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hoot sweet (and not so sweet)

Henry turned four a couple of weeks ago, so we made chocolate owl cakes to celebrate again this weekend with my lovely visiting Dad. My little buddy was in charge of smartie sorting and eye placement - the owl in the bottom left hand corner is my favorite. (Owl idea found here via pinterest, of course).

Unfortunately our chocolatey friends were not enough to deter the person who broke in to our house Friday afternoon. The kids and I arrived home and caught him in the act - thankfully (oh, so thankfully) we hadn't quite made it into the house where he was, so were are all safe. Not nice, and not exactly the kind of memories I'm keen for our kids to have. Bah!

back in black

Um, hello? I hope you are still there. That was a mammoth blog absence. Busy times, with my Mum in hospital and general life stuff keeping me away from the computer.

I always find it difficult to dip my toe back into blogging after a break, so perhaps a list to start things off? Nice things that have happened during the past month:

1. We found ourselves with a few spare hours at home last weekend, and Matt painted the wall behind our desk black. It's phase one of our study schmick-up - more about that later. (The black wall was heavily influenced by the gorgeousness found at The Marion House Book and Door 16). Here is a before. This photo will hopefully remind me what it's like to have a clean desk, as I'm sure soon enough it will be covered with teetering piles of paper. For now, I love it.

2. Audrey turned 7. We had a very low key birthday for her this year, but I did make my big girl a chocolate piniata cake (from the good old WW Kid's Cake book). I still can't believe this worked out. It gave a convincing crack when she whacked it with a toy mallet, too.

kid's bedrooms

I am thinking about kid's bedrooms again. Changes are afoot in our little house - Henry will be in a big bed soon, and I want to squish in a desk for Audrey. Our kids share a room, so whatever we do in there it has to be gender neutral, too. These photos are some recent and not so recent favorites, gleaned from the archives of my tumblr blog. The beds are proving the biggest stumbling block. I'm a big fan of those wonderful wooden scandinavian kid's beds - but there's nothing of the likes of them to be found in little old Adelaide. So notwithstanding a secondhand-store miracle, I suspect we'll be falling back on Ikea again - maybe these, I'll probably paint them.

In the meantime, the internet has so much goodness. Sometimes it's easier to get happily lost in the search for inspiration than actually making decisions (not to mention getting in there and cleaning it up in the first place, ahem...)

From top: 1richtungsblog, inspirational spaces, bloesem kids, far out brussel sprout, green is the new black, design is mine, fine little day, real living.

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?