Totally Tessa Tuesday

Not sure if my dog is interesting enough to do this every Tuesday so this could be a once a month thing.

I can't believe my precious girl will soon be 12.  If she was human I would be sending her off to high school soon, if not already.  Fortunately for me she is a fur baby and still acts like a toddler.

When I get home from work you would think she hadn't seen me for weeks.  She will jump up and down on me, and whinge and whine until I say hello.  The mere act though of petting her and saying hello is not enough.  No, she has to lick my nose.  She is not satisfied until she does that. 

For the rest of the evening she is happy to sit nearby me and let me do my thing.  At bed time though she gets all sooky and wants to snuggle up into my shoulder with her nose in my armpit.  It amazes me she can breathe.

I have her bed on top of mine but at the bottom.  While I am getting myself organised and prior to snuggle time, she hops into her bed.  I took this photo of her last week on my phone.  Anyone would think that she had run a marathon the way she is slumped here.

The flash of course disturbed her so the next photo she is giving the evil eye.  How dare you take a photo of me while I am sleeping!

Since mum was away for 8 weeks, Bo still thinks my bed is hers.  I go to bed before mum so Bo will come with me and mum will collect her later.  The problem with Bo is that as soon as she is on my bed, she curls up beside my pillow (after rubbing her face all over the sheets).  She just looks the picture of innocence.

What I'm Making Monday

I am taking a different approach to how I blog.  I want to blog more often but never seem to know what to blog about, and when I do have something to say I am not ready to post it because I want to put up photos.

Through blog hopping I have noticed that people have set aside days for specific things so I am going to try and do that.  I would love to know if there are any other suggestions that I can make this blog that little bit more interesting.

Today is all about what I am making.  No photos this time but I promise that I will have photos each Monday of the progression of what I am making.  I have a number of things on the go, as usual. 

A while back I won a jelly roll from the Fabric Patch.  I love this store.  Linda is very helpful when I have a question.  When I won the jelly roll I chose the fabric Birds and Berries by Lauren & Jess Jung (pictured below).  The colours in this are gorgeous. 

I am relatively new to quilting and had no idea what to make with my jelly roll strips.  A google search led me to the Missouri Quilt Company.  They have a lot of really good tutorials.  The woman who does the video speaks clearly and explains things really well.  One of the tutorials is called the Jelly Roll Race Quilt.  It was perfect for what I wanted to do.  I have loaded the video below so that you can have a look.

I have stitched all the jelly roll strips together so far and now I just have to do the backing.  I am also thinking of doing some applique on it as well.  Maybe some little birds. 

Around the same time I won the Jelly Roll I also purchased some precut tiny squares of Basic Grey's Fruitcake fabric.  It is a christmas fabric that is more earthy than bright.  I am hand sewing hexagons with this fabric. I will tell you more about this later as there is a cool technique involved.

Finally, my friend is due to have her first child.  I was going to make a quilt for her but she said  she would prefer pram toys as she had already bought a quilt set.  This quilt set is jungle animals so I set out to make those same jungle animals as pram toys.  Suffice to say that after trying to make a small zebra yesterday I have decided not to do jungle animals.  Think I will make some octagon balls and put rattles in them.  I will post a photo of the zebra once he is stuffed.  He is cute but I just don't think it would work as a pram toy.

Finally

Before I give you my good news, I think you had better sit down.  I don't want you to fall over and hurt yourself.  You may also want to make sure that someone is present in the room with you, phone in hand ready to call your emergency hot line in case you have a heart attack.

Are you ready?

Seriously make sure you have taken life saving precautions!

Ok here goes ...

For a few years now I have had an Etsy store that is full of nothing.  Nothing unfortunately is not a good product to sell and therefore was not going so well.  I blame the economic downturn personally.  Well guess what ...

I FINALLY STOCKED MY ETSY STORE

Are you ok?  Is there a need for an ambulance?  Do you need ice?  Would a paper bag help?  I know shocking isn't it.

