Christmas Stockings...finally

I've finally got round to making the kids some Christmas stockings. We've been using skiing socks for the past few years which works OK, although it was a bit hard to squeeze the presents in.

I used this pattern (very easy) and just used old fabric I had around the house.

I thought Joe wouldn't like a ruffle so just did a plain cuff.

Please excuse the dodgy photos! I just didn't have time to muck around this morning.

Ducks Dux of the School

Edited to say: who knew that people from outside Australia wouldn't know what Dux (pronounced 'ducks') is so just to explain, it's when someone tops their school academically for the year. Hope that clears it up :)

Last week my niece got Dux of her school (actually she got joint Dux because they couldn't split her and her friend). I asked Joe if he wanted to make her a card for becoming Dux of her school and this is what he came up with...

It's now in a frame on her bookshelf.

This was her present from her parents...

She said it didn't hurt too much. I wouldn't know, I've never had mine done.

I got her this as well. It's not due to arrive for a few weeks so she'll have to wait.

Love you darling, we are so proud of you! xx

Turning Two!

Yesterday my gorgeous little nephew turned two so we spent the first day of school holidays lazing around at my Sister's place.

I bought him a Chunky Chooky softie (thanks Cath!) which we wrapped in about four boxes just like a pass the parcel.

His Mum and Sister made him a cute cake which we had after dinner.

All in all a lovely start to the school holidays. I hope you've all had a nice week. xx

Tree Climbing

The kids just had fun climbing the Jacaranda tree out the front of our house.

Meeting Jenni

Yesterday, me and Ella went down to the local Mall and met up with Jenni from Baa-me Kniits. It was such fun meeting another blogger in person. Her two boy's were there as well, what great kids. The three of them (the kids that is) were running around the coffee shop chasing each other, luckily it wasn't very busy.

Look what I got for a present. A gorgeous crocheted christmas decoration that is now hanging just above Reindeer Hollow and a cute little charm that I'm going to hang on my handbag. Thanks so much Jenni!

We must have been too busy talking because we totally forgot to take a picture!

Trip to the Tip

We've been doing a big garden clean up this weekend so a trip to the tip was in order. I'm apologising now for any trailer envy caused by this post...sorry.

Here's us arriving at the tip and removing the tarp. Shane likes to think he is the best tarp tie-er downer-er (??) in the world, no movement from that little sucker all the way to the tip. He also managed impressively not to jack-knife the trailer as we backed into position... not that it was close or anything.

Next the back of the trailer comes off...now here's where your thinking the rake comes out, we climb into the trailer and start pushing it all out, yes...

...no. Ella (fairy dress and all) starts winding the trailer...what??? a tip trailer??? Here's where the trailer envy starts I'm afraid.

All tipped up and now all Shane has to do is get back in the car...drive forward a tad...

...and voila, the neatest pile of garden waste you've ever seen. See all the people behind us in the line...they're all using rakes and getting all dusty (not that we were having a giggle or anything).

We don't even have to take a broom to the tip to sweep out the trailer. We just tip it back to horizontal, chuck the tarp and straps into the back of the car and we're off.

I should mention that the trailer is homemade by Shane's Dad, brilliant design. Now I have to pack it full of all our camping stuff for our next camping trip.

Hope you've all had a lovely weekend. xx

PS - check tomorrows post where I write about meeting another blogger!

The Christmas tree, another disco and morning tea

On Saturday we put up the Christmas tree, I say we but really the kids pretty much did it on their own which produced this...

The tree is about 10 years old and on it's last legs and it has a big gap where there's no branches so Joe made 'Reindeer Hollow'...

Can't wait to get a new live tree that we can just bring inside each year.

Ella's finishing up day care this year to start 'big school' so there was an end of year farewell disco on Friday. She was happy to wear the same outfit as the last disco and had her face painted just like a butterfly...so cute.

Me and Ella had a lovely morning tea this morning catching up with Jenine from Made by Jenine. Thanks for the lovely food and chat Jenine!

Hope you're all having a great Monday. xx

Shane's Birthday

It was Shane's birthday today (hubby) and look at the adorable card Joe whipped up for him. The only question he asked while he was writing was "does world have an 'e' on the end?"

Happy Birthday

I love you Dad, you're the best person in the world

Hope you all had a nice Saturday. xx

My Creative Space...

