Secret circle project revealed

The next big event for this year was the Kitchen tea for my daughter, our youngest, and it happened on her dad’s birthday using this to invite her over for some snacks with her not knowing that it is actually her kitchen tea.  My dearest daughter-in-law is an astronomical organiser and with my injured shoulder I cannot thank her enough for everything she did, planned and stepped up to.

I made all these tulle pom-poms to hang from the roof as decorations but fortunately these were made before I hurt my shoulder.

I’ve been working on a secret circle project for a while and I can now reveal what it was.  With my daughter getting married I wanted to give her something she could remember her kitchen tea by and made these place mats to match her black and white dinner set and appliqued coloured circles on it and the guest used these to write their names and a short message on a circle.

These would still be used at her bachelorette for those who did not attend the Kitchen tea to continue with the messages.

Our new and only grandson

This year started off with a bang and occasionally some less bangy moments.

My eager decluttering came to an abrupt halt after falling and hurting my shoulder on 22 December 2016.  At first I felt that something wasn’t right but it was really not that bad but with every unpacking, wiping, washing, sorting session I had, it worsened. 

Eventually I admitted defeat and went to see a physiotherapist and the treatment made a massive difference for at least one day and then all the aches and pains returned.  So for a couple of weeks now and after several treatment sessions which still doesn’t seem to help, I’ve been hanging around in every room of the house with nothing positive to show.  I simply cannot stretch my arm forward for the life of me.  It is like a dead weight hanging useless next to my side.   Frustrating, especially as we returned back to the office on Monday, 9 January and I wanted to do so much more before then.

Our new grandson was born on 19 January, as good as they get but there was hardly time to revel in this amazing event as we still had a Kitchen tea and Bachelorette to plan for my daughter, our youngest.

However for now I can at least show off the new little man, still only able to sleep and feed and not causing much more excitement.

Mystery completed

And finally I have my Hillbilly Space Journey mystery tablerunner completed and what a feeling this time of the year.

I deferred somewhat (not totally) from the finishing tips shared by Tonya on her blog over HERE. I too kept the folded edges of my EPP project folded under and cut the batting right up to this folded edge of the top.

The backing however I left almost half an inch larger than the batting/top layer.  I then quilted the top keeping clear of about half inch from the edge.

This allowed me to fold the backing over the batting tucking it in under the top.  So I could simply use quick slip stitches to hold the edges together instead of tedious tiny ladder stitches to try and hide the batting from popping out. This worked really well.

In the end I simply stitched a straight stitch a quarter inch from the outer edge.

Being a Fly Baby again

I started this New Year with a bang and hope to keep it up.  For one I subscribed to the Fly Lady daily e-mails again.  Did this a couple of years ago, got my house to almost perfection but as time went by things slowly started to deteriorate as one gets distracted by other things.  The lovely part is that I still kept up so many of the good habits and when I read today’s mission – to clean the entrance to my house – I saw that this, once was a dumping ground for everyone’s keys, phones, shopping lists, unwanted mail and everything else was perfectly intact and whatever was in there should be there.

However the one habit that I let slide is to declutter for 15 minutes every day.  Initially I only did this in my sewing room but when you see how much unneeded stuff one accumulates you do come to the conclusion that the rest of the house must have the same and more of these.

Having a function at my house later this month also nudged me to take a good and serious look at our entertainment room and I got started in there.  Now as little as anyone likes cleaning one must agree there are few feelings as good as the one you get when you get to sit back with a cuppa realising you did a job well.  This is the first cupboard cleared of clutter and packed ready to entertain.

Well I do not only clean and keep breaking up my decluttering in 15 minute sections and I actually get some quilting/sewing done too. I spent New Year’s Day morning totally relaxed, starting to finish my mystery table runner and I am almost done.