I am traveling overseas for the next couple of months so my normal posts will be on holiday too.

I hope to check back in occasionally.

In the meantime – you might like the chance to read back over some of the older posts. Enjoy!!

This week I played with a collab kit from MKC Designs and Sarah Jones. The colours were perfect for these photo's of the youngest Miss Munchkin's last birthday. It has the cutest elements with a lot of similar design to them but in many forms. Spoilt for choice!

The design is a template for the template challenge this week at The Digichick and is made by Julie Fish. The kit is called Cupcake and really was a treat to work with. There are way more cute elements too.

Late last night I received an email telling me I had a private message over at Shabby Pickle Designs….where I used to spend a lot of time doing their fabulous challenges before I started to hang out more at The Digi Chick.

Anyway the email had an interesting title.  "Psst". Which seemed a little strange to me – and the user name was not one I recognised. So I went over there and did a search on the user name just to be sure it was kosher.

Why – you might ask?

In the last two weeks I have had a couple of unfortunate incidents with spam at a couple of sites. Not either of the ones mentioned here though. One was in the forums and the other via a private message. Now I don't know what is wrong with people that they have to spread this awful stuff around. It's not like we are looking for it – if we wanted to there is more than enough of that trash out there. What do they get out of it? Is it the secret kick of knowing they gave some one a shock?

It is certainly not the site owners fault – I feel sorry for them. They work very hard to keep their sites going, family friendly and as safe as possible. But still these idiots with nothing better to do with their time seem to find a way in.

Ok – rant over.

However you can see why I took the precautions to check the Private Message – before I opened it. I will continue to do so.

Anyway in my search for the user name, which was legit, I saw my name mentioned as a thread title. That has not happened before. Which meant I had to look. I also read the PM.

I was very nicely surprised to find I had been made Shabby Pickle Designs Featured Scrapper of the week. They had picked a couple of my layouts to showcase. It is a lovely honour and I am very grateful to have been picked.

Apparently I get a prize at some point too.   Gotta love that!

Thanks Shabby Pickle Designs!

Remember my post about digital alpha's and the little sneak peek's shown. Well today was my turn to guest post on The Hybrid Chick blog and I can finally give you a full reveal of the project. It is a little index card notebook that I can use to keep all those prayer requests that come my way organised in.

Before this they were all on little scraps of paper.

Hope on over to The Hybrid Chick Blog where you will find a full tutorial on this project . Not to mention lots of great photo's showing how to make this cute little note book out of index cards, but also my first real successful endeavour with Modge Podge.

Don't forget to leave me  some love if you do and mention I sent you. You'll find lots of awesome projects there too.

We never really stopped learning over summer. One of the joys of homeschool is that you can learn all year round. We did slow down a bit and spent a bit of time on hobbies and other types of learning.

However it was time to get back into the more "structured" learning as summer is drawing to a close. My eldest Miss loves to write herself little notes when she is working (wonder where she gets that from?).

This little hyrbid notebook is just for her – so she has somewhere for the little notes to be corralled – and to help ease the transition "back to school".

Using my "frugal" found chipboard and some leftover notepaper scraps from another larger project this piece came together very quickly, easily – and inexpensively.

I had so much fun making the little wire antenna for the bugs and attached one bug to some twine for a bookmark. The alpha is raised on mounting dimensional tape.  It is Modge Podged on all the pieces to help with durability.

Those short leftover bits of Bind It All wire from other projects came in perfect for notebook too.

After far too long I am glad to say this wall hanging size quilt is finally finished. The top has been done and rolled up ready to baste and quilt for a couple of years.

I wanted to put piped cording on the borders but had never attempted it before. The task was daunting and for a while I could not figure it out. My good friend and quilting teacher had moved away before I could learn that technique.

Late last year she came out with a book called Quilting in the Lime Light. Fabulous book if you are after a clear concise "how to" book with both humour, and a little insight into the life of internationally renowned quilter Philippa Naylor.

Anyway, another dear friend had got it for me on a trip to Houston where she caught up with Philippa, who had just won another major quilting competition in the USA, and convinced her I had to have the book. I don't know what it took to do that as it wasn't released at that time. I am so so thankful to both Shirley for pursuing it and Phillipa for giving up her copy for me.

I am blessed with wonderful friends!

It inspired me to pull out some of my past projects and finish them off. So far I have done two this year. This is the second one – I still have to photograph the other one.

