hop skip jump

floral tribute

 

 

We are full-tilt Christmas here this week. It's the last week of school so I'm trying to get all those one-kid-only jobs out of the way, plus there's concerts and picnics and all of that other end of year fun stuff. 

The Christmas frenzy seemed a good excuse to make one of these flower garlands (found via one of my current blog favorites, You Are My Fave). The directions call for tracing the petals using a cotton reel, but since very low time input was my main criteria for this I traced the petals for mine from a ribbon reel (about 8cm diameter) so I could make fewer, larger flowers instead of lots of miniature ones. It still worked, and they are now festooned over the door to our kitchen. Please excuse the very classy blue masking tape on the half-painted door, it was impossible to get a half-decent photo of the garland in action.

Also, there's a few words about me & my toys over at the lovely Progressive Pioneer blog this week. Thanks Amy!

domesticated

I've been feeling far too domesticated lately. Which is sad, because I'm a domestic kinda woman. I love the baking, the home decorating, the sewing, the nurturing of the small folk. But lately I've allowed myself to let the not-so-great parts of this domestic based time in my life to get me down - the constant cleaning, the caring for sick kids, the juggling everybody's needs, the groundhog-day stuff. 

So, in aid of finding some perspective, I thought I might post about a couple of domestic-related things that are making me happy at the moment. 

1. I made marmalade from a whole lot of excess grapefruit we had. From this Nigella recipe (scroll down). Thanks to Charlotte for the idea - when I googled for grapefruit ideas, I came across her post about grapefruit marmalade and ricotta. Oh, how I love the internet.

2. I recently started a tumblelog of houses/home decoration that inspires me. I love that images on tumblr can be tagged (Did you know that? I didn't!) - so this is the perfect way to group all of that house related eye-candy. If only my magazine collection (about half of it above, currently being sorted through) was so compact and easily accessible.

week of giraffes

Last week was supposed to be giraffe week. I had three of them cut out and was feeling particularly on a roll. But then both kids came down with ear infections and giraffe week turned into week of sleep deprivation, antibiotic dispensing & cuddling feverish little people. Hopefully this week will be a better one for the giraffes, and with any luck they will be ready for the shop by the weekend.

Also, this past week, we tried to buy a church! A very run down old church in the shape of an octagon with no kitchen/bathroom/heating/21st century comforts like running water. I've always loved the idea of turning a church or old hall into a home, but unfortunately we missed out. Very exciting to give it a go, though.

So for now, back to tending to the convalescing sickies - and giraffes.

off the wagon

So, I fell of the photo-a-day wagon around day 125 (minus two, but who's counting?) I'm going to try to dedicate the time I used every day thinking about what to photograph and editing photos to actually making stuff, and blogging more - I've missed being here. Taking a photo every day reaffirmed that while I like to take photos, I'm no photographer. It was fun while it lasted though, & lovely to have a record of the first 125 days of this year. A big salute all those people who see the whole 365 though!

befores and afters around the house - the garden

I haven't written about it much here lately, but we have an old house that we've been fixing up slowly. After lots of work indoors (and still more to do, oh, it never ends!) we are finally getting around to the yard. Lately, we've made a couple of new garden beds and planted some wild iris, a flowering plum and some ornamental pear trees. But most exciting for us was the arrival of three pallets of recycled old red bricks last week. Now we have a back patio. At some point we are hoping the back yard might even be an inviting place to be. It's a plan, anyway. 

I dug around my blog archives and found this 'before' (ish) photo from November 2005 (another good reason to keep a blog!) That weirdy old pergola sat unsoundly on cracked concrete. Matt still goes into the foetal position every time he sees bougainvillea - removing that took 2 days and a truckload of bandaids. The 'after' photo doesn't look like much, either, but there is still much to do! Next up is a new pergola, some gravel for paths, and painting the back of the house (we are testing muddy greys up there to the left). 

