This year has also challenged many family and friends with the floods and health issues. I wish everyone a happy and healthy new year!

I’m missing a couple of green kids, some itti boosters and some of the nappies I made for my godson. I’m sure they are somewhere safe buried in my fabric collection that is getting a bit out of hand. I really need to start sewing again!

This is the embroidery program preview of what I think will be the first of many attempts to embroider the Sunflower from ‘Plants vs Zombies’

If you have not seen Plants Vs Zombies before, take a look at the music video…

Please note that the original artwork is part of Plants vs Zombies, and the copyright for it is held by PopCap Games. I will not be selling the design or anything created with the design.

This is a preview of them rendered by the program. I’m hoping to stitch them tomorrow to see where there are any errors and further improvements.

Please note that the original artwork is part of Team Fortress 2, and the copyright for it is held by Valve Corporation. I will not be selling the designs or anything created with the designs.

Update:
The demo man badge had actually been updated… The newer one was a bigger challenge to embroiderer, but here is my initial design attempt:

There is a story that goes with it, but it is staying offline for privacy reasons.

Although we are extremely excited to have a new member of our family, we will be putting very little information and pictures up on this blog. We do enjoy reading our friends and families stories online, but like every parent we have to decide on what we choose for our own children. Andrew and I participate in many online communities and we choose the information we share with the world about our lives. We have decided to let our children also have that choice when they are old enough. We will be setting up a way to privately share photos and stories. Let us know if you would like to be included.

We’ve been extremely lucky due to our generous family and friends having already supplied our baby clothes, toys and essentials. While there lots of time before a baby shower and the birth itself is a long way off anyone else looking for gift ideas need only look so far as a good bookstore. We would love children’s books to add to our baby’s collection and we do also treasure hand made items from the heart.

Our thoughts and best wishes also go out to a few friends who are still trying to conceive. Our journey was long and we wish all those who are having trouble to one day experience the joy of this moment.

I did try to show them the error of their ways and see if they would eat the morning glory weed that keeps invading everything, but alas they would not eat the weeds and therefore had to be destroyed.

In good news my new batch of sunflowers and potato plants are growing strong. It is really interesting to see some 20cm high and others just germinating.

We have a new batch of potatos coming through

Potato seedling

Our Bok Choy has been starting to seed for the last month. I lost some seeds while away in LA, but most are still fresh and still need to dry out. I collected one stem that was ready to harvest. If one stem gives us this many seeds, we are going to have a lot of little bok choy plants very soon.

After doing research on how potatos grow, I discovered that they would grow, flower and then die. I actually really liked this cycle because it meant that a dying plant was actually a good thing and that the plants wouldn’t be in that location for a very long time. A little while back I noticed that they had purple flowers and recently noticed that they were nearly all dead. We scored 26 potatos from planting about 10. 4 are babies, 3 are green or partially green as they grew above the soil and the rest are ready to be made into something yummy.

Our bok choy has seeded and the seeds look ready to harvest in the next few weeks. Our garlic, shallots, silverbeat are all still going strong. All these were planted from offcuts from the kitchen and are sitting in pots. My parents in law gave me a wonderful 1mx1m planter box, which I have now set up with cabbage and some more potatos – this time only eyes that I cut off. Our plant it and see what happens process seems to be paying off!

I was planning to take more photos of all the plants, but I had forgotten to charge the camera battery and the spare (oops).

Day 9 – Something you’re proud of and why

At the time I was meant to be posting this I spent 2 days to write -1 lines of code. Our flex project was failing to call the webservice only some of the time, it turned out that it was because of the way the flex webservices classes were reading and parsing the wsdl as it was large and over many files. One of the loops broke before the whole service was parsed, which meant depending on which order the sub wsdl files were loaded it didn’t have the relevant operations.

Day 10 – Songs you listen to when you are happy, sad, bored, hyped mad

Happy – Sing along type songs and if I’m being honest – disney movies too

Sad – motivational songs and soft melodic pieces

Bored – the radio

Hyped – not sure, don’t think I need music at this point

Mad – Evanescence and other similar artists

Day 11 – Anther picture of you and your friends

Instead of going searching through my albums, last time for the first time in ages, I played gw and sty and I caught up with an old friend to try out a hard mission.

Day 12 – How you found out about Blogger and why you made one

When I left uni I created my own website where I updated news manually and was creating a portfolio. I came across wordpress and fell in love with it way back then. It is lovely to look back and remember events and thoughts

Day 13 – A letter to someone who has hurt you recently
I have written and deleted one in particular recently. I keep reminding myself that the only person who can hurt me is myself and while others actions can be selfish and sometimes malicious, the only person I have a say over is myself and my actions.

Day 14 – A picture of you and your family

Day 15 – Put your iPod on shuffle: First 10 songs that play
I don’t have an ipod

Day 16 – Another picture of yourself

Day 17 – someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why

I really can’t think of anyone. While my life isn’t perfect, I’m actually really happy to just be me.

Day 18- Plans/Dreams/goals you have
They are mine, you will find them if you talk to me and when I’m willing to share them

Day 19 – Nicknames you have; why do you have them

My mum used to call me pink frog.

Day 20 – Someone you see yourself marrying/being with in the future

My husband

Day 21 – A picture of something that makes you happy

From today – my garden

Day 22 – What makes you different from everyone else

I love to learn with a childlike enthusiasm. I love spending time with my friends and family but find my energy from being alone.  I feel responsible for the things I promise and therefore work very hard, but I do love my job. I can’t find something specific that is unique, but then I can’t find anyone exactly like me either.

Day 23 – Something you crave for a lot

It really depends on what I need at the time. The other day I was craving vegetables. I’ll crave chocolate if I have a migraine coming on.

Day 24 – A letter to your parents

Too Personal

Day 25 – What I would find in my bag

A better question is what you wouldn’t find in there

Day 26 – What you think about my friends

Each one of my friends are unique and special in their own way and I love them all.You really find out about who your friends and family are when you go through trauma and illness.

Day 27 – Why are you doing this 30 day challenge

Because it seemed like a good idea at the time

Day 28 A picture of you last year and now, how have you changed since then?

Sorry no more pictures

Day 29- In this past month what have you learned

Flex can be painful and a whole pile of tips and tricks.
There have actually been a lot of lessons learned this month but some are work related and others too personal to list.

Day 30 – Your favourite song

It changes and changes often… my mood drives my music selection a lot and vice versa sometimes.