In the book there were the instructions and the clearest photo's to do the corded piping. I had the cord made already having done that years ago when the top was pieced.. Just never knew how to attach it.

There are two rows of the piping. The very fine green one surrounds the piece where the white meets the borders. The red which is a lot larger is attached to the outside edge of the border then the binding was added to that.

I can't say it is perfectly done but for a first attempt it is ok. There were a few lessons learnt in the attempt though.

The middle of the quilt is trapunto under the heart to give it real dimension. It seems to need something though. Perhaps this pretty schwarovsky crystal "bling" button?

What do you think?

When I left of last night this is where we were at – Bogged in sand.

There is however a lead in to how we ended up in this predicament on our way to the darkest point in the desert for the best view of the Perseid Meteor shower.

We had left the gas station following the fellow who knew where we were all headed. After driving for 94 kms and about an hour on the road he pulls over. He was using way points on his GPS to keep us on track.

Now the convoy of vehicles had been traveling along a busy major highway, rimmed by desert sand dunes and hemmed in by fencing. Every now and then there is a break in the wire for access to an overhead pass which is usually just a camel crossing area.

There is not a run off road or slip road like we would have back home – just a hole through the fence and a hard stand graded road.

He has missed it and we had gone a little way under and past the overpass. In true local style we turned around on the same side of the highway and drove back along the way we had come – facing the oncoming traffic. Most of which is going about 130+kms an hour. The other alternative was maybe driving another hour in that direction before being able to turn around again. And who knows how far to get back and turn around to the same point!

In fact is isn't local style really. They mostly just back up in the lane to get to the turnoff they missed. At least we had turned around and were staying to the side though still on the bitumen.

Anyway this was all fine though a little nervewarcking facing the oncoming lorries and speedy cars. As we headed back under the overpass it widens out a bit but you have to go off the tar road and inside the overpass support as there is not enough room on the part of the road between the railing and the oncoming traffic.

It was graded and would have been fine, except a large sand dune had been swept across and the slip side was covering the graded road. Even this would have been fine as long as we could have kept moving, however the car in front of us slowed as he traveled through the sand and we had to slow so much that the car just sunk in.

Hubbs is saying " I knew it, I just knew it".  DS11 is saying "Yahhooo – we're bogged!!".  I am saying "don't worry!".  Plus I love an adventure and always look at this kind of thing as part of the fun and experience.

We were with experienced desert trekkers, all had 4wd and some had winches. We were the only 2wd though someone was coming out in a Camry sedan.

The car behind us got bogged as well and all the others backed up. This allowed the 4wd that was stuck to gear down and be pushed out. Then they all took a flying run at the sand and moved around us. After that it was our turn.

Lets try and push it back out. Many hands make light work.

Nope! Now the other side was digging itself in further. Hubby had wisely stopped as soon as he felt the tires grab and had not kept spinning in the sand. Mind you, I took this photo after we had dug quite a lot away from the wheels

Let's put the tow rope under the front and pull it through.

Nope! Guess what? There is no tow point under the front of the car and no place visible to attach it.

Our intrepid leader goes back through the sand putting a fair bit of distance between the two cars. They attach two winch ropes to both back ends of the vehicles.

DS Jumps in for the ride.

The car is finally pulled free backwards.

This time forwards The Mr kept the revs up and moved smoothly over the same area and on to the hardstand graded road.

Everyone was so helpful – people we had never met pitching in and doing what was needed. Remembering too it was about 42 celcius even at that time of night. One guy even commented to me about how much fun it was and all part of the adventure. I am pretty sure he was the other one with the camera taking photo's.

If you look closely in the background of some of the photos you can see how close to the highway we were with all the large trucks going past. Literally right there.

We continued driving along that road for about another hour, trough many sand dunes that had swept across the road till we reached where we were meant to be. The munchkins could not get over how much fun it was to go slipping and sliding along in the sand as their dad guided the car forward.

It was sure worth it too. The heat cooled down out there and as we lay on a large quilt together under the stars we saw about 10 meteorites pass over head in the space of about 2 and 1/2 hours. The first one we saw was the largest and went right across the sky. Two or three others were just as large.

Unfortunately no photos – I am still learning my camera and it was just too dark out there to try and work it out. Especially as no one was using their light to try and get a better view of the Perseids. I have one snap with one star showing as a tiny blue dot and that is it!

I'll will leave you with a fun though slightly spooky one I took of dd with her torch. Just turned it on and pressed the shutter so not well composed….but it sure shows how black it was out there till the moon came up.