A matching set!

These are the fruits of my husbands labour over the last few months. He's been busy organising makeovers for these three vehicles and now they are all finished and ready to be given away at this years annual Beach hop festival. It's the 10th anniversary this year so it was decided to give away a classic car (the buick stationwagon), a hotrod ( a 1930's Roadster) and a Harley bike. All painted the same vivid blue with white interiors and accents. Pretty cool huh! Beach hop starts this Wednesday and runs through until Sunday. Some cool cars have already started arriving and by Wednesday there will be that unmistakable hum of V8's around Whangamata. Even if your not into cars you can't help but admire their beautiful paint jobs and the hours of work and on-going care these cars are given.

Make my husbands day and tell him how great they look!! 

Crazy, Busy!

Just want to apologise now if you not into cars but this post has no sewing items in it. I'm not really big on cars either but I can appreciate a nice classic car when I see one. Being married to a car crazy guy I can't avoid them. I know I may have mentioned this before but my husband is on the team of an annual festival here in Whangamata called 'The Beach Hop'. This festival is all about celebrating the 50's and 60's and involves lots of beautiful classic cars, hot rods, cool rockabilly music, dancing and of course people dressed up in the fashion of that era. (And if you not into any of that it's great to just 'people watch'!) It attracts over 100,000 people to our small town and takes a lot of my husbands time to help organise it. We are 2 weeks away from this years festival so things are getting a little busy around here and next week it will be crazy busy and that means not a lot of quality sewing time.

This year it the 10th anniversary and instead of one vehicle being given away there will be 3! This classic surf wagon is one of them. It's just been given a new paint job so looks all shiny and new again. Check out what it used to look like here.

 Don't you love the names they gave cars back when this was made! Also being given away is a Model A Roadster hotrod and if you don't want a car you can win a Harley. They are all matching with the same colour paint. You can learn more about this festival over here.

I promise my next post will be full of lots of sewing goodness!!!

The Buick

I have been sooo looking forward to this cars arrival in the country. Isn't it too cool! I know I know this is a sewing blog but I'll get to that in a minute. This car is what my busy Husband went over to the USA to bring back for next years Beach hop. It will be all painted up and looking shiny and new ready to give away in March next year. Oh and in case your not like my husband and know every car's make and model on sight, it's a 'Buick', to be specific a '1963 Buick Le Sabre station wagon'. I can just imagine it with a couple of surfboards on the roof.

Now the other reason I was looking forward to the 'Buick' arriving was because it contained these books!!!! Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross AND Seams to me by Anna Maria Horner

......and these magazines plus a pad of Amy Butler double sided scrapbooking paper. Didn't he do well! The books are beautiful and full of beautiful projects I want to start NOW. They are also a great source of basic sewing info that I'm sure will come in useful not only to myself but as my daughters begin to sew more and more.

Another car photo I know but just wanted to show you what our small cul de sac looked like for a couple of hours this morning. Because of the huge earthquakes that occurred in Samoa this morning we were on high Tsunami alert this morning. We are lucky to be living high on a hill so are quite safe ourselves, it just means everybody else comes up here as well. I'm glad it was school holidays as our street is also where the area school evacuates to, although not our girls as they go to a little country school 10 minutes north of our town. The tsunami was eventually cancelled but other tsunami's are actually happening now all around the pacific islands and creating chaos.

Direct from the USA!

My husband's been travelling around the States for the last 5 weeks so I have been VERY busy looking after our 2 girls, working part time, cycle training for a 200km event coming up in 2 months and trying to find time to do a little bit of sewing when I can. I've been staying up way too late trying to get things done and to just enjoy some me time. We were expecting my husband to arrive today (Sunday) but he decided to surprise us by arriving home Friday morning. It was a lovely surprise although I had my suspicions when I hadn't heard from him for a couple of days. He got into town just in time to attend a funeral of a lovely old guy well known in our area for his generosity around our community. The girls were so pleased to see him when they stepped off the school bus that afternoon.

As you can see he brought me back lots of yummy fabric to drool over and play with. There is a great little fabric shop in Bakersfield, California called "Strawberry Patches" that he has been to 3 times now. They have got to know him (I guess because of his strange 'kiwi' accent) and are very good in helping him find what I've asked for . He got some gorgeous "Patty Young" fabric (above) from her 'Mezzanine' range and below is some sweet little fat quarter bundles. I love how they have used tulle to tie these fabrics together. Almost too pretty to use.

And of course I HAD to get some more "Heather Bailey" fabrics. These are all from her 'Pop Garden and Bijoux range except for the one hiding at the back which is from her first range 'Freshcut'. I actually ordered these from her website ( along with some 'trash ties' and some scrapbooking stamps) and had them sent to our friends in Reno, Nevada where my husband stayed for a few days. This way I saved on shipping costs a bit.

Noddy ( yes that's my husband's nickname) was over in the States to buy an old Buick and organise it to be shipped back here to NZ. This car is for the annual "Beach Hop" festival that he helps to organise each year in our little town. He had a great time over there driving this cool car around to promote the 'Beach Hop' at car events such as "Hot August Nights" in Reno and the Land speed racing on the Salt flats at Bonneville to name a couple. I am looking forward to this car arriving over here not only because I get to ride around in it until next years Beach hop ( where it will be given away) but it has some yummy quilting magazines and books inside it that were too heavy to be brought back in Noddy's luggage.

This week I'm looking forward to fitting in alot more sewing than I have been able to lately. Oh and more blogging time. I hope this extra long post made up for my absence over the last week!