Desktop Wallpapers

Have you seen the great free desktop wallpapers available for free download from Kindred, a website created by Holly (from Decor8) and Ez (from Creature Comforts).

My current wallpaper is from Shanon Gass but I think when the weather gets a bit coolers I might have to change to this one. This one was a my second choice for now.. maybe in a few weeks if I'm feeling like a change.

Dressed by her Dad

Oh man.

I had to go out last night so it was G's turn to give Matilda dinner and a bath and put her to bed.

When I got her out of bed this morning I found her in this stunning outfit.


Not only is it pink and red stripes but they are also too small for her and the top was on backwards. Nice :)

He did a good job though getting her to bed and doing everything by himself, so I had better give him credit for that.

Belle & Boo

You have to go check out Belle & Boo, one of Mandy's beautiful prints is available for free download. So you can print it out and hang it on your all. Too cute.

We gave Matilda the 'Found' print for Christmas and I still have to buy 'Lost' to go with it, I love these prints, they are so gorgeous.

Sewing

So instead of washing dishes and clothes and cleaning the bathroom I spent the sleepy baby times of the day finishing this nappy bag.


My cousin and her family are arriving home from a year in the UK on Friday and I never quite got around to posting over birthday and Christmas presents for her 3 year old little girl. I had bought her a 'feeding pack' for her baby born a while ago with nappies, bottles, food etc so I thought she might need a little girl sized nappy bag to carry it all around in.


Plus I got to use the cute floral fabric I had picked up from Spotlight a couple of weeks ago, and I learned how to make yo-yos from this tutorial.


I'd love to make a yo-yo quilt one day, but I think that might be fairly low on the list because I can't even imagine how long that would take to do.

Eat, Pray, Love

I have to say that I did like this book, but I wouldn't say I loved it. I was expecting more, maybe I have been a victim of too much hype.

It was fine, whatever.. I've read it, on to the next book. That's how I feel about it. Hmmm, maybe if I'd read it at a different time I'd feel different about it, not sure.

It was interesting and I would say worth a read, but now I kinda feel like I'm trying to convince myself that it was worth the effort.

Wow, I think I'm feeling a bit harsh today.

Mathilda's Market

We visited Mathilda's Market today, this is the first time I've been so we had fun checking out all the cute little bits and pieces on sale. My Matilda was a lucky little girl and scored a bit of cuteness.

These hair clips, just what every girl needs.


A new bib, just what Matilda needs - she is a grub.


A new outfit, just because it's cute.


And most special of all, this doll. Her name is Anouk and she's from Tiny Concept. She's going to live in a cupboard until she can come out again for Matilda's first birthday in July. Even when she does come out I think she might be a shelf doll rather than a play with doll.


And we had apple pancake for breakfast. Needed a hearty start to prepare for all that shopping.

Today I...

worked.
called a plumber (toilet blockage - don't ask).
cleaned.
voted.
went out for dinner.

but i would have liked to...
make apple pancakes for breakfast.
sat on the verandah and ate them.
played with matilda and the box.
read the home beautiful and delicious magazines that appeared in my mailbox last week.
make a nappy bag for a 3 year old.
finish my 2008 photo album on blurb.


the going out for dinner bit can stay.

tomorrow I'm off to mathilda's market in the morning and then who knows where the afternoon will take me.

I lost my blogging mojo

It's time to get it back again.. maybe now we'll go for 1 post a day for the rest of the month. That won't be too bad a result over all.

Sad thing for me is I can't blame excessive productivity or busyness for my lack of posting, just normal day to day boring stuff.

I did get my Easter decorations up (but I can't take a decent photo of them).


Had mothers group, and a slight incident with the cake I had bought for morning tea. Oopsies.


And I made a chocolate roll with coffee cream for my mum, cause she was having people over for dinner and ran out of time herself.


Now I'm going to attempt to make a 3 yr old size nappy bag for a baby born.

