My creative space...

Oh, Ikea. How you taunt me from your new home... 20 minutes drive away!  Having grown up Ikea-less in Tasmania, any visiting relatives insist on a visit there as part of their itinerary.

And what am I to do as I tag along but buy 3 metres of housy fabric for no apparent reason and then have it taunt me from the craft cupboard, forcing me to make it into a new sewing maching cover!

This is supposed to be the right side cause the houses on top face the right way, but of course I prefer this side....

...they all seem to line up better don't you think?

If you are interested, it is a super easy pattern that I found here. I made sure to measure up my own machine to be sure of a correct fit and I also tend to use trusty baking paper from the kitchen to draw up a pattern before cutting up the fabric. Would hate to waste any of that 3 metres of housy fabric!! Any ideas on what I can use the other almost two and half metres on????

This week I also tried my hand at making a fabric yo-yo!  Addicted after only making one!  I followed Emma's advice over at Frog, Goose and Bear and bought a yo-yo maker online with the Haby Goddess - super fast postage and a wee freebie was included!

I'm thinking of making up a few simple skirts and teaming them with a t-shirt decorated with a couple of yo-yo's made using the same skirty fabric for little girl birthday presents!

Other creative types hang around over at Our Creative Spaces on Thursdays.

Bunting Swap almost posted...

I've managed to finish off all my crochet bunting for Squiggly Rainbow's bunting swap and they are going in the post tomorrow!  Yay me!  Two of my recipients live abroad - one in the UK and one in Sweden.  Another lives right in the next suburb from me now and one lives in the town my uni boyfriend came from in Tassie!

Hope all my recipients like them.  I cant wait to start getting my pieces!

Some sexy for your Sunday

Source: notesondesign.tumblr.com via Claire on Pinterest

Oh, Ryan - you and your sexy little smile. 
You are on my 'list'!

'Seriously, it's like you're photoshopped!'

 

This week I'm grateful for....

Oh my.  Well hello and welcome to you if you haven't been here before! 

The very lovely Maxabella is letting me host Grateful this week and I'm feeling a little shy!  I tried to tidy up a little bit around here but I still have nervous tummy and everything.  Gosh, I hope you like me.

I'm grateful this week...

...because Maxabella asked me to host today.  Truly, I did the dance of joy when her email came through.  Well, it was probably more of a bounce around in my seat cause I was at the boys swimming lessons and people may have started to wonder if I'd leapt up and started grooving.  I consider Maxabella to be one of the cool girls of the bloggy world!  I'm really hoping a little bit of that rubs off on me!

...for baby chicks.  We were lucky enough to watch them hatch at Isaac's kinder over the week and they are terribly cute and chirpy.  Chicks I love.  Chickens kinda freak me out.

...because school holidays have started!  Two weeks of blissfully, lazy mornings, park visits and picnics awaits us!  (If you come back in two weeks though, I'm bound to be grateful for a return to school!!!)

...that exclamation marks exist!  Odd, yes I know and I'm the first to admit to my overuse of them but I really like them!  Especially when I leave comments!  I'm hoping they convey my excitement for all the marvellous things you may have said!  Fair warning I say, as I'm sure there will be an over excessive use of them when I pop by to read all your grateful posts!

Thanks for stopping by.  Feel free to visit anytime!

Please join in by adding your Grateful post to the list below (and please, we love you, but it really does matter that your post is one about being grateful, not just a random) and pretty please add a link back to the list.  Make sure you pop over and visit other bloggers too and spread the sunshine!

Everybody Hurts

I will always remember this song as the soundtrack to Brenda and Dylan's relationship on 90210.  How I loved that show!

You know that they retired yesterday?  Did you have a favourtie REM tune?

My creative space... Pippy Crochet

My undying love for my newsagent continued this week when he made sure that one of only three copies of Mollie Makes he recieved had my name on it.  Bliss and Joy.

And look who I found perched merrily in it's covers...

Pip from Meet me at Mikes! 

Perfect timing to be reading about her, cause I am currently following her fabulous tutorial and making my first ripple rug.  Pip writes the perfect instructions for crochet - really clear and easy to follow.  I learnt to crochet granny squares from her videos.

