You Are An ENFJ

The Giver You strive to maintain harmony in relationships, and usually succeed.Articulate and enthusiastic, you are good at making personal connections.Sometimes you idealize relationships too much - and end up being let down.You find the most energy and comfort in social situations ... where you shine. You would make a good writer, human resources director, or psychologist.

What's" Your Personality Type?

Doing some very late blog checking tonight after racing home from a few days at the beach for impromptu quilting meeting here. Had a ball as usual-and introduced the girls to some of the US online quiltshops. they are in shock like me-do you know that we pay around $24 per metre Australian here for the proper ranges?? It's almost unjustifiable. (I said almost!!) Some half price shopping is about to occur online. My quilt shop will still get plenty of work from me matching jobs etc, I wont forget them! ($20 for charm packs!)

Anyway, must go to bed but after everyone had included this personality test I remembered that I did it months ago and ended up an ENFJ: I printed it off but didn't post it. So I did it again today and thought I'd probably answer differently. But no, I'd say I'm still the same personality I was 2 months ago. You can't really fool yourself, can you! And if you think that idealising relationships bit doesn't get my heart broken on quite a regular basis you would be wrong!

ps, remember it's de-lurker time! Say hello!

A quick post.

Here is precious little Millie Charlotte at 11 days old. Already travelling for 2 hours to see her extended family.

My girl is very proudly holding her. She is very maternal and still extremely attached to her Baby born who came to hospital the day her brother was born and still has to have matching outfits made when I make DD a dress. Baby born also gets strapped in a car seat on trips to Warrnambool and has more luggage than me. I am very encouraging of this little girl play. Little girls grow up too quickly in general but seem to really be being hurried there at the moment. It is sad when you have to buy Bewitched, I dream of Jeannie and Little House on the Prairie for your girl to watch because there is absolutely nothing without some questionable content on TV after 6 pm. Bring back family shows! (And don't even start me on music-what is there between the Wiggles and Britney??And Britney's no role model!)

Enough of this little pet hate, have to run, hopefully some quilting time soon.

ps Thanks to dawn in Korea for the note about de-lurking month-and for commenting!. Seeing as I get about 100 hits each post I must have a few lurkers as well. Consider this an invitation to say hello.

Tracey

38 degrees celcius, a strong, hot North wind ...and a lucky escape!
Apologies for a lack of posts, "Life" intervened! Perhaps in the winter there may not be quite as many distractions.
Major "distraction" was my parents farm being caught right at the forefront of a forest fire. As you can see in this photo that is looking at my parent's blackened hill and down to the cypress trees that hide the house-there is a still smouldering forest in the background. In the atrocious fire conditions of wednesday we learnt the forest had gone up and they were under ember attack. After a hectic day of ascertaining who was with Dad, and whether they were evacuating or not the results were that Dad and my visiting brother and his girlfriend all stayed to fight ember attacks, with a number of fire tankers. Although a number of fires came as close as 20 metres from the house and over 50 acres of hill and land were burnt all the stock and house were safe. The helicopters were great, filling from the town's reservoir that is Mum and dad's backyard and saving many firefighters from having to enter the forest.
So the day after saw us down there and then into the beach again. It really was very fortunate for the whole district that the wind calmed in the evening.

On a lighter note, here was my exciting mail the other day. I love good mail, especially when i know it's material! I discovered the fat quarter shop when I baulked at some prices here recently.

Almost more exciting than these nice contents was that I saved 40% on retail here and had it 6 days after I ordered it! I am particularly excited about the Moda tins that I couldn't source at all here. I am a sucker for a tin!

The general intention was that a lot of these things were gifts. Oh well, you know what they say about intentions. Does it count if you just show the people you may have been buying for the site instead? Then they can share the fun! What a gift!

An update on the baby quilt. I am enjoying these colours, it looks more vibrant in real life. I also made her a muslin wrap edged in pink gingham, almost made me clucky!

Back from the beach and back on track!

