they're here!

The school holidays that is! We are super excited about being on school holidays after an 11 week term at school. Oliver was so excited about school holidays that he did a little dance. The first thing that we generally do for school holidays is sleep in. But today we had to head out to the airport bright and early so that Ruth could head off on a plane to visit her dad. What an adventure!

Oliver was less than enthused about losing his play mate for the week; but we made promises of playing games together, going to the library lots and having plenty of cuddles. Plus, the planes started taking off which was very exciting.

You'll have to excuse the photo quality - I only had my phone with me and he was wriggling like a maniac. We did have fun taking photos and pulling funny faces while we were waiting though.

Gosh I love this kid - well both of my kids - they are so beautiful, funny and cuddly. Now, we have some serious fun to be having so until tomorrow....

how are you starting?

I am starting this month playing along with #reverb12 over on I Saw You Dancing. Kat sent me a message here on Sunday last week asking if I would like to play along and I really think it might get me out of a non-blogging rut that I have been in the last month or so.

So today's prompt is "how are you starting this month?"

The first thing that I did this morning, to start this month, was send my gorgeous sister Carmel a birthday message. It's her birthday today and we wont be around to help her celebrate as she lives in Brisbane and we live in Melbourne. But we are excited to give her real hugs at Christmas time when we will see her.

I am starting this month busy. December is always a busy month here at our place with Christmas just around the corner and all of the organising that goes along with it I am looking forward to Christmas day to actually just sit down and relax.

I am starting this month in a festive mood. I've set up the Christmas tree, the kids have decorated it, and it is beautiful! I love when my kids decorate the tree, and this year the decorations are much more spread out than last year when they just put the decorations right in front of their faces and we had very well decorated sections of the tree.

 

How are you starting December?

Have you set up your Christmas tree yet?

whoops!

I've let the last 12 days go past without any posting which I am kicking myself about. I have been very busy finalising the end of this semester at uni and ensuring I put in as much effort as I could to get the marks that I really want. I like to work hard as I think it pays off later in that I have learned as much as I can and do not need to really re-learn, just refresh.

A few things I have been up to...

 Sewing.

Celebrating another successful year for Miss-R at Calisthenics. Also celebrating the fact that we don't have to go to calisthenics practice for a couple of months.

Giving magical mummy cuddles.

Taking far too many "selfies".

I've also been doing lots of yummy clean-eating cooking, attempting to sell my car (without much luck so far), going to watch the MR play inline hockey, writing assignments, getting marks back for assignments, procrastinating, and working. I love my life, so busy and so many things that I get to do every week.

What kind of busy person tasks have you been up to or are you enjoying a more relaxed lifestyle?

Blogtober 16th: on working with children.

Finally, a wrap up of the items I completed in the KCWC.

I wanted to get some great modeled shots of the kids' new clothes, but working with children... yeah well we all know how that saying goes...

Mr-O tells me this is the best way to look at his new pants. By looking at the cool green fabric through the light of the window.

I was able to get him away from the window for a second before he went back...

Miss-R LOVES her new skirt, and as soon as she put it on, she ran out to the back garden to complete a very important test...

The twirl test... and it passed with flying colours.

Maybe one day soon I can get some great modeled shots for this blog, but for now, we can just see the clothes being enjoyed. That's all I wanted.

Are your kids unwilling models too?

Do your daughter's insist on checking the twirl factor on every skirt or dress?

Are you keeping up with Blogtoberfest?

Blogtober 13th: KCWC day 6

Today I gave myself a similar deal to yesterday. Rewarding myself with sewing is turning out to be quite satisfying. So after a lovely Saturday morning sleep in, some awesome breakfast and some reading time, I set to making Miss-R's Milkshake Skirt. 

The Milkshake Skirt is actually really easy to sew. MUCH easier than I had imagined, what with all those coloured panels. But it comes together really easily with only 3 pattern pieces. I have used the grey linen again (that's the last of it!) and some Happy Mochi Yum Yum by Monica Solaro-Snow as my accent fabric. 

It has meeblings in the selvage (bloomin iPhone games...)!

I am excited about how it will look when I finish it. I am also realising I have made both of the children items of clothing in grey and green... Totally un-planned, perhaps it has something to do with my mood. 

 

I actually gave myself a bit of reward time today. A few hours of study behind me and a skirt almost finished to show for my hard work. Hopefully I can finish it in the morning so Miss-R can wear it to watch daddy play hockey.

What did you get up to today?

Do you make strange connections to iPhone games too?

How do you reward yourself?

Blogtober 12th: KCWC Day 4 & 5

Yesterday my space was not so creative, and my place was full of tired, cranky parents. Mr-O made the executive decision to spend most of Wednesday night awake, coming into wake me five times during the night. Teamed with an early start to sit in traffic before a long, busy day at work, and then awful traffic on the way home, I didn't sew yesterday. In fact last night I didn't do much of anything other than mumble instructions to children about eating their dinner, brushing their teeth, and going to bed.

I did make a decision about what to make for Miss-R though for the KCWC. I am playing along with Karen from and so I sew this month and de-stashing some of my patterns in her great pattern de-stash. No, I'm not giving them away. The plan is to take some of the patterns out of the stash that I haven't used before, and use them! So in light of my blogtober plans to make, and to fulfill unfulfilled sewing promises, I will be making Miss-R the Milkshake Skirt I promised her back in June.

It's amazing what sleep can do, its so refreshing, and with only 2 visits from Mr-O during the night, today I decided that sewing would be a reward for me. 

I so desperately wanted to get into the sewing room and finish off Mr-O's pants. But I do have commitments to my study and I use Friday mornings to get a lot of reading done generally. So my deal with myself was to complete an hour's study before rewarding myself with some sewing. A good deal I do think myself.

