FRIDAY PHOTO SCAVENGER HUNT - ORNAMENT.

 OK, I'm running very late due to life getting in the way, but here goes.

As we have hot Christmases here in Oz, I don't go to town on decorations, but do have a few favourites that come out each year & I'm still debating as to having a tree up or not.

Atop the wood burner a small tree DH fashioned for me a couple of years ago & I painted.  The little figurine is also timber & I've had it for a long time.  The lovely candle arch was purchased in an arcade in  Skipton, Yorkshire back in 2016 & always has pride of place somewhere prominent.

Many moons ago I purchased the gold filigree sleigh & popped this bundle of goodies into it and it comes out each year to grace the diningroom table and of course on a table mat I made from Christmas fabric.

My lovely Madonna vase that I've probably had since the early 80's and definitely needs a nicer arrangement to brighten her up a little.  If we are able to find somewhere local with bits'n'bobs I'll attempt something prettier.

Nothing wonderful for the front door in the way of fresh greenery as if we have "very" hot days, they completely wither & wilt, so a little something I made to be a bit festive.  A closeup below.

Now Jak prompted me to take a photo of my printers' tray with a lovely handmade Christmas card sitting on top and even though the printers' tray has been on before, I thought it looks good with the 3D card and it's small items.

My lot done hurriedly I'm afraid and hope I can still link this up.  Thanks to Astrid for hosting these and I'm already trying to work on this Fridays.

Take care all and hugs from down under.

Susan.

FRIDAY PHOTO SCAVENGER HUNT - Something we see everyday......

 Linking up with Astrid for the hunt this week and although I know what I see most days, was it going to be of any interest to others? So once again I've probably been a bit wayward.  Well, here goes...........

Looking from our side entrance, across the road to the farm that is basically in the middle of suburbia.  I often refer to this as "Middle Farm" and  realise that one day it will be cut up for housing, but at least I can see the cows grazing and a tractor working for now.

SKIES.

Looking at the sky at different times of day can be absolutely fascinating with different cloud formations and colours, so here is a selection from my archives.

The next one was taken last week about mid morning and this has been very much the weather we've had for most of November so far, though not always with the rainbow.  Each of the sky photos has been taken from home.

Must admit to the garden being messy at the moment due to the incessant inclement weather, though the blueberries are netted now.

DAILY WALKING.

Not as much of this has been done lately either, but a few things we see on our close to home walks are of course trees and a couple of quaint boardwalks across marshy areas.

A beautiful white bark gum in someones front yard.  I do have lots more tree photos, so only one more with a bit of a story to go with it.

This is now a vacant block which once had a beautiful 2 story art deco type house on it and I'd always admired it from when we moved to this town in 2004.  We live closer  now and one day as we turned the corner to come home, they were tearing it down and it has been like this for the last 3-4 years with a small sign that claims to a child care centre being built on it.  As the Pandemic hit, all was put on hold, but is now about to go ahead soon.  In the centre of those trees is a beautiful old lamp,  that I'm going to inquire about, as it would make a lovely garden ornament.  

One last photo which some will know as I used to often talk about out resident magpies and they still come and at this time of year with bubs in tow, can make an awful racket hoping I'll put out a few breadcrumbs for them.  They only get a tiny bit as bread isn't good for them, but I can't help spoiling these amusingly friendly birds.  I do love all our birdlife, but these are special.

Taken late last year with my Butcher bird sitting on the fence too.

OK, that's enough for me today and although it's cloudy, we've a few things to attend to this morning and I'll link up now and read all the other hunter posts tonight.

Take care all, have a great weekend and huge hugs from down under.

FRIDAY PHOTO SCAVENGER HUNT - APPLE

 First and foremost, I'd like to apologise for being so absent.  Basically I've had troubles with my old laptop, which I use each morning to check my email & catch up on blogs, then to make matters worse, Google updated something or other and more troubles have ensued with all our devices.  What with Covid lockdowns going on for so long, nothing much has been happening here and although we still have some tough restrictions, things have eased for now.  Weather has been horrendous and we have the fire lit today and it's supposed to be nearly summer and everywhere seems waterlogged with so much rain lately.  It's not too windy, though it is predicted over the weekend and the cleanup from the last two big storms is still underway, so we'll keep our fingers crossed that it stays away.  I suppose from all the above, you may realise, that I've been a bit down of late, but I'll try and ease myself back into blogging slowly, catch up on a bit of blog reading, use  my camera more and just generally try and relax a little.  Here we go for this week's word......................

APPLE.

