Miss K and the Christmas tree

Well I had hoped to come back over last night to update you guys on our Christmas tree, but after spending half an hour fluffing up fake branches, then another ten minutes trying to figure out how to anchor the tree to the wall (Miss K is too likely to pull the whole thing onto herself in five minutes flat if we let her) and another twenty minutes helping mum put the lights on the tree, I was all out of energy and motivation, so you guys had to wait.

Now it may surprise you (or it may not, I could be wrong) to discover that our Christmas tree this year is actually pretty bare. We rushed to get the lights on before Miss K went to bed, so we could show her really the most exciting part of a tree, but once we plugged them in and turned them on, we discovered that the effects of the lights on a bare white tree were so stunning, we have decided to leave the tree ornament free this year. (Whether or not this actually stays the case I'm not sure, mum tends to have a lot of changes of mind, so we could be back tomorrow covering the tree with every ornament we have to hand.) Normally we have what we call the Santa vomit effect, where every last square inch of tree is covered in ornaments and tinsel, till it looks like something that Santa would regurgitate after too many plates of cookies and glasses of milk. But for now I am loving the simplicity of our tree, as well as the added bonus that there is nothing small for Miss K to pull off and break or choke on.

Given that by the time we were finished last night, it was after 8 o'clock, it was pretty dark outside, but still too hot to pull our blinds down and block out the only source of cool air we have, so I actually got to test out one of the most popular Christmas themed photos at the moment...

(Source)

Now of course given that Miss K wasn't going to be wrapped in the lights (well not yet anyway) and I didn't have a proper source of natural lights, my picture was bound to come up a lot different to this one here, but it still makes me smile every time I look at it.

My big sister and I are planning to do the proper Christmas light photo at another time, but for now I'm happy with my efforts.

Well that's all for now, Miss K and her cousin are currently trying to swap sippy cups so I need to go and separate them yet again. I'll be back again soon with more Christmas fun.

Guess what we're doing tonight

Can you guess what's on my list for tonight??

That's right, we're decorating our Christmas tree tonight. (Or as we call it with Miss K our Santa tree because every time she looks at it she yells out "HO HO HO!!!")

So I've got our Michael Buble Christmas CD pumping and Miss K and I have been given the job of spreading out all the branches while mum runs down the street to buy some coloured Christmas lights because we only have white ones and we want different ones this  year.

I shall be back later on with photos of the finished product. 

And to explain why Miss K is doing her decorating wearing only a nappy, the barometer has spiked at 38 degrees here today, and barely dropped at all, despite the fact that the sun is as we speak on it's way out. So in the name of comfort Miss K has been stripped down to the bare minimum. Oh to be one again.

The begrudging model

Well I promised I would be back today with photos of Miss K modelling her brand new kimono top, but I forgot that I would have to contend with the model herself and her ever changing and fickle moods. Well it took both me and my baby sister ten minutes of begging, coaxing, persuading, distracting and bribing of Miss K to finally get some decent pictures. Unfortunately they are all on my baby sister's phone, so I only have one to share with you now, which is the one she posted on Facebook for me today.

I will be cornering my sister the next time she comes home and insisting that she uploads the rest of the photos onto my computer straight away, because there are some absolutely beautiful ones there, which put my attempts to take her photo to shame. 

Of course my photos don't come with the lovely filters and effects that only come from Instagram. But I can't complain too much because at the end of the day Miss K really did love her new top (she actually kissed it when I brought it out to show her) and I did get some pretty pictures of her wearing it too, so all in all I guess it was a success.

Well that's all from me for now, it is CSI Saturday here right now and I don't want to miss any more of my stories. 

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.

We've got mail

So the day I have been waiting for a whole week finally arrived today, our parcel from Western Australia arrived this morning with Miss K's new hair accessories from Little Birdies. Miss K and I both had trouble containing our excitement while opening the box, and her reaction when she saw the hair clips was more than I could have hoped for. She was so impressed with them she grabbed them out of the parcel before I could even stop her and started trying to put them in her hair. Then she proceeded to strut around the lounge room like a little catwalk model while mum and I oohed and aahed over her. I even managed to get her to sit still long enough for me to take some photos to show to my friends on Facebook, including the lovely lady who made the hair clips in the first place.

The look of pure concentration on her face is thanks to Yo Gabba Gabba, which she was watching at the time.

And just because I am such a sucker for that pretty face, I couldn't resist snapping some more photos when she sat down for morning tea too.

That look is because I'm interrupting her watermelon to make her look at me. 

Well that's all for now, and I can now finally stop stalking the poor postman everytime he rides past on his motorcycle hoping he has a parcel for me. Unless any of you wonderful readers would like to start sending me gifts? I know you're all such a generous bunch... no? Alright then never mind.

Well stay awesome everyone, I'll be back again soon.

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

My prima ballerina

So this is just a quick post to share some photos with you guys.

For anyone who knows our family, you would know that my baby sister owned a dance school until the middle of last year. As a result of her own 16 years of dance lessons and then owning a dance school, our house has been filled with bags and boxes and crates of old dancing costumes for years now. So today mum finally got tired of looking at the bags and boxes and crates and put all of the school's costumes in a vacuum seal bag so that they could be stored more efficiently. Well Miss K was in seventh heaven with all these pretty dresses sitting around just waiting to be touched and explored. In among all of the lycra and tulle was my baby sisters old tutu, which was one of Miss K's personal favourites. So just because I am the best mum in the world and I love making my baby smile, I helped her to pop the dress on so she could be a ballerina just like her aunty. Thankfully my sister had her phone ready because otherwise these photos wouldn't have happened. (Stupid camera batteries dying last night)

So without further ado, let me introduce you to my little ballerina.

Now ballet is not my favorite thing in the world, and up until before Miss K was born I was adamant that my little girl would not be taking dance lessons like her two auntys and one uncle did as kids. However I have been told by all of my sisters and my mum, and my little sister's former dance teacher that I have no choice, and Miss K MUST take dance lessons when she's older. I would fight this, but the sheer delight on her face in these photos is enough proof that Miss K might want this just as much as everyone else does. Luckily for us, as little as this area does have in the way of entertainment, it is absolutely filled with dance schools, so we are definitely spoilt for choice. Just as well because it looks like I've got no say in the matter.