Working on cold winter's day

Dear Family & Friends

It's been a cold winter's day, but always very bright and sunny:) The sun is positioned much lower in the winter season...to me, that's God's grace for mankind to get a bit comfort and warmth for the season. Despite the very sunny day, the temperature records -7C! ..and we have some work to do in our tiny apartment.  

we finally got connected to electric supply to enable us to start work

There's some delays in our plans to get it all ready before then, but it still works out well for us. This winter we are more free to undertake the interior works...the building contractors were ready with the electric power supply.We're more concern of having to work in a freezing situation, so a portable heat blower was in mind. Yet, we realized that despite the freezing temperature outside, inside the apartment was not too bad as the sun shines right through. A real blessing indeed. 

sunshine steaming thru the apartment - keeping us warm as we work:)

Our work chores have now changed according to what the season dictates. No more outside gardening for me...instead, me and the two teenagers are busy with our home projects like knitting, crocheting, and sewing, From time to time we are also called to help in the apartment interior works... sanding walls and painting. An extra helping hand is always needed somewhere. 

knitting an orange colour scarf:)

Yes, our CEO at home is keeping us all out of idle mischief...but saying that...he is also pampering us with lots of winter holiday breaks! We're off to yet another weekend break in the mountain to enjoy food, and a 5 star hotel facility offers. Perhaps we might check out the ski lift, although no one is interested in skiing. I definitely just want to be in the warmth:)

Hope you are also taking the time and chance to enjoy with your family whenever opportunities arises too:)

Yours

Hand sewn embroidered heart Lavender sachet

Dear Family & Friends

Our teenage girl wanted her Japanese friend to know that she is thought of, on her special day, from as far as Bulgaria! She decided to make a handmade lavender sachet which she worked on for a few days.

Handmade Lavender sachet

Using a pink satin material, a heart shape form was prepared.

Step 1: cut material to sew a heart shape pattern

Two pieces of materials...one for the front and the other for the back.

Step 2: Make two identical form for one heart sachet pocket

She embroidered a lavender flowers for the front, and her friend's name at the back

Step 3: Before stitching it together, embroider your design 

I have gathered a lot of our home grown Lavender flowers and she used this to fill up her sachet.

Step 4: Stitch them together and leave a small gap to fill it with lavender flowers

With her patience and dedication, she hand stitch everything as neat as she could....almost as if it was done by a sewing machine...thus, it took her a while to accomplish this.

Step 6: sew up the filler hole

To embroider a tiny kanji character on, is a challenge... but she did it!

Step 7: The heart sachet is all done

The flowers are made of bullion stitches to make it resemble like lavender...I think she did well.

A nice little project that my daughter enjoyed putting together:)

Best of all, this project was made full of love for a friend who has been so kind and supportive to her in her language learning journey...a very talented blogger friend who cooks wonderful food, till she took a break to enjoy more time with her grand-babies.

Well, I'm off to go and make some lavender sachets too...they're good to put in clothes cupboards and ideal little gifts to cheer family and friends too:)

Hope you have a nice cheerful day today.

Yours

Restoring furniture project

Dear Family & Friends

We're trying our hands on new interest of restoring furniture.. Modern day new furniture sold are just not appealing...prices are high and we mainly see a lot of MDF furniture that's not durable. 

We found a shop that sells old real wood furniture...some of which they have already restored. We bought an unrestored one...it's ugly for the moment but we can see the beautiful potential of the unit.

this ugly looking armchair got lots of potential to be a well loved, comfy chair

This armchair is just the right size for our need and it's very comfortable...for just 15 pounds we took it home for our new project. My big girl is enjoying this project in between all other things she does.

sanding wood furniture using sandpaper and hand power!

We sanded it down and will soon repaint it and reupholster it. I hope this will get us going to many more beautiful furniture projects and be successful with it.

a bed side table on the list of 'work-in-progress'.

