It's begining to look a lot like Christmas... 'n' other stuff

Finally unpacked some Christmas decorations, and have had a bit of fun, placing them around our new home. The Christmas tree is just too big and there is just no room for it, so I have a cane obelisk from the garden centre, you know the ones that you grow runner beans on... have added some flowery colour lights, and Bob's ya uncle!

The Christmas decorations were the very first thing that I packed to move to Twizel, and they have been here since July!

I think we still need a real tree, and one night next week we shall go tree hunting, and grace our deck with a really big one to festoon with sparkly lights!

don't look too close, one of these angels has lost her halo

This door bell is my favourite Christmas decoration; it really belongs to Eco Girl (aka # 1 eldest daughter). When she was about 9, she had her tonsils out, and we got friendly with her roommate. The following week we invited her and her Mum out for lunch while both the girls were recuperation, and they bought this as a gift for Eco Girl - I really should offer to give it back to her shouldn't I...

and we finally have a letter box, and these arrived this week!! They were addressed to the Heath Centre as we have been using that as our postal address in the short term, but in true country fashion, the postie knew that we now have a new letter box, and delivered them here on Saturday

This is from Bev, in Australia, this was for the Snickerdoodles Festive Honeypot Swap, hosted by Darlene

and this is from Melissa in the USA, for the Four Seasons Holiday Quilt Swap (FSHQS), hosted by Margaret at the Quilting Gallery. Thanks to all you lovely ladies, these are truly delightful, and I shall treasure them indeed.

This is the quilt that I made for Narelle for the FSHQS, and I have just had an e-mail to let me know that they have arrived safely,

Narelle asked for a quilt with a snow theme, so I hope she is happy with this.

My swap partner Betsy - in the Advent Swap hosted by Fiona & Jo, still has not received her parcels yet. As some of you know, the gifts that I had made for Betsy, and for Narelle, and for Chookyblue's SSCS were lost in our move, and I had to redo them all.

I posted Betsy's gifts off in 2 parcels about 7-10 days apart (hard to remember exactly now as it has all been a bit of a hurried blur), about 2 weeks ago now, so she should get them really soon. I posted another parcel to the USA in between these 2, and I have heard that this has arrived so hopefully Betsy will not have too much longer to wait. Betsy has been so incredibly patient, and I am so very grateful to her for this.

I have not yet opened any of the gifts that Betsy sent to me, I thought it might be nicer if I waited 'til I knew that Betsy had hers, and then we could open them together.

...and I have not yet heard if my Stitcher's Angel parcel has been received by my swap partner yet, despite several e-mails to her.

Rowing man has been working away on the garden shed, but has run short of nails/screws that were no in the kit, we have ordered more and they are being couriered over from Timaru

so he's doing a bit of lying down on the job if you ask me!

he is back at work today anyway; (we have his work dinner tonight, yum no cooking!)

check this out - Adas Great Christmas Giveaway ends on 17th December, so pop on over and have a looksee.

....and I just wanted to show you these great little wonders, I have used a variety of them in different sizes and shapes and types for many different things, and have used a different one then this to hold all the Christmas light cords tidy,

but these ones are amazingly great for hanging up quilts! Unbelievably good, and no marks to either wall or quilt if you want to move it around later (and believe me I have done a bit of moving of late!).

I made this quilt a few years ago, for our Twizel bedroom, and it has finally found it's resting place. Rowing Man hijacked it as soon as I finished it, and it has been hanging on the waiting room wall at his previous surgery for the last 2 years or so. I am so pleased to have it where it belongs!

Well, that has been a long post, and I had to do it twice 'cos Firefox crashed whilst I was adding in links etc, and I had to start all over again!!! Hrrmph!

Anyway, I do hope that you are all having a wonderfully festive and happy week, albeit a busy one.

productive day then for a Sunday

me and my green fingers, we have been busy today, weeded the driveway, and the garden, and that was after our early morning bike ride down to the lake and then along the canal, followed by coffee at our favourite Twizel cafe,

did just a little bit of trimming, the garden here is not that big (yet..)