We live in an area with many different farms, including apple orchards and although I had high hopes of getting out this week to take some better photos, this will have to do.  Most of the orchards are covered in hail netting.

Let's see what I had fun finding and photographing today.  It is all plain nonsense really............😊

My favourite Apple & Ginger juice along with 2 lovely timber turned apples that I was gifted with many moons ago.  The fabric shows lovely green cooking apples.

My glass apple bowls which I used on regular basis for stewed apple or apple snow while the kids were growing up at home and the apple sauce dish which still gets used occasionally if we have roast pork or maybe grilled pork chops.  Above them is a page in a cookbook showing some apple recipes on my book stand.

A quilt of my own design using apple fabric.  Taking good photos today has been hard due to the inclement weather.

And lastly, my old business card showing apples beside my business name, when I was quilting for others a few years back.  Of course, most will recognise the name as my blog title too.

I did a little looking back in old photo albums for a couple of photos from years gone by, but alas mustn't have taken as many snaps when our children were small, but from 1980 to 1986 we lived in a small town called Batlow which had a plethora of orchards and a cannery which canned vegetables and fruit and made the best sparkling apple juice.  We also spent many years living in Tasmania, which is known as the Apple Isle, and again as a full time working Mum, time was short for much photography.  Oh well, that will have to be my lot for this week.  I'll look forward to seeing what everyone else has come up with.

I'll link now with Astrid.

Take care all and hugs from down under.

Susan.

Q is for......................

QUIET..............

Yes I've been quiet!  Not a lot happening here what with more lockdowns/restrictions & the weather being very tardy, but here is a "quick" catch up.

Also "sorry" I've not done any commenting lately, but have caught up on reading blogs and can only  say that I've been down & just want to get back to at least some sort of normality in the future.

QUEUING.

As things were improving here a little, DH & I went shopping on Friday morning to our local Bunnings store (a large hardware chain) to purchase a few bits & bobs for a couple of projects and some veg plants to start getting ready for summer gardening & lo & behold there was someone in the store with Covid at the same time as we were there, so off to get tested yesterday.  We'd only had 5 cases here in our shire since it all began last year, so why now?  We sat in the car for 4.5 hours. Luckily the testing station was out of town at a large facility that caters for country shows for farming, cars, music festivals and also cattle sales.  Lots of cars, but at least we weren't queued on the road.  Just awaiting our results now & hopefully we are negative and can get out to buy milk, bread & some fresh fruit and veg.............soon.

Now, not sure whether I'm allowed to do this, but I've found an aerial photo via the i'net of the above venue.

Not too bad an area for our wait in the queue and we did take coffee, biscuits, my sewing and a book for DH.  We also heard plenty of birdsong/twittering from lorikeets, rosellas, corellas, butcher birds, magpies & wattle birds.

QUAKES.

 Last Wednesday around 9.15am, I was busily putting some washing on the clotheshorse (it was drizzling) and SUDDENLY..................there was a strange rumbling noise & then the house started shaking & although it was quick, it was quite scary.  We'd had a 5.8 earthquake some 100kms north of us, but it was felt far & wide throughout eastern Australia.  I even rang DD to tell her & she answered the phone, saying "yes Mum, we're having an earthquake" and they live on the other side of Melbourne. 

A rather strange month this September!!!!!!!!!!!!

QUILTING.

As we've been in so much lockdown and aren't allowed to visit or have visitors, I've been doing a fair bit of quilting, so a few photos follow of a couple of finishes for this month. One you have seen before the binding was all hand sewn.

Flower Power, the QAL I did with Jo Avery in Scotland & was in a previous post.

Chateau Garden.
One of my own designs which was a simple pattern to fill in between the QAL above.
Below a photo of the pieced backing as I can't get out to buy large pieces and as I've plenty of leftover bits, I'm making good use of them.

Rosetta.
Another of my own designs based on the traditional Buckeye Beauty block.
Again I'd had the curated bundle of fabric in my stash for a long time and am finally utilising it in these tough times.
Below the pieced backing.

On the design wall............

which will hopefully become this......

QUILT ACCESSORIES.

DH has been busy too and indulged my whim for a "HUG-A-RUG" for the hallway to display my wall quilts and now I can change them easily on a regular basis.

DH's clever rendition of the Hug-a-rug.

QUESTIONABLE.

Now for a few photos from the rather wayward garden at the moment.  As the weather has not been playing nicely, I'm not getting a lot done outside.

Azalea

Wallflower & Gazania

Only 2 bluebells have flowered this year.

The Snowball bush.

