Chicks and keets

 We've got baby birds! With the chicken themed party for Lily, I decided it would be perfect to get her some chicks... and then I got some guinea fowl keets instead.

Originally I was looking at silkie or belgian d'uccle chicks, but we've had quite a few eastern brown snakes around the house, so we picked up the keets in the hopes they'll help deter snakes when they're older. 

Turns out Lily doesn't really like them as they are very flighty even though they were hatched in an incubator. So a week later we got some silkies, because they're supposed to make great pets for kids...

And they're almost as crazy as the guineas since they were raised by their mums for the first week. 

They're about 2 months old now (I should get updated photos) and altogether in a chicken tractor next to the house, although I think the silkies have had enough of the guineas who run and fly around all day. Luckily we're building their big coop so the guineas will move into that once it's finished, and get them used to the older girls who they'll be living with eventually.

The plan is to build garden beds for the tractor to sit on, that way the silkies can fill them up using the deep litter method, and clean up any garden beds that need a refresh in the future. These little fluff balls will have an important job as well as being pets. Now we just have to wait and find out the gender ratio to decide who we're keeping - it currently looks like I've got three boys and three girls with no favourites to tip the scale.

Birthday bunting

 I quite enjoyed making this Christmas bunting and mentioned that I would like to make birthday bunting and I finally did, with the help of my mum.

Originally my thought was that I could just cut some stencils and paint the letters on, but mum said she could do the letters on her fancy embroidery machine.

The fabric is all from Spotlight with the triangles being poplin with a white cotton drill for the backing, and the trim is another poplin. The font I chose for the embroidery letters is Jared.

It was quite the process in the end and would have been far easier to buy a printed panel like the Christmas one was, but this is special and one of a kind. And just like the tablecloth I shared last week, I hope that it will be used for many birthdays to come!

Rainbow tablecloth

 I decided for Lily's party this year that I would make a bright rainbow tablecloth instead of buying yet another one of those plastic "reusable" ones, that haven't actually survived their first use.

I nearly didn't finish it, turns out I don't like slippery satin. It's impossible to cut straight and equally impossible to press the hems. While I did roll the whole lot up and throw it in a box, I ended up getting it out and finishing it. The worst part of it all was that I was hoping I would enjoy sewing satin because it was supposed to be my practice run for sewing a dress with it... obviously not happening anytime soon!

The rainbow satin is from Spotlight and the trim is from Temu. Here's hoping it will suit many birthday party themes over the years, and save us from needing anymore of those "reusable tablecloths".

Watermelons

 Whenever I go to Bunnings I obviously look at the plants, and I found a multipack of melons - honeydew, rockmelon and watermelon. We ended up growing them on a trellis made of fencing wire and conduit. Which was fine until the watermelons started getting big and heavy!

We successfully harvested these two once the caterpillars destroyed the leaves and started to munch on the watermelon skins - at least they didn't make it inside like they did with the honeydews and the only rockmelon. Luckily the chickens like bug infested fruit so they didn't go to waste.

I'll definitely grow watermelons again since Lily loves them (as do the chickens) but it won't be up the trellis again. And these were too big for our little family so something like Sugarbaby might be a better size.

I always find it funny how excited I get when I harvest something from our garden, but it's nothing compared to watching the excitement of a three year old when it comes to harvesting and eating the produce from our garden - or produce that my mum or our neighbours have shared from their gardens!

Bottle tree planted

 Exciting news, Ray got the post hole digger out so I could plant this bottle tree! Well exciting for me, especially after planting my blueberry in what is the hardest ground I've found so far.

This lucky tree even got a rock edge from the fire pit I've been disassembling. The mulberry tree that you can see in the background, just behind the trampoline hasn't been too happy so it will need to be moved, but I'll wait for it to go dormant in winter. Things just do not grow very fast here, the weather and the soil aren't ideal.

Fingers crossed it will be happy in this spot and will give some shade when it's bigger, I feel like everything I plant here is an experiment!

Leilani dresses

 For Lily's birthday this year we are doing a chicken theme, so I got some gorgeous fabric and the Leilani pattern from Vintage Little Lady.

The first one I made in the simpler version as a trial run in this cute bunny fabric from Audrey's.

I did find sewing the elastic back awkward so when I did the chicken dress, I left the elastic out until after attaching the skirt at the back. I just sewed the back panel in place between the channels for the elastic. After I had gathered and attached the skirt at the back only, then I added the elastic and topstitched the sides down. Then continued gathering and attaching the front and sides of the skirt.