And so today I give you the finished product. The shorts should be around 3/4 length on Mr-O, I will try to get some modeled shots up by the end of the week. I made a few changes to the original idea of the pattern, and so didn't follow the instructions at all, just used the pattern pieces.

The original pattern called for the pieces to be made into lined pants that can be turned up at the bottom to create a cuff that is held up by tabs with buttons. The problem with this is that Mr-O hates buttons. He pretty much lives in trackpants, won't wear a polo-shirt, and don't even ask him to wear a button up shirt! Making him something without buttons is the only way to get him to wear it.

The pants also have a stretchy drawstring. We are big fans of drawstrings here as pants that have the pull in waists have buttons also, and on the inside, meaning they are doubly horrid to Mr-O. I am thinking I will add in a bit of topstitching to the top of the waistband though to prevent this drawstring from digging in (the original tutorial probably asked me to do that but as I didn't read it...)

So there is my first finished item. It looks probably not much like the idea the pattern asked for, but it is what I had in mind.

Was your space creative yesterday?

Do your kids have clothing that they simply will not wear?

Do you know how to stop 4 year olds visiting their mummy 5 times a night?

adventuring

Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day here in Melbourne. So after calisthenics photo morning finished up for Miss-R we packed a picnic and headed out to Werribee Open Range Zoo for an afternoon in the sunshine and fresh air.

I love that the zoos here in Melbourne are all about promoting animal conservation and fighting extinction rather than just putting animals in cages for people to stare at. This teaches our kids to value the animals that we have and look after them for the future. They even have a project where you can recycle your old mobile phones to help save the gorillas. A good idea for all of you who have just upgraded to the iphone5!! I have a few envelopes around here that I intend to fill. It gets rid of all those old mobile phones laying around too!!

We enjoyed eating our picnic lunch out on the grass and the kids loved the fact that there were lots of other kids willing to play with them. Apparently everyone else had the same idea as us and the carpark was actually full when we got there. The zoo staff are wonderful though and were parking cars in a field close by. Even though there were lots of people at the zoo, it didn't seem crowded which meant I wasn't stressed out all afternoon about losing the kids.

We went on a safari after lunch. For those who haven't been to Werribee Zoo, they have all of the animals in BIG enclosures sorted by their country, so there's an arabic enclosure, an african enclosure etc. This is included in your ticket price and they book you in at the gate making it very family friendly, no massive pushy lines and no extra money to fork out for safari bus tickets.

Miss-R noticed as we were going through past the giraffes that one of them was licking his nostril. She tells me that this is because he has no fingers to get out the boogers. (SO CUTE!!)

There are a lot of endangered animals at the zoo and the zoo does have lots of breeding programs to try to build up their numbers which is great.

The zoo also has an area set up called the village dance party. There's a big screen, music, dancing and pots and pans to play. This was lots of fun for the kids after our safari. 

We also got to look for dinosaur bones.

All in all, it was a great afternoon out and with the zoo not being far from our house it wasn't a long drive and I am considering becoming a member of the zoo so that I can take them more often not only to Werribee zoo, but also the others around Victoria.

Do you like to go to the zoo?
What is your favourite animal to visit?

a sunny saturday

Well at least that is the forecast... so today I plan on taking my kidlettes on an outing to the zoo.

 source

On weekends and school holidays the kids get in for free, so it's really quite an affordable adventure (and its just down the road too!). 

I'm sure I will have many photos to show off tomorrow too.

What are you up to today?

Do you have any awesome school holiday activities?

my creative space

This week, I have been doing some hat sewing.

I signed up at the beginning of the month to a hat sew along over at Solomon's Sewing and started quite quickly on sewing up my first Sunkissed Hat for Miss-R.

She chose some Dr Seuss fabric for one side and some flower pot fabric (I'm sorry I forget the name of it) for the other.  I am certain that the Dr Seuss side will get much more wear than the flowerpots as she is in love with The Lorax at the moment. She alternates between reading the book on my phone and watching the movie many times a day, I am certain she knows the entire thing off by heart!

The pattern was quite easy to sew as it had easy to understand instructions (as with all MIP patterns). So for a novice hat sewer like myself (this is my first hat), it was quite an easy and enjoyable project. 

turning the hat 

 top stitching

 

 of course, I ran out of bobbin just before finishing the top stitching...

 sewing on the velcro.

I will definitely be trying to make a few more of these hats. Mr-O has spied this one and said he would like one (most likely with pirates on it) and Miss-R wants another in purple. Who knows, maybe I will get time to make them before the month is out.

Check out some more creative spaces over here...

Maybe you can join in yourself. What are you creating today?

Sunday Snippets

 

Joining in with Tinniegirl for Sunday Snippets.

Sunday Snippets

 

The week that was... Playing along with Tinniegirl for Sunday Snippets

better late than never...

I missed my creative space post yesterday... The world was happening...

Work... Tiredness... Major meltdown in the evening (me not the kids)

So I will update you all today :)

I have done some planning for my bag for this month's sew-a-long. Which was fun, and a bit exciting. I have to do some more research yet, but there's something on paper.

I also made (translate - decorated a chesty singlet) Miss-R a top to wear to her school mini-olympics on Wednesday. MUCH appreciated by all involved. We are all pretty into the olympics here, so it was pretty exciting for Miss-R that her class got to dress up in Australia colours.

I made a dress bag for someone at Miss-R's Calisthenics club.  I even inserted gussets... these will be going on her dress bag that I will make for next year as it means it will hold more costumes.

And then after that I sat doing assignments as it is week 10 at uni (translate - end of semester) so I am crazily writing portfolio and journal entries and sleeping very very little (thus the meltdown).

I am looking forward to bed on Sunday night but know that I need to work hard to get there as I have a lot of work to do.

I hope you are enjoying your week!!