Dressing Polly

I had 2 assignments due on Friday, one of them I finished at an obscene hour which was really Saturday morning.   So to reward myself (and in an effort not to go insane) I spent my Saturday making a dress for Polly.  Yes I am a party animal, however, sewing does mean a bit of time to myself and believe me that is a rare commodity around these parts.

Of course when I finished it, it wouldn't go over her head (I think my kids have big heads) so I had to improvise. I cut down the back of the dress a little, finished it with some binding and added a button and loop.

And now, it fits!

This is the pattern I used for the dress.

Polly has been rocking the dresses lately.  Matilda and her were treated by their Granny to go and see The Lion King during the week and Polly wore an old dress of mine (vintage!) from when I was her age.  Love that Mum has kept some of these.

She wasn't really interested in having her photo taken in it though.

So that's all we've been doing around these parts.  Writing assignments, trying to keep kids amused in the mean time and then sewing.

And apart from mum taking them to the movies, I did get a fair bit of work done during the week by writing letters on paper with glue sticks and then letting the girls cover them in sand. An idea I stole from here.

Matilda has been having fun trying to spell our her name and Polly's which she gets right some of the time.  She also likes trying to write out their names and can kind of do most of the letters (if you use a bit of imagination) but she hasn't really got down with the idea of writing the letters next to each other and just puts them where ever she likes. 

I'm not really ready for another week to start yet.

The red dress

So I said the red dress fabric would be for Polly, but Matilda had other ideas.  She was determined that it was going to be for her, and I caved.  Really she does need more clothes than Polly does because Polly gets all her hand-me-downs, poor little second child.

So here's Matilda's dress.

It's a version of the chic chic dress from too sweets but i just made the sleeves short.  She loves it, I'm pretty happy with it... it's definitely nice and cool and easy for just hanging out in in summer.  I would have liked it to be a bit longer, I think I stuffed the hem a bit but it's ok.

I'm a bit obsessed with the idea of making her a cream coloured plaited yarn necklace with a few brass beads but I probably don't really need to be accesorising my 3 year old's outfits just yet. Well maybe, she'd probably love it.

study + spare room

Over the weekend we got everything in our study/spare room tidy enough to take some photographs, at last.  We actually finished most of the work back in July but finally having a proper study/sewing room/spare room that G and I share meant sorting through stuff in all different corners of our house to get it into the right spot.  Lots and lots of cleaning, sorting and throwing out.

We're really happy with the end result although we've ended up with more stuff in here than I would have liked.  But when you're trying to combine all those functions in one room and you have a geek husband who has spare computers as well as boxes of cables and stuff like that that need to be housed a bit of prettiness had to be sacrificed (not to mention all my boxes of random crafty bits and a cupboard full of fabric).

At the end of the day I'm just happy to be rid of the ugly green and peach carpet, tartan curtains and the yellowy walls. Very 1994.  So here's the photos.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Our desks are actually a couple of saw horses and 2 big planks of wood painted white.  An idea I completely stole from Claire.  We had been thinking of getting desks properly built in as we wanted them to completely fill the wall.  But we didn't want to spend too much money and it all seemed a bit too hard once we had seen this idea.

My grandma had given me her old sewing cabinet - one of those ones where you can lift up the sewing machine when you open the top of the cabinet.  I wasn't going to keep it cause it's pretty ugly, but it's turned out to be really useful so I gave it a bit of a makeover with some Lara Cameron birch removable wallpaper.

It still has a little bit of it's ugly, but I think it's a big improvement.

We also had this old ikea coffee table lying around and we bought some foam, recovered it and made a little bench seat for Matilda and Polly to sit on.

It hides some storage bins from Ikea with some paper, pencils and duplo that the girls can play with while I'm trying to get some uni work done (that was the theory anyway), they've also got their dolls house down here.

The yellow wardrobe stores all my fabric in it.  I've had it for ages, just sitting waiting to be used for that purpose.  At the last minute I decided to paint it yellow, I decided we needed a bit of colour.  (I still need to paint around the handle with a little brush, so just ignore that bit.

The curtains I made (and I use that term loosely, think heat & bond) from a Joel Dewberry fabric. 

And that's about it, but a few more pictures just for good measure.

Much nicer. 

craft night

Last Tuesday was craft night, my favourite night of the month.  Friends, yummy dinner, lots of talking and silliness and a little bit of crafting.  A proper 'night off' every month.

This month we ate from Greg and Lucy Malouf's Saraban cookbook, I love Middle Eastern flavours.  We ate baked layered rice with spinach and lamb with yoghurt and herbs.  I also made the chicken version.  They were both yum, but the lamb one wins hands down and I can't wait to make it again.

The recipes are available through google books at these links:
Baked layered rice with spinach and lamb
Baked yoghurt chicken with rice
and you also need this recipe for cooking the rice (this is the best way to cook rice, really nice and fluffy).

The recipe may seem a little complicated but it's actually really easy, you just need to do it in a few stages (start the day before).  I actually find this kind of cooking easier with kids because I can do little bits at a time and there's not too much to do right before serving.

And we did actually do some crafting, we made some of those fabric and bead necklaces.  This is a good craft activity that you can finish in a small amount of time, I think they took us just over an hour. Plus we figured they'd be good for some summer outfits. 

Here's mine, which I made quickly the night before to make sure I knew how to do it.  It's a little bit messy and I'd like to retie some of the knots, which may happen one day.

And as modelled by the big girl..

These were pretty fun and quick to make, I think I might make one each for my girls for their Christmas stockings.  Yes, it is time to start thinking about that.

There are tutorials for them online, but basically all you need to do is sew a tube of fabric, slips beads/polystyrene balls/marbles inside and tie knots between each one.  I made my tube about 150cm long and once I'd added 7 balls and tied the knots I had lost about half the length.

Sunday night supper club: lamb + hommus + flatbread

I've been suffering from dinner boredom again lately.  I think it has to do with changing seasons.. bored of winter foods, not quite ready for summer foods.

So this quick, easy and tasty dinner was a bit of a life saver.

Recipe found here, on the Melbourne Vintage blog. 

Raspberry, yogurt and lemon loaf

Raspberry, yogurt and lemon loaf for mothers group morning tea. Yum. Recipe here.

Polly's crazy pants

I finally got a chance to sew up the pants I had cut out weeks ago for Polly.  I love them although I'd wish I'd made them a bit wider at the top of her legs so they were a little more baggy. 

Can't wait until the weather is warm enough for her to wear them with a little singlet, I think she'll look cute.  And i kind of want to buy her a pair of yellow salt water sandals just to go with.  But my sister, who is currently on holidays in New York has just bought her a gold pair and a bright pink pair, so I think one of them will have to do (if you want to buy some sandals that's a great place to get them from, if you're buying more than 1 pair then with shipping to Australia it's still cheaper than buying them here).

Next project is a dress out of this fabric. I think it will be for Polly too.

Only problem is I can't decide which dress. Here are the candidates.

1. Pockets are best dress.
2. Mini maxi dress or
3. Smock top dress
4. Something else??

Thoughts?