embroidery.

embroidery is awesome. 
it is also acceptable at any age. i promise. 
not only does embroidery have to be frilly floral old school- these days it can be anything you decide you want it to be. 
just to prove it to you, pinterest has very kindly allowed me to find these wee beauties. 

some of these designs would be super simple to pull off and they look super effective.

also because i freaked out when i read this, i'm going to freak you all out. only 12 saturdays left until christmas day.
and i will leave you with that cherry thought to ponder. 

(maybe you could all start fine tuning your embroidery skills for chrissy pressies?).


 

spring

officially spring is here. so why not spend all day inside baking and sewing? (the sun has come out and i regret my plans that include baking and sewing).

so instead of wowing you all with beautiful photographs of my beautiful flowers, i'll instead wow you with some beautiful material. (just a side note my flowers are no longer beautiful because i have a puppy and had some rain. both of these things have made my flowers unbeautiful).

i have had a request to make some wheat sacks for an amazing cause and this material is one of the options for this project (will have more information for you on this soon). it came with a lot more beautiful materials (which i will keep a surprise). all this material arriving also added to my weekly joy of mail time, (which i discussed with you in an earlier post).

for me spring also means lambs, calves and docking. and feeding lambs and calves. these can be enjoyable events. however in the past couple of days in the rain feeding lambs and calves is not an enjoyable event (however i will not complain and instead will congratulate those of you who are feeding a million compared to my five).

beautiful weather is another added bonus in spring. like this afternoon. (officially scrapped collecting firewood off the daily list). it inspires me to get the gardens looking grand, stock the fridge with cider, and warm up the bbq and find some friends to enjoy it all with me. (i do have friends- just need to lure them here is all).

alas i will keep this plan in mind and in the mean time get on with some sewing and general domestic tasks and enjoy this springness from inside...

night owl

sorry for the late night blog post,
but i am home alone tonight, and instead of imagining the noise my dishwasher is currently making is someone outside the house i will instead immerse myself in blogging. and online shopping (whoops).

living in the middle of nowhere (or as someone pointed out to me the other day more like the end of nowhere) i sometimes worry that i will miss out on what is cool. thankfully i have a younger brother and sister (they're cool) so sometimes (maybe a lot) i look to them for inspiration. 

also the internet helps. there is a lot of cool stuff around at the moment... it's just finding it all the way out here. thankfully i have friends that steer me to places where everything is the best.

for instance: http://collected.co.nz/collections/living
please go to this website. it has a tonne of cool things. especially these radical duvet covers:

and this amazing wall paper:

now we can all envision our houses with 'cool' bedding and wall paper. (also check out the candle sticks... these may be in my shopping cart already...)

if only

if only i lived at urban outfitters.
if you have not heard of urban outfitters, or have not paid their website a visit- do it. although schedule a free hour or two to do so. 

http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/index.jsp

aside from pinterest and facebook and etsy, urban outfitters is where i spend a lot of time (when i'm internetting). 
nz is a beautiful place but sometimes finding the most amazing things involves either a. spending a lot of money, or b. everyone else having it too. urban outfitters takes care of such issues. they have the best things, and we don't all live in america so that works too. 
here is my wish list. 

one day soon i'm going to decide on exactly what i want and head to the checkout and then count down the sleeps until my package arrives... mail is not a mundane daily event in my life you see. i have to travel to get our mail and usually if we leave it long enough there is mail for me (not just bills). so mail collection is high on my list of exciting activities.
other exciting activities include working in my new office area. i am super enthusiastic to get things done in there. but i have already made it messy. perhaps urban outfitters have some grand storage solutions?
 

workspace.

after telling you all that i was going to have this done last thursday... one week later.... i have moved all my bits and pieces into my new workspace/room.

it is such a nice feeling being in a room that's bright and has some room for you to get creative in... it may be just the motivation i need to get creative and stop playing constantly with rosie...(maybe). 

unfortunately it took me most of the day to sort the two rooms out so i'm looking forward to what i can get up to in it during the weekend.


the other thing on my weekend list is my garden (no i'm not 80 and it is perfectly fine to be into gardening at my age....). i am madly in love with spring and spring time flowers. especially freesias. they smell ridiculously good. so with some garden commitment this weekend not only will you be able to smell freesias in my garden you will also be able to see them.


