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25.01.2022 Making Mobiles During March, I took part in a workshop to learn the technique for making mobiles. You know, those fascinating hanging ornament thingies that move around in gentle breezes and no parts seem to touch or clang into any other parts. Two reasons for doing this workshop. Firstly, I wanted to add a skill to my growing crafty things I like to do. Secondly, I wanted to add to my 6 Months of 60 events where I am choosing to undertake activities I would not usually do. ...Goals achieved. A small group of women met at the Pear Shed Gallery in Parson’s Bay Nubeena ...quite literally just across the water from our home. Claire, our lovely instructor, took us through techniques and ideas then we moved to the hands-on component and made our own mobile. Interesting to note that a mobile is constructed from the bottom up, the opposite to what I had thought would be the method. We had been asked to bring along some items we would like to make into a mobile. I have always loved the look of using old cutlery for various art forms. With a plethora of dessert spoons on hand (mostly purloined from staffrooms across the country) I asked the wonderful Graeme to drill holes in the handle end. The following photos don’t do justice to the beauty of a moving mobile, with each suspended item swinging silently in a gentle breeze. The trick is to construct the mobile so each piece swings and moves but DOES NOT touch any other piece. I finished early so selected some items that Claire had brought in. Not bad for a quick piece, Thinking about what I can do next. Cheers, thanks for reading. Julie

25.01.2022 What a wonderful Sunday we have had. Sleep in, coffee and toast followed by a short walk with our Charli girl down to the local jetty....she loves sniffing the smells on the seaweed washed up on the sand and rocks. Time spent in the garden is always satisfying to turn chaos into order. While out mowing I thought I had run over a blue tongue lizard, luckily the grass was long enough that he escaped the blades unscathed and dawdled off to the wood heap. I know Dad was not a fa...n of Coca Cola but i couldn't resist this can......and he would have loved our view, chooks, vege patch and dog. I feel you here with us everyday Dad. Delicious fish and chips from Salt at the Pear Shed for a light lunch. Light rain has settled in...good for soaking the soil and filling up the water tanks. We have headed indoors, while Graeme catches up with the cricket I'm baking chocolate cake and pitting cherries ready for a black forest cake to take to school this week. I'm also learning to crochet with 2 lovely new friends teaching me and and another friend. Cannot believe what a wonderful life we have in our part of Tasmania......fabulous decision of ours to make this life change. Bucket list item ticked off.....living with a water view.I Ahhhhh, paradise. have a great December everyone. See more

22.01.2022 Hi everyone. Haven't posted in a while, just been busy and a little bit lazy. Also I now have a full time teaching job for 10 weeks with the possibility of further work. Most of the work is on the school farm, so that has been a great learning place for me to pick up skills involving animals, feeding, building shelters, bottle feeding calves and lambs and being spat on by alpacas. Things have slowed down a bit on our place. Graeme is closing in the carport to make a weatherp...roof area......initially to build the kitchen cabinets....hence the new kitchen is on hold for a while. Everything depends on something else being done. It just never ends, but still we love where we live and what we do. Can't believe how lucky we are. more info and pics to follow....gotta get the dinner on to cook and get some school programming done Cheers and keep the comments coming. See more

20.01.2022 Productive day in the kitchen. Rhubarb/apple jam, rhubarb syrup for cocktails, rhubarb muffins. Plus rhubarb mix catching Wild yeast ready to make rhupagne.

18.01.2022 hello everyone, as you may know i am moving to Tasmania before Christmas to start a new life on a small property and being the 'Good Life' of sustainability. follow me here, or follow the link to my blog at http://robbins.life

16.01.2022 Hello dear people. I keep forgetting to write posts, lazy me. I have always intended to write something on a Sunday night but as you all know that hasn't happened. So here we are, more that half way through April 2020 and the world is in lock-down and social isolation due to the COVID 19 pandemic. We are all tired of keeping our distance from friends and family, no friendly hugs in greeting. I am missing my friend hugs, but feeling so fortunate to be in this isolation life w...ith my husband. I cannot imagine what people who live alone are feeling. It is quite apparent that we, as humans, were meant to thrive on human touch. The staying at home regime has had some unusual effects. firstly I am sleeping a lot more, but feeling very tires. I don't have an appetite for food, but quite readily tuck into loads of junk food. Go figure. Hubby and I have taken on some big tasks at home, and I will be sharing those in separate posts. as a quick look at what I have been doing I am attaching photos of some jigsaw puzzles that I have completed. Cheers everyone, #stayathome and stay safe. See more

16.01.2022 i couldnt add these pics to my post so here they are by themselves.

14.01.2022 Busy day today despite the very windy weather. Nearly blew the chooks off their nests, but we managed to collect 8 eggs today. Soon we could be getting 17 a day. We live in a perfect part of the world.

12.01.2022 Tonight i ticked of a 25 year bucket list item. I have had a dream of creating my own weird and wonderful craft items to sell at markets. I have been playing around with different crafts and now building up stock to sell soon at upcoming Christmas markets. I also ordered my business cards......with a name i chose 25 years ago....Kajenda Kraft. I am so excited and elated.

