Home sweet home

March 20, 2018March 20, 2018 | poppypeach

The big news that made me so happy last week was the approval of my hubby working remotely in Australia. Now with all the plans moving along it was a hard decision to up and leave a job but now with this in the pipeline and a presentation from our architect in Melbourne shortly I am getting excited to be back in Australia. This illustration was found at the park after I took the kids for a walk as I could not sit still after my hubby gave me the news. Day by day I am patiently waiting for the green light that says now start packing and selling everything it is time to go. But until then I am enjoying myself here and having fun carving out my future career in education.

I was still on a balanced nutrition diet last week had me caving and wanting extra flavour in my food with sriracha and miso mayo. Tacos have carbohydrates that I do not want to be eating in the evening, so I turned Taco Tuesday into a bowl minus the taco of salad, avocado salsa and beer battered fish. I know my diet of no bad stuff, but hey it fitted into my macro plan for the day! The bowl on the right is smoked salmon on a kale salad with miso mayo and spring onions. I am finding with eating fish is helping me reach my protein limit to build muscle, fingers crossed I am doing this thing right! I love food too much to eat bland food all the time…

At Ventana School where I work we made some pipe cleaner dolls for the dollhouse the kids built, and here they are all ready to be sold at the auction.

Speaking of the auction my hubby and I had a lovely night out on Saturday night at the adults-only event with cocktails, wine and a delicious catered dinner by Opa! It was a game theme, so my outfit was my own interpretation of a Candy Land princess :D. It was a bit wacky but anyway it gave me the opportunity to wear the lovely raw silk vintage beaded jacket (from my fave vintage store in Mountain View, which is now gone!) with a dress I made out of FabMo silk pieces.

The quilt that is pictured was created with help by the 1st-grade class I help teach. A grandma of the students (who is a star quilter) designed and made the quilt, and it is incredible. It was won by the parents of the class and will be shared by the parents to travel with this cohort of children at the school. It is an absolute treasure and captures the spirit of the community at the school.

My daughter came with me to work today, and we had a fun time in the classroom together. She was a bit tired by the end of the day, so she did some reading when I was working with the kindergarten kids. She had a fun time with the 1st grade and enjoyed the tinkering with the kids at lunchtime and ate and played with them all which was so good!

After work, we went to visit the lovely ladies AKA the chickens at the ranch, and they have a new addition an Easter Egger whom we call chicken cheeks which is just beautiful and tiny. Apparently, these ladies lay different coloured eggs which are how they get their name. I cannot wait until she starts laying. I was so happy to spend time with the chickens where at one point I turned around, and the whole flock of standard hens had followed me out into the grass, I am so looking forward to having chickens of our own one day!! At the coop we now have 13 bantams and 10 standard chickens so that is quite a flock and they are all very entertaining, I am sure they remember the people they interact with and most especially whoever gives them the best treats like strawberry tops and kombucha!

A quick little Valentine gift

February 14, 2018 | poppypeach

With Valentine’s day around the corner, I had a bit of a task on my hands to make last-minute valentines for my Kinder and 1st-grade students. So here is a quickie tutorial on making these cute little wooden bead heart necklaces.

Supplies needed: a stash of wooden beads – 25mm (about 1″), watercolour paint, brushes, skewers, a tall mason jar, sharpie, concreters string (from OSH) and Mod Podge.

Paint your beads all the colours of the rainbow using a watercolour wash on each bead, use a skewer to hold the beads in place. When the paint is dry draw a heart with sharpie and seal with mod podge on aluminium foil. The beads are ready to be strung and given to the kiddos as little Valentine gifts from their teacher! A super cool and somewhat quick project, I did have help with quality testing from my 9-year-old daughter – lucky!

This is a super cute kinder card my co-teacher came up with using tissue paper squares, glue and then cutting the card to make a card for their parents.

These are observational watercolour drawings made by the 1st-grade class for a card for their parents – such beautiful watercolours created.

This was another kinder card using sequins, a sticker and a heart doily – I really love seeing what the kids make when given the opportunity to craft.

