Happy Birthday Cookies For Kat

Yummy butter cookies with sweet flower toppers for Kat's birthday earlier this month (which I managed to remember this year woohoo!!!). Vienna and I also took Renee out for a few hours and bought Kat a compost bin for her birthday.

Candle Dipping

Loving these photos of Renee candle dipping at the Advent Fair last year - a traditional event at any Steiner School Fair, I used Glenna's new border punch to make the lacey scolloped edge and the fabric topper from a yummy jar of garlic and green bean pickle that I bought at the market.

Thieving Oranges

Ashley has been having an orange for dessert each night recently. Vienna likes mandarins and has decided that oranges are pretty yummy also, she thinks she should be able to just help herself ... yoink! Thanks Dad!

Nicola and Roel

Finally ... the start of my creations from camp.

My cousin Nicola got married to Roel in December 2006 and I offered to do a wedding album for a wedding present for them. Now, I didn't actually get the photos until 2007 but still, I do think that I may have taken a little long to complete the gift! I finally got my bum into gear at camp and finished the last 13 out of 20 pages that I had to do.

I am very happy with the resulting album, I hadn't done a wedding album before. I kept it simple using black, white and the pale pink taken from the baby roses in Nicola's bouquet, the same font throughout and the same stamp on many of the pages.

Boobies for La Leche League

Twice a month we go to Howick to La Leche League ... we always take along something yummy for morning tea ... this month I made these boobies! They were yummy and funny! I may have to make some to take along to the Big Latch On on 6 August.

Making New Friends

We are house sitting for my cousin Maree (who is in England) at the moment and Vienna has made friends with the baby in the oven. She chats to her, getting quite excited and gives her big passionate snogs. Today she was chatting to her while I was washing the dishes and when I left the kitchen she followed me (she is quite clingy at the moment - I can't be more that a few metres away from her) but stopped to wave goodbye to the baby in the oven - so cute! The baby even waved back at her.

Tetris Cookies

I found this cute cube shaped lollies at the dairy by Kat's house and was inspired to make these tetris cookies. I had no real reason to make them so the lollies sat at home for a while until I decided to make them Gypsy and family.

After started I realised that I should have made baking paper patterns for the shapes as they were very tricky to cut free hand but I was pretty happy with the way they turned out.

I also should have tried the lollies before I started as they were YUK! and tasted like soap! I warned Gypsy to take the lollies off before eating.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The Amazing Aunt Kat made Vienna some cool under-bankets for Vienna's big girl bed using an old grey woollen blanket that used to belong to Ashley's Nana. I love that we were able to use something that had so much history and there were very few left over scraps but we did manage to have just enough to make this matching hot water bottle cover for Vienna.

I don't have a sewing machine so it is all lovingly hand-stitched, I managed to keep some of the original red blanket stitching and decided to tie in the red to the rest of my design. I got out my french knitting thingy (i don't know what it is called) and made the draw-string cord with some red wool from my stash (Yay! Using up stuff that I already own!), then crocheted a long length of the same red wool and sewed it on to make Vienna's name along the bottom. The project then stalled for a few weeks as I couldn't remember how to crochet in rounds to make the little circle for the dot in her 'i' but the next time we were in Raglan Evelyn showed me how (Yay Grandma!) and I just love the finished product!

On cold nights Vienna's hot water bottle pre-heats her bed with warm and hand-made crafty love.

Chippies

The little girl had cabin fever this afternoon so I put her in the sling and headed out for a walk. She bounced with joy as we walked down the street to the dairy, picked a little packet of chippies from the shelf and clasped them tightly as we walked back home. Strapped into her little seat she enthusiastically gobbled her 3 chippies up and eyeballed me suspiciously when I ate the rest of the packet.

She is like her Mummy and LOVES chippies!

Rocking Out With Daddy

Vienna loves MUSIC!

If music starts up when she is in the room it always grabs her attention, she loves to listen and dance to it. She loves live instruments, especially Carrie's ukelele but most of all, she loves Rocking Out with Daddy.

Usually he is sitting down playing when at home but this day she got the full standing version:

Cute Food - Double Decker Caramel Chocolate Fudge

I made these double decker caramel chocolate fudge 1 inch circles sandwiched together with vanilla frosting and a mini swirl of vanilla frosting on top for Andrew a few weeks ago. I am sure that he enjoyed them - I certainly did!!!

Dolls Blanket

I had a few little scraps of wool that I was going to get rid of but decided to knit them up and see what size squares they would make. They were so totally cute so I made some extra squares from some left over bamboo fibre wool and then sent them all off to Vienna's very clever Grandma.

Grandma crocheted the squares together and now Vienna's little wooden dolls (an awesome Christmas present from the fantastic Aunt Kat) have the cutest little blanket.

Each little square is approximately 5cm and the whole little blanket is 18cm x 25cm and soooo cute!

Thanks Grandma for your crochet skills and time and thanks Grandma's friend for the cool purple wool that Grandma used. Vienna's dolls are enjoying their cozy warm blanket this cold cold winter.

Blue Camo

Well, we are back from camp and happy but tired (well I am tired - Vienna is fine!). When I make some space on my computer to download the photos from the camera I have lots of cool things to show you but for now and the next few days let me share some other things that I already have photos of on the computer.

Have you seen my blue camo painting?

A couple of years ago we went duvet shopping, I have always hated the duvet cover that we had and in true Wendy style just made do with it anyway but I asked my Mum for money for Christmas to put towards a new duvet cover. The brief when we left the house was a plain simple duvet cover - not highly patterned (I don't really do patterns on most stuff). But somehow we left the shop the proud owners of a blue camo duvet cover ??? I was so amused by the fact that we 2 grown adults had just purchased a camo duvet cover that we stopped on the way home and bought a canvas, some blue paint, some army toys and in the following few weeks made this:

Some of the shapes have Raglan sand around the edges, there is also blue eyelets and stitching, and cool army toys sewn to the canvas. I was able to take the helicopter apart and sew on half of it, and the rotor blades stand out from the canvas. If you look closely at the bottom you will see that one of the soldiers has escaped from his stitching and is one a wierd angle, shooting up at the sky! I guess I better fix that. The dog tags have our names on them :)

Today

2010 has so far been 'One of THOSE years'. We have had some amazing times and some completely SHIT SHIT SHIT times. I am currently taking each day as it comes and am ever optimistic that today is going to be a 'Good' day.

Today - Sunday 4 July is a good day:

* Vienna had a better night sleep than most of the nights lately

* We are going up to Camp Maynard for a week of kids camp and then scrapcamp starting this evening (this is great for creativeness and hanging out with friends too)

* We have already taken half the things up to camp and only have a small amount left to pack

* The scales said nice things to me this morning

* The washing is almost up to date

* Ashley and I have been hanging out watching QI in the last few days and I am really enjoying it

* My shower was nice and warm this morning

* I LOVE my new hair cut

* I had porridge for breakfast and it was yummy

* Waking up to Vienna's smiles is a great way to start the day

It is great to take this time out to remember the good little things that can add up so quickly and not to dwell on the dumb stuff.