special birthday lady

How are you all? Feels like a while since I last posted - I've been hanging out over on Facebook a bit though, so come join me over there if you haven't already!
Bit of a personal post today. I have been debating whether or not to post this but you know what? I'd like to share this pic of my beautiful mum with you all coz I think she really is a beautiful mummy :)
It's her birthday today. She would be 59 years young. If she were still with us I would be taking her out on the town for some serious martinis tonight! Instead I think I'll just have a quiet one (or two!). I know she'll be right there celebrating with me anyway :)
What about you? Do you do anything to remember your dearly departed on their special days? It's nice to celebrate them even if they can't physically be with you I think.
Righto - I'm going to the supermarket to get me some stuffed olives so I can make a real proper martini tonight! Happy Birthday Mum! xox

blue eggs!

Hi everyone! Phew things have been so busy, but it's been great! I had a market stall for Little Beehive at GrassRoots Community Market on the weekend and it was great fun :D Lovely to meet so many nice people - customers and fellow stall holders alike! Can't wait until the next one in May.
In other news - our lovely Araucana has started laying us the most GORGEOUS blue eggs! Aren't they special?! And in keeping with the blue theme - here are my 'Blue Ballet' pumpkins I just harvested this morning. I hope they are as delicious as they look :)
Have a top Wednesday! xo

new prints coming REALLY soon

Hello lovelies! Just a quick stop to give you a little preview of two new art prints that will soon be available in the Little Beehive Etsy shop yay! Fox & Tiger going for a bike ride in the country, and Kitty & Bunny riding a pony through the forest. I'll let you know when they are available :) Have a top Thursday!

flooded

Numurkah on Sunday. Photo: ABC News

What a weekend! Not the relaxing weekend I had been looking forward to... rather a more dramatic and eventful one!
We arrived in Numurkah, a little country town about 4 hours drive north, on Friday afternoon. When we arrived the creek that runs through the town was looking full and running fast. By Saturday morning the creek had crept even higher and by the afternoon it was starting to worry a lot of people. The army and SES were putting sandbags in place as the creek rose ever higher. After a bit of debate, we decided we should leave early... just incase the worst happened. So things were hurriedly packed into bags, and we headed back home... with a tired cranky baby in the back and a not-very-relaxed-and-refreshed me in the front!

Lucky we left when we did. The entire town flooded overnight. Here are a few snaps I took before we left, and a couple of images of the aftermath. I hope the residents of Numurkah are doing OK and are well and safe - unlike us, they had nowhere to run to.

The resident family of Black Swans were about the only ones who thought all the water was a good thing.

Saturday morning the creek was lapping the legs of the benches which usually sit a way back from the edge of the bank.

The Army were sandbagging literally out the front of our cabin.

The drive home - the paddocks looked more like lakes

The Main Street. Photo: The Australian.

sketchy time!

Howdy all! How have you been? Are you doing anything ace on the weekend? I'm looking forward to a weekend away with Marty and Elora yay! We're having a bit of a Strong family get-together in the country town where Marty's grandparents settled after the war. They had a dairy farm up there. I've always thought I'd like to be a dairy farmer but I'm sure my romantic notion would be blown clean out of the water once I learned how much hard work it is haha! Anyway... A weekend without the computer means it's back to sketching with a pen and paper whilst I'm away. I'm looking forward to spending some quiet time with my sketchbook, it's been a while!
Hope you have a top weekend! I'll try to take a few snaps to share when I get back... hopefully it's not raining too much so we can get out and enjoy the pretty scenery :)

giveaway WINNER!

The random number generator says the winner of two mini prints is..... comment number 16!
Congrats Polka Dot Daze :) Please email me with a postal address and your choice of two mini prints - bee[a]littlebeehive[dot]com[dot]au
Thank you ALL so much for entering the giveaway and for following Little Beehive on Facebook. You all rock! Stay tuned for another giveaway in the not-too-distant future. I hope you're all having a wonderful Valentine's Day xo

Valentine's Day Blog Hop

My piece for the Valentine's Blog Hop

MWAH! Happy Valentine's Day! My very lovely and talented artist friend Chris Chun has organised a fabulous Valentine's Day Blog Hop and I'm really happy to be a part of it. Chris has rounded up some of his artistic friends and we have each created a Valentine themed piece. We have all added links to each other's work so please have a look at the other lovely artists blogs by clicking the links below. I hope you enjoy!

Copyright Chris Chun

Chris Chun

Copyright Sharon Himes

Sharon Himes

Copyright Allison Langton

Allison Langton

Copyright Gabby Malpas

Gabby Malpas

Copyright Peggy Jo Ackley

Peggy Jo Ackley

Copyright Patricia Shea

Patricia Shea

Copyright Skye Rogers

Skye Rogers

Copyright Natalie Ryan

Natalie Ryan

Phyllis Dobbs

Barbara Johansen Newman

Spoonflower

Go to my Spoonflower shop here

Happy weekend everyone!! Just a quick note to let you know I have three new fabrics in my Spoonflower shop - 'Kokeshi Dolls' plus two co-ordinating prints to go with it, a sweet little mini blossom print and a plaid. I have more fabrics on the way REALLY soon and will let you know when they are available yay!