This is an invitation for making the paper plate heart sewing with yarn craft for the 1st-grade class. All you need is some yarn, paper plates prepped with a heart shape and a hole punch and yarn needles. This is the perfect craft to practice sewing with a large needle and ready punched holes.

And sewing last week with my volunteer class at Stevenson Elementary was making felt emoji keyrings – featured is one make by a 5th grader. We precut the circle and the kids can embellish whatever emoji they like from our emoji poster for ideas or create their own.

And I thought last week was pretty quiet with the 100th day of school – the Kinders bought in 100 of different things like coins, seeds, Perler beads, pom poms and these two with beads and little tiny felt houses. I remember when I did it with my kids it was 100 buttons stuck on some cardstock, maybe I was too overwhelmed with the two kids to be super creative at the time 😉

Again the amazing ramen recipe from Minimalist Baker and this time with a poached egg and seaweed – an absolute favourite at my place each week, especially in the winter.

This is the Japanese Pizza from 101 cookbooks with a watermelon radish salad with a side of chanterelles and homemade miso mayo drizzled over the top – such a divine meal for the mushroom lover.

And I thought last week was pretty quiet – checking over all of this it seemed like quite a busy week for me, oh and I got some sewing done on the weekend too as I was inspired by some love bird fabric I found at FabMo. It is so good to sit at my sewing machine again 😀 we have a break from school/work next week so time to organise the study/sewing room and do some sewing.

Relaxation at last

February 6, 2018February 6, 2018 | poppypeach

It is no wonder my lack of sleep is catching up with me now – it all started with staying up each night finalising my Case Study for my final assignment for the teaching period. Now that I am done this week it is such a weight lifted and I feel free for a month and I can catch up on other things that I have left behind!

The fun last week was the Super Blue Blood Moon which we woke up for at 5:30am on Wednesday morning – it was very early but so worth it just to see the red moon – incredible! I have pictures from the NASA Live coverage plus a couple of pictures I took with my phone camera and you can see the tiny dot in a sea of black!

Thursday we had week 3 of Arts Focus and it was embroidery and fleece pillows with a button and as our class has been working so well and completing their projects, my co-lead came up with the button tree blankie so the kids can have practice sewing buttons!

I was back at work on Friday morning and the kids found a freshly hatched monarch butterfly drying in the sunshine, it was just beautiful to experience – you can see the cocoon just above in the bush.

Come Friday the opening of the Community School of Music and Art School show was on display and work by Miss H was there so I dashed in to take a pic of it. This is her second piece on display with the CSMA over the last year and hopefully, we get her peacock pastel drawing back from the school soon.

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Saturday was a Ride with Lenny the Mountain View Mayor and Safe Mountain View and Great Streets were there to help out on the day and I found peeps who love Public bikes and here is mine in red, Janet’s in white and Tracy’s in Green – looking very Italian! We are all bike advocacy folks who enjoy our commuter bikes 😀

Sunday we finally had a family day of relaxation at the beach and enjoyed a small amount of time at the beach with a walk and a dip in the icy cold Pacific Ocean, it felt so good to be burying my feet in the sand and grounding with the earth.

The kids were hungry so we wandered to downtown Santa Cruz and it was so quiet and lovely – maybe because the Superball/bowl was on and everyone was partying with their big screen TVs and dip? Anyway, we were out and about and found this brunch place right at the end of the main drag with these delicious poached eggs on a couple of muffins with avocado and hollandaise sauce with a pot of Japanese green tea – now that is what I like and thank you, Santa Cruz, for being so cool!

Lulu Carpenter’s was a very lovely cafe with outdoor seating both on the main drag and out the back in a courtyard with a bunch of tables in the middle with students working away on their computers – I was glad not to be one this weekend! The range of teas was just divine and I really enjoy a good cup of tea I even had a decent cup rather than a mug to drink my tea which is refreshing for a cafe in America.

And for our next visit to Santa Cruz, the Museum of Art and History looks like fun – we missed an event on yarn bombing, these guys are speaking my language!!

