Hello Naperville! Hello Greenwich! Hello Boston MA!

This is beginning to sound a bit like "The Price is Right"... Naperville, Illinois, Come On Down!!!  No, that's mean.  I'm quite sure people reading this drivel appreciate being called out as having visited, even whilst trying to hide the dirty little secret from friends and family...


I have been molto occupato, Gentle Readers, which means "very busy".  Don't quite know why I feel the need to inflict the occasional Italian word on you, but Mr Golightly always speaks to me in Italian when he leaves messages on my phone, you know, on those rare occasions when Hell freezes over.  Ciao, Bello!


We had one of those yesterday, meeting for lunch in town.  Until yesterday I could count on the fingers of one hand how many times we'd had lunch together in the city, despite both working there for some years.  I think it's more the concept of stopping for lunch, rather than having an actual lunch with your actual spouse that gets him, you know how we Aussies are for working too hard.


Anyway, I met up with Mr G, and my nephew D, who teaches Divinity at a rather flash private school in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs.  Divinity, I hear you say?  Just as I am the only brown-eyed member of my family, he is the only Believer, with a capital B.  Anyway, I bought him two fabulous books for Christmas, both of which I coveted for myself (isn't that a Commandment I just broke?  Ouch.  Watch out for those shards of covetousness there on the floor!), from Abbey's, which is far and away Sydney's best bookshop - one of them was this little gem, Begat, The King James Bible and the English Language.  Fascinating stuff, even for a heathen like me.  The other one was gorgeous too, The Infinity of Lists, by Umberto Eco, a fantastic resource for a teacher and an artist, of which he is both... and we ate, too!


Then I traversed Sydney's Christmas Roads, made treacherous by short tempers, hot weather and overcrowding, to return to the sanity of my little house, and make this for My Best Friend:

It's actually all in one string, currently along the top of the glass doors between the front & back of the house, but I couldn't get close enough to show you the lovely fabrics or the letters, so I used Picnik to stitch it together.  I'm sure some of the Photoshop gurus out there could tell me an easier way, but this is OK.  Kind of...  

Anyway, it's the easiest type of bunting, 'cheats bunting' really.  I used a charm pack from Moda, by French General, and just cut the letters out & ironed them on using Vlisofix, then stitched each square and its backing onto my binding.  I do confess to making the binding from 2" strips of beautiful dark red spot, from Cottage Quiltworks... but the rest was pretty easy, in case you're thinking of attempting it.  

Tech Tip:

I buy my fonts from here, print them out and use a light box to trace each letter again on the back of the paper, then I put the vlisofix over the top, and draw them again onto the smooth side of the vlisofix.  Then I iron them onto the wrong side of the letter fabric, cut them out, peel off the backing & iron them onto the bunting fabric .  Ecco, letters!

I've just made a Happy Birthday banner for Saturday, when the Hordes* will be descending to celebrate the birthdays of Mr G and I (mine on Monday, his on Friday), and I will hang the 'Break the Rules, Bunting' as well, so we should look reasonably festive.  That's it for my christmas decorating, I'm afraid to say.  

And, that's it for me for today.  I need to go & do some mad cleaning up, in anticipation of the Hordes coming on Saturday, finish the bunting, finish wrapping Christmas presents for the Kidlets and Mr G, and then a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down are called for!

Ciao!

*Hordes - various family members