Christmas bags and ribbons ready to be washed and packed away until next year.
Inspired by a little, obscure blog I read, called SouleMama, I have decided to make a few fabric bags each year until I have enough to do away with wrapping paper altogether. Two years in, I have a nice little collection, but the question remains, will I be bored with it all come next Christmas?
Well, had a wash out of a summer holiday. We went to visit my brother in northern New South Wales and it rained every single day. Not just a litte sun shower either, it was full on side ways buckets of rain. There was flooding, in fact the worst floods the area had seen in 50 years. The area where my brother teaches was declared a natural disaster.
We weren't flooded in, thank goodness, but we were confined in doors and that can get a bit grim when you are 3 and a half.
We made it back to Sydney before the highways were closed and got back to a shrivelled up back yard. Sydney hadn't seen a drop of rain. We had one beach visit before we left and that is where I took the photo of Francis above. See the Harbour Bridge and Opera house on the horizon. We managed to have another beach visit and barbeque before Andrew went back to work. Sydney was treating us fine. Why did we ever leave to go on a beach holiday when we could have had sunfilled days together tight here in our own city? (Mind you, it was good to see family).
And 2007? I'm not really one to make new year's resolutions but there is something I want to aim for this year. You see throughout 2007 I was just really tired. So tired that every morning as soon as I got up, I was counting down the minutes until I could crawl back into bed in the evening. That's no way to live, and certainly no way to cherish your children. So this year, I want to live my days, not just mark time. Sure I have a lot to do, and a lot of it is monotonous child rearing stuff, but surely I can brighten up a bit and look forward to each day beginning, rather than waiting for it to finish.
Ok, so I'm going to replace one ugly phone photo with another one. But I think the camera problem is going to be rectified very soon.
A friend and I are combining our baking output and making mixed boxes of goodies for Christmas gifts. She is taking care of the fruit mince pies and and shortbread and I'm onto the chocolate blocks and gingerbread.
We've got some cute boxes made from sustainable bamboo to package them in and they will be fastened with red and white stripey grosgrain ribbon. We'll be sending the kids off to the beach with the dads on Monday and the two of us will have a little packaging party.
I'll be sure to capture some more ugly phone photos.
Wow, I've really been absent for a while. Apart from the whole Christmas thing, we've just had a 2 week beach holiday. Oh it was bliss! We were not even 2 hours out of Sydney at Pearl Beach, but it really was idyllic. The first week my brother and nephews joined us so things were nice and loud, but the 2nd week it was just my Mum, Andrew, Tilly and me. There is absolutely nothing to do at Pearl Beach. There's the beach and that's it. So days were filled with lazy mornings, swims, crossword puzzles, reading and a few more swims and a frolic or two on the sand for Tilly. Just what I needed after the busy lead up to Christmas and the day itself.
I can't believe I actually managed to make all the presents. Well, that is not true, Andrew's was purchased, but that is only because I had put it on lay by many months ago. As is usually the case, I left a lot of the finishing off until the last minute and so have no photos to show for myself. A big shame really, because I put a lot of time and effort in. Something even happened to my sewing machine about two weeks prior to Christmas and I can't seem to wind bobbins anymore - so I had to do a lot of hand winding!!!! I sure was dedicated!! I had made quite a lot of Christmas decorations too, but alas, neglected to photograph them. They were still up when we got back from our holiday a couple of days ago, but they seemed so dated I saw little point in trying to get some shots. We pulled everything down today and the tree is now out on the street waiting for the organised council pick up tomorrow. It seems a little sad. Such a big lead up to Christmas, and then suddenly it's all over.
Christmas day itself was great. In all, we had 14 family members here and it was a great success. Andrew cooked up a traditional lunch and I made some berry tarts for dessert. I had been really working hard to get the garden up to scratch for the big day, and while it was no shimmering mirage, it still scrubbed up pretty well.
There are so many things I could have been blogging about all this time, but I suppose I was too busy living them. I'm not into new year's resolutions and really my only real aim for this year is to scrape through (a new baby! I'm going to have my work cut out for me), however, one thing I wouldn't mind working on is posting on the blog a little more frequently. Hmmm, will it happen?
Speaking of the baby, I'm less than 5 weeks away from my due date. It sure has crept up on us. Even though I'm really finding pregnancy to be much harder the second time around - I was never this exhausted with Tilly. Oh well, no use complaining, I'm going to be suffering from a different kind of exhaustion soon, so I had better get used to it.
Here's to a fun and exciting 2007, but most of all, a managable one!
Oh, the picture is of Andrew and Tilly. I so love my little family.
Most of my Christmas crafting endeavours have been heavily influenced (oh, ok, down right copied) from other bloggers. For example, the owls in my last post look uncannily like some owls I saw at the Ornament Swap hosted by Freshly Blended.
I've been admiring the yo-yo garlands seen at Hello, My Name is Heather and SouleMama. And thinking that it might be something I could do. So I set to work. My Christmas colour theme is red and aqua (once again, seen around the traps, this time prior to Christmas in a whole swap dedicated to that colour theme), so I've been cutting out circles of all my scraps in those colours, and any time I get the chance, I whip up a yo-yo.
Well, poor Tilly. What with all the other handmade paraphanalia going on around here (why, oh, why am I attempting to make all the Christmas gifts this year when I'm 31 weeks pregnant???), I thought she was getting a bit bored of seeing me with a needle and thread in my hand. But no... she wants to join in. She picked up one of my fabric circles and was trying, unsuccessfully to jab the end with one of the laces from her very chunky bead threading kit. She was so keen to do it, that I went and got my awl and pierced some holes in the round of fabric and threaded a wool needle with some cotton yarn. All the while I was thinking, "don't be ridiculous, she'll never get the needle through the tiny hole" Well, low and behold she did! She may not have threaded the holes in any particular order, and she may have given up after about 5 holes and reverted to her favourite craft tool, sticky tape, however, she was sewing with me for a brief 5 minutes and I couldn't have been more proud.
