Open for business!

After a well deserved break and a freshen up for the shop, Railway Bizarre is open for business again. Drop in and see the lovely Wendy at 42 Railway Ave, Ringwood East.(It's almost across the road from the train station-how's that for handy?)
Opening hours are 10-5 Tuesday to Saturday. If you visit on a the 1st Saturday of the month you can wander around the Car Boot market in the station car park.

Helloooooo.

Yes, the poor old blog has been very neglected. I tend to be over on Facebook, or reading other blogs rather than tending to my own. Or I'm over at the Modern in Maroondah blog if I've had the opportunity to walk the neighbourhood and take photos of houses and gardens with a contemporary edge that I find inspiring.
I've been spending the last 2 weeks at the sewing machine. The change of market venue has meant we start a month earlier than previous years. I was enjoying the break from sewing a little more than expected so of course this week was a mad rush to finish everything before heading off to Healesville bright and early on Sunday morning.
I was pleased with what I produced, but I'm not pleased that the heightened stress levels has resulted in me having one helluva head cold. I'm going to be a pretty sight as I greet shoppers with my watering eyes and flowing, shiny red nose!
I hope the new venue works well. I'm a bit apprehensive, but we'll have to give it some time, particularly as it's going to be wet and cold this weekend.
Things at home have been quiet. Not much has been happening on the gardening front. We got the vegie gardens in a couple of weeks ago, so once I finish building the climbing frame, we'll get some broad beans in to start. I found a sprouting onion in the vegie box the other day, so I planted that in the hopes that it will produce more onions, or maybe just some really pretty flowers.
D-man is keen to start work on the garage overhaul and the landscaping of the front garden. He has some big plans for the front. It's a huge job, but I trust his vision.
Other than that, I need a holiday and am tempted to scrape up the money to take the kids to Qld for a week, whilst the grandparents are holidaying up there. We'll see how that pans out.
Anyway, enjoy the eye candy.

Time poor and very sore.

Ahh, where have the months gone? The year is halfway through and i am still in the same rut I was stuck in last year. Chained to the computer/sewing machine with a head full of ideas and not enough hours in the day to get through them all.
And to top it all off, I have minor health issues that are driving me crazy. I sure many of them could be remedied with regular exercise. Unfortunately, a recurring back/shoulder problem has halted the exercise regime as well.
I've been doing a lot of gardening/rearranging around the house in an effort to keep mobile. Unfortunately, this tends to have a snowball effect in regards to ideas and plans that pop into my head. No sooner am I halfway through one thing when I get the urge to start on another. Last week it was paint the front door, trim the plants, pull out the dead and overgrown plants, rip out half of the garden, plan new front steps, plan new front garden. It's the same inside the house. I tidy a room and the next thing I know I've moved the furniture three times and then it's off to the hardware store to choose paint colours for the wall that's been unpainted for three years!
The self afflicted frenzy is doing my head in. I need to find some sort of peace. But all of the things that usually bring me peace-eg. sewing, gardening, walking and taking photos, painting and cooking are currently causing me pain and a further sense of restlessness. I feel a holiday is in need, but the finances have put a halt to that.
I've just spent the afternoon culling my list of Flickr groups I usually peruse. And recently, I deleted a lot of my bookmarks and said goodbye to those Facebook contacts that I really had no reason to add as a friend in the first place. It's baby steps, but I think I need to disconnect myself from the computer in an attempt to find some clarity.

I made the front page!!!!

of MadeIt today. Go on, take a look.

Hello

I've been over here lately.

Compostopia

Looking from the far bottom corner up to the house.

We've been landscaping our backyard. It's a long and laborious project as Damien and I have very different ideas about what we want. He's all about the hardware whilst I'm more about the plants. But together, it's working quite well. We've lived at this house for almost 5 years now. When we moved in, the previous owners had cut alot of the trees at ground level, stuck some plants in the wrong areas and mulched the entire garden. We thought we had trees along the back fence, but it turns out that the trees were on the neighbours side and they were hanging over our fence. When we trimmed everything back and removed the trees that were dead, dying or a weed, we weren't left with much. I shifted some of the plants that were in the wrong places and planted fast growing shrubs like hakeas. Once they took hold, the transformation was very inspiring for me to keep going.
I should point out at this stage that we are fortunate to have a large backyard. Our back fence runs 52m. But the yard is narrow and runs on a slight downward slope. We've dug out an area near the backdoor so that we could have a flat surface of grass for the kids to play on. It was the best thing we ever did. This also meant that alot of the garden beds are raised. It makes it easier on the back, but it does mean lots of good quality dirt and mulch to stop the garden beds from drying out.
So to cut a long story short, we have been hard at it again these last couple of weeks working on the lower section of the yard. This is the area down the back, behind the crumbling garage. A new garage is high on our priority list, but finances and council red tape has meant we have a garage full of everything but cars, as it has no power and is just big enough to hold all of Damien's 'stuff'. We've been making a path down to the small shed where I keep the gardening stuff and sometimes paint. It's also where I put my potting table as it's nice and shady. We were going to continue the concrete steps we did last year, by adding a path. The cost of concrete weighed on my mind, so whilst Damien was in Canberra, he grabbed a heap of 50mm thick pine that was being discarded and that has become our new path. (We ran out, but managed to get a fair bit done.) It needs to be gone over with the whacker to get it level and solidly packed in. I love how it looks with the garden edging right up to it. After the rocks were placed along the edge of the path and the lower level was flattened, I realised we had quite a bit of room next to the small shed. It was currently being used as a graveyard for old signs and a couple of canoes (or canoons, as Schnoob calls them.) I gave it a tidy up and then put the question to Damien- why didn't I put the vegetable garden here? I'd been searching for a viable spot for years, but because we didn't have much flat ground I found it hard to find the perfect spot. It was right because of the sun, but we didn't have anywhere for a tank and I didn't want to take up the space where the new shed was to go. Damien had grand plans for a large shed and as I seem to have comandeered most of the yard, I figured I'd let him have whatever he wanted as far as the shed went. When I discussed the idea of putting a garden down the back, he said that he had planned for that all along. So he got home from Canberra on Saturday and by Sunday night, he had completed this.

Compost bins

2 huge compost bins, with space behind to store all of my gardening tools. We had some branches off the lemon tree that we mulched, so one bin already has quite a bit of stuff to get it going. I'm really excited to be able to produce large quantities of compost, rather than having to pay for the stuff. And we'll be able to use the garden waste bin to collect water, 'cos I don't think we're going to have any garden waste from now on. Stayed tuned, the vegie garden plots will be next. We just need to find out where Damien can source some more free timber.

Playing with pattern

abstract pattern repeat primary, originally uploaded by Joyflea.

I pulled out the sketchbook yesterday and scanned in a couple of marker drawings. One thing led to another and the next thing I knew, the day had disappeared and I had produced this fun, retro inspired pattern on CorelDraw. I couldn't get the depth and texture right, but the colours are fun. I'd make a cushion out of this if I it was fabric
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