Photo courtesy of Cottonlicious

Also - check out this gorgeous little zipper purse that the talented Ele of Cottonlicious created with my 'Happy Woodland' fabric! Isn't it cute? You can grab this little purse in Ele's Cottonlicious Etsy shop.
Hope you all have super weekends :D xo

FREE printable Valentine's Card

 

Download your FREE Valentine Card HERE

Hi lovelies! Thanks so much for all your comments so far in the Little Beehive print giveaway. If you haven't left a comment yet be sure to do so before Feb 14th to be in the running to win two mini prints of your choice :) With Valentine's Day just around the corner, the girls and I over at We Love To Illustrate have each created a FREE downloadable Valentine's Day card for you to print out and give to someone special YAY! So head on over to We Love To Illustrate to check out the lovely designs by Jennifer, Julissa, Nina, Cally, Shirley and I. We also have special guest illustrator Lucy Boden on board this month and she's created a couple of cute kitty cards for you - hooray! xo

Facebook and a GIVEAWAY!

Howdy friends! I've finally created a Facebook page for my Little Beehive brand and to celebrate I'm hosting a GIVEAWAY - yippee! You can win TWO of my new mini prints, the choice of designs is up to you! You can view all mini prints in my Etsy shop.
All you have to do to be in the running is leave a comment under this post and the winner will be picked using a random number generator on Valentine's Day, Tuesday 14th of February.
Please have a squiz at my new Facebook page and if you fancy 'liking' Little Beehive you can keep up to date on all my new products, giveaways and freebies yay!
Happy Friday to you all - have a rad weekend :)

what are you listening to?

What's your fave band? Do you listen to lots of different types of music or do you have a style that you stick with? I like all sorts of stuff. Today while I work I'm having a bit of a 90's mixtape kinda day! Lots of rad bands pumping out the jams while I work like Pavement, Weezer, Pixies, Custard, Super Furry Animals, Ween and these dudes - They Might Be Giants. Thought I'd share this rad little song with ya, it always makes me happy and I always have a bit of a sing along to this one teehee! Have a good Wednesday! xo

FREE printable lunchbox notes!

Download your FREE lunchbox notes here

Howdy all! It's back-to-school time here in Australia, so for this week's Mum's Business article I've created some FREE printable notes you can hide in your kid's lunchbox for a nice surprise at lunchtime! All you have to do is print them off, cut them out, write a little 'Love from Mum (or Dad)' if you wish, and pop them in the lunchbox. My mum would sometimes put a cute little note in our school lunches, I remember it made my day when I opened up my lunchbox to find a sweet little 'Have a great day' or 'I love you!' message. You can download them right here. Have fun! xo

January garden

We've been eating our rainbow carrots and spuds mmm!

Bean and pumpkin flowers turn into....

Beans! And (baby) pumpkins!

Waiting for blueberries to ripen. And we've had a HUGE big bumper crop of strawberries this year mmm! I've frozen enough for a huge batch of jam and I think we'll even have enough to make sorbet too.

Little green crab apples and cumquats starting to ripen.

My Summer garden is not complete without basil! Sage and silver thyme grow alongside parsley, oregano and rosemary for super fresh instant flavour in all sorts of dishes.

Helloooo! Wowsers things have been B-U-S-Y. Pedal to the metal, all systems go! Great to have such a lot of work on so early in the year but my poor old blog has been a bit neglected. How have you been? Are you well? I hope so! Summer is kicking along here and it's such a nice time of year in the vegie patch. Thought I'd share a few snaps of my garden this week :) The chickens are doing really well too yay! Oh yeah we named them all... They're all named after dragons, with Godzilla (OK so that is a monster not a dragon) - the blue chook, Falcor - the araucana and Mushu - the gold.

CHOOKIES!

Blue Wyandotte bantam

Gold Pencilled Wyandotte bantam

Lavender Araucana, she will lay pale blue eggs

Oh yeah! Something I've been wanting for a LOOONNNNGG time - chickens! We built a nice big chicken coop AGES ago and I've been so busy I just haven't had time to fill it with chooks, until now - yippee!! Say hello to our three lovely ladies... we have two little bantams of the Wyandotte breed; a pretty blue and a gorgeous gold pencilled. And a funny-lookin chicken of the Lavender Araucana variety who will lay eggs that are the most beautiful pale blue colour. Yep - blue chook eggs yay! These girls won't start laying for another couple of months, but in the meantime I'm really enjoying getting to know them teehee! I think this may get addictive, I'm already planning an extension to the chook run so we can get more :)