It is also a lovely shady area, and since the fence was built in 2015, it is where I have planted ferns, clivias, bromeliads, and other shade loving plants.

And due to some serious neglect it looked like this. The worst part of this tree are the seed pods that hang on the tree, and drop off in the wind. I do periodically rake all the mess out of this area but it has been awhile now. We have had a lot of strong winds lately, and it looks like most of the pods have fallen. As we are in for a long spell of hot weather from this week, I decided that I better get to this job this afternoon.

In spite of the neglect I found a couple of bright spots in the middle, with this hydrangea flowering....

....and underneath the leaves was this bromeliad flower.

It now looks like this, and is ready for a dressing of compost and some new plants that I have.

And this is the rubbish that I raked out, now waiting for "someone" to take it to the rubbish tip.

 The pergola garden also had a prune and tidy up, and also is waiting for some compost and some new plants.

And out the side garden, I found the first dahlia flower, in a pretty soft pink.

This morning I went to church, and listened to a good sermon. It expressed exactly what is happening with the commercialisation (is that even a word??), of the Christmas season. I felt like taking notes, and have asked if I can have a copy of the sermon to share.

A couple of friends and I had agreed not to buy each other Christmas gifts, when we don't really need for much. Instead we went for a drive after church and had a coffee together. Can you guess where we went?

If you guessed the Frances Strawberry Farm you are correct. These friends had not been there before, and this was my 3rd trip in a month!! The strawberries, and the coffee and the scones are worth driving 50 km for though. And we had a lovely afternoon out together.

Since then I have been in the garden, and now I think it might be time for bed. I have been playing Christmas Carols for the last couple of days, and thinking about the real reason for the season.
I have been reading the blog of Desert Sky Quilting, whose link you can find on my side bar, and she has written some very thought provoking blogs, including some video clips, that you might like to hear. First is Come to the garden and the other is O Holy NIght and Hallelujah. (I just realised that Come to the garden, is almost the title of my blog post!!)

Blessings, From Jude

Another quilt show!

Quilting posts seem to be few and far between lately, so it must be time to look in the photo files again.

First one was made by Lyn, and sorry the photographer was not too good at the photos, or the light just was not right, can't make up my mind which to blame. This was custom quilted, and the roses in each block were stitched by Lyn, and she has plans to add beads to each block.

If you click this photo, you should be able to see the pattern on the red fabric easier.

Erica made this quilt, which was one of the Mystery quilts that were made recently. I have made extra kits of this pattern, and still have 2 left, if you are interested. The kit is called Bird Song, and we found an allover pattern called Song Birds, which seemed very appropriate for this quilt.

This quilt, made by Linda was very large, and is her own design. Linda called her quilt Oaken Wood, and it was quilted allover with Maple Leaves and Acorns.

The backing was pieced with the leftover fabrics, and you can see the pattern on this.

This is another Mystery retreat quilt, called The Bee Hive, which has also been very popular. Alison made this and wanted a pattern with BeeHives on it.

This pattern came with some Honey Pots in with the Beehives, and she wanted simple, so I divided out the honeypots, and added extra hives to the pattern. It's amazing what the software on the Statler can do, and I need to make more use of the features.

Vicki made this simple quilt, where the fabrics do the work. It was quilted allover with a pattern called Botanical Blossoms.

The corners of this quilt had those flippy flying geese blocks, so I trimmed out the allover pattern in these areas, so that the hopping foot did not get caught in the folded fabric.

 Jennifer made this quilt for her son. It was quilted with a very simple point to point pattern in the squares, which gave it a custom look. The wadding used in this quilt was cotton, and supplied by the customer, which gives a flatter finish to the quilt.

 This scrappy quilt was made entirely by hand by Mon. I couldn't imagine hand piecing a whole quilt, but what an amazing use of scraps in this simple block.

This is another Mystery retreat quilt, made by Raylene, using very soft rose print fabric. It was quilted allover with a pretty pattern called Soft and Sweet, which suited the quilt very well.

I will leave some more quilts for another post one day, just in case I run out of photos to post!!??

I do seem to have rather a back log of custom quilts waiting here for the quilter to get busy, so I don't think there will be any slacking in time soon. January will be catch up month, in between a few other activities, like a new baby, an 18th birthday, a couple of medical appointments, and then at the end of the month, the retreats start again.

I have had a few deliveries this week of things I had ordered. What do you think?

Someone said Santa must thought I have been VERY GOOD!!? ( I need to get a few custom quilts done, so that I can work on these fabrics and get some more cases done.)



Be back soon

Blessings, From Jude