Saturday Night Bloggers Boogie

Time for a bloggers boogie again spurred on by the fact I am currently spending 3 days with a group of wonderful friends including the Bloggers Bogie found LWD.

So with that tonight theme is friends

 

Saturday Night Bloggers Boogie

I originally was going to base tonight Bloggers Boogie on the first 5 songs that my randomly are played from ITunes but the second song made me think “wonder what he/they are doing now” How are they?

Well just before I got married in 2005, there was a show on Fox8 that Andrew and I loved to watch, mainly because we are both huge INXS fans.

The show of course was RockStar INXS and tonight songs from my favourite songs from the show.

We were definitely in Camp Marty in this house but in the end were happy with JD Fortune, even if we were disappointed that he was off his face (and not on alcohol) when we finally got to see them in concert, were not surprised that they did not renew his contract.

You may of heard this song as it was released by INXS

My favourite song of the series

Yu can check out other Blogger Boggie’s over at LWD.

Bloggers Boogie {blog party}

Long time no blog, so much for a blog a month, well if you count total blog post for the year I am not doing to bad, this makes 5th post for 2012 and we are just entering the 6th month.

Anyway the reason for breaking my blogging drought is to join in to LWD bloggers boogie party along with Car and Bee

My 5 songs for this week are some of my fav songs, that my husband finds annoying

So who are you listing to this weekend

Flowers

So far this BOM was started on July 2010, Block 2 finished in Jan 2011 and now Block 3 was finished 29 Dec 2011.


I am sure I will finish it.... one day :)

A Photo a Day

You may have seen on blogs, twitter, Facebook and/or Instagram people posting photos along with words like, ME, Mailbox or today’s favourite and the hashtag #JANphotoaday. Well they have all been taking part in this challenge set by Fatmumslim

I have been posting my photos to my twitter account @m2monkeyb (almost dailiy) and will try and share with you here weekly

Day 1 – Me

Day 2 - Breakfast

Day 3 – Something you adore

Day 4 – Mailbox

Day 5 – Something you wore

Day 6 – Makes me smile

Day 7 – Favourite (treat of above 4 yr old)

12 WIPs in 12 Months

As I mentioned in my last post (am I really posting two days in a row, shock horror ) I intend to make some more time to sew for me alongside my Two Little Monkeys sewing.

Luckily AJ came up with a challenge that will encourage me to not only sew more but get some of my huge WIP list finished. Now more info about the challenge can be found here and here but the gist of it is

1. Entry fee of 1 FQ to be sent to AJ to compete for the grand prize at the end of the 12 months
2. For each month that you finish a WIP you get an entry to the grand prize draw (plus an extra entry for blogging about it)
3. 6 of the projects have to be true WIP 'already started' which shouldn’t be a problem as my current list shows 17 and I know there is at least two more to add to it. The other 6 can be not started but you must be previous planned and either material or pattern owned (or drawn up for pattern) While I have at least 9 in that category as well.

My only problem is that most of my WIP still need a lot of work on them so apart from the 6 that are am going to list here I will choose the others that I will do during the year.

Monkeys & Lions Quilt  - This just needs the binding sewn down

Arabella – This was my MIL’s Christmas present for 2010 (oops) just need to send it off to be quilted and then bound

Bastian’s Plane Quilt – I need to remove all the stabiliser from behind the appliqued planes and then once I getting the backing fabric also needs to be sent out to be quilted and then bound. I don’t have a photo of this one but it is this quilt

Charm Square quilt along – Also don’t have a photo of this but I have the quilt top almost finished just need to add the borders, not sure if I have the backing or not for this one. Once again needs to be sent out to be quilted and then bound. This is a photo of the first block I finished.

Pram Quilt – this was meant to be for Lachie but I never got around to finish it. It is going to be backed in two layers of mint green microfleece, I might add some pink flowers or shapes to it before sandwiching it and give it to my cousin for her little girl that is due in Feb.

Snowballs -  This is an advent calendar that I started Nov 2010, did some more Nov 2011 at a quilt retreat and would really like to have it finished for Christmas 2012

My last one is an unstarted one, I bought myself a Odyssea by Momo jelly roll either Christmas 2010 or 2009 waiting for the perfect project and found it while at the quilt retreat in Nov last year. Then at my last market for 2011 I found the pattern I was after at Bella’s Patchwork stall. I decided that I really want to start a new project at the first MMQG SASD in two weeks time so this will be it.

Just need to find some material for the borders and get some white Emma Louise for the background

So I think given that I finished no quilts last year that if I get all of those done I will be doing well.

Goodbye 2011, Hello 2012

Well what a year. I have to admit I am glad that one is over, good things outnumbered the bad in numbers but there was one really bad thing that overshadowed them all. I haven’t got around to blogging about this yet as I wasn’t sure it was something I wanted to share but I think I need to try and move on as I know that she would hate for me to dwell.

In July last year, exactly one month after she celebrated her 98th birthday my amazing Grandmother passed away, at the time I actually coped with it a lot better then I thought I would, which I think was due to the time I spent visiting her in hospital prior to her death. She had a fall at home a couple of weeks earlier and broke her hip, had an operation to put in pins and was going well, in fact the physio was talking about rehab and then I suppose the best way to put it was that her body just gave up. She had lived an amazing life surrounded by her family, 5 sons, 9 grandchildren and 7 great grandchildren, and I was lucky enough to spend a lot of my childhood with her and most of my memories involve family occasions with her.