This was the first time I have used pom pom trim and it ended up being a pain trying to use the zipper foot. But I found using this clear foot along with poking the pom poms under the foot using my seam ripper worked best at getting it to stay put!

Now that the dress is finished I better get started on everything else for her party!

Potted grape and trellis

 So I made a decision recently to only buy more plants if I had a place ready to put them. Then we went to Bunnings where they had a grape vine on clearance...

Now to be fair, I put it back, then changed my mind and went back to get it again before actually buying it. So then I spent the drive home trying to figure out where on earth I was going to build a sturdy trellis for these grapes. By the next day I settled on where I want them, and the trellis I'm planning... but that is really low on the priority list.

After some more research, I made a quick, rustic stick trellis in a large pot for now. Future plans are to build a trellis along the side of our house that gets full afternoon sun, and where we store a whole lot of untidy junk for everyone to see as they drive past! I'm thinking I'll have shade cloth between the house roof and the grape trellis so I can use that space for my orchids and ferns. When the grapes are dormant I'll grow peas on the trellis to keep the privacy and shade.

Until then, I'm learning how to care for the grape vine, and will be able to propagate using cuttings when we have their future trellis built.

Toddler wrapping paper

 Toddlers, well mine at least, love painting! I've been getting her to paint useful things as Ray is getting quite the stack of Lily paintings on his desk.

This one was just from a roll of brown kraft paper that I normally use as wrapping paper with some pretty ribbon. But this time I put blobs and swirls of paint on the paper (cut to size for the intended present) and let Lily do whatever she wanted with the brush or her fingers, then repeated with the next colour.

For the cards and envelopes we do the same thing, but let it dry in between.

The kids presents for Christmas were painted and stamped the paper grocery bags, and we have done the blob and swirl technique on them as well, but they weren't big enough for this gift.

A sun hat for myself

 I made myself a hat!

I used the free Set Sail Hat from Patterns for Pirates. I made the biggest brim size but ended up trimming a few centimeters off and finishing with bias binding. The interfacing was some old stuff I had at home sand ended up being rather floppy so I added extra interfacing and lots of top stitching. It's still a little floppy so I might trim another couple of centimeters off and see if that helps. Probably would have been smart to just buy what was recommended...

Anyway I'm really happy with it, and even happier that I don't need to keep replacing my straw hats that never last long and can't be washed!

An english mulberry tree

 When I went to visit a plant nursery, I was looking for maybe a mandarin or a few natives, I definitely didn't plan to bring home another mulberry tree!

Terrible photo I know, but this is an English Mulberry which has very different leaves to all my others... obviously I had to buy it! So I've got the cuttings from my black mulberry we had at our old house, the native mulberry and this new english mulberry.

And then Ray went to "Coles" and bought me a weeping mulberry for Valentine's Day! And yes he did go to Coles on his way home, I was wondering what was taking him so long!

Beetroot harvest

 Most of my garden has not been enjoying the heat, but thankfully the beetroots have done well!

The varieties I planted were cylindra and golden globe. Both grew well and tasted nice, but I got the cylindra variety thinking it would be easier and more consistent to slice.

Beetroots are actually pretty versatile, the leaves are edible so we used them fresh on sandwiches, and have used them like spinach in stir fries as well. Some beets were grated raw into our salads, and added to the pan for roasting, while the rest were boiled and pickled following a recipe by Emma on Kitchen Mason. I did the first batch with white vinegar because I didn't want to drive to the shop just for vinegar, and the second batch using brown vinegar. Now we're trying to wait two weeks before we do a taste test!

I did pull all the beetroot out of my garden bed because it was in need of a refresh, but I regret it now that we don't have any beetroot leaves for salads or beets to add to roasts! I have sown more seeds, and will be doing succession plantings to have a continual supply of beets ready for whatever we need.

Garden apron

 I made myself a garden apron! Because half my clothes don't have pockets which is really annoying when you're on acreage.

Of course I'm happy to finally finish my new apron, but nowhere near as excited as Lily is! I tried it on to show her and she was stuffing all her pens in the pocket - I assume it'll be full of 'pretty' rocks whenever we go outside.

