my girls first sewing project...

and isn't she just so clever!

I found this book today and just couldn't leave it in the bookshop, its packed with easy step by step pictures to make gorgeous little things. Alot I'd like to do as well.

So Miss Lilly chose a felt butterfly brooch to make, she did all the placement and stitching except for pushing the final part of the needle through the layers of felt on each stitch as it was too hard for her little fingers. We need to get our embroidery cottons back off Mum so we don't have to use wool again, that will be much easier!

It took about 30 minutes to make and she didn't once whinge or want to give up. She learnt plain stitching and blanket stitch and also how to thread a needle, start off and end with a knot. We also did stuffing and sewing on a pin to the back.

Here is her very beautiful finished brooch.

You are a clever girl.

antiques and collectibles fair

Here are the treasures we bought...

Lilly chose the tiny little doll with sleeping eyes and the smallest crocheted dress you could imagine. The doll is 60's. I got another pair of Siamese Cats for my collection, a Holly Hobbie book about Mothers, a milk glass cup and saucer, a demitasse cup and saucer, some miniature figurines, some random plates and 2 trio's of Elizabethan Mother (my Mother's Day present and one is for my second best friend!)

Here is the new pink addition to my china cabinet to go beside the violets that I got last year at the same show. These cups are tiny, made in Japan but I'm not sure of anything else about them, so so sweet.

Monarch Butterfly's

Lately we have been on a complete tangent. It all started at Kindy where we had some caterpillars that were brought in by another family. Well Joey and I had to get some for ourself and after a bit of research, library work and googling we found out all about the Monarch Butterfly.

We learnt that they eat milkweed as caterpillars and if you open your eyes and look around you see it is growing everywhere. We found a massive patch nearby to our house and spent many hours wandering around just looking, finding caterpillars, butterfly's everywhere- how come we've never noticed these beautiful orange and black things before right here on the road we drive down everyday?) We took some home and had our own caterpillars. They ate and ate and ate, and grew very fat. Meanwhile we noticed more tiny caterpillars appearing, the milkweed we had picked had lots of eggs on it.

Eventually the caterpillars have eaten enough and hang upside down in what is known as the "J" shape, they spin a tiny silken pad to hang from. We noted they stayed in this position for 12hours before they magically shed their skin to reveal the Chrysalis!
The "J" shape ready to pupate. In the 'wild' the Monarch Caterpillar gets off the host plant and pupates elsewhere, but here in our house they have no choice but to hang from the plant they have been eating.

This is a newly formed Chrysalis, you can see the discarded skin below (a black crumpled piece).

After a few minutes a beautiful gold line appears along with some gold dots on the green Chrysalis. It is so beautiful. The Chrysalis hangs for roughly 10 to 14 days and changes occur.

Eventually the Chrysalis turns brownish and black in patches then magically, orange sections are seen as the Chrysalis case turns clear.

Here are my two trusty observers- observing at a very close range!

Not long later, a beautiful Monarch Butterfly emerged.

It hung from the empty Chrysalis for a few hours breathing in deeply to pump up its wings, then to uncrumple and dry them and then slowly take a few practice flaps to test them out.

Finally with a few wonky flaps and flight attempts it flew away. Off to find nectar to eat and milkweed to lay more eggs on after it finds a mate. There is no shortage of milkweed around here. The plan for our yard is a small milkweed patch and lots of colourful flowers to attract the Monarch to our garden. But look a little further at our place and we find things way more exciting than this: Eastern Dwarf Tree Frog, Blue Triangle Butterfly, Orchard Swallowtail Butterfly and another frog yet to be identified.

After our fun with the Monarch's we put the remaining milkweed plants that we had picked back at the patch so that the other tiny caterpillars could live on, the life cycle would never end in our house, because the more milk weed fresh shoots we picked to feed the growing caterpillars, the more new eggs we were bringing back home!

So this discovery led on to a small fascination with butterfly's. Everywhere we went we saw them, we carried our books and were able to identify most. We even found one outside our local bakery, on the smallest Oleander plant with all stages of the Common Crow Butterfly happening (these maybe only a boring black butterfly but the Chrysalis is by far the most beautiful I've seen and we had one hatch here this am).