Feeling great today, and not just from a few days at the beach! The junior workers and I went mad on the house today, they are presently resting! I made lists and worked on both of their motivations-money for DS and DVD's for DD (as in I took away the right to watch them until the work was done-and she got $ per job.) We even got all of Christmas packed away, which is always sad. Here is dear tabitha kitten illustrating how much a part of the family she now is, she had to "help" too!

The beach was great, it is at Warrnambool, on the Victorian Coast, right at the bottom of Australia. A great seaside town that really takes off in the Summer. It was my hometown and there is always something special about going to the beach there, really feels like Summer. The kids seem to have inherited this beach gene, it certainly wasn't from their father who doesn't even like sand between his toes.

A lot of photos taken but most more personal than postable, here is one of my DH showing me in unarguable terms that he does not want his photo taken...and yes the camera did recover.

I managed to get a feed of my favourite meal as well. Gently fried abalone. If it looks good let me only add that with a little vinegar it tasted even better. When I was younger and Mum was SCUBA diving I thought everyone lived on this all Summer. How wrong I was!The weather was very hot and muggy while we were there and just as I was about to start chasing the kids towards the car to come home the heavens let loose with almost an inch of rain (at once) and thunder and lightning. I ended up right in it, in the bathers, digging a trench around the annexe but it still managed to seep through. Added to the holiday adventures.

When we were finally able to leave I snapped this at the breakwater, love the rolling clouds.

Update:After extensive searching I found some purple for the HST quilt for DN, I put it together a little more tomorrow but will hopefully have more progress to show next post. Cheers, Tracey

Joy in daily living.

A house back under control, the beach, happy laughing children, coming home.

Exactly the kind of fun I like!

Call me dull, but playing with HST's is my idea of fun. I love the variety of primary and secondary patterns that appear just by rearranging your pieces. Here are baby Millie possibilities #1,2,3,4 in descending order. I'm off to the town that possesses my favourite little quilt shop for a few days beaching. As it is where I got this little pack I am hoping to pick up more of "something" for the border or a few plain edge blocks. What is the general consensus-1,2,3 or 4?

Quite partial to number 1, would obviously need to make some more squares which I can do. i like the secondary star pattern, thought if I put some plains in the corners it may make the starts stand out more. Also weighing up plains in the centre or are the squares in a square alright? The plain pink centre is only a guide, I would look for some matches tomorrow.Another favourite way of positioning. Obviously needs some more blocks but the idea is there.Think the contrasts may be a little pale for pinwheels, nothing jumps out.Ever reliable, may look really good on point with a substantial colour as the filling triangles. Anyway, some feedback would be good as it is so hot here I haven't had a proper night's sleep for about 4 nights and I don't think I'm mentally up to the task but I like my baby quilts in my hot little hand when I first see the baby!

Been spending the days around the pool-along with a fair few neighborhood children. My kids have had a ball but are exhausted-now for the beach! DD will be sleeping over at the camping ground with her Ma,(She is ma's current favourite) DS and I are sleeping over with my sister. Bunking with my Mum is not my idea of a holiday! It's meant to get back up near 40 degrees celcius tomorrow so we will be spending a lot of time in the water!

Hoping to see my Hub soon, he left at 2 pm to fight a bushfire down near the coast and hasn't returned yet and it's 9.30 pm. It could even be tomorrow before we see him. I try not to think about it when he is fire-fighting, I just pretend he's in the tractor! Works for me!

Okay to the perceptive souls who picked up on the life-changing Russian trip in my"5 things you didn't know about me". Seeing I've now gone well over the 3000 hits I'll give you a few more details. (But maybe not all of them as not enough people are dead!)

In my last year of University I had a fairly eventful love life. I had been seeing a fellow for over a year (that REALLY wouldn't have worked out) when, in the January I went to a big country wide Church youth gathering for a week and met someone else. We commuted the 800 kms between us for over 6 months and on the eve of my leaving for the University Russia trip lets just say future plans were discussed(by him). Well I headed off to Russia in absolute mental turmoil because he wasn't looking quite so shiny as he had been but my Mum was insisting this was it (and still loves him!) I also didn't want to look like some serial breaker-upperer!!

