Here is a quilt I made this week for a friend who has just had her sixth baby girl :-) 

Barb from Harmony Fine Arts was asking me about our winter today.  Yes, we're in the middle of winter here in New Zealand and have experienced several hailstorms and lots of rain in the last couple of weeks.  The sun is shining today, but it is very cold outside, the forecast for today is a high of 9°Celsius and it had been at least 2°C below zero overnight.  We have a lovely fire though and have just recently installed a heat transfer system which is designed to pump the warm air from the living room through ducting in the roof to vents in the bedrooms.  It works really well, our bedrooms are toasty warm at bedtime!  We're not so prepared here in NZ though with things like double glazing & under floor heating, so we probably feel the cold a bit more.

I thought I'd post a map of where we live here in the North Island.  We live in the town of Feilding (pop. 13,500), just north of the city of Palmerston North (population approx. 78,000). My parents live in the largest city, Auckland (pop 1.3 million), a day's drive north of us.  If it snows on the main route through called the Desert Road, Mum will have to take a detour when she comes to stay after baby is born.  We could travel about 2 hrs north to play in the snow, but it's something we've never done with young children...one day!

I hope you can spot Feilding!  It's in the lower central part of the island between Palmerston North & Dannevirke (which isn't as big as it's lettering suggests at a population of around 5500!).

This week's Sketch Tuesday topic is "Secret Garden" or something you might find in a garden.  Here are the girls' pictures:

Ainsley:

Emily:

Bethany:

Here is the Renoir picture for this week:

Chrysanthemums in a Vase.

Renoir, ca. 1884.  Oil on Canvas.

We have a book called "Colour Your Own Renoir Paintings" printed by Dover Publications.   The girls often copy these and colour them in, often cutting out the people and using them as paper dolls.  My plan for this picture is to make copies and colour them with oil pastels or pencils.

Click here to sign up to Dover samplers, a weekly sampling of their colouring books, clipart, paper dolls & more.

This week we actually did something with our Renoir picture of the week!  We studied Renoir's paintings four years ago. 

 Here is Bethany's page on ~ A Girl with a Watering Can ~ at age 5:

This includes a little narration about the picture - a good idea if the child is reticent to try copying the picture itself.

and this is her effort four years later at age 9 3/4.

Emily (8 1/2 yrs)  decided to focus on the watering can.

Ainsley's picture (age 5, nearly 6).  Evidently red was the colour of the day!

I have recently set up a blog for my nine year old daughter, Bethany, to post her stories. 

Check it out here.

Beth is learning to type and has done a lot of the typing herself.

I bought a big packet of calico at Spotlight the other day and decided to try making some simple tote bags for the girls.  I scoured the internet for free tutorials and came up with this one at super eggplant.  Here are the first three I made for the girls.  They chose their own decorations & Bethany made the yoyos (patchworker's name for the fabric puffs attached to the tote with buttons).

Then I modified the pattern a little and added a patchwork strip to this slightly smaller tote for a little friend's birthday present:

Then last night, I got really ambitious and started this more complicated nappy bag (diaper bag for those of you in the US!), using some of the fabrics I had for the quilt.  This was a little more complicated and involved padding which made some of the seams very thick, but I got there in the end!

it includes interior pockets...

and here's baby's pram all made up with the new quilt and nappy bag...

The 1st July is our Wedding Anniversary, 13 years this year! 

Happy Anniversary Eeuwe, I love you more every day!

"Two are better than one because...but a cord of three strands is not quickly broken."

Ecclesiastes 4:9,12.

We chose this as our wedding text because we know that without the third strand, our Lord Jesus Christ, we would fail.  We acknowledge that it is only by God's amazing grace that we can have a loving marriage and are given the much needed strength to bring up our children in His ways.

Here are the girls' pictures for this week's Sketch Tuesday. 

The topic is: Picnic.

Emily's Picnic Blanket.

Bethany's Mouse Picnic

Barb, from the Handbook of Study and Outdoor Hour Challenges, has recently spotted some hummingbirds in her garden.  What a pity we don't get them in NZ!  Check out Barb's two entries on Hummingbirds here:

Hummingbird & Bleeding Hearts

Cala Lily & More Hummingbirds

Grandmother Wren has a lovely post on Gardening for Hummingbirds.