I've only done a couple of rows so far and I'm just using some yarn from my stash.  I hadn't crocheted anything in a couple of weeks and my hands were getting itchy!  I needed a project that lets me sit in front of my favourite tv shows and still feel productive and this is perfect. 

Oh, and we are still cutting out lego men for the Lego party of the century!  This is a big pad of coloured paper ready for Lego men to be cut out of and hidden around the backyard for a bit of Lego Search and Rescue.  Tell me that might keep 20 little people entertained for more than five minutes please???

The Twits

Have you read 'The Twits' by Roald Dahl?  He truly is a magician, the way he writes for small people is incredible. 

I think big people can learn a lot from him too.

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face.  And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it.

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.  You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

(The Twits by Roald Dahl)

Why this will never be a cooking and photography blog....

...because I bake $2 packet mix carrot cake for afternoon tea & take pictures of it with my iPhone.

oh, the shame

Lego Men Tshirts: A tutorial (kind of)

A certain young man in this house is going to turn 5 next month and we are all systems go prepping for a Lego Party!  I have found loads of fantastic ideas on the internet and pinned them onto my pinterest board if you are interested.

Only recently, I came across these great free downloads that someone has used to make lego man bunting (which we will definately do) but I have also used them for the party invite.

Source: winksanddaisies.blogspot.com via Sonia on Pinterest

The lovely person sharing these has included a blank man, a happy birthday man and lego men with 5, 6, 7 & 8 on them, which I think is super generous of them!  We make Officeworks our best friends at party time and take all our files in there to photocopy and print.  I had them print off the Mr 5 onto some nice thick card, cut them all out and just wrote the invites out on the back.

My other great find has been these lego kirigami.

Source: zakkalife.blogspot.com via Sonia on Pinterest

How cute are all the little lego men holding hands?  We'll definately be using some of these to decorate the house!

Instead of making take-home bags full of crappy lollies that no-one likes I've had the grand idea to use them as a template and give each party guest their own lego man t-shirt to take home!

Click on the link (above) and print out your lego template.  Trace around as many of him as you need onto iron on transfer paper (I think it has some fancy name starting with v but it escapes me right now!).

(I am fairly certain I will be sick of Lego men before this party even begins!)

Without cutting them out yet, iron them onto some yellow fabric.  Apparently if you cut them out once you have ironed them onto the fabric you get better edges that dont fray as much after they have been through the wash.

Cut them out nicely, then peel off the backing paper and iron them onto your t-shirts.  I have bought a couple from Best and Less for around $4 each.  Depending on my time I think I might even sew around the edges of each man just to make him a little more secure.

The boys have given their thoughts and determined them to be 'way cool!'  I think so to, so much so I think I might make myself a grown up version to wear on party day!

In the (Lady) Lion's Den

Saturday nights change after you have children.  You probably knew that already. 

Mine looks like this on a fairly regular basis. 

The small people are sleeping, my husbands away.  I may have a fairly dreadful movie on tv (The Ugly Truth... and it is pretty ugly... except of course for Gerard Butler!).  I have developed blisters from cutting  out those lego men.  And a large percentage of those m&m's may have already been consumed.

What do your Saturday night's look like?

Give a grown up a skipping rope at the museum and you shall end up with ridiculous photographic evidence

My niece, me, my sister.

I hope they still speak to me after this.

Online Magazine love.... tickle the imagination!

Oh my.  I've only just come across this gorgeous online magazine.

http://tickletheimagination.blogspot.com/

Have you seen it?  It's full of lovely!

I think I want to make one of these just for me so I can go skipping through the woods on whim, with my basket of apples and fresh baked goods for grandma. 

(screen shot from the magazine)

My music confession....It's a heartache!

I noticed one or two ladies of late fessing up to some 90's music love.  I dare not judge.  I was raised on Bonnie Tyler.  I love her.  I sing with her at every opporunity.  I have her in my car and on my ipod.  I fondly remember drives home from uni in Hobart back to Devonport literally singing the entire Bonnie Tyler catalogue the whole way.

When I was about 700 hundred weeks pregnant with Matilda, my sister and I went and saw her at the Casino.  Can I just say how fabulous it was without being judged to harshly?!