But everyone knows what happens on overseas trips,( well I have decided any kind of week long holiday away is no good for me so i have warned my DH to keep me close!) I made lots of new friends, realised I was so not ready to settle down at 20, had a fabulous time and came home where all h*ll broke loose! All was eventually gotten over and really it has all worked out so well, I could not be more happy with my 'totally-unrelated-to-all-these-events, DH'. All of which goes to show that we are not the architects of our lives!

So now my favourite piece of advice to my daughter is that you need to kiss a few frogs to find your prince!

Have a great quilty day, Tracey

Another Millie!-(Millie Charlotte.)

As I was posting about the prospective arrival's tardiness last night at 11:45 pm, she was actually being born! A nice healthy 7 pound for her little slip of a mother and everyone is well so I get the unbridled joy of taking this little present like bundle of fabrics and making a special girly quilt to match yesterday's more generic variety.

There is very little in life that is more fun!!

Better run and start. Cheers, Tracey

ps Dh very pleased, he will actually be able to remember someone's birthday!

I'm on time!
It's the first day of the new Year and I have managed to begin the New Year the way I want it to continue. Well...that's not entirely true-dragging myself from bed fairly tired and with an ever so slightly muddled head is probably not the way the year should continue but the finishing off of quilts that are due, the walking, the sorting of sewing projects and the time with family were positives that made up for the inauspicious start.

Had a few families and single friends over for a BBQ and swim to see out 2006. All of the 13 children managed to see in the New Year so you can obviously tell that my girl continues to get better and better.

As the stroke of midnight of a New year always begins a second celebration-my DH's birthday- it is not always so easy to have a relatively early night and believe me, if my 6 year old had not been jumping on me saying, "get the presents, it's daddy's birthday" at 8.30 am this morning I could well be still tucked away under my Gratitudes quilt tonight.

This post is called "I'm on time" for several reasons, but the main one is that the baby quilt for the potential great niece or nephew due on the 28/12 is finished, so I have done my bit but the baby is not being quite so punctual. DH is still hopeful it will be born on his birthday but I personally think you want to spread your yearly opportunities to celebrate out a little bit so I hope it's a few more days now. (This is easy for me to hope as I am not having to be pregnant with it!) This will be my 4th great niece or nephew, the first arrived when I was 28y.o and 12 weeks off having my first baby, our family is very out of whack!

The quilt is the chenille and cotton fun print that I posted as a 3/4 finished flimsy. My DN chose the fun print from the stash. It has my label on it which is their family name as well so that looks quite good.

As I am very big on goals, challenges and trying to stay organized these are some of my New Year resolutions to "do something with". Feel absolutely free in coming weeks to ask where the completed photos of these things are. I'm hoping this motivates me to stop looking at them!

Some plans or resolutions for 2007.

1. Master how to put the quilt goals in my toolbar-I have the general idea but I'm going to try tomorrow when I am more refreshed and less likely to give up and throw something at the screen!

2.UFO's-fix my favourite bag, red and white quilt, work on roses, sew last strip on the Moda faded memories, sew last strip and fix dodgy edge on quilt group rounds, finish flanelette panel, finish other baby chenille quilts and do some of the above pictured projects.

3. Quilts I want to start .

-Another plaid and check shirt quilt, single size.

-Red rose quilt.

-DD doll for birthday and small wall hanging.

-Chris' tessalations.

-Log cabin with the red flying geese on the edges.

-farm one.

-Christmas table runner.

-Everything I see really!

4. General resolutions.

-Keep car clean so DH doesn't need to shake his head at me once!

-Remember that skin products only work if you take the time to put them on, they will not make you beautiful just by having the jars in close proximity to you in the bathroom!

-Put things away rather than just down!

-Get books from the library more.

-Don't start more than 2 quilts in the one day!

-Clean the house early in the day so it doesn't drag in to fun time.

-Walk 5 times a week, do Pilates at least 3.

-Have at least 2 scheduled afternoons in the studio per week.

-Take time for cuddles!

My New Year gratitudes.

-A lovely, happy and fairly healthy family.

