Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from June, 2017

Making coasters from natural tree branches!

When friends come back from holiday in places like Tasmania, they sometimes bring home coasters made from tree branches. I love them and have always been very envious of people who have them. While looking through a friends wood pile a few days ago, I spotted an older piece of wood about the diameter of a coaster and wondered if I could turn it into a set of coasters to go with our "rustic" more natural homesteading style? I asked for the piece of wood and was given bemused permission as the owner knows we don't have a fire place (yet) and bought it home. With a bit of help from the husband and his collection of power tools, I gave it a go. Heres what I did... My first attempt to cut the branch onto slices involved the pruning saw and I never got through the first slice. Its really hard work to hold a small piece of wood still while you hack at a piece of hardwood! Once the Husband realised what I was doing, he got out his power saw and set it up for me with a j

HELP - My pet has hurt a wild bird!

Since we moved to the Hinterland we have noticed the amazing and very abundant  birdlife. We are really enjoying seeing the tiny Yellow Eastern Robins, the curious Crimson Headed Rosella's, the noisy and completely unafraid Cockatoos, the bright red headed King Parrots and even the bold but boringly colour Shrike Thrush...  Yellow Eastern Robin Sulphur Crested Cockatoos  Crimson Headed Rosella Sleeping Tawny Frogmouth Now identified, Lewin's Honey Eater And so is our 14 year old cat... She is far more interested in the birds here than she ever was back in Brisbane. I thinks its because the Robins flit around in the front yard and come right up onto the windowsills and jiggle and twitch in a very eye catching and enticing way that push all her predatory buttons. Our cat hasn't caught one up here but with all the renovations and missing and left open doors as we fix up the new house, we found her outside yesterday half heartedly crouching, bell

How I recovered a old lampshade with gathered fabric and fringing!

I got given a set of lampshades about 15 years ago that I loved but are now a bit worn and dated. I did clean them and revamp them but as my décor changes (depending on what available at the op shops) I was finding that they don't quite fit with my current decorating direction! (that would be shabby opshop chic!) and when I spotted a piece of fabric that I fell in love with on sale, I just had to recover the lamps and then find accessories to match! I'm not so much of a sewer as a constructor and I tend to feel my way through a project with out too much in the way of exact measuring or cutting to a pattern! Here's what I did... The original lamp where you can see revamp number one with leaf skeletons glued to the inside of the lamp. Its plain when its off but have these lovely leaves when its on. First cut a length of fabric that will fit all the way around your shade a couple of inches too long and with a hem of a centimetre or so top and bottom. So a long re

Easy, cheap,good looking temporary fix for a broken window..!

When we moved into our "new to us" home a few weeks ago, we discovered the previous residents had left us a couple of windows that weren't entirely whole! While we had the "Great Wall of Boxes" up against them, we didn't realise that the cold night air was sneaking silently in through the holes but as soon as those boxes moved, we discovered that not only are (very attractive) light summer curtains not good at keeping the cold air out, but that the holes in the windows weren't helping either. They look like a stone from the lawn mower type breaks and whilst we can fix them, its just not an overwhelming priority right now as we sort out where everything is to go - and then of course where we put it when we need it! I wondered if I could use the clear packing tape that I had been using on the boxes as its so wide, but I knew that would look a bit uglier than I would like... and then I found an easy solution! Here's what I did... This window

Wow - A TEDx event near me!!!

The amazing people at the Helensvale library decided to hold a TEDx event and I applied for a free ticket online (you couldn't get more than one) and was randomly selected to be one of the only one hundred people to attend! The TEDx Stage at Helensvale Library So who is TED and what is a TEDx?? TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. Their catch phrase is "Ideas worth spreading" and they invite speakers on topics as diverse as Artifical Intelligence, building buildings based on fractals, conservation, racism, aultruism, autism and really anything you can think of. There is a TED website where you can watch videos of the various TED talks held all over the world and there are podcasts (audio talks) of all the TED talks and then there is an hour long hosted TED talk in a radio format that examines a topic that was covered by a number of speakers (a really good one was the seven deadly sins!) I tend to listen to the TED radio hour at work as one of my jo
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...