Retail Therapy

I haven't posted for the last couple of days because I've been in a shopping induced coma. My cousin (who has a 3 month old baby girl) and I met to do a 'spot' of shopping on Friday. We met at 10am and didn't leave until around 4pm. We had gone into some crazy retail haze and lost track of time, laughing hysterically at things that I'm not actually sure were that funny but we were on a high - how ridiculous is that. In the end I don't think I actually bought that much anyway, although maybe I've just pushed it out of my mind until I see the credit card statement :) I did buy some pretty ribbons though, 29m for around $20 I think is a pretty good deal.


Since having babies and just buying/saving to buy a house we have both been trying to be very careful with our spending and on Friday we both had some things we 'had' to buy and giving ourselves permission to spend a little bit of money made us both lose our minds a little bit.

Of course, both of us had something that we wanted to buy that had run out at the shops we were at so on Saturday morning we met for breakfast (this time with husbands in tow) at a different shopping centre and basically did it all again. Although this time we were home by about 2pm so not so bad.

Anyway all this shopping has exhausted me, which it never used to do - I must be getting old or now I just feel guilty spending money! The weekend has flown past again which not many things crossed off the to-do list and a sink full of dishes from having my family around for dinner last night.


I did do a little bit of decorating for Easter.. not so far away now.


So now I'm going have a cup of tea and some fruit slice on the verandah and maybe doing some dishes before veging out on the couch tonight and watching Lost in Austen. Did you see it last week? I loved it and I'm really looking forward to tonight.

Oops

I missed a day, but I can deal with it - and just move on.

I had Mothers Group at my house today and I was doing savoury so I made some chicken, feta and pine nut sausage rolls. Can you call them sausage rolls if they're made with chicken?


We spent most of the day hanging out on the back deck, eating sausage rolls and muffins and playing with babies.

This afternoon Matilda and I went on a little hunt for some suitable twigs to paint white and hang some Easter decorations on. We found these, I think they will do the trick.


So this weekend - spray painting and decorating. My sister bought Matilda some coloured shredded paper for her Easter basket, so we'll be needing to make one of those too.

The Happy Stacker

I can't believe I finished it. I started this toy in time (so I thought) to give it to Matilda for Christmas. I had everything cut out and had all the interfacing done and then hit a mental brick wall and couldn't move past it.

I thought the instructions for sewing the rings together were really complicated but they actually aren't too bad at all. Don't look too close though all you'll see some dodginess going on in a few places.


I debated whether or not to put any trim on the rings or to just keep it simple, but then my cousin gave me a box of trims and bindings that belonged to my Grandma and that sold me. The bird trim I bought a little while ago from Superbuzzy, but the rest of the trims belonged to my Grandma.


It nearly didn't get finished today, I ran out of stuffing at the last ring so I had to make an emergency trip to Spotlight. I thought if I didn't do it today it could very well end up back on the pile and not see day light for another 3 months.

While there I came across these cute little heart plates for $2.50 each so i couldn't pass up a couple of them. I'm sure there will be a little girl's party or something in the future that they'll come in handy for and I love pink, white and red together.


Doing a blog post a day is working for me so far... forces me to actually finish something or do something remotely interesting every day so I have something to write about (although yesterday's post was really a pathetic attempt and I don't hold out much hope for tomorrow).

On to the next item on the list.

Autumn

This was the view from our back deck for most of the day. Grey and rainy, beautiful!


It's such nice relief to have some weather like this for a change - it's been hot now for too long, bring on Autumn and Winter.

And check this out for a forecast -

Forecast for Tuesday
A few showers about with patchy rain at times. Moderate to fresh SE to E winds.

Precis:       Showers/patchy rain               
City:         Min 22    Max 25
Bayside:      Min 22    Max 26
UV Alert:     8:20 am to 3:30 pm, UV Index predicted to reach 11 [Extreme]



Wednesday     Rain periods                           Min 22    Max 25
Thursday      Showers                                Min 21    Max 26
Friday        Showers                                Min 21    Max 28

Doesn't that sound lovely?

I do feel kind of bad that the cooler and wetter weather I am enjoying is because of Hamish, but since I can't do anything about it I'm going to enjoy the side-effects of it and hope that there is no real damage done by it.

