Christmas at our place

This year will go down in history as the first year I hosted Christmas for my family :) Such an historic event! lol.

For the past few years, we have had Christmas Day with my husband's family and Boxing Day with my family. It stretches out Christmas and means there's no running around on Christmas Day trying to get to see everyone. Works well for us :)

The "historic event" was for my side of the family. We had my little family of 4, my brother's family of 4, my sister, my mum and my Grandma. My brother's girls are the same age as my boys and thankfully they all get along so well.

We had a delicious lunch with cold ham, chicken, pork, salads and bread followed by my Grandma's Christmas pudding that my boys helped her make last month. They were excited to see the end result!



The kids enjoyed having their own table (thanks to 2 little IKEA lack tables!) and it was nice for the adults to have our own table too....

It was a great day and I was really happy to have hosted, even if it did take weeks to tidy the house... and a long time to keep it tidy with 2 little boys around!

After lunch, my sister face painted the kids. Jack asked to be a Lego Ninja and his cousin asked to be a butterfly.

We got a pic of me with my sister, brother and mum. 

and one of my little family of 4

 Merry Christmas everyone!!! Til next year... :)



Mission: Possible

It's nearly a brand year. 2012, I have big plans for you! I'm going to start blogging more and be involved in more little challenges. I've found my first one!

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The lovely Chantelle from fat mum slim has put up a photo challenge for January.

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Your mission (should you choose to accept it..) is to take a photo a day for the whole of January 2012. There's a theme each day. This message will self destruct in 31 days... lol. hmmm, maybe I need to get some fresh air...

Anyway, mission: accepted. First day is a week and a half away and is YOU! (well, me, but whatevs!)

little lukey

my little Lukey. He's such a little sweetheart. I still think of him as such a little boy, but he's growing up so fast. He LOVES talking. and talking. and talking, and talking! about... well, anything really!

i love watching my boys together. And Lukey tells me they are "best fwriends" cutie

He's getting very excited about Christmas and I'm looking forward to it heaps this year. He seems to get it this year. It's going to be fun fun fun :D

my website's fresh new look

My website originally started as an online store. I chose a template from this chick designs after many, many hours (possibly weeks or even months!?) of looking at hundreds of templates.

I was on the search to find one that I liked (derr) and one that had the same colours as my awesome logo that my lovely friend Claire from frangipani designs created for me.

(funnily enough, my favourite colours are now aqua and lime green.... coincidence????)

Anyway, I came across a fantastic template using the same colours and bought it. I set it up as an online store, but found that having my own store plus my made it store was too much. I wanted my website to just be an information site about me, my products and what markets I had coming up.

I had it changed from a store to an information site, but after a while, I wanted a fresher look just for my product photos and design.

Claire helped me again and designed a lovely collage for my home page and a couple of different collages for my gallery page.

I love it! I think it looks so awesome and it's how I pictured it to be :) yay!

( and this blog just happens to match it too! )

superhero capes

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? no! It's a superhero!!! lol

My latest new product that I've been selling is my superhero cape. I'm loving them and I'm loving making them. I enjoy finding the colours to all go together and the different designs I have in my head for the backs of the capes.

I'm thinking for the back; a star, a rocket, a lightning bolt, a personalised letter of the alphabet and even the batman or superman logo.

I've been getting a great response for the capes which has been fantastic! I sold out of them at the Handmade Craft Market that I did last weekend, so I'm now sewing a lot more for my next 2 markets. Sure, I don't have any markets now until February 2012, but that'll come around quickly I'm sure!

My little models enjoyed helping me show the products in action!



big school

Today, Jack finished his 6 week orientation at his new big school. He starts next year and is SO excited. He loves his big school and has some great little friends in his class. His teacher seems really lovely, the school is great and everything is falling into place. Except for me. I'm a bit of a sook when it comes to Jack.

 Maybe because he was my first? He's my little mate and we get each other. The school have matched them up with a buddy from year 4. The buddy is a familiar face and someone they can look out for in the playground for the next 2 years. Jack's buddy is Nicholas and Nicholas has been awesome!

The school gave out little certificates to all the 2012 Kindy kids today. They went up on stage when their name was read out. If they were a bit shy, their buddy was right there next to them to offer support and to go up there with them.

I thought Jack would definitely need Nicholas for that. I was wrong. They called out his name and up he jumped. Confidently walking right up there to receive his certificate.

And yep. There were tears. MINE!

Surely it's still 2007 and surely Jack is still a baby... right????

our place

I'm not a particularly tidy person. I'd love to live in a clean, organised house everyday, but alas, I do not! I blame my mother. She's a hoarder! A shocking one at that. And she has a messy house!

So, when I do tidy the house, I get excited at the end result. I love the look of the house when it's tidy. But, with kids and their mulitple toys around (where did all of the toys and crap all COME from!?!) my tidy beautiful house is short lived.

And we have painted our new feature wall! We used to have maroon and while it was lovely when we did it, we've grown out of maroon. I love love love blue and adore the new wall :) (and I finally gave in after 10 years of my husband's nagging... we got a flat screen tv. and yes. I'll admit it. I love it!)

The new feature wall needed a matching curtain on the front door. Of course! So here it is. 



no prizes to those who can guess what the house looks like now... haha x

Decorating the house

We've been in our house for 7 years and have no plans of moving any time soon. When we moved in, the walls were all green. The green was actually quite nice, but we wanted to change it. After a couple of years, we painted the whole house a kind of beige-pale brown colour with 2 maroon feature walls. We thought it looked grown up and mature, but now we find it really dark and heavy!

Here's a pic of our loungeroom when it was green

For the last little while, we've wanted to change the maroon walls... to pale, vintagey blue. I've been mentioning it to my hubby for a while, and finally this weekend we went searching for paint.

Well. The hardware store had lots and lots of paint... including one called.... *drumroll please*... vintage blue!!! Perfecto! It was exactly the colour we were after. yay!

It's kinda like this...

now, as a crafty person, when I painted the walls maroon, I also made a maroon curtain for the front door. And it's now time to change it. to a blue colour.

This is the material I'm thinking of...

We'd also like to update our kitchen to lots of blue accessories to make it all matchy and I've got a vision of covering our dining room chairs with various blue fabrics to all go together, but also be different from one another...

We're also going to make our bedroom more grown up and put up wallpaper, nice lighting, new curtains and new linen. But that's our next project.

We love this wallpaper for our room

so there you have it. a little update of what's to come in my decorating. Thrilling, yes?? lol.

I'll add in some pictures soon :)