Further on I investigated what Butterfly's were native to Australia, since Monarch's aren't, but interestingly are listed as potentially vulnerable in our Going, Going, Gone book. And after this, came to find out about the Richmond Birdwing Butterfly which is indeed very vulnerable and is a native butterfly to our very own region with a Recovery Program to boot and the expert Ray Seddon living just kilometres away at the ready to teach us all about them! Which is a whole new story in itself, stay tuned for our adventures with the Richmond Birdwing Butterfly and planting of the vines as they are far more important than the Monarch.

Richmond Birdwing Butterfly image from saveourwaterwaysnow

would I change a thing?

... nup!

hang on, yes I would, I would magically make Lilly and Joey appear for the day!

I'm flashing back 8 years this September to our wedding day. I meant to do this last anniversary but scanning pictures was not that appealing. These are unprofessional photos taken by friends and family, the professional ones (in the times before digital) are bound forever in the big album which is stored in its special box never hardly ever looked at!
I'd definitely wear this dress again, yes definitely...I'd just have to get it out of the Airs & Graces windowed box and try and fit into it that's all! Back then, I wasn't into sewing so much but I did have detail in me and this dress was made especially for me and turned out exactly as I'd imagined, even down to the pattern I wanted the diamontes stitched into (I bet they called me a PITA behind the door!) The roses are preserved and framed on the wall, thanks Mum that really was a good idea, despite how ghastly I thought it was at first.

Here we are, all married and very happy!

Nothing's changed cept we've got Lilly and Joey...

NOW we are very very (infinity no returns very) happy!

sight words ruined my picture

Last night Lilly and I did this week's sight words homework. Our clever teacher always gives us interesting things to do. This week we were supplied with a plain white piece of cardboard a bit smaller than an A4 size and we had to fill it in with colour, this is what we did, mainly Lilly.
I did some of the flowers on the right, the trees and birds nests and helped fill in the blue sky.
Then we had to glue on the sight words, 6 of them, randomly onto the work, then draw puzzle pieces or wavy lines and carefully cut them all out making a puzzle.
Well the big mistake I made was helping create this masterpiece, naming flowers then drawing them, adding the birds nests (she could feel it in her heart when I drew the first bird, I could see it in her face!) she was so taken with our work and so happy. But then she went into an absolute state of desrepair when I read out the next instructions of glueing over the top and then cutting it up!!!!
So I scanned the picture before any of this happened and now I'm blogging the original drawing so everyone can appreciate it, cause she is still not happy about it all, and scoffs at the puzzle when we put it together.

Sesame Street

So this cool as Sesame Street sheet became shorts.

owned and worn by a cool as and cute as little boy!

How could I choose which cheeky picture to put in here, so here are both of

my little beauty boy.

And so far I haven't had the right idea for what I can do with the rest of it (the sheet), which is destined to head Kirsten's way, since this little rascal's mummy found it!

singlet love

love love love this singlet...

and I believe it is very very very loved...by another Lily!

six

Happy 6th Birthday to my little Lilly!

Born on Anzac Day, such a special girl, we did the Anzac Day parade for the first time marching with our school this year in full school uniform, remembering those brave people that lost their lives for us.

We will never forget, ever.

After the parade and service we went on a special tour of the Australian Wildlife Hospital at Australia Zoo. It was great, we saw a Koala, snake and possum all having different operations, we saw all the different wards with lots of patients, the orphaned Koala's learning how to be grown up wild Koala's and much much more.

Lilly got this Sea Turtle Puppet, in pic above for her birthday, since she loves Sea Turtles and has been fascinated with Puppets since seeing this recently!
Then we stopped off at a nearby dam and found some water lily leaves for her cake since we couldn't buy any plastic ones! This year Lilly helped me make her cake, she came up with the whole idea and I think we did a pretty good job.

The Frog Pond.

We had Roast Pork as requested for dinner and a couple more presents at bedtime.

A very busy but so much fun day it was!

