Australia Day

Australia Day was a hoot!

This was our little set up, a big umbrella to shade us from the sun, then later from the wind, we marked out our spot with little Aussie flags.

Very Patriotic...Red, white and Blue!!

 

All dressed so summery, in fact all quite vintage-esque...the gals in frocks, AND the guys donned Chesty Bonds and Gingham! We'll forget that back then Bonds T's were probably only undies because they are as casual vintage-esque as the Mr will go :)

We fanned, relaxed, chatted, listened to swing, pity the batteries began to die in our radio because we had planned to have a dance or two when the sun went down.

 Ate SUCH yummy food, on fun 50's plates!

Marinated Mount Barker Free Range chicken drumsticks, pasta salad with plentiful garlic, basil (off my bush at home) and truffle oil from Manjimup WA, and a Mediterranean salad with feta from Margaret River WA. Very patriotic home grown food!

 

Miss Sarj made the most amazing Raspberry Pie with cream, fabulous Red Velvet Lamingtons (you MUST see inside these babies) and Anzac bikkies, OMG Soooooo Yummy!

Look at that vivid red lamington!

 

 

All of our fabulous sewing, making Kanzashi flowers, we lay out pieces of fabric all over the grass at Heathcote to starch them, people must have thought we were mad!

Just like I said it would be, sewing and a glass of red!

 

Folding Funky Fabics

 

• Ferals (the rat bags behind us) :)
• Flags
• Flip flops (for the sake of alliteration, "thongs" otherwise)
• and Flowers
  

Laughing

 

Candy necklaces, sunburn and silliness!

 

Was such a lovely day, great food, great wine, great music, great friends!

 

all ending in FIREWORKS!! Oh and more PIE!

 

Check out more at Sar's Blog, Her Travel Romance!

Tsumami Kanzashi Flowers

                                   
Now whilst on the very complex search for the right scanning, photocopying, printing, SD plugging-iny downloading things (of which I later found was called a "multi-function printer") I stumbled apon the greatest gadget of them all...

This fabulous little thing is a memory card reader. The wonderful part about it is, the SD card goes straight out of your camera, into the little slot and then plugs right into the USB port completely ruling out the need for me to buy a $200 multi-thingy-me-bob. Apon my smug return to the store I shall be choosing the $50 scanner/printer as this $10 gadget is working a TREAT!

So NOW I can show you the kanzashi flower class...

You start off with little squares of fabric which are starched to stiffen them...then you fold them all up...there is different folds for different flowers. I'll do a tutorial if you'd like! Then pin them all up.

You can have as many petals as you like. You then cut them across where you have pinned them.

Then thread a needle and thread through the bottom middle of each petal, then pull them all together, tie it up and.....

DONE!

Then you just decorate them with buttons or what-not! I've got mixtures of vintage and modern buttons. You can put them on gifts, hair accessories, brooches, they are very quick to make once you get into the swing of things.

Now these are made out of old scrap material so the folds aren't as precise and are a bit "chunky".

Kanzashi Elsewhere...

Smitten Kitten makes amazing looking flowers out of vintage silk scarves...

So come Australia day, we shall be sitting in girly frocks with big sun hats, bare feet in the grass, fabrics sprawled across the 50's wool blanket (which will double as warmth for watching fireworks!) sipping wine and making pretty blooms for summer hats to winter coats. Lovely!

Current LOVES: fresh pumpkin bread, flicking admiringly through old Cath Kidston catalogues, self taught guitar lessons via Google searching!

Current reading: The 4-hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss