This is what happens when you give me 3 days notice

So for anyone who read my last post you might think that was enough insanity for this week. Sadly there is no such thing as enough insanity in our household, so allow me to show you yet another moment that had me wanting to tear my hair out. 

Do I have any people in my audience who work for the Department of Education?? No need to out yourselves, especially after the rant I'm about to go on, but can this be passed on to the higher ups somewhere pretty please? I'm asking, no I'm begging you guys to stop organising dress up days at schools and kindergartens.

For anyone out there who thinks I'm just being a grinch right now, clearly you have never had the panic of being told THREE DAYS before a dress up event that your child is required to come to school/kindergarten this week dressed up as something from some random theme that there is no way in hell you have anything that relates to in your dress up box. Admittedly our dress up box is one fairy dress because Miss K really isn't into dressing up much, and she rarely wears the one costume she does own. She's just as happy putting on a pair of my shoes and pretending to be me. But when the theme of your dress up day is "Australian" it is difficult to put a national spin on a fairy dress. Short of teaming it with a pair of thongs (flip flops Americans, I know.) and a bottle of VB beer and going as a bogan fairy, I really struggled to come up with an idea. (For any non-Australians who don't know what a bogan is, please feel free to Google it.)

For any of you who aren't from Australia, you definitely have no idea what the heck I'm panicking about, so allow me to fill you in. Here in Australia we are about to celebrate book week starting on 20th August. I know this is about three months after you guys do, but we're always about a step behind so it's all good. This year the theme was Australian books/illustrators. I'm all for highlighting the local talent we have around here, especially for authors whose works I have enjoyed in the past like John Marsden, Paul Jennings, Andy Griffiths, and the wonderful Melina Mallos whose latest book I reviewed a few months ago. So for me that part was a big plus. The giant steaming bag of poop however was that I didn't find out until Monday of this week that we had to dress up on Thursday, and it had to fit the theme of book week. If I was any more fiscal than I actually am this wouldn't be a problem, I could just run down to the local shopping centre and find a costume. However given it is currently my off pay week, and any money I do have I've selfishly decided needs to be spent on food, this was not an option.

Luckily for me, this isn't my first rodeo. I have been given minimal notice of special occasions more than once by our kindergarten, despite the fact that we have a Facebook page and they have our email addresses so they can send out newsletters, so I know what it means to rush around like a headless chicken just so my child isn't left out of the fun. First I had to Google Australian children's books for inspiration and discovered to my joy that two of my favourite kids books are actually by Australians, Where is the Green Sheep and The Very Cranky Bear. My first thought was she could go as the green sheep, and just stay home and have a nap. (For any of you who haven't read Where is the Green Sheep and do not get my reference, please go out and find yourself a copy, it is a great book for kids, and it is so easy to read Miss K reads it to me nowadays.) But in the end I decided that would be too mean so we decided to dress Miss K up as the very cranky bear. I was able to do this with thanks to an empty egg carton, an old headband I had lying around and some icy pole sticks and toothpicks. It wasn't pretty by any means, and if Martha Stewart was grading me I'd get a C for effort and an F for enthusiasm. There is photographic evidence, just because this will look excellent on her photo board at her 21st, but that doesn't mean I can't share it now with you guys. I call this photos "This is what happens when you give me 3 days notice."

That's her best cranky bear face. Either that or she's impersonating the hunchback of Notre Dame, I really can't tell. 

Of course you look at the grin on her face in that picture and you realise she loves her costume, so I guess I can call it a win. What that photo does not show is the fact that one minute after the picture was taken the headpiece broke, so she ended up going to kindergarten with a bear nose. So my C for effort changed to an F.

The kindergarten very kindly told us that we didn't have to follow the theme if it was too hard. The only problem is they did it on Wednesday night after I had already spent an hour making this thing and I had no other alternative anyway so we went with cranky bear followed closely by her stressed and very cranky mum. I like to team with the theme you know. (Hats off to any Kath and Kim fans who read that in Kath's voice just now.)

So this is why I'm begging the powers that be to please stop making dress up days a part of the curriculum. You probably think you're doing something nice for the kids, breaking up the monotony that is learning, and giving them fun memories to carry on into their adulthood. What you don't see is the stressed out parents behind the scenes madly trying to figure out how to turn an old beer box and three empty tin cans into a cowboy outfit. We put enough pressure on ourselves to be perfect parents without you guys adding to that pressure by increasing our workload with all of these "fun" extra activities. 

Well that's all from me for now, there will definitely be more insanity to come soon, as I have so many more reasons to pull my hair out right now I'll be as bald as Bruce Willis before you know it. Is anyone interested in doing a reboot of GI Jane anytime soon because I'm sure I'll be a shoe-in for the lead. You'll even get my best crazy eyed stare for free. 

Five things (Old School Blogging)

Ok so for any of you wonderful readers out there who follow Baking In a Tornado you will know that she tagged me in a post earlier this month called Five Things. And for any of you who don't follow Baking in a Tornado, what on earth is wrong with you people?? Get your backsides over there now and meet a classy lady and brilliant writer who is responsible for the Secret Subject Swap that I partake in every month, as well as the Fly on the Wall series, which I will be joining as of next month. (Stay tuned, it's going to be legen...(wait for it)...dary)

Any way the five things tag is another chain blog post which apparently was a popular thing when blogging was in its infancy, but seems to have been lost over time. This one doesn't come with any fancy trophies or dinner for two at the Olive Garden, but it comes with seven lists of five things about me. (Well technically the seventh list is five bloggers who I pass the tag on to, but now you're just splitting hairs.)

Because I have just run out of witty banter, I'll plow straight into the lists.

5 Things I Have a Passion For

1. Paper crafts
2. Music
3. Food (seriously, have you seen the size of my butt? that should have been a no brainer.)
4. Word puzzles. I can't get to sleep until I've done at least one at the moment. Just as well I have a massive collection of puzzle books to keep me company
5. Writing. Of course I never did manage to write the best selling novel I dreamed of as a kid, but that's why this blog is one of my happy places.

5 Things I'd Like to Do Before I Die

1. See Miss K grow up happy (Isn't that all any parent ever wants? I don't care if she grows up to  be a secretary like mum, or a cleaner like grandma, or a rocket scientist like....OK I don't know any rocket scientists, but I'm sure they're all very happy)
2. Visit the birthplace of my ancestors
3. Own a house
4. Become a grandma (my mum makes it look like so much fun, I can't wait to try it for myself. Actually I can wait. Until Miss K is 25 at least OK young lady??)
5. Retire near the beach

5 Things I Say a Lot

1. For the love of monkeys! (I don't really love monkeys, although some of them are pretty cute, it's just better to say that than to keep swearing like a fish wife when the children are around.)
2. I can live with that. (Any time my little sister tries to insult me by calling me horrible names that's my come back. She can never beat it. Ever.)
3. I'm going to count to three. (This one has saved Miss K's bacon so many times over the last year, she knows that if I've gotten to the counting stage, things have just gotten real and she needs to pull her head in.)
4. I love you. (This one is usually aimed at Miss K, but sometimes I'll feel comfortable enough admitting it to other people.)
5. You weirdo. (This one is also usually aimed at Miss K, but it's always when she's doing something totally bizarre like pressing her stomach up to the fridge because it's cold, or spinning around on the ground in circles.)

5 Books I've Read Lately

1. The Hunger Games trilogy. I love this series so much I've finished the last book and gone straight back to the first book several times. I never get tired of the story.
2. Girls Night In. This is a massive omnibus of short stories written by some brilliant women from around the world. All the profits from the sale of the books go to the charity War Child which was just one of the warm fuzzies reading this book gives me. Again another book I can read over and over again.
3. Puzzle books. I know technically you don't read puzzle books like a story, but I still have to look at words with my eyes so I'm counting this as reading.
4. There's a Reason for Everything. This is a very old trivia book that was written in the 1970's so some of the trivia has since been disproven, but it is still full of so much interesting information about topics like the origins of superstitions and rituals.
5. You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News. This is a book written by the people from the hillarious and brilliant website cracked.com, and basically includes some of the articles you can find on their website, but in book form so it makes you look more intellectual when you read it. I bought this book when Miss K was a baby, and it has helped get me to sleep on many a night.

5 Favourite Movies

Thank you for finally giving me a list that asks for more than one favourite movie. How can I only love one movie the most? There are too many awesome movies out there to just pick one. So I'm happy to finally be given a place to list in no particular order just some of my favourite movies.

1. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
2. Cry Baby
3. Despicable Me (Hey don't judge ok I've got a kid now so it's totally ok for me to have a wallet full of kids movies.)
4. Shock Treatment
5. Mystery Science Theatre 3000 the movie. Americans may recognise this one, but I don't think it was even released in Australia. I had to buy our copy from an American seller on eBay. Thank heavens for multi region DVD players.

5 Places I'd Love to Travel to

1. Ireland. In particular Tipperary because that's where my mum's family originated, but the country as a whole would be fabulous to see
2. Italy. This is where Miss K's other family come from, and I'd love to take her to her Nonna's home town so she can see where her family started.
3. Fiji. The people seem to be so friendly, and the beaches are stunning. It's always been a dream destination for me.
4. The rest of Australia. I've been to two of the territories in Australia and three of the states. I'd love to visit the rest of the country that hosts me as a citizen and see more of the beauty that is out there.
5. Tokyo. I think there are just so many fantastic things there that you just need to see for yourself to believe, and I'd love to be amazed. Oh and I've always wanted to go to a cherry blossom festival in Japan too.

5 Blogs I'll Tag

Now this one was tricky because I didn't want to tag anyone who had already had a turn, but I also have so many blogs on my favourites list, I didn't want to leave any of them out.

1. When Crazy Meets Exhaustion
2. Life, Unexpectedly
3. Dinosaur Superhero Mommy
4.We Band of Mothers
5. Ms. Adventures

Now if you were tagged and you don't want to play along, that's totally cool. And if you weren't tagged and you want to play along, that's totally cool also. For anyone at home who is playing, tagged or not, answer all the questions yourself and then send me a link to your post and I'll even advertise the hell out of it for you.

Well that's all from me for now, I'm off to charge my camera batteries and use up some more of my immensely impressive and slightly over the top collection of pretty papers. What's that? you don't believe I have too much crafty stuff??

Yeah, I may have a problem...

Stay tuned people, soon I'll have a post showing what to do when you have too much crafty crap.

Guess what I've been doing

Can you guys guess what I have spent the past two evenings doing?? I'll give you a hint...

No I have not spent the last two nights staring at a t-shirt hanging on my door handle (on a truly horrible and old fashioned crocheted clothes hanger too) I have actually spent the last two evenings making this lovely kimono top. This was actually the hardest sewing project I have undertaken to date, for several reasons, first of all it wasn't just squares of fabric of different sizes sewn together, and secondly that bright green strip you see running across the top of the shirt is actually bias tape, and something I have avoided at all costs before now, with good reasons too. I always knew the first time I sewed with bias would be horrible, and I wasn't disappointed. The biggest problem I came across with the bias is that I actually bought tape that was too small for what I needed, meaning that I had to do a lot of fiddly messing around with the tape to make sure it fit on the top properly and didn't look ridiculous either. That took me three hours to do. Three very long and frustrating hours. So the next time I do this top, I will be making sure I use thicker bias tape which hopefully will make everything go a lot smoother.

Yes you heard me correctly then, this is only the first of hopefully many kimono tops I will be making. This was really just a practise run to make sure I could actually follow the pattern and have it resemble a piece of clothing at the end. Because of this the fabric I used here was a very cheap and thin cotton (that I found for $5 at our local Spotlight store, can anyone else say bargain??) which as my little sister told me made this top look like it is meant to be hospital scrubs and not a gorgeous Japanese inspired piece of clothing. But I'm not too worried because the next time I attempt this it will be in a softer, possibly more stretchy fabric. And because I made plenty of mistakes this time around, I have learned what not to do next time so I should get it done a lot quicker too. And the first thing I will be doing next time is making sure I don't have the iron on too hot when I press the fabric because the very first thing I did was melt one of my cut out pieces of material while trying to iron out the creases made while the material was stored in its shopping bag. Luckily I hadn't even pinned the pieces together yet so I didn't have any unpicking to do as I had to scrap that piece and cut out a new one. Luckily I bought way too much material for this project, so I still had more than enough left over to cut another piece out. But it does mean I now don't have enough to make a matching pair of pants to go with this top. 

Hopefully I can return tomorrow with photos of it being worn by Miss K. Sadly by the time I had made the final finishing touches on it tonight, she had been in bed for 3 hours and I couldn't bring myself to wake her up just to make her model her new top. But I know she will be super excited to be allowed to wear it tomorrow, as I let her try it on a few times today while I checked hem lengths and made sure it fit her properly, and every time I made her take it off again she cracked the poops at me big time. Fingers crossed I can get her to sit still long enough to get some decent pictures for you guys too, but I have a feeling I'll have to wait until she's strutted her stuff on the catwalk (our lounge room floor) several times first. 

Well until then I am super duper tired now and I need to go to bed. I will hopefully be back tomorrow with new photos, but until then stay awesome my lovely readers and for all of my American readers I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of good food and happy families.

A Scrooge's Christmas planner

Hello again my lovely friends, I hope that you are all well and healthy. Don't I just sound like a sappy motivational speaker right now?? Just wait a second and I'm sure I can find more platitudes to throw at you while confusing you with my vocabulary of large words...

Or I could get right down to the heart of what I've come here to share with you wonderful people today. Now as I promised right before the batteries in my camera died, I am going to share with you all my version of a Christmas planner. But as always because money is more of a rumor than anything around here, it will all be done on a budget, using things that I already had lying around the house.

Just some of the things that go into making a Christmas planner

Now if you are like me, you obsessively stalk follow a lot of blogs. And if you're lucky like me, you'll have found some incredibly talented and disgustingly smart people out there who can make magic happen every time they put their hand to something. The lovely ladies at the blog Eighteen25 are three such ladies. So naturally when I saw that they had put together a gorgeous book for organizing all things Christmas, I had to rush over to their website and check it out. (You can do the same here.) They have even been so kind as to offer free printables for anyone who wants to make a Christmas binder in the same style as them. Now sadly as I am currently without a printer, I had to make do with admiring their binders from afar and then use whatever I had on hand to make my own instead. (Sigh) But as you will see, I have managed to create something that is entirely my own, with small touches of homage to the lovely ladies at Eighteen25 simply because some of their ideas were so great, I couldn't not include them.

I have to stop and brag for a second now, because I am pretty chuffed with the finished product here. And the cost of the whole project was pretty impressive too, as the only money I ended up spending was $2.50 on a notebook to decorate. Everything else that you see here comes from what I had in my stash of crafty supplies, making this not only a pretty way to get organised for Christmas, but also a thrifty project. It has the added bonus of making my compulsive hoarding of papers and ribbons now look like an economical plan instead of the crazy actions of someone who just loves shiny things.

The papers I have used come from various places, the red background paper was a freebie with a scrap booking magazine I bought a few Christmases ago, the green paper and the red and white striped papers are offcuts from old projects. The shape of the green paper was made by tracing around a piece of die cut chipboard and then cutting out the finished product. If you are creative enough to be able to draw things free hand (which I am not) then this should be easy enough for you to do without the chipboard, otherwise there are always things lying around the house that you can use to create shapes for your projects.

This metal plate is something I got in a goody bag a few years ago when I went to a scrap booking retreat with my sisters. I have been searching for years for a good use for it, and I am so happy that it finally has a new home. But if you are not lucky enough to have something like this, paper or cardstock is a good replacement. The flower and pearl brad again were items I picked up in bulk packs ages ago and have had sitting around just waiting for the right project. I made the title with my trusty old Dymo labeller and some green Dymo tape that is actually very hard to find these days. Now that Dymo has gone digital my old hand held labeller is looking very old fashioned, but I love the look it gives. 

This ribbon is a recent purchase that I made, it came in a pack of 20 reels of ribbon for $20, but I think I may have been a bit too mean in my cutting because there is apparently such a thing as not enough ribbon to make a bow with. So if you are going to put ribbon on your book to keep it closed, don't forget to be generous with your measurements. Or make sure you have really skinny fingers because already I can tell that bow is going to be a pain in my rear end. Ribbon is one of those wonderful things that can be found absolutely everywhere. I have lots of pieces of ribbon in my stash that were used in packaging, on clothing and even from bunches of flowers I have received over the years. My family know that they are not allowed to throw any pieces of ribbon away as I can always find a use for them.

I only did four sections in my book; to do, gifts, menu and calendar. There are any number of other sections that you can include in your own Christmas planner, like cards, traditions, travel, or anything else you can think of, but really everything you see here is all I need to worry about so I didn't think it was necessary to add anything more. Maybe one day I will have a need for extra categories in my Christmas planners, but for now I think less is more. Again the tabs were made out of card stock that I had in my stash. I made sure to use a folded piece of card stock, and stick one side of the piece on each side of the page, just to make it a little stronger and more durable. If you don't have card stock, cereal box cardboard would be a good replacement, covered with wrapping paper or anything else to make it look pretty. The shape of the card stock came from tracing around die cut chip board again, but I'm not really happy with it, so next year I may have to think of something new. The pages are blank at the moment, but I will be decorating the front page of each section with something cute. For the gifts section, it will probably be a banner with the words "making a list and checking it twice" or something equally Christmassy, and I'll think of something else for the rest of the sections soon, I just couldn't wait until It was completely done to share it with you guys.

And of course no Christmas project is complete without an elf running around and getting into everything so here is one I prepared earlier.

Geddit???

If only she got as excited about the cleaning up as she does about making the mess.

So before I go, a few tips for you guys who are looking to make some Christmas themed projects on a budget.

• Get creative with the supplies that you use. Christmas themed wrapping paper is super duper cheap and in abundance at the moment, and it can be just the thing to brighten something up
• Don't feel that you have to go out and buy exactly everything that some one else used to make something, sometimes using the things you have at hand can make a result that is just as beautiful and even more personal to you
• Always make sure you use a good quality glue though because you don't want everything falling apart before you have a chance to use it. (I recommend Tombo latex glue, because it dries pretty quickly, but not too quickly that you don't have a chance to re-position something if you didn't do it right the first time. Plus you only need to use the tiniest amount because it spreads pretty far)
• Don't forget that Christmas is not about spending money, it's about spending time with your loved ones, so don't stress too much if everything has to be done on the cheap. Just remember that it is so popular that these days it's not called being a cheap-ass, it's called thrifting. 

Well that's all from me for today, my little sister Natty has been very patiently sitting in my lounge room for two hours now waiting for me to stop being anti-social and entertain her so I'd better go look like I'm interested. I'll be back again soon with something else super thrilling I'm sure, so stay awesome till then.

