Colourful weekend

This weekend was filled with colour.

 Beetroot and quinoa burgers using this recipe.  Delicious, filling and nutritious. We ate them with labne and salad from the garden.

Cutting vintage sheets and pillow cases into fat quarters for the vintage sheet swap over at Green Tea and Red Nails.

Playing on the lawn in the warm winter sunshine.

Multicoloured lunch with friends. Green broccoli and white carrots from the garden (with walnut and coriander pesto), green lentil and capsicum salad, twice-cooked eggplant salad and red salad with beets, tomatoes and red onions. Served with homemade sourdough bread. There was also pumpkin pie but I forgot to take a picture.  It was good though - home-grown pumpkin, eggs from the girls, cream, orange zest and spices.

 A new patchwork project from this book.

Harvest Monday July 25

It's been ages since I've posted about Harvest Monday. The garden is actually pretty good right now, and we are picking something most days for dinner.  Anyway, here is a round up of what's growing in our cold, damp Melbourne winter.

Daikon radish and turnips.  These were grated and quickly stir-fried with some brown mustard seeds, ginger, coriander and lemon juice to go with Aloo-Gobi.

Rainbow chard, always so pretty in the garden, grows like a weed and is good for you. 



Last of the capsicum, more turnips, celery and  sprouting broccoli.

This isn't my harvest, it's from the food swap a little while back but it was too good not to share.  Beautiful grapefruit, chokos (haven't tried these yet, anyone know what  to do with them?), passionfuit, parsley, coriander, basil-mint, curry leaves and kale.  Must think about adding some of these herbs to our garden.

For more harvests pop over to Daphne's Dandelions.

I heart op shops

I meant to spend more time in the garden this weekend, really I did, but instead MMSTL and I re-arranged the kitchen and decided that we needed to fit a couch somewhere for lounging and socialising and the like. So we walked to the  op-shop  at the end of our road and found this.....

A perfect sized couch in near-new condition for $60.

We also found these funky, and comfy olive green 70's dining chairs to replace the worn out bum-numbing ikea ones that we had before. We scored seven of these for a great price especially as most of them are in near-perfect condition. 

A vintage sheet (yes, another one but in my defence I do have some sewing projects in mind).

This funky plate.

And these leather boots - just in need of a bit of polish.

Because we only live down the road from the op-shop we borrowed their trolley to move all our treasures back to the house.  Up and down the road, with sofas and chairs on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

The kitchen is now transformed and we have many more comfy places to sit. And I have a new pair of boots to wear to work tomorrow.

Linking up with Flea Market Finds at Her Library Adventures.

Weekend

Baking sourdough



Fresh eggs for breakfast: the girls are laying again.



Admiring the pea flowers in the veggie garden

A new sewing project

Picking camelias for the mantelpiece

I hope you all had a lovely weekend, whatever you did.

Sewing Simplicity 3835

I finished the quilt top and have decided to take  a little break before I do the back and quilting.  It's been fun but my eyes have gone a bit funny looking at all those squares.   That's not to say that there is no more sewing..and I will finish the quilt soon, I promise.

Browsing the blogosphere I found some really nice versions of the top and dress from this pattern - like the ones here and here and was lucky enough score one from Ebay in the US. The pattern is out of print and difficult to find. In fact, I was  outbid on the first pattern that I tried to buy but the nice Ebay seller emailed me and offered to sell me another one that she had because she knew that I wanted it. Yay!

This was my first attempt at making  a top so I started simple with the View C, top but adding some darts in the back from the dress. I picked up the fabric from the op shop  and I think I like it. Maybe a bit too curtain-like?  I can't decide.  Anyway, it came together OK,  I took my measurements and cut out the size 12 which was bigger than I needed because I ended up taking the sides in quite a lot and it is still quite loose. Mind you, the sleeves fit OK. Next time I'll cut out the smaller size in the body part and leave the sleeves in the bigger size.  the only other tricky part was getting the elastic through the casing. I didn't leave quite enough room and had to really pull it through with a bit needle. I enjoyed making this. Next  I'm going to have a go at the dress but with the elasticated neckline - those neck pleat things look way too complicated for my newbie sewing skills!  If you have made this pattern how did you get on?