Sending you warm wishes for a happy New Year filled with love and joy. May your heart be light, your days be bright and your year be just right.
Happy Ramblings
The little things in life that make me smile.
Sunday, December 31, 2023
Happy New Year to you! 2024
Sending you warm wishes for a happy New Year filled with love and joy. May your heart be light, your days be bright and your year be just right.
Monday, December 25, 2023
I wish you a Merry Christmas
Tuesday, December 19, 2023
I have been making Christmas decorations
I have spent the past few weeks busily enjoying myself getting ready for Christmas. The Christmas presents are all bought and wrapped, and I have since been focusing on the Christmas Eve lunch table setting.
I downloaded the templates, scaled them, and printed them onto glossy photo paper. They were easy to cut out, fold and glue together.
I treated myself to a set of new handmade placemats which are made out of white-washed rattan. Plus, I bought a white cotton tablecloth and napkins which have a hemstitched border. They were all in the pre-Christmas sales and the napkins worked out to be free once all the discounts were applied!
Friday, December 1, 2023
It's the first day of Summer today!
December the 1st is the first day of Summer in New Zealand. It has been a lovely warm 24 degrees C today, slightly overcast and no wind. A perfect day to start putting the Christmas tree up, decorating the house and opening door number one of my advent calendar.
I walked around the garden, barefoot, this afternoon, with Otto following me. He is such a curious cat, watching what I am doing all the time, apart from when he is running up the trees or climbing onto the roof of the house!
In the garden I found a few ripe boysenberries and raspberries, which tasted delicious, lovely and juicy and full of flavour. The small passionfruit vine is flowering and there is one fruit forming already.
The Feijoa (pineapple guava) is full of red flowers, but I didn't see any Tui birds nearby to pollinate them. Hopefully the Tuis will find them so we can enjoy feijoas this year.
The Pohutukawa tree overhanging our fence from next door, is absolutely full of flower buds. It's going to look spectacular when the red flowers are open. Nice and Christmassy.
I hope that you are enjoying the first day of advent too.
Do you follow any traditions for December the first?
Hugs, Rose x
Friday, November 24, 2023
Busy time for cats - making new cushions
The last couple of weeks have been very busy for Otto. He has been supervising me while I made some new cushions. The supervision was necessary because it has been well over 20 years since I made cushions with zips in. I used a YouTube tutorial to refresh my memory. Here is a link to the tutorial that I found easy to follow.
Supervision is exhausting work for a cat. Otto had to lie down a lot to rest on the material as I moved it. Then he had to thoroughly inspect my cushion template and test it for size.
Examining the placement of every pin proved to be a lot of fun for Otto, as did trying to catch the scissors as I cut the material.Sunday, November 12, 2023
More Spring surprises in my garden
Lords and ladies - arum italicum |
Willow tree catkins |
Ornamental quince flowers? |
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Happy Halloween!
We had a fun early Halloween, called "Fright Night" on Saturday evening.
Dozens of houses in our village were set up for the children in the neighbourhood to go trick or treating. We registered as a safe house where the younger children could come trick or treating. Others set up spooky houses for the older children. Then afterwards the children went to watch the film Beetlejuice at the village hall.
I was on a very tight budget, so spent most of it filling a basket with halloween-themed sweets and plastic spider rings. These were placed on a chair that I draped with a metre of black tulle that was decorated with ghosts.
Then I made paper decorations, both 3-D and 2-D, which I found free downloads for online on the Canon Creative Park website. I had great fun with scissors and glue making them.The decorations were hung on the plant growing in a pot on the front doorstep. And the Halloween picture, that I printed and cut out, was taped to the front door.
I bought a length of glittery orange spider web patterned wired ribbon and decorated the basket and the plant with it. Plus I bought lots of plastic spiders and spread them around the front door.
I dressed up in black and white and wore a large floppy purple witches hat that I bought for $9 at a party shop.
Lots of children visited our house in groups with their parents. One boy said ours was the best house :o) I think that may have been because I let the children have a spider ring as well as sweets!
One child asked if he could have a big spider, so I said yes, and he put his sweets back in the basket and took a spider lol. I tried to tell him that he could also keep his sweets, but he was too excited about the big spider. It was so cute.
The village that I lived in before didn't have children doing trick or treat because all the houses were on large blocks of land and were spaced far apart down long driveways. Instead they held a party at the local village hall for the children each Halloween.
This is the first time that I have experienced trick or treat at Halloween. Mum and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, I think as much, if not more, than the children.
Do you do anything at Halloween?
See you again soon.
Hugs, Rose