Pot Luck Dinner

I'm determined not to waste any food this year.. so often in the past I've had something in the fridge or freezer for too long and I end up throwing it out. But I'm trying to be a lot more conscious of that from now on.

So for dinner tonight I defrosted the mysterious lump of meat in the freezer that had been there for a few weeks and I couldn't remember what it was anymore. By the time it had defrosted enough for me to work out what it was (rib fillet) I couldn't be bothered going to the shops to buy any more ingredients so I figured I'd work something out based on what we had in the pantry.

It worked out pretty well, we had a middle easterny beefy casseroley thing with cumin, paprika and saffron. Quite yum actually, might have to put this on the dinner rotation. It was meant to have some olives in it which would have been nice and maybe I'd add some other veges to it - i think big chunks of carrot would be a good start. We ate it with polenta but I guess couscous or rice would have been more middle easterny.


It was nice to cook a entire meal from what we had on hand.

Also today, progress was made today on my happy stacker, my next 'must make that march' project.


I have stitched all the inside walls of the rings on while munching on choc-chip cookies and coffee. We were also kind of watching La Vie En Rose but it's hard to watch a movie with subtitles when you're try to sew.


I made the cookies a while ago from this recipe and as Nigella suggests I only baked half at the time and then froze a few to bake at a later date.. today. Good idea Nigella.

I can't believe we watched 2 movies this weekend, that's more movies than we've watched in the whole time since Matilda was born.

Shopping and My Band

Yesterday, while searching for orange envelopes I bought myself 2 presents.

#1 Some white roses.


Don't know why but these have been on my mind lately. They are just from Coles and only cost $4 because they're on their last legs but that will do me. I so miss living down the road from the Prahran Market and all the beautiful and cheap flowers that could be bought there.

#2 More Softies.


Just because. Now I need to add a car and caravan, elsie the dog, topsy-turvy tabitha, little red riding hood and moopy bunny to my list of things to make (to start with anyway :) ).

And just to procrastinate a bit longer before making dinner... here's My Band. Thanks to Pottymouthmama.


It kind of works, I think that's a bit freaky. My album artwork is from here, thanks!

Apparently Furr's is a restaurant chain in the US. And my quote was "The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in 70 or 80 years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all." from Doris Lessing, O Magazine, October 2003.

Right.. now dinner (chicken burritos - i want to try making my own tortillas, tonight is a burrito kit deal, but at some point i'm going to, has anyone out there made their own before?), then watching a movie (taken) while working on my happy stacker.

Invitations

My cousin asked me to make some invitations for her little boy's birthday party. She wanted to use this photo that we had taken when we were down the beach on holidays in January.


At first I was going to just put some text on the right hand side of the photo and print them out at 4x6" size but after playing around for awhile I decided to make long, narrow invitations with the text beside the photo.


I'm really happy with how they turned out, and glad that I found orange envelopes to match.


It was also a good excuse to buy a corner rounder punch, they're fun. Now I'm thinking about what kind of invitations to make for Matilda's 1st birthday party, even though it's not until July.

One thing off my 'must make it march' to do list.

Today

We had a lazy day. Hanging around the house eating muffins and drinking tea with the mothers group. Making some invitations for a little boy's birthday party. Getting a pedicure with my mum and my sister.

And to top it all off Mum had made us some lasagna for dinner so I didn't even have to cook.

Yay for lazy days.

The list

So, while G was off getting pizza for dinner (lamb pizza with yoghurt, yum) I sat down on the deck with a glass of wine and my cute little notepad from here to write my list of projects that I want to finish sometime this century.


On the list is quite a few presents for some new babies and not so new babies as well some things I've been wanting to make for Matilda. I also want to plan out a desk to get built in to our rumpus room/office sometime this year. Now I have to pick which ones I am going to finish during March.

The first one I'd really like to finish is this set of stacking rings from this pattern that I bought back in December. I was going to make it for Matilda for Christmas and never quite got there so I'd really like to finish it soon.

