Shopping bags made by daughter and her mama

Before we went to Finland I got Emma to draw two special pictures on a piece of fabric, one for her mummi (grandma) and one for her pappa (grandad). They both had birthdays during the summer so this was going to be a present for them. I sewed the fabric into shopping bags. Good team work I say and we did a HI-5.

Inside of the bag is rather retro and on handles she painted spots. Pretty cute if you ask me, I might want one for myself too.

Little dinosaur boy

We were very fortunate to be able to go up to Perth on Saturday and celebrate Casey's 1st birthday. He is the most gorgeous little boy, as cute as they make them. And when his mother wrote on his birthday how lucky she is to have such a beautiful, happy, loving, caring little mr mischief, I knew exactly what to make for him.

I saw a while ago this text: ROAR, that means I love you in dinosaur. I think it fits with so many little boys. All the loudness and mischief, all the energy they have and trouble they get in to... all a way to get our attention and to tell us that they love us.

I haven't drawn in a long time and I feel it's definately not one of my skills, but I had a lot of fun trying to draw this little boy inside the dinosaur outfit. And now I'm planning on drawing some more, I got so excited. What do you think? I also put the orange dinosaur beanie with the gift to match the t-shirt.

Minnie Mouse present

Emma's cousin Mia turned 3 last week. Oh my how time has gone fast. That means that it's less than 4 months and Emma herself will turn 3 (Better start planning her party.. Just kidding, it's almost sorted already). But for Mia, I made a little Minnie Mouse bag and a Minnie Mouse mask. Cuteness. Emma was more than happy to be my model and try on the mask before we wrapped the present up.

 Poor thing would have wanted to keep the Minnie Mouse mask to herself. So it got me excited. I think it's time to make some more masks. The FARM ANIMAL ones have been really popular and now I've been drawing patterns for other sets.

I'm thinking jungle animals: monkey, lion, giraffe, zebra and elephant. Also maybe little garden bugs: butterfly, spider, caterpillar, ladybird. I only have 4 bugs in that list, but I'd want the set to always have 5 different things. So any suggestions of what would be a good bug to that list?

Owl dress, shouldn't have even started...

Sometimes things don't go as we see it in our head. Something that seems like such a great plan, doesn't work when we put it into action. That's what happened with this little owl dress. A very special girl turned one and she had an owl party. I wanted to make her an owl dress and saw this idea on pinterest. Oh the wrinkles, poor owl.

Infinity scarfs

It's Christmas present time. I know I'm ruining the surprise to some of my friends now, as these scarfs are nicely wrapped under their trees waiting to be opened on Christmas, sorry.

I saw this type of  infinity scarf on pinterest and thought I'd have to give it a try. Then I made one and fell in love. Mum and I got so excited. I made heaps for my friends and mum, after returning home, has made these for her friends too. I miss sewing with her and have to post these things that I was able to make while she was here, as at the moment I'm finding it hard to have time to make anything.

After I wrapped and sent these scarfs in to the world, I still had couple left over. So they are on sale on my facebook page, if you are interested.

Christmas excitement

 Emma's first Christmas calendar. I had a clear vision of what it would have looked like, but as it turned out, our fire place is not long enough for my ideas. Now the little pouches are very crowded. But it doesn't take away the joy she had, when she got to open the first little bag today. Neither does it take away the cries when she didn't get to open another one.

Merry, jolly Christmas waiting time to each and everyone of you!

Spring Festival hulabaloo

Hey ya'll! I haven't been posting much lately, not because I would have been relaxing with our little prince, but because I've been busy busy sewing. Couple of weeks ago I tossed an idea to my mum of going to the Narrogin Spring Festival. She loved the idea and that was the start of two weeks of madness in our house.

For two weeks all the tables in this house were covered in fabric. I don't know where we ate.. Did we eat at all? No recollection on that one. We lost 3 pairs of scissors in that madness and had to buy one new pair (two of the scissors have since been found again). We got a new, though second hand, sewing machine to help us out so we could both be sewing at the same time (thank you hubby for that). We started as soon as we woke up and didn't finish until our eyes were closing in on us. We sew without thread (so tired), sang kids songs and had a blast.

 The day was amazing! So many friendly faces and so many lovely comments and of course some sales too. We had reversible dresses, reversible hats (for girls and boys), reversible headbands, nappy wallets, travel drawing kits, animal masks, bags, shorts for boys, dresses for girls, hair clips.

Most of the products were made (at least partly) from recycled materials, old curtains, sheets and such. Very nice I say.

My favorites were the animal masks and the boys pants that have the funky pockets. Gotta keep couple of them for Noah I think. People loved the reversable hats and the travel drawing kits as I sold most of them. Also the animal masks and the dresses got a lot of attention during the day.