DISCLAIMER: Although her sewing skills her highly advanced, please be aware that she does normal 2.5 year old stuff as well, like ripping off all her clothes in an upmarket fabric shop and running around like a crazy critter. That's normal isn't it?
For the past I don't know how many nights I have been busy working on my friend's (the cake and the book friend) little boy's Christmas present. It's a felt counting mat. Each number has a corresponding "home" such as a tree trunk, fish bowl, bee hive, with just the right amount of slots to place the little creatures. I made 1 sheep in a snow dome (bit of a long story, but he has an actual snow dome with a sheep in it), 2 cats on a mat, 3 owls in a tree, 4 chicks in an egg shell, 5 fish in a bowl, 6 bees in a hive, 7 frogs on a lily pad, 8 lady beetles on a flower. And there will be 9 caterpillars on a leaf and 10 butterflies loose in the sky, but those ones are still on the way but I had to give the present yesterday as they are off to Adelaide for Christmas tomorrow.
There are more pictures over on Flickr.
I first spied the Thanksgiving leaf garland over at Wise Craft, and it just so happens that a lot of other people were noticing it too! It looked like an easy enough project for me to manage so I whipped this up in less than an hour last night. I think it is pretty cute. I'm trying for a red and aqua theme for Christmas this year and I'm going to try to make all the decorations. I'm also going to try to make them from things I have around the house. It's a bit of a challenge, but what do they say about "necessity being the...", oh what ever that saying is.
I needed to tie a knot each time I threaded the felt on, so that they wouldn't slip slide all over the place. I thought it was cute to make it a little bow, it looks particularly cute on the little stocking shapes.
Aaahh... a little bit of crafting that was a success.
In the supermarket this morning Tilly saw a little girl holding a pretty garish, cheapo teddy with a Santa suit on. Tilly was most impressed with the hat and asked me for a teddy with a Santa hat. I promptly told her that she didn't need a teddy as she already has Tully (pictured above). But I did say that we could make a Santa hat for Tully, thinking it really couldn't be so hard.
While I was navigating the war zone that is Spotlight, I changed my mind. It was very hard. Nothing to use as a pom pom, no white fluff to be found, Spotlight as crazy and frantic as ever, the staff surly as usual. And the price was way more than a tacky synthetic Santa hat from the Two Dollar Shop. Why was I making life so hard for myself???
The answer: to make my little girl happy! She was so excited from the moment I said that we would make them. The anticipation, the spying of the materials in my shopping bag, her watching in awe as I constructed the hats, one for her and one for Tully! . And once they were complete, not only did she think I was a super magical Mummy, but she was also on 7th heaven. Couldn't take the thing off. Wanted to wear it to bed. Dragged Tully around all afternoon when usually he is relegated to staying in bed all day. It certainly gladdened my heart to see how happy I could make her. And to think that that happiness lasted all day.
I could have bought her the cheap, tacky one. It would have cost next to nothing, but the joy too, would have been fleeting. So all in all, a happy day with Tilly and a successful craft project to boot.
My apologies to Stephanie of Little Birds, I really haven't done her soft trees justice. She has so kindly provided the template to make her little beauties, and well, I feel I have fallen short. There is even a Flickr group going on, but I'm afraid I will lower the tone if I add mine.
I'm feeling a bit dejected about my sewing endeavours lately. I've stayed up past midnight for the past two nights (no mean feat for a 28 week pregnant woman with a toddler under foot!) working on a skirt for myself. My birthday is approaching and Mum (she's Noname in the comments) gave me some money to spend on myself. I chose to get Sew U by Wendy Mullin. It was shipped really quickly (mind you, one of the flaws of living in sunny Australia is the cost of shipping things from the US!!, it cost just as much for the shipping as it did the book + an extra pattern). Oh, I love it, just the right book for me. The book includes 3 patterns, and I decided to give the skirt a whirl, I thought if I made a low waisted draw string one, it would be fine with my growing belly. I really spent time on each step, wanting it to be really well done. Well, the darn thing doesn't fit me!! And it's not the belly that is the problem. I can't even pull it up past my thighs. I don't really know what to do, I took such care and it is really looking very good. Perhaps I will post a photo and maybe one of you readers would like it. Let's say it is a small (not medium as I intended!)
And another sewing project that has ended in despair. A little dress for a friend's new baby girl. I have a real problem in that I have great ideas for things, but no idea how to go about making them. There are never any patterns to suit what I want to do. So this dress was compromised from the start. I ended up finding a pattern in 70's craft magazine that I copied onto a grid. It really hasn't turned out the way I wanted it to, and the instructions were so brief! I had to make up a few things as I went. No photo as I am too dejected at the moment.
Perhaps tomorrow I will photograph the really bad tree ornaments made from play dough that I thought would be a good thing to do with Tilly. While I did succeed in entertaining her for 3.5 minutes, the end result is very, very lame. I've kept them, otherwise there might not be anything to decorate the tree with.
I'm tyring, I'm really trying to make some nice things and not rely on run of the mill bought stuff. I'm trying to inject some meaning into the things Tilly and I do together. I'm trying not to waste money. I'm trying to make our house a home. I'm trying. But sometimes I feel like I'm just too messy or something. The intention is good, but the execution is poor.
Even my roast lamb was a disaster tonight. And I don't think I should even mention the Martha Stewart paper star that I attempted. Dismall.