A piece a Week – A Pattern Remix

May 10, 2016May 28, 2016 | poppypeach

Sidetracked is what happened to me last week – in a mass of projects I saw this beautiful fabric in my project pile and thought what can I make with this? Then a flash of inspiration came – why not combine your favourite top and skirt combination and see what happens? So I used the skirt of a favorite dress pattern of mine. For the top was a fabric a good friend in Portland gave me last time I visited. I really wanted to focus on the super cute birds in the print and used the Geometric Top pattern from the Burda Sewing Vintage Modern book – I pretty much wear the black version of this top every week to ceramics class and it can be layered with long sleeves and with its interesting cut it sits quite low and does not creep up when I am working on the wheel. This dress makes me so happy as yellow is my favorite color. Currently I am planning my wardrobe for when we leave the country to visit Australia in 4 weeks and it will be winter 😦 at least yellow is a happy colour!

Vintage chick fabric

The front of the dress has pockets – which I love

A V at the back of the top with a yellow fabric I found in my stash

This was going to be a Mothers Day dress but the day was far from what it is today, which is lovely and sunny! Yesterday by the beach in Pescadero the sun was hidden by cloud most of the day so I made this top in a wool to be worn as a layer. I like the way it turned out and it is a lot of fun with a short skirt and tights – an easy layering piece for a Sunday at the beach in California.

The geometric top in wool suiting

We had organized to meet our friends from Oakland in Pescadero for Mothers Day for lunch at Pescadero Country Store and after a feast we walked down to see the goats at Harley Farms. There were so many baby goats, way too much cuteness. After our 1 mile cruising walk we decided to go and hang out at the beach for a bit before heading home. Lucky for us we were there in time to see a family of whales swimming by in the shallows. We could see their little fins popping up out of the water and the air from their breathing holes – sweet! While we were at Pescadero there was a parade down the street celebrating the Portuguese community check out the mini horse taking these folks for a ride!

Dudes strike a pose – loving your mini horse!

We wandered up to Harley Farms to check out the goats as a tradition of ours for the many years we have been visiting Pescadero – no trip is complete without a visit to the goats! And we were in luck with seeing lots of baby goats and a trip up above the store to the hayloft where sat a huge table and chairs.

Just like being in Alice in Wonderland

As it was nice overcast weather we made our trip to the beach for a final farewell to Pescadero.

The pair of us on a rock – very rare photo op!

Missy finds clay and makes a cat

The cat closeup

Adding a bit of detail to the head

A bee in a poppy – one of my favorite photo captures

This guy found a whale bone – not really it is a stick!

A piece a Week – Patchwork Snakes and Summer memories in a Photo book

August 4, 2014May 28, 2016 | poppypeach

This week did not pan out as I had planned – instead of having a full day to design and create it was down to less than 3 hours on two days and around an hour the other two… I was being the chauffeur to and from the summer camp, two trips daily! After the initial shock of losing all that time, I had to plan those little blocks with projects that had a deadline such as my summer photo book – see the final product here. So that book had a deadline of Wednesday so I could get my $10 Groupon deal – which is just super as I do a book every year of our summer adventures. This year was exceptional with the time we had away up in Northern California. After that was all sorted, it was time to get ready for the rest of the week which was dinner with friends on Saturday night with a vegetarian lasagne to prepare and a fig tart for dessert, both turned out delicious and I am happy to be enjoying figs while they are in season at the moment! I think this was the third week in a row of making this tart – it still tastes so scrumptious!

After all the preparations for the cooking were done that left me a part of an afternoon and a morning over the weekend to do a little bit of sewing. I was inspired to make a patchwork snake as I saw it in this great book Minieco – I cannot wait to do more of the projects in this book especially the macrame which I have started, yet to finish… There are a lot of scraps in my craft room and as I am enjoying the quilting at the moment I decided to give this snake a go and see how it came out. I made one and then of course I had to make another one for child number 2! So far they are being road tested by the kiddos and we will see how they go after a couple of weeks and what I need to do to make them withstand the tests of time as toys!