Simple project fun

 I wanted to make a special thank you for my SIL for hosting us last week, so I came  home to try to find some fabric I thought I had been given. Her lovely new lounge room has a brown sofa and a brown and teal rug, so I used those to make this little table topper for her. I had only one fat quarter of the teal fabric, but the stripey border fabric was a good lift to the whole thing.

 I had been wanting to make one of these 'self binding baby receiving blankets' ever since I saw them on YouTube from the Missouri Quilt Company. Today I had an excuse -so I made it in about 30 minutes flat, using two pieces of flannel I had found at different times in op shops. It feels luxuriously thick and cosy so I think I will remember this for any winter babies -in summer in Perth this would be not much use at all.

 We have our first crop of tangelos -these are a cross between a grapefruit and a tangerine, I think. I was sent a recipe for turning them into a curd like lemon curd -so here are two jars!

Finally we have been lucky enough to get a pile of mulch for free that is almost hiding the house! It came from mulchnet.com -and if you are in Australia you might be able to get some too! It is the end result of tree prunings and we have used this sort of thing before on our garden. Over the years the mulch has rotted down and made a thick layer of good humus rich soil on top of our gutless Perth sands.

Of course a pile like this gives us lots of exercise as we spread it. Here is a pic of our half-completed back yard. The mulch in the foreground covers a muddy track to the clothes line -we are so glad that we can now get there and back without getting dirty feet. We will gradually spread this mulch over our garden -it will suppress the weeds which are showing through now we have had a bit of winter rain, and put the garden in good stead for next summer.

I imagine there will be plenty of mulch left to offer to family and friends and freecycle too!