Flowers

So far this BOM was started on July 2010, Block 2 finished in Jan 2011 and now Block 3 was finished 29 Dec 2011.


I am sure I will finish it.... one day :)

A Photo a Day

You may have seen on blogs, twitter, Facebook and/or Instagram people posting photos along with words like, ME, Mailbox or today’s favourite and the hashtag #JANphotoaday. Well they have all been taking part in this challenge set by Fatmumslim

I have been posting my photos to my twitter account @m2monkeyb (almost dailiy) and will try and share with you here weekly

Day 1 – Me

Day 2 - Breakfast

Day 3 – Something you adore

Day 4 – Mailbox

Day 5 – Something you wore

Day 6 – Makes me smile

Day 7 – Favourite (treat of above 4 yr old)

12 WIPs in 12 Months

As I mentioned in my last post (am I really posting two days in a row, shock horror ) I intend to make some more time to sew for me alongside my Two Little Monkeys sewing.

Luckily AJ came up with a challenge that will encourage me to not only sew more but get some of my huge WIP list finished. Now more info about the challenge can be found here and here but the gist of it is

1. Entry fee of 1 FQ to be sent to AJ to compete for the grand prize at the end of the 12 months
2. For each month that you finish a WIP you get an entry to the grand prize draw (plus an extra entry for blogging about it)
3. 6 of the projects have to be true WIP 'already started' which shouldn’t be a problem as my current list shows 17 and I know there is at least two more to add to it. The other 6 can be not started but you must be previous planned and either material or pattern owned (or drawn up for pattern) While I have at least 9 in that category as well.

My only problem is that most of my WIP still need a lot of work on them so apart from the 6 that are am going to list here I will choose the others that I will do during the year.

Monkeys & Lions Quilt  - This just needs the binding sewn down

Arabella – This was my MIL’s Christmas present for 2010 (oops) just need to send it off to be quilted and then bound

Bastian’s Plane Quilt – I need to remove all the stabiliser from behind the appliqued planes and then once I getting the backing fabric also needs to be sent out to be quilted and then bound. I don’t have a photo of this one but it is this quilt

Charm Square quilt along – Also don’t have a photo of this but I have the quilt top almost finished just need to add the borders, not sure if I have the backing or not for this one. Once again needs to be sent out to be quilted and then bound. This is a photo of the first block I finished.

Pram Quilt – this was meant to be for Lachie but I never got around to finish it. It is going to be backed in two layers of mint green microfleece, I might add some pink flowers or shapes to it before sandwiching it and give it to my cousin for her little girl that is due in Feb.

Snowballs -  This is an advent calendar that I started Nov 2010, did some more Nov 2011 at a quilt retreat and would really like to have it finished for Christmas 2012

My last one is an unstarted one, I bought myself a Odyssea by Momo jelly roll either Christmas 2010 or 2009 waiting for the perfect project and found it while at the quilt retreat in Nov last year. Then at my last market for 2011 I found the pattern I was after at Bella’s Patchwork stall. I decided that I really want to start a new project at the first MMQG SASD in two weeks time so this will be it.

Just need to find some material for the borders and get some white Emma Louise for the background

So I think given that I finished no quilts last year that if I get all of those done I will be doing well.

Goodbye 2011, Hello 2012

Well what a year. I have to admit I am glad that one is over, good things outnumbered the bad in numbers but there was one really bad thing that overshadowed them all. I haven’t got around to blogging about this yet as I wasn’t sure it was something I wanted to share but I think I need to try and move on as I know that she would hate for me to dwell.

In July last year, exactly one month after she celebrated her 98th birthday my amazing Grandmother passed away, at the time I actually coped with it a lot better then I thought I would, which I think was due to the time I spent visiting her in hospital prior to her death. She had a fall at home a couple of weeks earlier and broke her hip, had an operation to put in pins and was going well, in fact the physio was talking about rehab and then I suppose the best way to put it was that her body just gave up. She had lived an amazing life surrounded by her family, 5 sons, 9 grandchildren and 7 great grandchildren, and I was lucky enough to spend a lot of my childhood with her and most of my memories involve family occasions with her.

Anyway as I said at the time I coped quite well but in the lead up to Christmas I started to miss her and while I did not realise it at the time, I know now that I threw myself into too many projects, markets etc to try and keep my mind busy. That is the main reason why I failed so badly at the advent blog-a-long I just didn’t have time to sit at the computer and blog and my IPhone app (Blogpress) didn’t seem to be working so I couldn’t blog via my phone as I had originally planned.

Moving on I have had a lovely week since Christmas with Andrew and my boys and I have been able sleep late, recharge my batteries, sew and reconnect with some online friends, Car, Rachel, Kayscha to name a few and am quite excited to have made plans to catch up with them in Nov this year.

Other plans for this year

1. More sewing for me (I will post more about this tomorrow)

2. Expand Two Little Monkeys, after the success of our Santa sacks i am hoping to find some new product ranges that are as successful, and have already booked into a market at the end of January and Mid March, here are my two newest items, personalised cushions and toy sacks/play mats

3.Get more organised, this is a must as this was a plan for last year and I can safely say I failed big time. I have realised that I don’t want to give up anything but at the same time I am struggling to fit it all in. which isn’t to say that I am doing to much but more that I have terrible time management skills.

4. Connect more with others, notice I didn’t say blog more, while I do plan to try and blog at least once a month I am not holding myself to it, instead I will try to comment on others posts more, post of Facebook and Twitter more and be a good on-line friend

Before I go I will leave you with two photos, the first is my gorgeous boys in there Christmas pj’s that I whipped up for them Christmas Eve

And a photo of them in there Santa Sack’s we took the same photo last year and I think it might be turn it into a nice yearly tradition.