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