This is the tutorial I followed, with a couple of changes. First, I cut the pocket front and lining the same size so I could keep as much of the print visible so I don't have the decorative trim at the top. Second I didn't have any D rings so I cut the tie piece 9" longer - I can just tie it in a bow, so definitely needed to add a few more inches.

And then I went and made an apron for Lily using the same fabric...

I used this tutorial, but when it came to sewing I found it easier to follow their video. I didn't add a pocket into the bib as I turned the skirt into one huge pocket! It is simply a second skirt layer with some hand holes cut out of each side, I finished the pocket edge with bias binding since it was a curve.

Versailles sunflowers & bees

 Well I've made yet another Versailles dress for Lily, so that's three of them in the same size - and there's still plenty of room for her to grow.

For the first two I used the full single ruffle collar so I tried the double ruffle collar this time. It looks so cute, but the lace I used was too thick which made it a little difficult to sew. My plan for extending this one in the future is to add a white band at the bottom and add a band of the same lace on top.

The fabric (which I could not remember buying) is a cute poplin from Spotlight, I found it in my box next to the sunflower fabric I was planning to use!

Flower pit

 My "flower pit" is the new trench for the septic that the previous owners put in before we bought. You can see in this post how it was just bare dirt with lots of weeds. It took me awhile to weed it and then cover it using a round bale of hay. Silly me forgot to take a photo of it in winter when my flowers were looking beautiful, so you get to see it now in summer after the winter flowers have all died off.

All the winter bulbs have died down, but there were freesia, anemone and sparaxis planted. The best performing were the petunias which are still going strong, the snapdragons were beautiful and a couple are trying to hang on. The paper daisies are still flowering well but the wind from all the storms is knocking them around and now the zinnias are starting to flower.

Not the best idea, but I cleared a row and scattered a mix of seeds, they're sprouting, but so are lots of weeds and I'm not familiar enough with my seeds (or the weeds here) to tell them apart.

From now on I will only be sowing one type of seed at a time, and will also sprout some in one of my self watering juice bottle planters on the windowsill. This way I can learn what the plant looks like vs weeds. Handy now, but also in the future when they self sow everywhere.

And as an added bonus, we have extended Archie's yard so he now has access to the pit which has helped with the wildlife eating my seedlings (and even the flowers)!

Planting chicken shade

 The chickens have a lovely spot under the gum trees, but unfortunately now that summer is here they don't get enough shade in the afternoon. I have hung shade cloth and covered their coop with a tarp, but it's not good enough. My next idea was using sticks and fresh murraya branches to create a lean to against their coop - and they're really enjoying that spot, especially when I put blocks of ice in there on really hot days.

My first attempt at planting in the chicken yard was this elderberry, but between the gum tree with a possum climbing it every night and the mice making tunnels underneath, it struggled along and eventually gave up. 

My second attempt is further away from the gum tree where I've started rosella seeds in one of these garden rings. Once they reach the mesh I plan to add a cage around it until it's a decent size, then replace the ring and cage with logs or rocks. 

At our old house I planted rosellas in a spot that had really dry sandy soil and they did great. Hopefully they'll grow just as quick here to give the chickens a cool, shady spot. I'm also planting them out the front of our house for some quick privacy. And if all goes well, there'll be lots of rosella jam in our future!

Eventually the chickens will have a permanent coop and run under this mulberry tree. Until then they get their very own little shanty town under the gum trees!

A-line with shoulder ties Moana dress

 Our little lady loves Moana so I searched and found some cute Moana fabric. The dress is from Jellyfish Kidz and was quick and easy to sew. All the pieces are rectangles so you can just use the cut chart - no printing or taping together the pattern! I did have to make the elastic channel a bit bigger to fit my elastic, so check that before you sew. 

It looks so cute on, but Lily doesn't want to wear it. I'm not sure if she doesn't like the fabric or maybe the bows on her shoulders are bothering her. If I make it again I think I'll use a lighter fabric, maybe poplin as it's a little stiff in this cotton.

Tulum shorts in gingham & flowers

 I finally made some of the LLK Tulum shorts for Lily, and she was rather excited for me to finish them after I showed her the pockets!

I didn't have the right size elastic so I just used 1 inch, and also did a 1/2 inch hem instead of 1 inch just because they looked a little too short when she tried them on. I did the size 3 so they're a little big around the waist, but they're staying up! 

Now to make a pair of the Styla Tulum shorts for me, or maybe I'll make them 3/4 length. The question is whether the pockets will be big enough to fit my phone!