 
 

a new form of distraction.

meet this wee critter. her name is rosie and she is the thief who takes all my time. 
she has already managed to induce parental guilt as i leave her to head to work. 
and everything i plan to do inside is quickly put aside for a possible outing with rosie.
and shes far too cute. today she slept in her food. (i feel like a new mum filling you all in on such details). 

aside from rosie being new, during the weekend i managed to acquire a new desk for my new office space. it is just what i wanted. a large trestle desk. but (again with the puppy) i want to spend my every spare moment with rosie..... so my desk is still in a box in the hallway. i also found a new lamp. which is also still in a box. but i may put that up tonight....  this weekend i shall have some photos up for you. (maybe some more of rosie also).

tea towels.

just because we are potentially about to lose the shield... i've decided to blog instead of watching the rugby.
and i also uploaded the tea towels (finally) onto felt!

in my house i have a draw of tea towels, and they are separated (not physically- just in my mind) into two groups. group 1 dries the dishes and deals with the likes of getting the roasting dish etc out of the oven. group 2 comes out when other people are in my kitchen, or when i'm feeding such people muffins, or something else that needs to be wrapped in a tea towel. 

if you are after some tea towels (i'll let you chose your own groupings) then have a looksy on my felt page (http://felt.co.nz/shop/rachydee), as these tea towels and some others are waiting for you...

  as well as uploading to felt i also undertook some bow making- using printed paper, such a simple amazing idea. allows you to print whatever pattern you feel like. heres my bow making from today:

will make sure i let you in on how to do this asap.. is very useful!

hope you're all having a glorious weekend. (despite the fact that hb just lost the shield..)

where thursday ended.

i do believe earlier i told you i make unrealistic lists to complete on thursdays... well not wanting to deter from routine i did not get anywhere near the end/midway of my thursday list.

i also mentioned i would have something up on felt for you all.. however this is where my thursday fell apart: we lost our internet connection. living where we do (literally in the middle of nowhere but by the sea), we should expect such interruptions in our power and our internet connection- however our internet is usually amazing. and on my list were many a thing that needed the internet. like felt uploads. seeing as i did not get my limited edition secretive things up on felt i will tell you all about them here.. and then in the weekend when i again have time and internet (hopefully)(obviously it's back now) you will be able to view these things on felt.

the other weekend i found some glorious material. of deer and fox silhouettes, and some neon-amazing-ness. out of these i have constructed sets of teatowels... i know a teatowel is not an exciting item, but these ones are. unfortunately there is no way to gather anymore of this amazing material, hence the limited addition-ness. so this weekend keep keeping your eyeballs peeled and i really do hope i have them up for you! (that's the pile of them in the photo).

and as for my work space move... i constructed a bookcase. does that count? officially the day hasn't ended though so there is still a chance this gets done...(it seemed to slip down my list). so when there is something worth photographing i shall! 
i did however photograph these bibs which are heading down to the bay...

hope your thursdays were more productive than mine.

why i like thursday.

thursday is a beautiful day.it is the day i have at home. on thursdays i write myself unrealistic lists of all the amazing things i would like to do. thankfully today it is raining so my list no longer needs to contain all of the things involved with outside (bar feeding the lambs and calf...unfortunately rain doesn't affect their appetites). 

today i plan to move my work space. i currently have everything jam packed into a tiny little room. this means when i go to sew i take over the dining room table instead. and then i have to put it all away again. so today i am swapping the tiny room with one of the spare bedrooms. i will photographically document my progress for you later in the day.
today is also the day i get some new (limited edition) items up on felt... so keep a watch out here> http://felt.co.nz/shop/rachydee

hope you all have a beautiful thursday.

welcome

why hello and welcome to my blog

a place where i will share with you what i have been up to with rachel d. and other creative-ness.
my aim is to keep you updated as regularly as possible. 

do look around... soon there will be more to look at.

rach