Hello Monday! It’s a great day to start again, are you with me?

After what feels like forever I’m back home with no travel in sight (well that’s not true in about 6 weeks time I’ll be heading to the Gold Coast to attend ProBlogger) and it feels great… and a little unsettling. I always find after a period of non-stoppness I need a little bit of time to settle back into the daily routine.  Which isn’t a bad thing, I just need to remember to go easy on myself and not just expect everything to fall back into the way it was before the crazy started.

I’ve got some Canberra Quilters Exhibition sewing planned for this week and I’m also working on a little something I’ll be sharing sneak peeks on Instagram but doing the full reveal in August. I feel like I haven’t done any real sewing in forever and I’m missing it something fierce. Yesterday I went through and tidied up my space and tried to get it back to tip top shape for creating. Looking at the collection of things that I have in that room I really feel like it might be time to do a bit of destash. As much as I like to think I’ll use everything in there, I have to admit that maybe I won’t and maybe (just maybe) it might be cool to scale it back a little before I need to claim a second room in the house just for fabric.

It’s a pretty quite week ahead, which is good because I need to get back into my good habits. I stopped going to the gym while I battled that horrible virus and now I need to go through the crap of starting a new habit all over again. Lucky for me though I just have to look down to my waistline to find the motivation to get out of bed on these cold winter mornings. I know the first 10 days are going to suck, but it’s going to be worth it and 10 days goes quickly.

I’m also going to get back on the no junk food bandwagon. I had a shocking couple of days in Sydney which carried on to the weekend, but today’s a new day and I have the power to make the changes so I’m going to take it one junk free day at a time.

All-in-all it’s a great day to be alive. I’m looking forward to a fun week and I hope you are too. Wishing you a most wonderful day!

Fun things to click on

• I love a good Irish Chain quilt and there was a fabulous Irish Chain Blog Hop in June. You can read more about it by clicking here – I highly recommend clicking through all the links and checking out the amazing variations on this fabulous quilt pattern.
• Make this fabulous vintage inspired envelope zipper pouch; click here to get the tutorial.
• Being so close to the Canberra Quilters Exhibition has got me thinking about my quilts again, and I’m thinking about this beastly creation a lot. Click here to read more.
• I love a good lasagne, but maybe it’s time to think outside the box. I’m thinking it might be time to try this Chicken and Leek Lasagne. Click here to get the recipe.
• I have some birthday gifts to be sewing and so I’m going back to adding the fun by using pom-poms. You can do it too, click here for a tutorial on how to add pom-poms to cushions.
• Love to make half square triangles, but don’t love to work out the math to do it. (Me too!) Then click here to get some fabulous HST quilt math printables to keep in your sewing room to help you whenever you need it.
• I love this blog post on 10 ways to incorporate more meaning into your quilts – I need to do more of this! Click here to read.
• My husband likes to joke that Nicole’s the person I have a mind-meld with across the oceans, click here to read more about how awesome she is.

Community Cork Board

• Entries are open in the 15th Annual Brother International Quilt Contest. You can win $2,400 worth of Brother quilting products and have your quilt displayed at the Tokyo International Quilt Festival in 2016. To find out more click here.
• Looking for a good cause to support, Caroline (of Nightingale Quilts) is in need of help to raise some money to build a bat enclosure to help rehabilitate bats. Now, I’m not a fan of bats in the sense that movies always make it look horrible to get caught in a bat swarm, but I am a fan of keeping our environment in tip top condition and bats are important so I’m all for helping to heal them and return them to doing what bats do. Click here to find out more and donate the cost of a coffee.

Want something included on the Community Cork Board, then why not drop me an email and if it’s applicable to the GnomeAngel community I’ll share it. It can be anything from a local fate, a charity raffle, a class you’re teaching, a pattern you’ve released, a sew-a-long you’re involved in to a community event that’s happening. Be sure to send me as much detail as you can and links to any applicable websites.  Click here to email me.