The first of many December birthdays has begun with the celebration of my niece’s 1st birthday yesterday!
Truly, my family and I cannot believe just how fast the year has flown by since that very special day she was born! It seems like only yesterday (weird concept as yesterday was her actual birthday), we heard about the amazing start she had in life – born early in the morning in the family car on the way to the hospital! (She sure knew how to make an entrance!) Then later that evening seeing her, my brother and sister-in-law along with her four big brothers on the 6pm News, where her adventurous start in life was reported to the nation! Gotta admit, it was a pretty awesome day in the lives of the Rolfe family (and extended family too!) and such a wonderful way to start the Christmas season off! 🙂
And now here she is, the big ONE, almost walking and taking in everything that life seems to bring – especially chocolate cake! (Good choice, my darling!)
Here in Australia, it’s the first week of the school holidays! (Similar to a mid-semester break!) So today I took my two oldest nephews into the city to visit the Powerhouse Museum and to see a fun and interactive Minecraft World that they have there at the moment!
Both boys loved it, especially the oldest one, Caleb who likes to play Minecraft a lot! At the exhibition they had a room full of cardboard Minecraft blocks for the kids to stack and build their own worlds, colour-in stations, interactive game play, green-screen photo sessions and a petting zoo (full of the cardboard animal characters!). Even Steve was there!
Caleb with Steve/ Building Blocks/ The Petting Zoo!
While we were at the museum we also had a bit of a look at The Wiggles exhibition, a beautiful Jewellery display along with all of the other permanent favourites that are there like the big Spaceship, the old steam trains and interactive science labs. So much fun!
Ayden in the Big Red Car!
However, although the day was super fun, this poor Auntie is now struggling to keep her eyes open as she types this post out! Gee, I’m pretty sure as soon as my head hits the pillow, I’ll be out to it!
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Tomorrow is back to normal for this quilter! I’ll be uploading my Mountain Block tutorial for you to watch (the edit has taken so much longer than usual!) and I’ll reunite myself with my sewing machine and get the inspirational juices flowing again! Yay!
Today was spent celebrating the lives of my nephew Xavier and niece Amelia at their Christening Day! The ceremony was lovely, very hands on and inclusive with their older brothers, godparents and grandparents.
Both kiddies were dressed beautifully, with Xavier sporting a darling suit vest and collared shirt and Amelia wearing a darling white dress with purple flowers and shiny white Mary-Janes! Oh so cute!
Here are a few of my favourite photos from the day…
The joys of photographing little people! One’s blowing a raspberry and the other is looking at anything but the camera!Xavier and his Poppy (aka: my dad!)The Boys: Caleb, Ayden, Noah & Xavier.My eldest brother Kevin and his beautiful family!
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So on the to-do list this week in my sewing room is:
Get the Mountain Block tutorial finalised and uploaded for you to enjoy!
Finish my Notting Hill House Mini Quilt so that I can hang it on the wall and swoon all over it!
Re-think the ‘Wildwood’ Quilt…
The initial idea I had in my head to make with those gorgeous Cloud9 fabrics I keep going on about, hasn’t been sitting right with me all week. I’ve sort of got half way through piecing together the quilt top and realised I’m just really not feeling it…
Hmm…Perhaps I need to re-jig the layout to get the excitement back for this quilt…?
What I’ve done so far just doesn’t excite me, resulting in me losing interest and motivation to get it finished. Boo! So, I’m gonna have a bit of a re-think about, scrap the idea I’ve already begun and start a fresh! Last night I came up with the idea of perhaps re-visiting the Spinning Stars pattern by Anna Maria Horner or even trying out that Octo pattern by Zen Chic I bought the other week from FQS! Hmm, it’s definitely back to the drawing board with this quilt and fabrics. I’m determined to get a beautiful quilt out of them one way or another!
I spent the day rugged up at home (my favourite place) joyfully playing with my youngest nephew and niece! We sung songs, played with balloons, ate doughnuts and built Duplo towers!
Amelia: ‘Auntie, what is that big thing you’re shoving in my face?’ (I took the picture using my big DSLR camera!)Oh, those big brown eyes and pouty lips!! Too cute!Xavier singing his ABC’s!Doughnut time!
More of my family came over this evening where we had our traditional party tea, with homemade chocolate cake, lollies, Chocolate Crackles* and yummy fresh fruit!
And because I work from home (which means that technically I’m my own boss) I gave myself the day off! I do feel slightly bad that I did, as it means that Friday’s tutorial has now been pushed back a day or two! Sorry! But today’s little breather from everything has really helped clear my head and get a few things back into perspective!
Although, I do have one very exciting thing to tell you about! Last night I finalised everything for my next Quilt-Along Series!!! Yay! It’ll be a HST Sampler, made up of nine different blocks, all at different levels of difficulty and layout. This time around I’ll be using a beautiful fabric collection from RJR Fabrics that has some of the most loveliest colours and patterns that I’ve seen in quite a while! As soon as I saw it, I knew it was the perfect one to use for the quilt! I’ll announce what the range is and the whole story behind it once I receive it! Eek!! (Although, some of you might be able to figure it out with some of the clues in the picture below!)
Here’s a sneak peak of the blocks we’ll doing…
I guess this also gives a little insight into how I design and work out all the maths for my quilts! I must always draw them out and colour them in to be able to get a true understanding and visualisation of the block/quilt I want to make! At the moment, I don’t have a date for when this will begin, but know that it’ll be very soon! (Like ‘weeks’ soon!)
I hope your day was as lovely as mine!
xx
*PS. Curious to know what Chocolate Crackles are?? Here’s the recipe if you would like to try them! Every Aussie kid has been brought up eating these, especially at birthday parties, cake stalls, picnics and as special treats!
Chocolate Crackles
Ingredients:
4 cups of Rice Bubbles
1 cup of desiccated coconut
1 cup of icing sugar (powdered sugar)
250g of Copha (a type of vegetable fat made from coconut oil)
3 tablespoons of cocoa
To make:
First, slowly melt the Copha in a saucepan over a low heat.
Meanwhile, mix together the rice bubbles, icing sugar, coconut and cocoa in a large bowl.
Carefully pour the melted Copha into the rice bubble mixture and stir until well combined.
Spoon the mixture into a cupcake tray filled with paper cases and place in the fridge until set.
Today in Australia we celebrate Father’s Day! The picture below was taken on Friday with my dad amongst his children and my oldest brother with his children.
My Family!
To celebrate the day, in the afternoon my folks and I took a lovely leisurely drive up the Blue Mountains and visited the Mt Tomah Botanic Gardens nestled amongst the misty mountain ranges. Things were slightly damp, a little drizzly and chilly but the scenery and fresh mountain air were absolutely beautiful!
While there I also took the opportunity to snap some stunning pictures of the native flowers for the blog! I hope you enjoy seeing some of the beautiful flora we have here in Australia!
It was such a lovely sight to see all of the fresh flowers budding and coming to life. There were so many colours, textures and patterns that caught my eye every which way I turned! I’m so happy that Spring has finally made its way back to us!
3and3quarters 