How slack am I?? No blog posts for over a week!

Oh well. I have a bit of an excuse, a new toy, my very first iphone...yay. I love it, so today I'm going to make it a case. Just one for when it's floating around in my bag.

What iphone app can't you live without? or which one do you just really love?

Check out more creativeness at Kootoyoo

Ella's first disco

Last night Ella went to her very first disco. Her cousin, Freya, gave her a very sparkly dress last week which was way too big so I took it in a bit and made it shorter and she had the perfect disco dress.

She was dressed at lunch time and practiced her moves all afternoon.

She had a ball, the DJ was awesome (some kudos coming his way) and the lolly shop got a lot of business! Joe danced all night as well, so cute.

Hope you have a lovely weekend.
xx

My Creative Space...

...involves sewing some new curtains for the cupboards in the Kindy and Year One wet area at Joe's school out of this cute, and very bright, fabric.

They are to replace these old ones.

Also, I went up to Spotlight yesterday (I got a free $10 voucher in the mail) and found these bits of fabric in the remnants bin. I might make a Christmas dress for Ella. They are so soft.

Check out more creativeness over at Kootoyoo. xx

Ever wondered where lightsabers come from?

Joe: Did you know you can go to Nippers and learn to be a lightsaber?

Mum and Dad: Really?

Joe: Yeah, you really can, it's true.

xx

Concerning Chickens

So, my sister finally got some chooks and after an initial run in with a very laid back Whippet who no one knows what came over when she first met the chooks, they've settled in well.

They love mulberries when the kids shake the tree.

And they occasionally come inside and poo...nice.

Can't wait till we can get some as well.

Hope you're all having a nice Tuesday. xx

A skirt, some shorts and some decorations

We've been making things round here. First of all, a skirt (Insa from this book). What a lovely pattern. I'll be making more of these. This one went to a gorgeous girl who turns 1 this week. The lace on the bottom is left over from my sisters wedding dress and the fabrics are all from the op shop.

Next up are some shorts I made for Ella. I've just got to do the hem and probably add a frill of some sort. The fabric is a sheet from the op shop. I love the large print. This is the Dortje Trousers pattern from the same book as I mentioned above but I just made it shorter (obviously).

I try to get the kids to make some Christmas decorations each year, this year we've gone for air dry clay shapes to hang on the tree. We cut them out with cookie cutters (mostly) and have painted one side which I just sprayed with a sealer so we can do the other side tomorrow.

And this is what I don't want to be doing today, but it's going to be hard to avoid because there's no space to cook dinner. It was clear the other day. I'm still amazed at how quickly it gets like this.

Hope you're all having a nice Monday. xx

Mmmmm....Max Brenner

Today I went to Max Brenner for the very first time...and now I feel sick.

The kids got a bit carried away and we nearly had an incident, but we walked out with no burns to speak of (I did see Joe putting his finger sheepishly in a cup of cold water, but he didn't speak of it so it doesn't count).

Thanks Aunty Kyla for planning it on a lovely rainy day.

Hope you've all had a nice Saturday. xx

Forebear Friday

I haven't done a forebear friday post for such a long time. I'm so slack!

This is my Great Grandmother Jessie May taken (I'm guessing) when she was about 20 years old which would have been in 1896.

Hope you're all having a nice Friday. xx

PS - If you want to see a some photos of the surgery our dog had yesterday click here and here, don't click if you don't like seeing stitches and stuff. They're a bit blury. He's fine now, sleeping it all off. He also had 6 teeth removed (including 2 canines) so I think he's got about 10 teeth left. He had an infection that was going into his sinuses...ouch.

A few things...

1. I've been a bit slack at blogging recently haven't I? Oh well, life just gets in the way. I've just taken over the  uniform shop at school so have been concentrating on that the last few weeks. I think it's all under control now though so shouldn't take up much time.

2. I've just put my Madeit shop on "holiday mode". My Etsy shop is still open though. I've been having a bit of a break so haven't been promoting them at all which is the good thing about Etsy and Madeit, they just sit there and if you need a holiday you can take it.

3. The bougainvillaea has finally flowered. I'm not sure what I did but it hasn't had any colour on it for a couple of years so I'm glad I haven't killed it.