... planted some herbs, but needed to pop them in pots, the ground was just a bit hard and rocky, and to be honest, I couldn't really decide where to put them, as in which part of the section. So pots it is! For the time being at least...

and these pots just didn't survive the shift, oh well, unlikely they would have survived the winter frosts anyway,

Rowing man has been happy as a sandboy all day constructing the ("his") garden shed,

and I'm about to start on this.... ironing - can manage it well if there is a good movie on the tele, and there should be sommat on being Sunday night and all...

Hope you had a wonderful Sunday...

where do I begin....

Hmmm lovely song that, but do not ask me to sing it, Rowing Man can do a pretty good version, but I am a bit tuneless, at best I hummmm along, and like Miche'le I can sing pretty good in the car - alone of course!

finally, I have managed to redo all my swap parcels -

and they are all away in the post - the last of them was posted last Tuesday. So all done and dusted, how awfully stressful 'tho, (losing swap parcels), I definitely do not want to repeat that in a hurry at all.

Twizel has a Mistletoe market and Santa Parade which is an annual event the last weekend in November, and most years we happen - or plan to be here. Rowing Man happened to be on call that weekend, so we stayed, and several of our other holiday friends came over for the weekend


For such a small town (population 1400 approx - but swells immensely over the summer and winter ski seasons), the parade was very well done, and every local organisation got in behind, and had a float of some description;


and of course, no Santa parade is complete without the jolly red fat man himself!


Mrs Claus is looking just a little bit tired of it all by now,

and these guys provided some wonderful entertainment, as we wandered around the market stalls, finding bargains and eating whitebait patties...

I did manage to find these, which have found a home at my place...

... and this little lass, doesn't she look so cute, slightly bohemian, but oh so cute - her mum had a stall at the market day, selling the dresses, tights and the cute wee critters;

Thursday was the last day for our Quilting Group to meet until there New Year, so we all headed off on a road trip, first stop Obsession 2 Quilt in Temuka;

and then Annie's in Ashburton (just about at your place Miss D);

and lunch here;


... and the other great news is..... the man came last week to dig this...


so we could have one of these....

all operational now, YIPPEE .... SKY TV is working now too, much to Rowing Man's delight so he can watch the rugby . The house is slowly coming together.... mush packing unpacking and repacking and sorting, sounds a lot of work, and it is, but with trying to amalgamate 3 houses, and then living in a teeny tiny one, I just have to be ruthless, and many of our possessions will just have to be in storage until we eventually build our home.

I have managed to finish this off, this quilt was our leaving gift to Tim's practice in Outram (which changed hands midnight Monday last day in November) - oh what a relief that is, and no more rushing back for Tim to work Mondays there altho' he is going to be doing the odd minor surgery day and vasectomy clinics down there by arrangement - Mon 14th being the first, but it will be very nice having him around this Monday for his first Monday off. He is building a garden shed - well at least putting it together.

... and this is Graciela from Argentina, and myself last Tuesday evening (we had only hours before got back to Twizel ourselves after our regular weekly Dunedin visit), I quite randomly received an e-mail from Graciela some weeks ago, saying that she was coming to New Zealand to visit; her daughter was here with her boyfriend on a 1 year working holiday. It was really wonderful to see her, and I am so pleased that she managed to get to Twizel, and that we were able to catch up. Her daughter was very good at interpreting for us at Graciela speaks a little English.

I am off to one of the local cafes now to meet Rowing Man for coffee, have a super Sunday!

Christmas cheers,

oh dear my bad!

oh dear confession time, and I am feeling so really really bad about this!!!!

I have had a really BIG oops with some recent swap parcels. Oh Dear!! And I was so organised and all.