*Editors note: This blog post has been linked to the following link parties;

One Project at a Time  

The Creative Spark 

Blissful and Domestic

Turning a coat hanger into a ribbon organiser

Ok guys so as you've probably noticed, I've been a bit absent lately. Part of it is trying to keep on top of the various bugs that Miss K keeps picking up (she has a cold at the moment which is just so much fun), part of it is that exam season is coming up quickly and I am madly trying to make sure I'm ready for my one and only exam for the year, and part of it is that I am starting to feel stuck in a rut as far as this blog goes. While I am sure you guys all love hearing my various anecdotes about Miss K and the cute things she does, I get the feeling I'm becoming one of those annoying people who has nothing to talk about except for their children.

So with that in mind, I have decided to try something a bit different for the blog today. Instead of just blabbing on and on about my day (which was just so boring to live through I don't feel mean enough to make all of you go through it too) I have decided to do a quick tutorial instead. Now for anyone here who doesn't care about crafty things, I do apologize for you might find this all a bit dull. But if that is the case, feel free to skip down to the bottom of the page and drop me a line in the comments saying so. I can only guess what you guys like about my blog since you are all such a quiet bunch, so today's guess is that you want to learn how to turn an every day item like a coat hanger into a nifty way to organize your ribbons. I'm starting really simple because I am new to this whole telling people what to do thingy, and I wanted to make sure this first tutorial would be both easy to write and easy to read. So here goes.

Ooh it even comes with it's own intro picture, how exciting...

Now for any of you lovely people out there who are crafty and like scrapbooking, or card making or anything else where you use lots of ribbons, you will know how annoying it can be trying to find an effective way to store your ribbons so that they don't become tangled and messy. I know that before I stumbled on this idea I had tried several different methods. There are professionally made boxes complete with dowels and holes for you to hang and thread your ribbons through, but they usually come with a price tag that is way outside of my budget of free or cheaper, so I have always had to get creative with ways to sort and store my lovely ribbons. My first ribbon holder was a plastic bag. That was terrible. On a scale of one to ten for ease of use and neatness, a plastic bag gets a zero. So I swapped to a plastic container which was slightly better, at least now I could see all of my ribbons at a glance, but they still got tangled too much. 

See? terrible.

So when I stumbled on a picture somewhere of someone using a trouser hanger as a ribbon organiser I got super excited. Until I realised how very little the people in my town must use coat hangers because I couldn't find a multi rack coat hanger for love or money. Luckily I eventually found one at Kmart and forked out a whole $5 for it. 

Now the first thing you want to do is gather all of your supplies. (I've always wanted to start a sentence like that. It sounds so tutorial-y)And now here is the obligatory picture of all of my supplies gathered into the one space for ease of use.

Ta-daa! Look at all that gathered-ness

Now if you are super OCD like I am, you can take this time to sort your ribbons into categories. I know, who knew ribbons could have categories! 

There is a sight that just makes my compulsive side sing.

And then it is just as simple as threading the ribbon spools onto the coat hanger in any way that you please. 

It couldn't be easier if it was thought up by a one year old...

And before you know it you will have a lovely coat hanger covered in spools of ribbon that you can now hang up anywhere that you like.

See? No more tangled ribbons and it even looks pretty. 

I even have heaps of room left over just in case I decide to go out and buy more ribbons. Not bad for $5 and ten minutes of work. (It would have been quicker but I had to keep stopping to take pictures of it for you guys.) And now just to make it really look like a professional tutorial, here is a before and after shot of my ribbons. 

So there you have it, a tutorial on how to turn an ordinary every day boring coat hanger into something awesome for your crafting area. I hope that this was as enjoyable for you guys to read as it was for me to write, if it wasn't please, please, please let me know. Also feel free to tell me what you guys do want to see on here, because I can't entertain you if I don't know what you like. 

*update, this blog post has now been linked to A Bowl Full of Lemon's One project at a time link party, check it out for other awesome bloggers with even bigger and better things to share.