4. The maple tree (or whatever it is), on the other hand, hasn't got any leaves on it yet...what's with that? I'm really hoping it's OK because it's such a lovely tree. My MIL thinks it was late to drop it's leaves this year so maybe it's just running a bit behind schedule.

This is the neighbours one which ours usually looks like

This is the Elkhorn or Staghorn (can never remember) that we've been watching since it was the size of a fifty cent piece...so beautiful

5. I put a Kirb button on my sidebar (just under my profile), so you can check out my kudos and leave me some if you feel so inclined. There's a picture of me there as well. I'm sick of trying to hide my identity. Enjoy!

Hope your all having a nice Friday. What are you up to today? I'm going to try and get Forebear Friday back up and running next week in case anyone's wondering.

xxx

Geocaching

I did my first geocache yesterday after school.

Well, me and the kids just tagged along with friends that were doing it. How fun, what a great excuse to go on a bushwalk and look what popped up at the end...

Who knew that was there!

For those of you who've been living under rocks go here to see what geocaching is.

Do any of you do it?

xx

Kirb

Look what my clever husband and his partner made... Kirb

They've been working on it for a long time and finally launched it last week! Well done guys.

It's a site where you can send kudos to either an email address or a domain name (website). I signed up and tried it out and it looks like this. Click on the image to go to my page on Kirb.

You can follow other people on it to see who they're sending kudos to and people can follow you to see what kudos you are getting. They're working on new features as we speak so it'll be getting better and better all the time.

If you send kudos to a website try to follow it up with an email to someone who works there so they can collect the kudos and publish it. Once the website's signed up they'll get notified if any more kudos is sent to them.

If you send kudos to an email address they'll get notified straight away and can sign up and collect it and publish it.

It's kind of like an online list of testimonials. The amount of kudos you can send is limited (you get a token a day) so you can't send kudos to everyone all at once which kind of makes it more special I think.

Anyway, I probably haven't done it justice in my explanation so go and check it out for yourselves.

Hope you're all having a nice Sunday whatever you're doing. xx

Darth Maul

During the school holidays Joe got invited to a spooky party and since he's really into Star Wars at the moment he was desperate to go as Darth Vader...do you think I could find a cheap Darth Vader mask anywhere???

No, so he ended up going as Darth Maul instead which worked pretty well. I just had to buy red and black face paint and a couple of $2.50 lightsabers.

I found a couple of meters of black fabric in an op shop and made the cloak.

He's wearing my pants and my top (which looks like a tunic on him...clever huh), his wellies and some black fabric strips as a belt and around his wrists. I couldn't figure out a better way to make all the strips stay on so I made him stand there while I stitched him into his costume (then I had to unpick him when he got home). I also had to take in the pants and stitch a sort of V neck in the top to make it fit.

The lightsaber is made from two stuck together with black electrical tape and covered in red tissue paper and glue. Luckily it fitted into the car...just. It would have looked pretty funny if I had to stick it on the roof.

I had about 10 minutes left to paint his face so it's a pretty dodgy job, but he was impressed and that's all that matters. He said the party was brilliant and his lightsaber was a hit with all the other kids.

Hope you're all well. xx

Manhattan Dress

Well, I jumped in the deep end and sewed the hardest item in the book. My sister wanted to make one for her daughter so I thought I would as well, the Manhattan Special Occasion Dress.

It was a bit tricky, lots of curved seams which I'm not all that good at, but I learn't a lot. I did the 3-4 size.

It definitely passes the twirl test.

I got the fabric at an op-shop and I think the lining is from an old white sheet I had in the scraps container. The only thing I need to buy is some purple ribbon, the pink is just in there because that's all I had.

I love how the hemline is longer at the back and the little cap sleeves are so cute. You can't really see it in these photo's (due to some wild hair) but it also has a little collar which Ella has named the Snow White collar.

I'm just hoping she wears this one....the last dress I made she doesn't like! I know, it's taken me a while to accept as well, but there you go. She say's it's because it's got green on it. Well this one has green on it as well but she chose the fabric from the stash this time so I'm crossing my fingers.

If anyone has any idea's what to do with the Feliz (above) I'm open to suggestions...a nice charity or if you want to do a dress swap that would be good too. I can't stand to see it just dumped on the floor of the bedroom any more!

Hope you're all well. xx