On the right hand side of my screen is a link to my store.  It is called Art Lore. Now my aim is to keep it stocked.

I am so happy.  I finally accomplished something.  Big grin and happy dance all round.

Now onto my second finally.  Yes there are two.  I have finally uploaded my Liffy Falls photos.  Yes this is only the first photographic day of my week in Tassie, and there are still more to come for the first day.  This selection is images taken on the way there and once I got there.

On the way to Liffy Falls

 Apparently while I took this photo below, all three of the sheep in the above photo stopped and looked at me.  They got camera shy when I went to take their photo again.

 Loving the colours

We parked in the top car park at Liffy Falls.  This little bird, and I mean little, was flittering all over the place.  By the time my camera would focus he was somewhere else.  I am lucky I got what I did.  The first one is a little blurred but the second one is a perfect in focus shot of his butt.

 The walk down to Liffy Falls from the Top Car Park is a 20 minute round trip.  That is unless you are a mad keen photographer like me who is also majorly unfit.  The way down was fine, it was the way up that killed me.

 The walk down to the main falls is scattered with smaller ones that are just as beautiful in their own right.

 You will notice that some of the photos are of the same area but a slightly different view such as these two below.

Ok this is me being bad.  I have waited all my life to go to Liffy Falls (lived in Tassie 11 years and never once went) only to get there to find that the main viewing platform was under repair.  No I did not push the orange plastic out of the way.  It was like that when I got there.  I appraised the situation and deemed the platform safe (it was obviously the newer one), so a snuck on to get my photos.  I did not know my cheaky Aunt was taking photos of her naughty niece!

 It was worth the risk.  This is my photo of Liffy Falls.  It is a beautiful place.

 These following photos are also taken at the bottom of the falls.

 The rest of the photo's were taken on the way back to the carpark.

These are the Liffy Fall photos from one camera.  My other camera has a proper macro so I took macro shots on it.  I still have to fix them up to put on here.

I am thinking of putting some of my photos for sale on my etsy store.  What do you think?

Playing

What are friends for, if not to help you out of predicaments where you seriously don't want to have to pay for photos being uploaded to your blog.  Thank you to my wonderful, more techno advanced than me friend, that I now know how to resize my photos to a size that is free to post.  Yippee.

I recently got a new phone and have been playing with the camera on it.  Well not so much the camera but the apps.  I first downloaded instagram and dare I say it, I did not like it.  I then realised that a free program I use on my computer was available as an app.  I had so much fun playing around with it.  Below are some of the results with my gorgeous furbabies.

Just look at those gorgeous eyes of my faithful Tessa.  It is rare I get her looking at me like this when I have the camera.  She tends to look worried more than anything because I am trying to get her to look at me and she thinks she is in trouble.  In this one she wasn't aware of the phone.  It is perfect.

And then of course there is Bo.  What more can I say.  By the way behind Bo is a hint of the quilt I have been sewing.  It is draped over the lounge and Bo is on the arm rest (her favourite spot).

Janelle's Giveaways

Janelle is certainlly outdoing herself with all her freebies.  Giveaway number 8 revolves around Etzcetera Magazine and a club that is run from it.  It sounds like a great gift.  It is run by Kim Archer and is worth $99.  Janelle as done all the hard work and put all the links to Kims blog, magazine, etc so go to Janelle's blog and have a look for yourself.  I have purchased a copy of the latest magazine and it is full of so much information from paper craft to sewing to cooking.

Giveaway number 9 has got to be one of my favourites so far so it is only out of the goodness of my heart that I am providing the link to make life easier for you.  Considering that so far this is the one I want to win.  :)  I love Janelles designs.  They are so me.

I would put some photos on here of her work but I have realised that I now have to pay Picasa to allow more to be shown.  Grrrr.  I am in the process of deciding if I should pay the small amount per month that will give me so much storage I won't know what to do with it, or do I change blogs and start fresh elsewhere.  Many of my friends use wordpress but I found it confusing at first so I am not sure I want to go back there.  Better the devil you know kinda of thing.