And because I clearly need all the inspiration I can get, I thought I might share with you some of my favorite home blogs at the moment:

Sheterblog

Sanctuary

The Seventy Tree (via a&b)

Nestled In

Desire to Inspire

hither and tither

What a week. Audrey's back at school, Henry's making the transition from two to one sleep a day, it's outrageously, scarily, biblically HOT outside (45.7 on Tuesday and over 35 for at least the next 7 days). So plenty of cool drinks, iceblocks and avoiding the outside world as much as possible 

I think the heat is playing with my ability to focus, though that could be just a handy excuse. I've been puttering around over the last few weeks trying to get my doll pattern to a manageable state with the view to putting it up in my shop soon. Almost there - although with the amount of doll patterns already available on the internet, I'm wondering if the girl doll pattern shouldn't be a cat instead. See? No focus.

And thank you for your encouraging words about the mustard quilt, more grey is the plan. Also, a couple of corners of my little house had their five minutes of fame - thanks to Janie for the mention on ohdeedoh the other day. 

every day

So it's school holidays. Sometimes busy, sometimes slow, often intense. Especially when you're trying to stay indoors away from the hot weather (41 C yesterday, yikes!) Yesterday Audrey and I made playdough from this recipe while Henry slept. This morning, banana muffins for mother's group later. 

When Audrey was a baby we went to a live-in facility for a few days to help us cope better with her sleep (or, rather lack there of). It didn't really help, but there was a fantastically wise midwife there who dispensed some great parenting advice that has really stuck with me. One such nugget was to do something small every day for yourself. In order to keep your head together and remember that you are an individual outside your role as a mother. Not always possible, but so important. So this year, I'm tackling project 365 - a photo a day on flickr. My history keeping up with this kind of thing is a little patchy, so we'll see how I fare! I've noticed a few of my Flickr buddies who are doing the same. Anyone else in?

today

Trying to post more. 

I've been in bed with the 'flu for the past two days. Feeling much better today.

Working on some new stationery. 

Thinking about getting some greeting cards printed up for the shop with line drawings similar to the stationery... not sure.

Watching the American election unfold with great interest.

Weeds have taken over the garden, but look pretty in a vase on the kitchen table.

Time is running out while my littlest commando-crawling companion sleeps.

Have a good day!

ack!

I'm still here! Just without most of the equipment that makes blogging possible. Our house was broken into late last week. They upturned almost every drawer and cupboard they could and stole just about everything of any value we had. Admittedly, we didn't have a lot of things with great monetary value, but they did their best. Jewelry, computer, camera, cd's - they were very thorough. They even emptied Audrey's money box. I mean, really, who clears out a kid's money box?

I'm just thankful that we are all OK, and that I didn't walk in with the kids while they were still here. The worst thing is that on my computer were years of family photos & video that (and, believe me, I know how stupid this is) weren't backed up and are now lost. A couple of Audrey's birthdays, Christmases, Henry's birth. Please tell me I'm not the only person who is neglectful of backing up. Thankfully, I'd uploaded a few photos to Flickr & Snapfish and sent some to family & friends over the years. But most are gone. It makes me feel sick to think of it. So, friends, please back up your photos now. Please!

Also on my computer was all the email I needed to reply to. Not to mention my address book. If I owe you an email, I'm still trying to recover some of it, but if you don't hear from me soon and you're reading this, I'd much appreciate it if you could just drop me a quick line again.

On the up side, Audrey had her 5th birthday party the day after all of this and a good time was had by all, I hope. But more of that later.

on my desk: the other one

Toward the end of our renovation frenzy & room switcheroo last year, I finally got my own work room. One thing I'd really looked forward to was buying a new desk so I could separate my craft stuff from computer. It's not the best photo, but I love this little corner and I'm sure the keyboard will live a whole lot longer now it's not subjected to fabric fluff every day. There's a little inspiration wire above it with some favourite images by Ana and Camilla, Audrey's art, and a favourite piece of Liberty print (the one with the little houses, can't find a picture online).

On this desk today? Um, Audrey - still home sick from kindy. Miscellaneous stationery, framed photos of Aud as a baby and of my brother, a stack of white Ribba (sensing a pattern here?!) frames waiting for me to get photos printed. That pinkish blob in the middle is a doll quilt I'm binding in quiet moments. Underneath it are a stack of delicious magazines my Mum has loaned me - it's Matt's birthday in a few weeks and we're having 40+ people over for breakfast (faaark!) For this I need all the help/cooking inspiration I can muster.

More desks here.