It's that time of the year again in Moreland...

Hard rubbish time that is. I have a love/hate relationship with it. I love the "hunt" for treasures, I often have a mental "list" of things I am looking for. But at the same time, I abhor the absolute waste of perfectly good items crushed in the collection trucks, and sent to landfill. Especially after reading the story on the front of yesterday's Age about the young couple fleeing their home country to seek asylum in Australia, now living on $6 a day for food, no furniture or belongings, and expecting a baby. I wanted to drive a truck around Coburg and fill up their house!
Why do people throw away furniture, clothes, books, blankets, kitchen goods, baby capsules, toys....??? Take them to the op shop, phone Diabetes Australia and they will come and collect, how hard is it to make a phone call & put your box of stuff on the verandah? Not much more effort than dumping it on the nature strip.
Ok, enough of my rant. I did manage to find some "treasures"... I threw out our old jogger trampoline -bought for $10 from an oppy about 10 years ago, fell apart at year- and replaced it with one from a nature strip last week. But the weird thing is that someone else took our old one from our junk pile today!
Best find- a little old fashioned foot stool- I have my feet up on it right now.The fabric was faded and the foam had turned to powder! And I completely forgot to take a "before" photo, bugger! But here is the revamped version. Foam from my friend & neighbour Holly, who offered an old cot mattress when I told her about my project, and a piece of fabric from a bag of bits from Rathdowne Remnants (so probably about $1worth). Suitably "retro" fabric really-





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Overdue sewing...

Last day of the school holidays and I finally got around to some sewing. I had promised to make the Jedikid a new pencil case for high school...and sewed it up today. Ready for term 2. Better late than never!


It is made from vinyl, and has 2 zips for 2 compartments - the main full size ( pencil case is nearly A4 in size) for coloured pencils, calculator, glue stick etc. - all the "extra stuff"; and the smaller front pocket is for the basics of writing pens, grey lead pencil, eraser etc. I think I matched up the red vinyl stripe ok! Just need to hand sew the zipper end inside - I was worried about breaking the needle when I put it together on the machine!
The J kid is quite happy with his design " it worked out better than I thought Mum, it looks really good". The only weird thing is - it kind of "inflates". You can easily push the air out, but sit it down flat & you can see it puff up again! Hopefully this won't be noticeable once it has pencils in it!

Back to school tomorrow, then hopefully I might have a couple of hours to do some sewing for me! Much easier when there is no one else home.

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Pom pom fun!

More pom poms, but bigger this time! I have seen patterns online & in craft magazines for giant paper pom poms made from tissue paper, which look great hanging outside. But what if it rains? Could you make them waterproof?


Yes you can! These are about 12/15 cm across, made from plastic tablecloths! I am going to go to school one lunchtime next term and teach the kids how to make them, so they can decorate the friendship tree with big, bright, colourful and WEATHERPROOF pom poms!

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