craft punk

image source

I'm going to Craft punk next Saturday.  Can't wait.

Thanks lottielulu for the giveaway!

look and you shall find

After a spur of the moment visit to a local op shop recently with a great pal of mine, I came home with this treasure.

A gorgeous crochet cloth. 

Measuring more then 2.5m long and 1.7m wide I'm using it as a spread on my bed.

After a soak overnight to remove a couple of stains it's now in perfect condition.

Occasionally the op shop god's look favourably upon me.

Every time I look at it I dance a little jig (even if only in my head!)

Here's hoping the op shop god's smile upon you too :D 

Turning 5

Miss B turned 5 today.

 

Happy Birthday Miss B.

Miss B, Miss A, Dean and I spent a wonderful day together 

getting to know some native wildlife a little better

at the wonderful Australia Walkabout Park .

It made me so happy to see the smile on Miss B's face. 

From the minute she got up this morning she was just so happy. 

She loved all the presents she received, including the vest I crocheted for her (see it there in that picture!  More on that later).

My lovely, loving, caring, sharing, purple loving girl.  

She can still be very shy and withdrawn but has come out of her shell an awful lot in this past year. 

She's getting so tall.

 On Saturday we celebrated with family.

I made the cake Miss B has been planning for and talking about for months.  Found in a book we borrowed from the library called

Birthday Cakes for Kids by Annie Rigg. 

This book is a gem, I've been thinking about buying a copy just so I can make sure it's always available to me.

I love you so very much Miss B

xo 

hot cross buns

Yesterday I stopped in at our local bakery to pick up an afternoon snack for Miss A to eat on the walk home from school.  After quizzing the lovely lady who works there about the ingredients, I established that the yummy looking hot cross buns I had just purchased would not be suitable for Miss B due to the fact they contained egg.

Miss B has always been very accepting of her food limitations due to mulitple food allergies. 

But over the last twelve months, on the advise of Miss B's Immunologist, we have slowly, ever so slowly introduced dairy into her diet!!!! 

Miss B has grown out of the dairy allergy. 

This is so exciting.  So super.  So liberating.  So life changing for the whole family.

 

Miss B has recently tasted many foods for the first time in her life.  It has been interesting to observe her varying attitudes towards trying foods with dairy.  Avoiding these foods has been a lifetime habit for her - to suddenly be told you can go ahead and eat them is, I think, confusing for her. 

Some foods she still turns her nose up at, others she has taken to with great relish.  Her new favourite food (chocolate is a food isn't it!) would have to be, hands down, Smarties.  When I was a child, my Nanna would give us kids a box of Smarties every time we saw her.  It was so sweet the other day when we were with my mum and she gave Miss B a box of Smarties...................

Anyway, I digress.  Due to her new found ability to eat various foods, she is now struggling a little with still being restricted by other allergens (being egg and nuts).  Hence the mini meltdown she had when I told her she couldn't have a hot cross bun.

So, today we baked.

Soft, scrumptious, egg free, hot cross buns.

And you know what?

They were even better than the store bought ones!  So worth the effort. 

Next up - chocolate chip hot cross buns.

weekend about town

On Sunday, the girls and I attended a birthday party for a couple of lovely little friends of ours.  Sisters turning three and one.  Their lovely mum is a crafty type, so I decided to give handmade gifts.

For Miss 3 I couldn't go past an On-the-Go Art Satchel made up in this lovely Sanae Oz yellow flowers twill, with spotty contrast.  For the strap I used grosgrain ribbon.

For Miss 1 I used The Bonnet pattern by Amy Karol.  If only I had known about this pattern four years ago when it first came out.  Miss A and Miss B would never have been without one.  Too cute.  Miss A was up for a spot of modelling and insisted I photograph her wearing said bonnet.  Four years too late....................

After the party, we took a Sunday drive into town and wound up at a place we regularly return to, the Art Gallery of NSW, where we watched a very entertaining puppet show and perused a little of the permanent exhibition. 