We also got a pair of bedside tables...this too will be restored. I will show you the outcome of these projects later on. For the moment we have a lot of work on hand...as we work to make some beautiful pieces of furniture to use in our new apartment.

pan fried dumplings with chives and egg fillings, we call this 'he-zi' in Chinese

Work makes us hungry...thus, we're craving for lots of food calories. So this week, we had pan fried dumplings with egg and chives fillings. They're so good...I must make some more soon:)

unleaven crispy flat bread made of flour, a bit of salt mix with hot water, then, sprinkled with chives

My little girl is engrossed with making very crispy fried chives flat bread. She rolls the dough so thinly that it is better than any packet of crisp. I'm just as happy as she is whenever she ask me if she can make some more of this...a few times a week!!

Eating and working...or is it working and eating? Ah, life couldn't be better than this:) Hope you are also enjoying each day where you are!

Yours

The doorbell

Dear Family & Friends

Our door doesn't have doorbell...so you can't really blame me if you knock and I never come to answer...specially if I'm so engrossed gardening!! Ah... but it is very frustrating for the one who knocks!! So we must put a doorbell...so the old ears can hear better.

Where's the doorbell?

An electric doorbell for a village house doesn't seem appealing to me...I wanted one of those manual pull the string bells... DING DONG, DING DONG!!

this door needs a bell along with a happy homemade heart made of lavender stems

I specially like the sound of those ringing bells that they hanging on sheep and cows in the pasture...I thought I could make use of those as we can easily get them here from a weekend outdoor market.

A close up photo of this cute little bell

So, this week we found and bought one - a metal bell for a doorbell!! We have yet to hang it properly with a pulley string...but I will leave that to the man of the house to sort out how he's going to work it out...For the moment, I know that we would soon have a doorbell:) This one would say...Klink Klank instead of Ding Dong...but its just as good!

Ring the bell of joy! From our house to yours, I'm sending you lots of joy:)

Yours

Teaching children to knit

Dear Family & Friends

My ambition once before was to teach my little girls knitting, but I have one big problem...I do not know how to knit myself. I tried learning, but it just doesn't work with me, although I can crochet.

knitting project of one little girl

Eventually, we seek help from people who knew how to... it's not one of those things that you learn and be good at instantly. We had to refer to many many you tube tutorials, before we got it right.

crafting moment...knitting and quilting

In our house, we like crafting specially during winter season when we find ourselves indoor. While the garden is on dormant mode, I keep my two hands busy with crochet and even tried hand quilting.

multi-tasking: knitting and baby sitting at the same time

Whatever a mother does, little daughters always take note. This little girl here was mimicking her mother...she was knitting at the same time looking after her baby (doll).

Dolly got a homemade knitted hat and scarf

As you can see, in the end, her baby (doll) earned a knitted winter hat and a scarf. It was not perfectly knitted...but it was a good start for a 9 years old. Now as teenagers, they still knit for winter interest...but this time, they make fashionable scarf or hats for themselves:) As for me, I am still not good at knitting...so I continue on with crocheting:)

Well, whatever you are good at, aim for that and just keep your hands busy. Most of all, enjoy what you are working on and have a lovely day!

Yours

Cooking time

Dear family & Friends

Summer's oppressive heat is easing a bit and it's becoming more enjoyable to be cooking in the kitchen. Although I love reading recipe for inspiration, yet in the end. I never follow them to the dot because I always don't have the exact ingredients available in my kitchen. We're more of a seasonal eaters, happy to be eating whatever the season freshly offers.

In the pot...assorted root veggie stew - sort of!

With all the garden harvest...I just enjoy doing stew of various roots vegetables like potatoes, beetroot, carrots, plus sweet pepper and tomatoes etc... no one complains and they always clean up their plates and have extra serving. That's why I think I'm doing well in the kitchen:)

Homemade chicken patties..photoshot is not good but they taste good!

Everything is made from scratch in this household...everything is homemade! It takes time and not so convenient, but I'm in control of all the ingredients that we eat. I only want to give the best to my little family, and they are well appreciated.

That's part of our week...full of simple and humble food...I often wonder what it will be if I'm 'that' perfect restaurant quality chef...?! My family unit might consider that a jackpot! Grateful that they are ever so content! I hope it is the same with yours. Have a blessed week as always.

Yours

My garden centre home

Dear Family & Friends

It will be a bit embarassing if you come to visit us at home at this time, because our little home has somewhat been turned into a green house! I'm telling everyone to be patient with me for this arrangement will just be for a month. I have shelves of seedling trays in our lounge as it's the warmest area of our house, and kitchen window ledge is also filled with more seedling containers!

