Happy birthday to me!

I haven't been doing much crafting lately, as I have been spending almost every waking moment that I'm not at work, here working on getting this place ready for sale. It won't be long now, our first open is on Sunday. Our house is starting to sparkle.

So you can imagine what I was doing as my first 30yr old wrinkle appeared on Sunday morning. Yep, you guessed it! Scrubbing windows and window frames, moving furniture, vaccuming the ceilings (yes, that's right - those 8 legged pets just had to go!), you name it. And that was AFTER staying up till 1:30am packing all my sewing stuff up to go into storage (sob). I did convince DH to let me keep one crate of quilt fabrics as I cleaned out my wardrobe to make room for it, and of course my new machines had to stay (but again only because I had made that extra space in the wardrobe!) Not the ideal way to spend one's 30th, however I will be making up for it next Sunday. While strangers wander through critiquing our home, I will be sipping a glass of champas, kicking back with the girls for a fancy Sunday brunch!

I did get some beautiful parcels in the mail last week though (and a few stragglers still coming this week). I joined in on the EB quilters birthday FQ swap where we each send each other a FQ to hopefully match their preferences for their birthday. I asked for blues/teals (for me) and anything boyish (for Austy) noting my tendancy to squeel with delight over cute tiny prints! I must admit I am a bit difficult because I'm not your standard pretty, floral, girly girl and much prefer cute prints over pretty, but I think I did well. Here's the loot:

I managed to score a few extras too, a couple of generous girls threw in a second FQ, Emma threw in a pack of gorgeous tiny bug buttons to adorn a quilt with (or maybe even a scrapbook), Lily threw in a quilting mag to inspire me and Cass surprised me the most with an ingenious shopping bag that folds into it's own pocket so I can keep it in my handbag for unexpected purchases. Perfect! Thanks again to my quilty friends! I thanked you all individually in our EB thread so you can see who gave me what there, but here are a few closeups of my faves:

That's my littlest finger up there! You can see how tiny they are.

I have done a little crafting amongst the cleaning:


An acrylic painting to cover the safe door in Austy's jungle room (he is getting a cars and trucks room at the new house so I didn't want to spend too much just to sell the house). Austy now has a set of 5 acrylic paints - Red, blue, yellow, white and black, and leftover brushes from the painting. So other than the five paint colours and three brushes, the painting just cost $5.50 - a large canvas at Spotlight!

Still going on my lacework although I've had to put it down for nearly two weeks as I need more than 10 mins to sit and do a bit. I like to try and get a whole repeat done so I don't get lost, learned through experience of having to frog quite a bit from missing out one row in a couple of repeats.

A day of scrapbooking (excuse the photos - you can't use the flash with photos on the page as it just flies right back at you, and my light was rapidly dwindling tonight but I knew I needed to blog them now or fear I'd never get it done.) I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped, but here are a couple of my faves.

And a little embroidered train that I did all by myself after my lesson on my new embroidery machine although I'm not showing because I think I need some practise - my fabric puckered a little because I didn't have it tight enough in the hoop - maybe when it's on a pair of shorts as an embroidered pocket I'll get some courage up.

Of course my embroidery machine was really my birthday present since the sewing machine was for Christmas. But I got the surprise of my life when Austy brought me my card (singing Happy Birthday... aaaww), I opened it, and Foo Fighters tickets dropped out of the envelope!!!! Woooooo hoooo! We're off to see the Foos in April! I've seen them before but I don't think I'd ever have enough! We'll get warmed up for it at the Big Day Out, not long to wait now.