07.01.2022 For a long time now I’ve been wanting to let you all know about our philosophy around the words. recycle reuse re-purpose... and what each of these means for us. We aim to recycle what we can but there are limits, as always, because various local government councils have different contracts with a variety of recycling companies. Therefore, our recycling is carefully thought out and the green wheelie bin is filled with items we can’t either reuse or re-purpose. Reuse glass jars have a multitude of uses such as making chia pudding, storing homemade chutney’s tea light holder re-purpose to us means creating a new use for old stuff. And we have plenty of old ‘stuff’ after renovating our kitchen and finding what has been left behind in various places by previous generations of owners. **The old kitchen cupboard doors are going to be sanded back, painted in bright colours and hung in the newly enclosed carport as decoration. **An old piece of down pipe has been given a fresh coat of black paint to cover the Federation green that is once was. The pipe is now a ‘flag pole’ to fly my rainbow banner in a colourful acknowledgement of marriage equality in Australia. **A major re-purposing task we have undertaken is turning the half size tennis court into our chicken coop/run and a hothouse for storing feed, germinating seeds etc. Alas the hothouse cover has succumbed to the strong winds here in Nubeena and pulled off its framework. Now it sits flapping in the slightest breeze and not at all waterproof or hot. The tennis court is an ongoing work of re-purposing that can take up a whole other post. Check in later for links to what we are doing there. Cheers for now and thanks for reading. Julie

05.01.2022 Hi there dear followers, As the end of another weekend closes in, I reflect on the wonderful two days that have just passed. Last weekend, the Buddha Sistas - aka Julie, Pauline, Sylvia and Denise - picked up a load of 2nd hand, used, new mosaic tiles/old plates etc. Today we got together and sorted out most of the tiles and selected some we want for individual projects. I'm planning a flamingo - so I got to pick over all the lovely pinks. My favourite colour. Denise is just... getting into the madness of mosaic.....little does she know how addictive it is....she will be trawling through Pinterest for ideas and pictures. If she wasn't a hoarder now, she sure will be in the next few months. Pauline is making an intricate table top....she's very clever and quite adept at the art of arranging tiles. Her table will be very bright. Sylvia is also a creative lady and has mosaiced a lighthouse onto an old surfboard. wow. So lots of sista time coming up and lots of interesting projects to undertake. Of course a sista gathering isn't complete without the consumption of food. Sylvia made amazing waffles, served with caramelized bananas/oranges, whipped cream ( thanks Pauline) and berries. Denise supplied milk for the coffees and we had a savoury treat of zucchini fritters. Not forgetting Saturday. A quick trip into Sorell, the nearest big town which is an hour drive away. Picked up groceries using the order online and collect in-store option. One positive to come out of the Covid-19 lock down. An afternoon gardening completed a lovely day. Sorry to say I didn't get any photos to share...to busy sorting, eating and chatting. Have a great week folks, cheers Julie

05.01.2022 Today's harvest from the garden. Yum. Rhupagne and rhubarb jam, tomato passata on the cooking agenda

05.01.2022 Chicken story number 1. about 25 weeks ago we fostered, then later adopted a chicken and 5 chicks. alas 1 chick disappeared, we surmise taken by either a bird or snake. So the remaining 4 chicks and mum have settled in very well. Now those chicks are well and truly adults, with 1 being a rooster whose crowing ability has come along leaps and bounds. He sounded like a teenage boy when his voice breaks. The first attempts at crowing surprised even him ( his name is Patrick Rafter - the chook house is built within our old tennis court). Patrick and the 3 girls - Sam Stosur, Jelena Dokic and Ash Barty - are living the good life with a lovely house for night time and a safe yard for digging and scavenging during the day. Mother hen - Evonne Goolagong- raised them well. The story continues however with recent additions to the chicken family.

05.01.2022 A Rough Week. both hubby and I were diagnosed with the 8 day virus. ( there's also a 5 day virus doing the rounds but we were greedy). So basically we have been sneezing and wheezing, coughing and barking, lethargic and lazy. Not fun at all. We seem to be on the tail end of things now, we should be as it is called the 8 day virus and I'm into day 10. So with Saturday's weather being reasonably nice we ventured outside and soaked up some vitamin D. While hubby tamed some of th...e jungle on the ride on, I sat at my craft bench ( it's really part of our old kitchen installed in the carport) and fiddled around. First off was 'blocking' a crochet star. Some of you might have read in a previous post that I am learning to crochet. I watched a few you tube videos and made a star. I'm sure crochet aficionados will point out all the mistakes I made, but I intend to keep my first attempt as proof that I can indeed improve on perfection. The blocking was easy. Basically you pin your work to a board and paint it with a clear drying glue to make it stiff. Easy. I have begun keeping styrofoam packing for this purpose. I located my bottle of PVA bought years ago for class craft only to find that it doesn't keep for years. Half a bottle was solid as. Damn. Plan B put into action. I decided to use Elmer's school glue, it is clear and therefore dries clear but in my humble opinion it doesn't not do the job as well as PVA. You can see the flip side of the star in my pics below. Second project was to begin a mosaic border around a small pot to be used for a succulent. I usually get impatient and just start gluing then decide the pattern and layout aren't right, pull off tiles and generally get into a sticky mess. This time I used my logic, took a deep breath and got to work.....slowly. I measured around the rim with a length of cord, laid it out straight and placed the tiles above. Bingo, success. I could play around with the layout until i was happy. It also made placing the tiles a lot easier as they were already in the pattern. Add glue to pot, place tile. Happy tiler. The next day, today, Sunday, and the weather is not so nice. A bit cold and raining...well the rain is nice. So i might venture to the 'craft corner' later on to trim excess glue and grout my piece. Happy Sunday everyone, thanks for reading. Julie See more