Tim and I have been tripping up and down between Dunedin and Twizel (3 hr drive on a good day) very frequently, sometime together sometimes alone,

I stayed in Dunedin the other week (that I was to post off several (3) swap gifts), but left part of one of the gifts behind in Twizel, I should have just posted it off anyway, but I decided to wait 'til the Friday evening for Tim to bring it down with him, and I wanted to wrap it nicely, well.... oh I am hanging my head in shame and horror!! - I had stayed in Dunedin for the week to pack up our house as we were moving all our belongings the following week,

When parcel man Tim (AKA Rowing Man), arrived on Friday evening as planned, but too late for the post of course, I duly nicely wrapped the gift, and put it with all the others, and 2 other swap parcels to head to the post, well I got waylaid by my mother - who fractured her arm some months back but is having awful problems with it, and was making the most of having me in town, and heeded to go off to attend to help her with a few errands, the parcels got left on the stairs at home in my haste. Oh all the best laid planes!! ooohhhhh I just cannot believe this...

Anyway - to cut a very long story short so you can read it tonight,... all 3 swap parcels got packed - somewhere in with all the other stuff being packed... and I have been tearing every possible box open, and my hair out trying to find them - but so far no luck, I could have sworn that I left them all together in one corner of the dining room - not to be touched, so that this would not happen! Oh NO NO NO..

So what I am going to do, is tomorrow send off some bits of parcels so that each of the three swap friends (if I can still call them friends) have something, and then start all over again, and get what I can done over the rest of the week and weekend and mail that too on Monday - oh Quelle Horreur!!!

There is no way any of this sounds good at all, and I just don't know how to say sorry enough to my swap partners,



so off to get into gear!

Have you ever done anything like this??? Please say yes, so I don't feel a total "duhhead" all on my lonesome!

We live in Tiwzel now

.....look what arrived at our new home (previously our holiday house) on Wednesday - containing most of our furniture and worldly goodies. (still all the outdoor furniture, garden pots etc to come yet). We packed our home up most of the day Tuesday, loaded up truck, trailer and car, and tootled off to Twizel later on Tuesday afternoon, followed by this truck early on Wednesday morning

The moving men were so fantastic, and just so organised, they had a safe place for everything, and I was amazed at how tightly packed, and well protected our "things" were. So now we have lots of these to unpack and sort, and sort, and find homes for... anybody out there good at this??

although I do not know why I say we, as it is very much a "me" thing. Rowing has very kindly excused himself from the task, and headed off to work. Well someone has to earn a dollar I say! Bring home the bacon, and all that other stuff that breadwinners do so very well - now that I am unemployed, not working, a SAHP - which is really a very good thing as that gives me lots of time for ... you guessed it! Quilting 'n' stuff!!

but slowly getting there, one corner of the lounge is starting to look a bit more organised, and that is more then just wishful thinking on my part.

CAn you see the dress hanging from the doorway top right, (well skirt and bodice), that is what I am wearing to the Oamaru Heritage Ball this evening, we go every year with a small group of friends, and it is soooooo much fun, will post about that next week.

But wait! There is more....

yesterday, Rowing man brought this parcel home from work (current postal address owing to the fact that we do not have a letter box in Twizel - on the list of things to do along with garden shed, trellis to screen off the hot tub, and sundry other tasks which just seem way to many to mentions ... or contemplate ). Anyway, I digress...

inside the post box were these delightful goodies... which are from the Advent Swap, my swap buddy, Betsy, has forwarded over all these delicious pretty parcels, all numbered, and one a day to be opened beginning on Dec 1st. Look at the delightful way that Betsy has numbered all these parcels... isn't she just the cleverest

Oh what fun and anticipation!!

BUT.. I am not so clever, I was so totally organised and had everything sorted, BUT 2 of my swap parcels which are to be posted, have been packed, and I am pulling my hair out as well as stuff out of boxes to find them!!! HRRMPH!!

They gotta be here somewhere.....

have fun!

it' on it's way!

last Friday I received a piece of tea dyed calico from Carole,

she has decided to make a "quilting buddies" quilt, what a fantastic idea!

so I have stitched this, and popped in the mail today,

Deb has done one also, pop over and have a look at hers,

Carole's quilt is going to look just ever so gorgeous!