Noah was hanging out with me all day and did so well. Many people were asking if I'm on facebook, so as of yesterday, you can see a button on the right collumn of this blog. Click that and you find me on facebook! Yay!

Thanks mum for going insane with me over the two last weeks and for helping me out. You are the best!

Cpr for an apron

One of the latest finds from our little op shop was this cute apron. Well, the only cute thing about it was the materil. I do not understand the point of these half aprons. I, at least, get all the flour and dough on my shirt so why would I want an apron that covers my pants? Oh well, the material was too cute to leave it there. I think I paid 50 cents for it.

As I looked at the apron closer, I realised that it was handmade. Oh how could I make something new out of it knowing that someone had created this apron with their own two little crafty hands. I felt like I was taking away it's life, and that is just too brutal. All this old apron needed was a bit of cpr. I had to keep it's original purpose alive. I just modified it a little bit and made it into an apron for my little helper in the kitchen.

She loves to "mix, mix, mix", as she says herself, and it does get a bit messy everytime. So she really did need an apron. I'm thinking of wrapping this as a Christmas present though. I think it would be perfect as that. First Christmas present of the year, done!

Our COW party!

This year, Emma's birthday party's theme was COW! Yes, cows! Oh I had so many ideas, but only few of them came true. But I didn't stress. I had so much fun crafting and creating. There is lots to share so let's get going shall we.

 

Invites were cows, of course! The nose of the cow was felt which added that extra specialness in them. It was hubby's idea and I totally want to give him the credit as I thought it was awesome! Not many people have had cow themed birthday parties so as I was thinking of the text I searched a lot of cowboy parties and took some ideas from them.

Because of all last years presents were noisy and flashing plastic toys I had to step in somehow this year. Hense the text at the bottom. I absolutely hate all those type of toys and don't really want them at our house. But how do you tell that to your family and friends? Any ideas?

I admit that I did slip up a bit with her outfit. She looks more like a Grease girl than a cow girl. It's the skirt.. I thought it was very cowgirly when I got the material, but somehow it just doesn't work. I still love the material and the way it turned out, just a bit wrong theme. Oh well, I'm sure we can get many more uses out of it this summer. And it was so easy to make! Yes, easy was the way I went this year.

Couldn't find any boots, but her aunty did her hair which was so pretty and fitting for the occasion. Thank goodness for awesome aunties!

As the guests arrived they were greeted by a line of cowboy scarfs. Everyone got their own. I got 5 different patterns so that they didn't all have the same. All the kids looked so cute with them on and I think my own cowboy was pretty darn handsome too. I made a few bigger ones for us parents.

I also made some buntig to hang around the place. All made from old things like sheets, mens shirts, table cloths and so forth. So very well recycled and it didn't cost me much more than time used for sewing and cutting.

I didn't make it in time to get good shots of our food. That's ok, at least it means that people were enjoying it. I think the coolest thing we did this year, concerning food, was our milkshake bottles. And of course that's the one thing I didn't get any pictures of, so I'll explain. We had a white metal bucket (you can see it in the furtherest corner of the table) filled with ice and full of glass bottles that had milkshakes in them. Flavours were chocolate, strawberry and spearmint. Oh it looked so cool and tasted even cooler! It was a massive hit.

My favorite food was the frozen banana pops, so yummy! We are going to make them all summer long. I also made little custard jars for everyone, and instead of a one big cake we had lots of cupcakes. On top of Emma's cupcake there was a cow with two candles on it. One of those silly ideas of mine according to husband, but yet he kindly did what I asked and I think it was groovy.

Loved the food! I put the most effort in it and it was gooood. Three different types of vegetarian pizzas, quishes, coctail sticks, home made dips, milkshakes...

We didn't have many games since all the kids were aged 3months to 3 years, but I did want some sort of activity. Photo wall was the answer! It was a massive hit, so much fun and guess what, so easy to make! We just got a big cardboard box (this one used to have a washing mashine in it), I drew some cows on it and then painted over. Then hubby cut the holes for the heads and ta da!

Notice the chicken who wanted to be a cow. Or then it was just trying to get away from the dog. I kept the heads that were cut off so that when there were three or two people getting in the photo, the extra cows were made to look like cows. I love this picture of the three little cousins, all doing their own thing.

For a party favour, all the kids got this little bag that had a small chocolate milk and a set of farm animal stickers in it. I didn't want to give any candy to the little children so that's all I could come up with. And hey, they got their scarfs too!

Oh what a happy day it was! I felt so blessed that we have so many wonderful people in our lives who care about Emma. Many came from over 2 hours away just to celebrate with her and that means so much to us. She was the happiest little girl I have ever seen and she fell asleep in my arms at 5.30pm. It really took all her energy. I think it was a perfect day!