We then strolled across to the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Levy's Fountain

Happy happy place.

How was your weekend?

Hope your week is a happy one!

the animal play mat (another finished object)

One day ,about a year ago, I sat watching my kids play with their animal figurines and I thought to myself, "wouldn't it be great if they had a playmat to play with them on?" 

Then, as I do, I got carried away with the idea and decided it would be really great if they had a playmat to go with their box of toy cars too..... 

After a trip to Spotlight, where I purchased some felt in just about every colour they had, I got to work with my scissors and cut and pinned and cut and pinned some more until I came up with two fantastically fabulous play mats that the kids couldn't wait to play with.

I finished off the car playmat back in April last year. 

Remember that one?  It was a beauty.

Well, after finishing that one I lost enthusiasm for the project and the animal playmat has hung around, being moved back and forth, from here to there, with all the other UFO's cluttering up my space. 

Recently, while it was sitting on my bed, Miss B noticed it there and asked me when I was going to finish it like I had promised to do. 

Boy did I get an attack of the guilts! 

Needless to say, it was the next project on the machine and in next to no time at all it was done. 

I remembered seeing this fantastic Snailblazer Bean Bag Toss game made by Cass and decided to finish the mat in the same way.  I made the holes using my button hole foot and thick piping cord for the string.

It makes packing and unpacking a breeze and if we want to take it with us on holidays or on a play date it's soooo easy peasy!

I suppose you can buy similar things at toy stores or on-line; I really don't know, I've never looked. 

I know you can get mats with roads and things on them anyway. 

I tried to make my versions a bit unique by adding things like the caves, which the girls love. 

 And I love the grass which you can make stand up by brushing it to one side.

I also love the way Miss A and Miss B arrange all the toys so neatly, grouping similar animals together. 

They always do it this way.

But I especially loved this little bit

I'm lovin' it! 

And you know that tight feeling you get in your chest everytime you see the mountain of stuff sitting on your sewing table waiting to be done (or is that just me?!), well it's slowly abaiting.

revisiting hobbies of old...........

Yesterday I spent the best part of the day out in the garden, tidying up what has over the last few months, become overgrown, burnt (after Sydney's heatwave) and badly in need of some TLC. 

I find gardening very satisfying, enjoyable and therapeutic. 

I love it.

 

I started gardening with a passion more than a decade ago when my husband and I bought our first house together.  I would spend every free moment out in the garden.  Tending, transforming, nurturing and watering.

When we bought our current house I took it upon myself to landscape our front yard,

taking it from this, in the November of 2007

to this by February 2008.

I spent the next few months scrounging around our property, looking for bricks to use for my piece de résistance, the circular path.  

By June it looked like this

   Yes, I did manage to find that many bricks lying around!

I did all this predominantly on my own, with two small children often pottering along beside me. 

To say I was proud when I had it all done is an understatement. 

Gardening during those early days in this home was all I had to help me hold onto my sanity. 

A little bit of me, the old me, before I had two children.  Before the ups and downs of being a stay at home mother, with children who often needed visits to and overnight stays in hospital. 

But as always, times change, things change. 

Stresses and health improved and I learned to be comfortable in my skin again.  I discovered blogs/blogging and reaquainted myself with some crafty persuits. 

The garden continued to grow

nov 2008

and flourish 

November 2009

with only the occassional day here or there spent weeding, pruning, planting out some annuals or bulbs.........

Today it looks like this.

In need of an overhaul I think.

For me, half the fun is in the planning. 
Pouring over my gardening books and magazines.  Selecting plants and colour schemes.  And while I love the rambling cottage garden look I was trying to achieve with this garden, my tastes now seem to be veering more towards the more formal, clipped hedge look.  But can I maintain this type of garden? 
It will call for more frequent tending than I have been giving it of late.  Hmmm so much to contemplate.

Excuse me, I have some books to dust off...........................