snippets of Christmas so far

 Christmas hexagon made on night shift, a tradition of mine now it seems- making hexagons on night stinking shift.

 My best friend and I have sewed up a storm of Christmas singlets this year, which we have mostly sold!

Lots of Christmas singlets

 The ladies version.

 Lilly's Christmas dress and Christmas cupcakes.

This orange and pink turned into a bag for Lilly's teacher and matching zippered purse, the colourful fabric at the bottom of the pile turned into a wrap skirt for me and Lilly with enough left for Lill's teacher who wanted one too- just have to actually make that one yet!

Gingerbread Christmas trees, just for the fun of it.  We also made gingerbread teddy bears, about 50 of them actually.  They were pretty yum!

Pretty Christmas

Here are my pretty Christmas decorations I've got happening in my busy kitchen.  Rather than spend a fortune, I decided this  year to work with what I've got!  I've got quite a few cupcakes stands, so I put them to good use!

So beautiful, and with $3 LED battery powered lights from Kmart, they look super special.

a collection of good things made

I've been busy lately, end of year approaching, working lots but fitting in time to make stuff!

I made this colourful button necklace for myself and I just love it.

this purply pink one was a gift

and this purply blue one was for my Mum.

new cupcake wrappers, really like these, these cupcakes went to kindy

decorating the dinner table with old china and doilies for fun

last week we made pikelets with melted choc and 100's & 1000's for afternoon tea-that's a treat

Fathers Day pavlova

made lots of beach towel shorts for fun

possibly the most awesome useful beach bag in the whole world with unreal Ikea stripes.  This thing is lined with the same stripes, has a pocket, a key loop and extra reinforced straps.  Fits everything we could possibly need at the beach and is easy to wash.  Very happy with this bag, have needed one like this for ages.

a couple of cute appliqued suits for a little baby born recently

my favourite little bird.

Little Red Riding Hood

Here is Lilly's bookweek costume from last month.

Little Red Riding Hood

 We did quite a bit of recycling and reusing for this outfit.

 

The red cape was mine when I was a little girl and is in super condition considering its 30 years old!  I lived in this thing, it was actually a super hero cape that my Grandmother made me and in later years she added the hood when I needed a bookweek costume.

We used the Handmade Dress Miss Madeline pattern again, but had to upsize it a bit to fit Lilly girl now she is a size 12.  We also reused a favourite doily, that was on a Miss Madeline dress a while back.

We used some cute red embroidered ribbon on the hem too.  And made a simple basket liner which Lilly wanted to fill with cookies for her classmates.

 Pretty girl picking flowers from our garden bright and early in the morning.

Joey's 5th Birthday...party food, cake and scavenger hunt

 Finally here some pictures of the rest of Joey's 5th birthday party back in July!!

We had lots of yummy food, choc dipped strawberries, cupcakes, cheerios, raspberry coconut white choc chip muffins, fruit, special teacup biscuits and a few other things cause it was that long ago I've forgotten!

 Here are Joey's version of the teacup lolly biscuits, no handles, smarties on top- something different from the girlie teacup.

A couple of years ago, Stephen built me a 3m not so wide trestle table esp for kids parties, it also doubles as my sewing table.  Each year I make a new tablecloth for it using Spotlights spots and stripes.  I get about 3.5m and just hem each end, and it makes the perfect tablecloth, this year I added a blue spotty one to our collection.

There were over 25 kids at the party, it was cold and to be honest am a bit over party games esp pass the parcel.  My clever cousin suggested a scavenger hunt!  I drew 8 items that  you would find at a park (we did a trial hunt to test it!) and printed out 25 copies and glued them on brown paper bags.

It didn't take the kids long to gather the items.  We scattered around a few feathers for them to find as well.

Here is Joey and Poppa scavenging at the park.  The game suited all ages as the pictures helped the little ones who couldn't read.

Here is the line up presenting their bags and me checking the items.  I think I gave them a freddo frog each for all items, some big kids were sent back to get the correct stuff!

Here is Lilly's collection of stuff.

And now the birthday cake, the brief was lollies, milky way tiny teddy cars, soccer, aeroplanes!

So I just made a number 5 cake and went crazy with all those things.  Joey loved it and helped me decorate it too.

It was a cold cold day but very colourful!

Happy 5th Birthday big boy, love you lots.

Joey's 5th Birthday Part 1...making of the Pinata

As requested I made a pinata for Joey's birthday party.  This time, I allowed enough time to get it dry between layers of newspapers instead of putting the wet mess every night in the bathroom with the heater light on as I had to do for Lilly earlier this year.

I did this pinata properly, adding the rope to hang it between the layers of paper.  p.s. I use newspaper and pva glue watered down to make the pinata over a big balloon and for the last layer, instead of the glue, I make a thick floury paste to coat the newspaper.  This makes it really hard, you can see the coating of flour in the pic above.  When its dried well, you cut a small opening and pop the balloon and do your best to remove the balloon bits.

Then add lollies, wrapped ones are best since they'll be heading for the ground!

This is a photo inside the pinata.  Then seal up the trap door with some more paper and glue and allow to dry.  Joey decorated his pinata with streamers and his sister made some cute signs to go on it, see pic below.

Here is the birthday boy in the park with his pinata.

He loved it!  I loved it, so colourful!

You are too cute Joe boy! I love yoU!

Time to smash it!

All the kids got a go of giving it a good whack with the soft baseball bat.

Joey got the final hit making a big hole in the side.

Scavenging for lollies!

These things cost next to nothing to make and are way better to smash up than the bought ones, they do take time to make though but well worth it.

Stay tuned for the party food segment and the awesome party game segment...

Bunting and lots of it!

I decided to make aprons and bunting to decorate our school fete cafe!

I think I am a little crazy!

The fete is not for a few more weeks, but Joey turns 5 this Sunday and his park party needs this bunting.

So, together with Lilly and Joey, we made bunting! Lots and lots, about 25 metres I think.

It looks awesome here in our lounge room.  I moved the sewing station upstairs for the ordeal, too cold down in the garage at this time of year.

I need to thank a couple of people/things...Lilly and Joey for being so well behaved while I sewed and sewed and my bias binding maker for assisting me with the 30 odd metres of white bias we made together!!

I took a break mid-bunting yesterday, to make this cute cord skirt for Lill.

I sewed on a small granny square I had laying around, it looks very cute.

Today's Projects

Today Kimmy and Wolf came over.

The kids played and we did a bit of craft. 

I have been saving tins to mod podge so we did a little bit.

The conversations are unreal when we are doing this stuff.

Alot of laughing and stupidity.

We got a photo of us today, standing in front of the fabric piles and ironing board where the best work happens.  Now she has gone over to her sisters to bake cakes, for no reason, just for fun.  What a fun day she will have had!  p.s. they are entering my kitchen rules as a sister duo, lets hope they get in!

Here is my latest crochet project, this one will see me through till next winter I'd say.

It's a Lucy inspired from Attic 24 Granny Stripe Blanket.

I thought it would be a good way to use up some wool.  I am not thinking about the colour combinations, just using up wool but making sure there is enough to complete to rows in each colour at least.  It's pretty long, so we'll see how quickly I get bored with it. 

This is a crochet hat for Lilly.  It is a touch too big.

I finished this off when the kids were fishing the other night.  See where I ran out of light pink wool, nevermind I think the darker band looks ok.  And the flower was pure scraps, which I made up as I went, the centre is a little dodgy!

Here is the little boy in his new crochet hat he had to have.  His is plain blue 100% wool and fits like a glove.  I've got his size and pattern sorted just need to perfect Lilly's.