-The hope of rain that a new Year brings.

-Great friends to celebrate special times with.

-A clean slate and the excitement of what the New Year will bring.

-Plenty of beach days left in the holidays.

-Lots of lovely blogs to read.

Enough of plans for the coming year. I think tomorrow will see my 3000th hit since I got the counter, I may just update the 5 things you didn't know about me from my 2000th hit-whoever knows?! Happy New Year, Tracey

Read and red.
Actually got to sew today!!
Threw off the post Christmas lethargy and got to work.....if I'm not careful I may do housework!! (No-I did enough of that pre-Christmas and everyone else is on holiday.......)
Made Clare (Dordogne quilter) some red and white blocks for her leukeumia quilts. There should be four but the 4th refused to end up 8 and a half in time for tea so I threw in the towel!! I HAVE to work on baby quilts next as the baby was due today and I don't want these UFO's to carry over to the New Year, so 3 blocks will have to do.

A close up of my Christmas quilting literature for those that were interested.
* 'This old quilt' is really appealing to me with great pics and good short stories about quilting as well. I especially love the beautiful watercolour prints.
* 'Crazy for quilts' had interesting anecdotes and some good pics but finished too soon, I like my pics and reading more balanced so the book lasts longer.
*'Every quilt tells a story' is full of interesting stories about quilting but no real pics and I haven't started the Emilie Richards novel yet but it looks good. The quilting pattern a day calendar is fabulous. I had it last year and everyone loves the 365 pics and instructions for every day of the year. It's good to have a calendar that is a resource you can use for life.

Off for a day at the beach today as the cricket was all over in 3 days, 10th win in a row to us. I prefer my cricket closer but a win is a win. Good for the kids to play with their cousins in the sand.
PS I hadn't actually posted this so I will now. Beautiful day at the beach visiting the family. I'll take some photos when we go back next week to tantalise the poor Northern Winter people!! I checked out Moda's new Sanctuary range at my favourite beautiful quilt shop today, even though I am a big scrap person, I think this is appealing to me, I may have to feed up those chooks to make more egg money!!
Cheers, Tracey

A quiet day. Thank Goodness!
Enjoying a catch-up after the hectic Christmass festivities. The Boxing Day Ashes cricket test is on and I haven't shifted far from that. The kids are very busy in a loungeroom laced with gifts and DVDs so life is good. If it would warm up a little and they could swim and ride their bikes it would be even better! Quite cold and slightly damp here for Christmas.

Had to share a few photos. My girl on Christmas morning with "the best present in my whole life." This little Tabby is suitable named Tabitha. The name is a pure coincedence and occurred because of her love of old bewitched episodes. I have managed to get James Herriot's, "Christmas day Kitten" book from ebay for her as that seems too perfect.
Tabitha has spent an extremely hard few days sleeping on her new mother, being fussed over and practising one of the loudest purrs I have ever heard.

Next is the before and after shots of Millie's dollshouse. I bought the old blue-roofed version from a clearing sale. Very knocked around but I thought it's bones had potential. I know my sister plans to one day have a really good one for her girl so she told me to keep it plain,(unlike the one I did for my daughter with feature walls and quilts on every wall) but thought I could do something in the interim. I think it turned out quite well and little Millie is pictured checking it out on Christmas day. Apparently by later that evening her 3 y.o brother had it full of cars!

Last photo is my little Christmas gift stash. Plenty of quilt books, carefully chosen by me and wrapped by the kids. The cabbage patch doll I've wanted for 20 years and my daughter bought me. A chook beanie kid-the girl again-with her mother's assistance! Same goes for the patchwork and quilting diary etc.etc. My sister was the calendar and the 12th man CD I had been hoping for. So, I was looked after very well. This is the first year I have dealt with my gift illiterate husband like this and just organized myself by myself. It's not quite the same but at least I didn't end up disappointed! I was actually looking forward to it! The hardest thing was not even looking at the quilting books when they arrived, but I have made up for that in the last two days!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. I have to go and work on some baby quilts for my niece , some red and white blocks for Clare's leukeumia quilts and start my New year goals for posting in a few days. Cheers, Traceyxx

'Twas the night before the night before Christmas........