My Banksia rose starting to blossom.

If you click to enlarge, you'll be able to see one of our resident Skinks on the far edge of the pond.

OK, that's it from me and maybe someone out there will have a peek at a long overdue post.  I've had plenty of ideas swimming around in my head, but the words won't come and as for taking the camera anywhere with me, it isn't happening, so I need a good push to kick start my blogging mojo.  Maybe this will be a fresh start. 

Take care all, stay safe & huge virtual hugs.

Susan. xxxx

FRIDAY PHOTO SCAVENGER HUNT - SCHOOL

 Linking with Astrid for the Hunt and this week's word is "School", which I really struggled with, but here goes.  

A lovely old school in the south east corner of Victoria.  I took this photo last year when we had our 4 day break away in an unlockdown period and was greatly appreciated.

A new school being built on the new estate near to us last year and it is now in operation.  What a contrast to the one above which was built in 1877.  

Now for a couple of photos from the 60's.

The non digital age of listening to radio programmes broadcast across Australia for schools, especially vital for children in remote areas who did all their learning via School of the Air.  I did have all 4 from my Primary School years 1958-1961, but I can  only find these two.  Once in High school it was all very different.

My two younger brothers and myself at the beginning of the school year in 1964.  G (on the far left), in his uniform ready to start High school for his first year and it was to be my last year at school.  My youngest brother (middle), not in uniform always went to a Special school due to being intellectually disabled.  Look at the daggy uniform I have on.  You ought to have seen our summer hat & winter beret!  Oh...........and black stockings in winter too.

OK, my lot for this week and found I didn't have the photos I thought would be good.  Remembered that I lost a lot of my schooling years memorabilia in my parent's basement flood a long time ago.

Not sure I'm going to be in for next week's hunt as DH doesn't like Pizza, so never on the menu.  We'll see if I can think outside the box..................

Take care all, stay safe and hugs.

Susan.

BEDDING PLANTS QAL - LINKUP.

 This is a quick post with a near finish of the Quiltalong I have been participating in with Jo Avery in Scotland.  I've had so much fun with this by using only coloured scraps/leftovers from previous projects over many years.  The white backgrounds for each row were from my stash as were the horizontal sashes, borders & binding.  I'm just now handsewing the binding down of a night.

A few photos so I can join in the link, though I do think I'm the only one without FB or Instagram, so maybe I'm a bit strange.  Here goes and I've actually called mine Flower Power and made it slightly smaller.

FLOWER POWER

A few photos to show each row and how they were quilted and what I used for the bed edgings.

One last thing before I go is to quickly show what my Garrya looked like this year after having one lone catkin last year.  It was gorgeous back in July.

GARRRYA

Off now to link with Jo and hopefully be back tomorrow with the Friday Scavenger Hunt.

Thanks to anyone I may have missed just lately with comment replies and I'm also having trouble with commenting on Wordpress blogs, so will have to sort that at sometime.

Take care all, stay safe & lots of hugs from down under.

Susan.

FRIDY PHOTO SCAVENGER HUNT - BUCKET.

 Wow, Friday again already.  I had all sorts of ideas I wanted to pursue for this, but being in hard lockdown again & only allowed a 5km radius from home, scuttled any of that.  I've had to rely on my archives, so very little for today.  Linking with Astrid once again for this.

Looking back to 2008, I remembered this photo taken which fitted the criteria perfectly.

The bucket of a huge loader with our eldest son & myself.  He is a qualified plant mechanic & has worked on all manner of big things & lucky we could see him whilst on holiday that year.  When will we ever go on holiday again & see the kids and grandkids..................?

I'd have loved to have a few sunny days for taking a couple more photos, though nothing much is in flower in my buckets at the moment, so back to the archives & I found these two.

An old bucket that I planted up a couple of years ago with a small flowered fuschia.

And again..................................The same corner of our back verandah in 2 more photos.

Same bucket, but with fuschia larger & more flowers for a quilt photo shoot.😉

The next photo has a re-purposed wine bucket (a gift from the real estate agent when we moved here & as we are non-drinkers & have no use for it I found a good use as a planter) and  another old bucket awaiting a new resident. (on far left).

OK, short and sweet today and hopefully next week I'll be able to get into the swing of things as Spring will be here, though our Health Minister isn't hopeful for the "foreseeable future", but warmer weather will bring HOPE, my word for this year.

I'm off to link up & check out the other hunters and maybe back very soon with a couple of other link-ups I usually join in with my quilting during the week.

Take care all, stay safe and enjoy the weekend.

Huggles, Susan.