So far I've cut out all the pieces and attached the interfacing - time for some hand sewing (Thinking about it now, I really have no excuse for not doing some of this last night).

Craft Night II

Almost didn't make a blog post today, but I can't start a month of blog posting and then chicken out on day 3.

We had craft night II tonight with some friends and relies - food, friends and craft is a good way to spend an evening. Of course it's also why I almost didn't get a post done. By the time I got my house decent enough for visitors and got dinner and dessert under control there wasn't any time for taking photos or writing on here. These things take much longer with an almost 8 month old to entertain then they used to when it was just the two of us :) Eventually I'll get used to that fact and hopefully start getting organised a bit earlier than I used to. I'm a last minute kind of girl, but with a bubba things that took a minute now take an hour so I'm slowly becoming a last hour kind of girl.

So for craft night we ate beef rendang, then milk tart for dessert (this is a south african recipe that I think came out of a Delicious magazine from about 4 years ago). Then there was knitting, crocheting, making wall art and I picked out some fabrics to make a new doll for a friend's baby, we even had some mending. Next craft night I'm actually planning on making more progress than picking fabrics, we'll see how we go.


Mags and Me is having a "Must make that March". I think I need to get on board because there's lots of plans floating around in my head but nothing materialising. First thing though is to make a list of all the projects I want to do and then pick a couple to focus on for March. Something to think about while making coffees at the cafe tomorrow.

Birds on my wall

Finally, after sitting in a box for two years since I bought them my little birdies are on the wall.


I really like them hanging above our piano. I was going to wait to paint the walls before I hung up anything, but we have decided to save up and get someone to do the painting for us rather than do a dodgy job ourselves - especially because the walls in this room and the adjoining dining room have a suede finish on them which will all have to be sanded off. I can't wait until the walls are white though it will make the room look so different. Not sure how long it will take us to save the money since we want to get the whole house painted, so the birds are hung.

The piano belonged to my aunty and I guess she and my Dad used to play around on when they were kids. It was given to us when we had Matilda so she should play when she grows up a little (although she really enjoys playing it now, bashing around on the keys).

The piano has thrown up a dilemma though. We are going to buy a new dining suite and a buffet and I really wanted a light oak table with white chairs like in the picture below (picture from here).


Anyway, the dining room opens up to the room the piano is in so now I'm wondering if I can buy a dining table the same colour as the piano and stick with the white chairs. Think that would look alright?? I think if I did that I'd look for a white buffet rather than a matching wooden one so the room isnt too dark. Hmmm.

I'm going to try and do a post a day in March. We'll see how we go.

A 1st Birthday Party

We had a 1st Birthday party yesterday, with a Jungle theme.. very cute. We helped by making some jungle animal birthday cakes.




The monkeys were my favourite, although I was also happy with how the tigers turned out. The elephants were my least favourite, it's hard to get 2 mint slice biscuits stick to a little cup cake for ears!

We also made some bunting for decoration but that was mainly because I've been wanting an excuse to make some for ages. It's really fun to make I think I must make more.



I used bias-binding to attach them all which worked well, but I think next time I'll use a wider one, just to make it a bit easier and hopefully also a little neater.

We wrapped up the present in some jungle fabric we had because the little boy's mum is also a bit of a crafter so she can add this little bit to her stash.


Matilda played pass the parcel and pin the tail on the giraffe for the first time. She's a little party animal and had great fun. Although G and I have been eating all the lollies in her lolly bag.

I'm back!

This arrived on my doorstep on Friday. Yay, I love it and I'm back! It's been about 10 years since I've really used a mac though so I'm learning all over again how to do it and getting used to not having a laptop anymore.


We've had a busy week with G's dad and his daughter visiting us from Melbourne last weekend and G's sister visiting from Darwin all this week. It's been great to hang out with them again, and for them to get some time hanging out with Matilda.

So this coming week we're going to take it easy, hang out at home and get back into a little routine and spend some time playing with the new toy!

G took this beautiful photo of Matilda while his Dad was here. I think it's amazing so I had to post it :)