A new project

Yesterday whilst we were out and about I spotted LINCRAFT inside the shopping centre :)

For those of you that don't reside in Australia LINCRAFT is a SUPERMARKET devoted to Craft · Stationery · Fabrics & Quilting · Haberdashery · Home Furnishing · Knitting & Crochet · Needlecraft · Patterns.

As Andre had ask me the night before to knit him a scarf in his favourite football colours... I had a great excuse to go have a sticky beak!! It was just as I remembered it :) I had a VERY quick browse and obtained the yarn and needles to make said scarf and also picked up some nice big fluffy bath towels that were on special.

LINCRAFT has always been one of my favourite shops and its the type of place that if I want to go window shopping well - I head in there!! They always have lots of free project sheets and eye candy for the crafter!

I will post some photos when I find my camera - Its somewhere in the stuff that is yet to be unpacked... I could use Andre's camera but his flash decided to die somewhere between Exmouth and here... so the photo quality would sux...

New House :)

Hi all...

Long time no chat :) But as you may have figured out I have been busy relocating :) Yes I am typing to you from my new house in Beaumaris Melbourne Victoria :)

Its been a long few weeks... and I won't go into it too much but let me tell you a few of the events.

We left Exmouth on Saturday the 10th of October after selling all of our worldly possessions and leaving with just a few suitcases containing our clothes and a few precious memories.

We met our new landlords on Monday and obtained the keys to the house then went furniture shopping. We picked out our house load of furniture and the neccessary electricals (fridge/washing machine) and then had to camp out in the house and wait for the deliveries...

We got the fridge and washing machine delivered on Wednesday and the furniture arrived yesterday... in flat pack boxes. Everything is in a box! I could not believe that they delivered to us flat packed things like chests of drawers and breakfast bar stools!!! Everything is put together with allen keys - and nightmarish instructions that are in every language BUT English... and you need to have an engineering degree to be able to figure the jigsaw puzzle out! We tackled the kids beds first, then ours ... and then the dining setting and still have 1 dining room chair to go... 2 bar stools... and 4 sets of drawers! We had the best nights sleep last night in a long time ... could have just been that we were exhausted! We will see tonight?

Today we looked at each other and decided that we couldn't face another allen key... so we went shopping instead :) My new favourite passtime!! The shopping centre is HUGE :) 750M long and 4 stories high.

After living in an area with no shops for so long - I am in HEAVEN!!!

Anyway - just wanted to touch base with you all - say HI and that I will be getting back into the habit of posting on a regular basis once my home internet connection is up and running next week sometime.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Hugs xxxxx

PAY IT FORWARD!!!

I won a PIF from CJ of Tea and Stitches It sounded like fun, so I signed up. So now it's my turn to Pay It Foward!

This is so easy. No sewing involved, and you get 365 days to send out your PIF's :) The "rules" are as follows:

1. I'll send no less than 5 stitching related items per person within the next 365 days.
2. Items can be DMC, other threads, stitching needles, straight pins, buttons, scissors, ribbons, etc. - a combination of items such as 3 threads, 1 pack of straight pins and 1 pack of stitching needles or just 5 threads.
3. The items must be new and not used. (Send things you'd be happy to receive.)
4. If you win, you must be willing to post this PIF on your blog and do the same for at least 2 people.

If you are interested in Paying It Forward, please comment on this post with your email address so that I can contact you. I will PIF three readers. If there are more than three comments, the names will go into a drawing to determine the lucky ones :)

As you all know I am in the process of moving... so I will announce the PIF winner when my internet connection is re-established - probably around the end of October - or beginning of November (gasp if its that long)

So what you waiting for? Leave a comment and get in the draw :)

Dad's progress..

Dad had his cancer removal operation last Monday - Things didn't go to plan and he ended up in Critical care for a bit... but I am pleased to report that hes pregressed so much that they have released him from hospital today :) YAY! The surgeon is confident that they removed all of the cancer and it had not spread to the lympth nodes or any other organs. Not entirely sure what the next step is but I just wanted to say thankyou to everyone whom has been praying and thinking of us! I appreciate it - as does my dad.

Hugs xxx

With everything thats been happening in my personal life I have not been doing much stitching (or crochet)... stress certainly is a mojo killer :( I also admit that I have *SOMEHOW* became totally addicted to facebook and the silly mindless games there. I think its became addiction solely because of those games - you can sit and procrastinate, time waste and don't really have to put much brainpower into it?

Anyway - here is an update on Seaside Treasures. I have not stitched on this since August sometime but it still looks to have progress from the last picture I posted on here...

Whilst on holidays I also had a new start. This is the sweetheart tree's friendship :) This is my first ever attempt at stitching on evenweave and trust me to pick something that has a lot of over one stitching and yup you guessed it - I started in the middle with the over one stitches. So far I am liking stitching on the evenweave even if my eyes are not appreciating the over one nature of the stitching....

