Friday flowers on a Thursday

My other beautiful clematis, called Lord Neville, a day early for Friday Flowers. It's my mum's birthday today so I thought I'd post early for her. 

I thought this plant had died last year so was surprised to see little shoots of green and buds! It's a beauty. The flowers are huge.

Happy Birthday Mum xx

A touch of India

I thought I might share another interesting item I have had stored away for a few years. This silk runner/table mat was given to me by Lyn's mum who had it passed on  to her by a friend who's family used to travel to India many years ago.
It's heavily decorated with metal embroidery which I assume was originally gold coloured. Parts are damaged and the silk itself is very worn, even threadbare in parts. I still think it is beautiful and would be nice framed for the wall. Not sure what I might do with it yet. Please excuse the dodgy and rather uninspired images. :)

On more tedious subjects, I have been painting the skirting board, architraves and some of the picture rail in my studio room over the last couple of days. The joiner forgot to take off the back part of the picture rail profile so the hooks cannot currently grip. We need to run it through the table saw to take a bit off and then I'll be painting that too.

Just a small tip... when painting, especially white enamel paint, don't wear your favourite jeans and then sit on the paint lid. Messy. It did come off with copious amounts of turps thankfully.

ps. I just wanted to thank you for your lovely birthday wishes. I don't generally tell people ( just blab it to the world wide web instead!!!) so your thoughts were really wonderful. xx



Friday flower

A lovely pink ranunculus for Friday and my birthday.

Hip hip hooray - it's starting to get scary...one more year and I hit the big 40!!!

Oh well. Here's to a happy weekend to us all xx

Vintage Glamour

Mum brought over this vintage dress yesterday when she dropped in to visit. It was given to us by a family member who was cleaning out a very old family home. If I breathe in it fits me pretty well.

What beautiful lace work. It came with a small bolero jacket that isn't shown here.

The skirt of the dress is so heavy! 

The lace flowers have a pearl bead in their centre.

The lovely fine straw bonnet came from the same place. I just love this hat and would love to wear it to the races one day. The black purse came from Lyn's mother's friend. I have some other vintage bits that I'll show you next time.

As you can see from the first photo, I still haven't properly fitted and painted the skirting and picture rail in my room. I have almost unpacked and sorted all my bits and pieces so that's good.

I hope you are all having a nice day xx

Friday flowers

Gorgeous poppies and ranunculas at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens the other day. Photo taken by my friend Leonie. My camera batteries conveniently died.

It looks like we are back to a wintry weather weekend down here in Tassie and many parts of Aus so I hope you all keep warm and have a nice one. I'm working (boooo!) but hopefully you guys have something exciting planned xx

My new clematis

This is my lovely new clematis, Pink Champagne, that came home with me the other day when I popped into the hardware store. It's only a small plant so I've planted it at the base of an obelisk thingy with the Pierre de Ronsard rose. How pretty and I love it's name too!

ps. how weird is it that I accidentally published this post the other day and then deleted it but I just saw it in Fun & Vj's blogroll? So, here is it now, published. Confusing much?

xx

Mulch madness!

On Saturday we purchased 3/4 of a cube (cubic metre) of composted bark mulch. Wow, that was a lot of mulch for $48!  I'm not a fan of pine bark, especially on cottagey gardens, but this is very fine in texture.

Firstly, I weeded every garden bed which took me a while as I'd had very little time to spend in the garden lately.

Above is the "before" and the "after" is below. The freesias blooming down the side of the driveway at the moment are so beautifully fragrant. The tall, pale blue ixias at the back will be out soon.

Above (before) and below (after) of the bed out the front where I have just planted my dahlias. That's garlic growing along the back. It is such a dry area so I'm hoping the mulch will help.

Before and after of my hydrangea bed. They're cuttings from last year and I'm excited to see flower buds appearing. Yes, I know I should really pick them off so the plant grows more but we'll just see...

Before and after of the new-ish bed out the back. The stock and spring bulbs are out and there's cornflowers, foxgloves and hollyhocks on the way. Excitement plus!

Before and after of the bottom part of the same bed as above. I'm trying to be patient while my new roses grow here. I can't wait to see them.

Phew, that was a lot of work! It now looks so neat and tidy but boy, did I have lots of sore muscles!

Look at these cute fellows that came home with me the other day. Such a beautiful pale blue with dark purple. Sweet!

Hope you all are having a nice week xx

Friday Flowers on a Saturday

I couldn't get pesky blogger to upload photos yesterday so here are my flowers for Friday on Saturday! These are my pansies from the front garden. I've always loved pansies - they're like happy little faces.

The one above is massive - as big as my palm!

The ones above are cute as they've got sweet little whiskers.

A lovely miniature yellow rose has snuck into the picy above.

I did sneak off to the hardware stores today to check out plants and came home with a few herbs, a pretty clematis and a new blue pansy!

We got a load of mulch so I have been a busy bee weeding and mulching the whole yard. Photos to come. Hope you are all having a nice weekend too xx

I have lots of stuff

To say that I have been a bit overwhelmed at all the stuff I have had to unpack and sort in my art room would be a bit of an understatement. I have so much stuff! How on earth I ever fit it in my tiny apartment where we lived before Molly's Maison I'll never know.

So many books, piles of fabric, odds and ends.

I really am trying to get organised but you know when you go to tidy up you always end up with more of a mess before it starts looking ok again? I'm at that really messy, disorganised point in my re-organisation. *sigh*
But, the upside is that I have been rediscovering some really nice things...

Above are some very pretty old French beaded flowers and below is a length of stunning sparkly trim that I thought would be very "Collette Dinnigan" on a pretty dress someday. It has hundreds and hundreds of seed beads, sequins, pearls and paste gems. I love sparkly things :)

What more treasures might I discover?

Well, I'm off to watch the Block on tv. Why is it when I am so over renovating do I enjoy watching other people do it on tv? I really do feel their pain.

Have a good evening everyone xx

Beach fun

It was such a nice morning that Molly and I decided to go to Kingston Dog Beach for a play.

"C'mon Mum, throw that ball you have hiding in your pocket".

What a sight!

She had a wonderful time but unfortunately lost her ball in the water (it had fallen apart and sank to the bottom). So, a quick rub down and then shake off excess sand in Mum's car (yay). 

 A nice start to the week. Hope you all have a good one :)