Happy Birthday Beautiful Girl!

i can feel it in my heart

Lill and I headed out together today for the last day of school hols, we had a few jobs to do and I thought we'd check out some Op shops as well. So driving along I am looking at her in the rear vision mirror and I tell her the plan then she says to me:

Mum I think this is going to be a great day today, I can feel it in my bones,

actually I can feel it in my heart.

We exchanged a Pandora charm that I already had and got our bracelets cleaned while we were there. Browsed in the Op shop next door while we waited then had a smoothie and coffee followed by a visit to Nimble Stitches, the tiny boutique fabric store (the only boutique fabric store!) on the coast and picked out some fabric for a dress for a little friends birthday.

Then we headed on down to the other Op shops we check out every so often and found a few more treasures.

I think my favourtie find is this little pink vase which I think is actually a candle stick that my lovely little Lilly discovered with her heart.

Lemon and Lime Pillowcase Dress

First up check out the cute little boy, with a fresh haircut! Bouncing!

This is a version of the Strappy Sundress. The pattern only goes to a size 6, a very small size 6 so I tried to make it bigger, mainly the bodice, I'd say this is now a size 10 as that's the size my cute almost 6 year old now wears!

I challenged myself to use only a pillowcase, a vintage pillowcase at that! But I had to call on the trusty spots pile of fabric for the green as there wasn't quite enough. So I used the green on the back casing and bodice lining otherwise the rest of the dress is made from one pillowcase. Bougainvillea's don't smell Lill! But seconds later we spotted a tiny blue butterfly nearby to this which we need to identify. Stayed tuned for our caterpillar-butterfly news we've got going on here, got stacks of photos of the whole process, more to come on that...

Here is a pic of the dress I made prior to the yellow one.

I used 2 vintage pillowcases for it and nothing else, except the new elastic but that's it, so this dress cost $1. And unfortunately didn't get a good pic of it while it was being worn roller skating the other day! The front of the skirt part of the dress has a white pillowcase with embroidery on it sewn into the blue floral main part. I used part of the white case to make the straps and line the bodice.

Part 2 Mon Repos

Remember this post...

Well we made our return visit (back at the end of Feb, slack blogger). It was fantastic.

We saw hatchlings, got to very gently touch one and say a quick goodluck little loggerhead turtle, be safe on your journey!

Unfortunately for us the nest we saw hatch was a 'priority' nest so that meant all the hatchlings were being taken back to the research centre to be photographed, measured and weighed and then released later on. I desperately needed my kids to see these little miracles enter the ocean, so they knew what really happened. So we asked if we could wait till all the groups had been down on the beach and then go again. Lucky for us, 3 hours or so later at about 10.45pm, our family- the only standing children around were taken back to the beach and we saw hatchlings enter the water!

They ran through the kids feet, we met Ranger John (in picture above) and we learnt heaps!


Since we have been home, we have learnt alot more about the sea turtles that nest on our very own beaches here and the programs in place to help protect them. I have registered with this group to be a volunteer next breeding season!

Easter Bunny

We won first prize in our Easter Kindy Raffle! and amongst the goodies was the cutest bunny softie made by hand by a very talented Kindy Mum who I would love to meet some day (she's in the other group!) using vintage fabrics, he is blue and we named him Peter! No picture of him sorry.

Lilly thought it was gorgeous and wanted one for herself since Joe boy is the big kindy kid and the ticket was in his name! So there was only one choice after this win, make a pink one, somebody had to. We used the special blue rabbit as inspiration for this pink bunny.

Miss Lilly picked out the fabrics, some old, some new, the decorations and special touches.

This one is called Flopsy! I made another as a gift after Flopsy, she was pink as well and had a few other details. I've bought some more corduroy and bits and pieces to make some more!

The Easter Bunny didn't leave alot of chocolate in our nests but he did leave a note! We had an Easter hunt after breakfast with 14 tricky clues, so much fun! And we used team work, patience and most importantly generosity and GIVING! Later that day, I overheard Joey (nearly 4) tell his sister "teamwork Lill, that's what we need like that bunny game this morning".

After hearing that it was all so worth it!