Where do I start??? part 2

In Perth we stayed in a lovely holiday house in the Northern Beaches called Carramar.... The property was called "THE LITCHFIELD" and if you are after a lovely place to stay look them up here



Our 8 days in Perth was overshadowed by reality.... The afternoon that we arrived we got the confirmation that my dad definately had bowel cancer. He is booked to have it surgically removed on September 21st...

Andre flew to Melbourne on the Wednesday night to attend job interviews in Melbourne... He only managed to attend 1 interview out of the 4 that he was booked for as he was involved in a car accident in Melbourne on the Friday and ended up spending most of the day in hospital having CT Scans... He still has some tingly sensations in his arm and is sore... he flew back to Perth on that Friday night...

On the Saturday morning (after getting 2 hours sleep from picking Andre up) I drove my 2 eldest daughters Jacinda (15) and Micayla (9) to the airport and put them on a plane to Sydney. They have moved to live with my parents for a few months until we relocate...

We left Perth on Tuesday morning and had a lovely drive back to Geraldton.... We had booked the same accomadation for the return trip... but decided to ask if an upgrade was available... so for an extra $70 we upgraded to a lovely brick cabin :)

On Wednesday we received the phone call that we had been waiting for.... Andre was offered the position in Melbourne with the company he managed to have the job interview with. YAY! We are extremely happy about this as it means he managed to secure a permanent position!

In this photo you see a VERY happy me texting friends/family the good news :)

On the Thursday morning we headed back home.... We had already decided that we didn't want to travel the whole trip and would stay overnight in Carnarvon if we could get accomadation... Needless to say we were maybe 100km into the drive when I hit a large metalic object that was sitting in the middle of the road at approx 111kmph. I had no chance to miss it... as there was a ditch on 1 side...or an oncoming car... I lined it up as best I could so as to not hit it with a tyre and it went *BANG* We stopped the car when it was safe to do so.... and as it was leaking fluid of some description I grabbed the toddlers and headed to a safe distance.... Luckily for us a roadtrain stopped and offered assistance...

In this photo - the roadtrain and my husband checking under the car...

In this photo... my 3 darling toddlers whom remained calm and sat and played in the wildflowers on the side of the road with mummy at a safe distance to the car....

Here we all are in front of the Big road train after it was declared that the fluid was water!

We then drove the car to the next roadhouse - which was the billabong... see previous post for a photo!! We had to arrange for a tow truck to come for us with a hire car from Carnarvon... what a nightmare... and expense!! We decided the best option was to spend the night at the roadhouse... haha what an adventure that was... As the rooms were in a donga and only contained a bunk with a single bed on top and king single on the bottom... for 5 of us??

Luckily for us - the BILLABONG also has a pub... which done a really nice feed :)

Here I am sitting outside the room - all snuggled up in the doona as it was damn cold. Don't ya think the room key is cute?

The next day heading back towards home.... here is a pic of Andre at the edge of the North West... the 26th parallel....

Driving into Carnarvon..... We were so close to home :) ( a whole 370km away!!!)

Now we are very busy with the removal. We have made the heart-breaking decision to sell all of our belongings and start over... so most of what we are doing is sorting stuff to either a) sell at a garage (yard) sale or tossing stuff to the dump.

I have mailed most of the yarn/cross stitch stash to myself... :) A friend of mine has offered to receive any parcels I want to send to myself... since at this stage we are having massive problems finding a house to rent in Melbourne.... Seems the real estate agents over there will not let you place applications on properties without viewing them first... makes it really difficult for out of staters!! Worst case scenario... I live with his dad for a bit with the kids and Andre stays with a friend of his dad's gf close to his new place of employment.... not a scenario I am going to enjoy....and to be honest I am freaking out big-time in advance about the whole situtation!!

To be continued.....

Where do I start??? part 1

Sorry that I have been missing in action for the last month or so.... BUT alot has happened in real life...

I forgot to tell you all that we were heading on holdays on August 22nd... We left at 6am and headed from Exmouth Western Australia via car to Geraldton Western Australia. (a distance of approximately 800km) It takes approx 3-3.5hrs of driving to hit our nearest town Carnarvon... and from there was unchartered territory as we had previously flown between Perth and Exmouth. (on that note after driving it - I am ALWAYS FLYING!)

This is the road in between Carnarvon and Geraldton.... Long straights of desert sands....

More straights....

First sign of civilisation - wooo hooo a roadhouse :) This is Wooramel Roadhouse. We bought much needed coffee here and stretched legs.

Some pretty wildflowers on the side of the highway......

We drove past the next roadhouse (as no one needed to empty their bladders) which was the overlander... and stopped at the billabong.... here we had lunch and coffee.

We arrived in Geraldton around 3pm... We were very glad to get out of the car and into our accomadation. I was VERY disappointed in our accomadation... we thought that we had purchased 2 nights in a chalet.... it ended up being 2 nights in a beach shack :( Very rustic!! On the Monday morning Andre had a phone job interview so the kids and I hung out at the shopping centre till he was done :)

We started the drive to Perth.... Lets continue this in Part 2 as the photos are not behaving themselves tonight :)