Tomato seedling making a head start in a recycled container

This would be different scenario if only I own a mini green house....but I don't have everything in life and sometimes, I have to make do.

My favorite subtropical veggie: The Kang kong! If I want to eat, I must grow them!

I particularly like to grow subtropical plants if at all possible...it's all very challenging for us because it needs certain warm condition...so I have to baby such seedlings to obtain some subtropical food veggies that I miss so much and couldn't buy in shops around here!

soda bottles turned into cloche to create a warm and humid atmosphere for the seeds sown in cups 

Even inside the warmest place of our home, I still have to make extra humid and warm condition for some of the plants, by putting them inside my DIY soda bottle cloche! This project is made possible because we have a friend who constantly supply us with bottle resource:)

seedlings sown in soda bottles - recycling our friends' supplies:)

Having some seedlings inside the house also mean that I can check them and build up my excitement everyday!

forcing potato to sprout indoor 

Some unusual plants don't necessarily have to be in compost pots, but just the same, they are inside the house with us...trying to make a head start for our coming spring time gardening!

one seed per cup by the window ledge

It won't be long now, all these seedlings will be going out to a bigger space in our garden. My gardening buddy has now built a cold frame for the seedings to move on to, and the temperature has improved a lot too...just a few more weeks to wait before they will all get planted directly into our garden soil!

It's all but a time and season! Making life all the more exciting and interesting! Hope you are enjoying your day at a time just like us here!

Yours

Old Trough to New Wash Basin

Dear Family & Friends

Our wise, clever guy is constantly occupied with home projects during his free time. He have the knack of making ugly things into beautiful master piece:)

We found some old trough in the barn house and so Mr. Innovative decided to recycle and make good use of it. I'll show you how and what he did!

Mixing sand and cement to glue the cut tile onto the surface of an old trough

This trough was probably used to hold water for the barn animals to drink in it's previous life. It's made of cement and quite heavy. As we need a sink outside in our garden area, our 'can-do-everything man' set on another home project, using his leftover bathroom tiles to cover the trough, inside and out.

The tiles were all precut to measure

The hardest part was cutting the thick blue tile, especially as we don't really own a good tile cutter...but he made do, and everything else came easy afterwards.

The inside of the sink is now blue

We didn't have enough blue tiles to cover the whole trough, but who says you can't mix and match tiles for artistic flare? Thus, other left over cream coloured tiles were laid for the rest of the surface area:)

Our water pipe is encased in an insulated cylinder to prevent burst pipe during winter months

We now use this sink to wash all our garden veggies harvest before bringing them into the kitchen. All water drains into the bucket beneath it and we also recycle the water and use them to water our garden from time to time.

This no cost sink is seated on blocks and the bucket beside it collects the water flow

This repurposed and recycled garden sink is the best we could have...no, we can't even find and buy anything as good as this:)

Recycled home projects are fun:)

Yours

Stitching Yo Yo

Dear Family & Friends

To keep busy over this cold season, I've started another thrifty project. Been tidying up old clothes and cutting them into rounds.

With needle and thread...just stitch a running stitch around it and viola! you've got one 'yo-yo'. That's what they call it...but it looks more like a flower to me. 

I've done quite a few by now...in fact my 5 litre icecream container where I store every yo-yo sewn, whenever I get the free time is fast filling up.

From time to time, I stitch everyone of them together, in different random colours and sizes...it's looking good...perhaps I'll end up with a large table runner before spring time arrives.

What home project keeps you busy during the days when you can't do outside jobs?

Hope you are keeping inspired with everyday living:)

Yours

Racing With Time

Dear Family & Friends

Have you ever notice how time goes by so quick? Sometimes it feels like there's never enough time. We are racing with time. So many little things yet to do before cold weather sets in.

Spraying the house, from gray to yellowish... it's getting there!

The house painting has been going slow...but it is almost there! My diligent and very meticulous husband have been working hard on it... rain or shine!

Training the climbing red rose to form a canopy.

We have intention to train this robust climbing rose to form a canopy over the entrance walkway...but we need that additional time to fit it in!