And all were sleeping, even hubby on the couch!

Just about organized, a little bit of tidying tomorrow, a touch of cooking and a big night of Sunday School Nativity service tomorrow night and the big day will be here.

What's the Christmas routine in our house seems to be of general interest, so here is a run down.-

Christmas Eve service is big in our thriving little rural Lutheran area. In a Church of about 150 adults we have 47 children in the Sunday School.As Superintendents, Robyn and I are in charge of Christmas Eve and we have been practising madly for a few weeks. Last year we did a huge effort with plays off the internet, this year is the straight Nativity. Robyn is on her year about with the other side of the family which puts me in the driving seat tomorrow night. This is my 6th and last as we are handing over the reins. I don't usually start relaxing for Christmas until it is all safely performed and none of the 3 year olds wet themselves while in my care! A lot of the families here have Santa come while at Church, but in the area I grew up in Santa came in the morning and that's what happens here. I think the evening thing had something to do with ensuring everyone gets to Church in the morning! But it's probably more an old Prussian tradition.

Santa gifts are in the santa sacks I've made and anything wrapped is from us. This is great when things have been accidentally seen or one child was with you when you saw a great thing for the other. I am not pedantic about eveyone getting the same number of gifts not the value-they get what they need or grabbed me as suitable. I generally ensure there are the same number of wrapped things under the tree but quilted santa sacks always look full!

I decided to replace Yoda, (I think my BIL just saw a stray) and we will have a cute little tabby kitten under the tree on Christmas morning. She was saved from the vets at the 11th hour today and comes immun., flea treated, vet checked and with a desexing voucher. She is in hiding at my SIL's tonight. All other gifts will pale in comparison. My girl is also getting a little silky chook under the tree as well. Live gifts are big here!

Christmas day will begin early, for us as and the kids as nothing can be opened until we are there as well-I couldn't bear to spend all year finding just the right thing and not see the joy!We then have early Church that at least someone attends and a bit of food preparation. Until 2 years ago we always had to drive the hour to my Mum and Dad's but we have started sharing it and this year it is here. All bring salads, meat and lots of desserts to share. we work all this out ahead. Gifts are a $50 Chris cringle for the adults and the kids get things off everyone. When I was growing up we went to my Dad's family for lunch and there were heaps of us. We had a huge youngies v. oldies cricket game after lunch that everyone played and it was great.

Tea this year will just require us collecting up the next lot of food and walking the 20 metres over to grandma's to catch up with the other side of the family-I love when I am the host! $30 Chris cringle was voted on and decided to be continued this year as usual . (Fot those of you who remember it was a saga!)

So we manage to catch up with all of the family and it is normally a good day. It looks like the weather may be quite cold again for Christmas though after we have been boiling here most of the week. We got a quarter of an inch of rain even, at least in dampened the air, if not the Earth.

I have a few photos to share. I made my sister a big beach bag out of the Moda plastic coated fabric. Great looking stuff but terribly hard to get even the leather needle to make a clean sewing stitch if you have a plastic coated backing as well. I'm hoping she just sees the general bag rather than the topstitching. I made a whole heap of little purses out of the scraps, they have nearly all been distributed today to babysitters and friends teenagers.

Some Christmas decorations I love. This angel I found a year or two ago, I'm sure the patchwork clothing has nothing to do with why she is a favourite!

The little wreath was a gift at my Christmas party. It is just a child's cheap metal bangle with fabric scraps tied around, looks great.

The patchwork chook was a gift from Robyn this year to add to my ever increasing collection.

The last photo is of some of my more eclectic Christmas decorating. We have all the necessities, nativities, santa on a chook, more chooks and Talking Boony and Botham figures in recognition of this year's Ashes cricket series. They talk to each other and tease each other all the time while the cricket is on. Don't ask me how, it's all to do with some kind of radio transmitter, but we love them no matter how they manage to talk!

So I will finish by saying,

"Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!" LOL Traceyxxxx