How lucky am I?

I recently participated in my 2nd swap via blogland and I received all this lovely fabric!

Amy and I had decided on a swap - I sent her one of my reversible sunhats for her little girl and a pencil/work case for her and I received the fabric.  Seeing as I was only expecting scraps you can imagine my great delight when I opened the package!  Many thanks once again Amy.

For my birthday in February I was given a book voucher by my in-laws.  Now as much as I love books it always takes me some time to use a voucher.  You see there are just sooooo many books out there that I would like that I never can decide and the books in NZ are sooo expensive, but that's content for another post!!  I had popped into our local PaperPlus a couple of times and eyed up a few books.  So you can imagine my delight when I see a book I would really rather like with 25% off - I ended up paying just $1.24 for this beautiful book:

although in truth that $1.24 will turn into much, much more because of all the lovely quilts I now wish to make!

The one activity that we have done every term for Maia is swimming.  This year Cassia started her lessons too.  We just go to the local aquatic centre and they both enjoy it tremendously.  The lessons aren't cheap so you can appreciate how happy I was to have won the draw for a term's worth of free lessons - theoretically they are Cassia's - but I'm not picky!

During the holidays we went away for a few days.  One day we all head into Levin and I scoured the op shops whilst Craig and the girls went to the Adventure Park.  For sometime now I have been looking for a grater which can be fastened to a unit and that the girls can use themselves.  I've even been into a couple of 'proper' kitchen shops but to no avail.  So I was very excited to see this in a new second hand shop I popped into:

Now I ummmmed and aaahed about whether to get it.  It was $8 which to me, being so used to $1 bargains at our local Sallies, seemed quite expensive!!!  Crazy really as I would have paid upto $40 in the shop if I had seen one.  Then the grating drum it came with wasn't really the one I wanted ......  But it was so retro and so pristine I bit the bullet and bought it.  I figured I could look on TradeMe for the other drums that go with it.  Now, of course, finding it was lucky but what came next was more than luck.  It was like op shopping karma - is there such a thing?!!!

I popped into a wee little op shop, the type that has very limited hours, only takes cash but can yield some real treasures.  And what did I find in there ..........

Can you believe it?  The other 4 grating drums all in mint condition.  The price?  50c each - that's right 50c each.  So for the grand total of $10 I have the whole set - woohooo!!!

And finally (this really has been a pretty full post eh?) this month is my month to be the Queen Bee at the Bee Seam Piecing Downunder.

So I've sent out the parcels and now just have to sit back and wait - sounds good doesn't it?  I made one practice block and then a couple more to check I'd put enough fabric in the parcels.  Good job I did that as it turns out because there probably wouldn't have been enough - ooops!

So as you can see I have had a lot to be grateful for recently.  It's really helped putting this post together because I'm currently suffering from the horrid bug/virus that Cassia had last week and feeling rather sorry for myself!  Hope you're having a good run of it too! x

PS The dinner I posted about earlier was just delicious!!!!!