We were quite possbily the youngest people in the audience and were told several times by those around us to sit down and stop singing along... truly.

The best bit was after the concert, when everyone just got up and left my sister and I spied her husband coming out from backstage, accosted him and asked whether it would be possible for her to sign out concert tickets.  Why dont we come back and meet her, he says!  Be still our excited hearts!  I tell you he was lucky I didn't immediately go into labour.

She was super lovely and friendly and in the end not only autographed things for us and let us take bunches of photos, she also sang 'It's a heartache' over the phone to my mum after my sister had rung my mum back home in Tassie to tell her exactly who we were with! 

And look, she hasn't aged at all.

See... dont judge my ginormous moonhead... 700 weeks pregnant remember.

Ever met a famous person before???

My creative space....

I feel like I have lost my bloggy mojo this week.  Do you ever get like that? 

There are loads of things I could talk about but I find I am censoring myself, writing posts then deleting them, not sure whether some things are in the 'way to much information' basket or whether I am sharing too much of my small people's quirks, habits and behaviours that possibly might embarrass them when they are older.

I sat in my sewing room this week instead and tried to make things.  I stuffed up big time - wasted time and ruined some really nice material.  I comforted myself by leaving a mess all over my sewing table, retreating to the couch with repeats of Grey's Anatomy, a jar of nutella and a spoon.  I find this solves most of the worlds problems.

I tried to make a hat from my new book.  It did not go well.  I found a fabulous apple pin cushion pattern and managed to successfully whip one up that looks like it's supposed to.  And when all else failed, I crocheted more triangles, ready for the Bunting Swap.

My new book, my new apple pincushion, my triangles (but they could be yours!)

Cute, yes?

I have been using Sarah London's pattern for Granny Bunting.

Ever lost your mojo?

You might be able to find it again over here.

Tuesdays.... bleuch!

Do you know Tuesday's irritate me? 

I'd leave now if you dont want to listen to my whining.

Still here, huh?  Do Tuesday's annoy you too?

My children have been getting up far too early for their own good - like around 5am.  Getting them back to bed to sleep some more has proven pointless.  A 5am wake-up call and being 2 don't make for a pleasant day at all.

I have done nothing but pick up after other people today.  I vacuumed up several pieces of lego this morning and smiled satisfactorily when I heard their crunching sound winging their way up the vacuum tube.

Why are Spotlight so rude?  Not just the people that work there but the fact that they charge $2 to access a trolley and that you never have $2 on you?  I asked 4 people this morning in that store where I could find their leather string and not one single person gave me the correct location, showed me the way or even knew what I was talking about.  And they do have it, and it was in stock!

Two small boys in this house have managed to break two sets of expensive in-car headphones!  Removed the battery covers, lost them and then stolen the batteries.  They are both accusing each other of the crime.

Every time my husband goes away, large creepy crawlies tend to make themselves known.  The worst ones are those that hide in the clothes you have bought in off the line.  They tend to leap on me, fall down my bra and make my dance hysterically while screaming.

I have no money and need a job, but don't know how to manage and organise the small people so I can get a job and still be present for them.  Primary school teachers who can only work part-time are not in high demand.  And I simple cannot go back to being a checkout chick.... I have two degrees goddammit and I will use them!

My wardrobe is full of clothes and I have nothing to wear.  I need a massive sort and cull and tidy and simply do not have the energy for it.  Instead I will continue to buy white, black, navy blue and grey things and force them into my exploding cupboard.

The shining light for my morning......

...someone sat still long enough this morning for me to get this teeny tiny partly braided plait in her hair! 

By the way, I will be totally fine by tomorrow.  I love Wednesdays.

I made a skirt!

I managed to complete a grown up skirt for myself over the weekend!  I am totally wearing it out in public today too so we'll see if it passes the all important school mum glance test at drop off and pick up (and dont pretend you dont know what I mean!).

I followed this pattern which was really clear and easy to follow, especially for someone who generally sticks with smaller peoples clothes.

I used this material - which I am sure is meant for quilting, not skirt making!

And these are the best photo's I could get whilst using a 7 year old and an iphone!

Lucky for me it's 21 in Melbourne today!