My quick way in putting up a lavender hedge on the existing grass lawn area

I'm claiming part of the lawn to plant a long stretch of lavender hedge...I used a short cut technique! I covered the grass area with cardboards, clearing only a small area where I need to plant my lavender plants! I'm hoping by spring time, the cardboard would have cleared the grass up, and the lavender will be more established and bigger in size. 

we placed a box and hay to make it all cozy for the tortoise in the barn..he's in there snoozing!

While we are racing with time with all the odd jobs we need to do this autumn, our free roaming tortoise seems to have a better idea! It looks like he is going into hibernation... already?! Oh! it will be another 6 months before we''ll see him roaming the garden again.

As for us, back to our little jobs...but before that, I think we will have a little cup of tea for motivation;P

Have a happy weekend :)

Yours

Odds Little Jobs

Dear Family & Friends

We had lots of rain for the past days...but just before the rain clouds arrived, I managed to sow around 60 garlic cloves and a few varieties of green leafy veggies for the winter. I had a good timing and the seeds seems happy as they popping up to see the gardener:)

During those days of all-day-long rain, I managed to speed up the frugal quilt I'm sewing by hand. Tadah! Here it is all finished:) With that, I feel like "yes, I can do it!" and my confidence in making another quilt is soaring up!

looks like a tic, tac, toc quilt...no?

It's a back to back quilt, using old clothes that my children have outgrown. The design was made up as I go about it...piece by piece. It's good for a beginner like me. I had to hand sew it because it was easy for me to pick up and leave the project several times a day to attend to other home chores in between. Afterall, I'm not so good with sewing machine either:(

The other side of the same quilt

One of the girls have been restless...So, I had to give her jobs to keep her happy too. As we've been collecting seeds, we need some seed envelops. Pocket of seeds can be shared with other gardeners to bring extra joy around:)

little seed envelops

Here's the few seed envelops she made. They are tiny but it's beautifully hand drawn and painted:)

The speckled frog

This froggy design is probably one of my most favourite from this batch of seed envelops. She patiently speckled the frog's skin with multiple tiny dots...to create the rough skin of a frog!

A very special flower ..only grown on paper art

The other very detailed design was this multicoloured flower. The petals are so tiny and she gave different colours to each tiny petals.

Well, she's got a few bead craft projects that I've ordered and at the same time, it looks like she is still making more tiny seed envelops for me too. The most important thing is, she's occupied and happy.

It's amazing how 'jobs', whether it's big or small, can bring life in order:) Do you think it is because we're made to work?

Hope you have a productive and enriching day today too:)

Yours  

All Homemade

Dear Family & Friends

After the past weeks summer pruning ground direction assisting job given to my husband, it seems like there's not much gardening jobs that need urgent attention....oh yes, not quite true... there's the non-stop weeding to do...but at this time, that seem to slow down a bit due to cooling summer.

first thought....

Somehow, I started focusing on "in house" projects. The crochet lap blankets for the girls are called finished by now.

decided to carry on further...

Then, I felt lost, I need to continue on more homemade projects. So, a recycled old clothes quilt project has started. 

little squares of recycled old clothes 

This one's going to be another colourful,  no cost project. It's all hand sewing too. Easy to pick up or drop off as time permits.  

hand sewed squares

I still don't know exactly how it will end...but so far, it kept me well occupied!

embroidered letters... It was a challenging task!!

I have been drawn to homemade sewing here and there lately. In fact, just finished an embroidery batch for the toothbrush bottle holder. It did prettied up the plain recycled bottle which holds our toothbrushes. I wasn't sure about embroidering letters...it was hard for me and I was so intensed on what I was doing for a couple of hours one afternoon! Loving the finished project. It brings smile and a bit of humour to our daily health routine.

Art work of our two working princesses (they were 6 & 10 yrs old then)

This is a very big framed board which I filled up with four of the paintings the two girls, done 6 years ago...it's probably time for them to come up with more paintings ... but so far, their interest these days are more focused on language learning. I'm sure they'll give me more paintings to cherish, one of these days....

Crafting and homemade projects can keep us inspired in our daily living. What have you been kept busy with recently?

Wishing you a lovely and a day full of joy.

Yours