Anyway as I said at the time I coped quite well but in the lead up to Christmas I started to miss her and while I did not realise it at the time, I know now that I threw myself into too many projects, markets etc to try and keep my mind busy. That is the main reason why I failed so badly at the advent blog-a-long I just didn’t have time to sit at the computer and blog and my IPhone app (Blogpress) didn’t seem to be working so I couldn’t blog via my phone as I had originally planned.

Moving on I have had a lovely week since Christmas with Andrew and my boys and I have been able sleep late, recharge my batteries, sew and reconnect with some online friends, Car, Rachel, Kayscha to name a few and am quite excited to have made plans to catch up with them in Nov this year.

Other plans for this year

1. More sewing for me (I will post more about this tomorrow)

2. Expand Two Little Monkeys, after the success of our Santa sacks i am hoping to find some new product ranges that are as successful, and have already booked into a market at the end of January and Mid March, here are my two newest items, personalised cushions and toy sacks/play mats

3.Get more organised, this is a must as this was a plan for last year and I can safely say I failed big time. I have realised that I don’t want to give up anything but at the same time I am struggling to fit it all in. which isn’t to say that I am doing to much but more that I have terrible time management skills.

4. Connect more with others, notice I didn’t say blog more, while I do plan to try and blog at least once a month I am not holding myself to it, instead I will try to comment on others posts more, post of Facebook and Twitter more and be a good on-line friend

Before I go I will leave you with two photos, the first is my gorgeous boys in there Christmas pj’s that I whipped up for them Christmas Eve

And a photo of them in there Santa Sack’s we took the same photo last year and I think it might be turn it into a nice yearly tradition.

Advent Blog-a-long–Day 4

Well today was in one word tiring, up early to do some work, had to pop out to a colleague’s house to pick up some work things and made a pit stop at a local market, scouting for potential markets for Two Little Monkeys to attend.

Then home to collect the boys and do some Christmas shopping. I realised that this weekend was the last free weekend we all had together before Christmas (excluding Christmas Eve) so if we wanted to do any shopping as a family this was the day.

Well i should of known it was going to be a long day when this was the boys after the first stop

But at least it was a productive day, well productive in we got our present to ourselves

We are now the new owners of

I have being wanting a small handheld video camera for a while but as Andrew has access to big film quality HD cameras at work we always put it off, but with Bastian’s kinder concert coming up next week I decided it would look a bit silly turning up with a movie camera and just wanted something small. I have tried to use the IPhone but it is not that good for video as there is no zoom.

I also made a stop off at Dusk, every year I buy myself a new Christmas candle decoration which I light Christmas Eve, these year due to Lachie the destroyer I was not sure if I should, so what did I do, buy three I have decided that I might no bring them out until Christmas Eve after the boys have gone to bed and that way they will stay safe.

The third one is a spinning top, when you light a tea light under it it spins. I did take a video of it but don’t know how to upload videos to the blog so the blury photo will have to do.

My last three photos for tonight before I call it a night areTonights book

Yesterday’s Lego item was a Mechno-Chair

Today’s Lego item is a Homing spider droid

Advent Blog-a-long–Day 3

Just sneaking in, well actually it past midnight but I am still up so that counts doesn’t it.

Today I went to my local quilt shops Christmas party, I was a bit unsure about going as I have not had any classes there since Lachie was born and rarely buy anything from there anymore but it always nice to go and see all the ladies. Two quilts that you can do in there classes next year caught my eye, one is Michele Yeo’s Giant Dahlia, the other is a from a book called “A path to a Civil War” I think this would look amazing with bright modern fabrics on a white background, kind of like how people have been doing the modern versions of Farmer Wife quilts. I would love to do one of them but as I am still only half way through my Dear Jane quilt, I don’t think I should start any major project like Farmers Wife. The one a saw today would be a lot more achievable as the blocks are 12” for the main part and 9” for the two board rows.

Well that is all from me tonight definitely time to go to bed but before I go today’s book was

We only read about 1/3 of this book as it is quite a long story, but it was amazing to see Bastian taking it in compared to last year when we first got it (It was the theme of the Myer Windows last year)

You will have to wait for a photo of today’s Lego item as it is in Bastian’s room and I forgot to take a photo of it before he went to bed

Advent Blog-a-long - Day 2

Yes I know that this is actually day 3 but I ran out of time yesterday to blog so I will do two today, will you forgive me wont you

We didn’t do anything Christmassy today except for having to decide what plate to bring to the Kinder Christmas concert and last day party. When you have a little boy as fussy as Bastian it makes it hard to bring something he likes, especially when his two favourite party foods had already been taken (cocktail frankfurts and fairy bread) so I decided on his next favourite, pikelets.

I have decided that as well as sharing with you which books are opened each day I will also share what was in the Lego Star Wars Advent calendar each day (just in case any of you are interested )

Day One - Republic Cruisers

Day Two – Nute Gunray

And to give you an idea of the size of the pieces, Nute Gunray is the size of a standard Lego person and here they are together (sorry for the blurry image, IPhone pic)

I spent the evening tracing out letters for our Santa Sacks that we have been selling through Facebook, MadeIt, Etsy & Hand-made. Both the Etsy and Hand-made store are closed at the moment as we are not taking any more Santa sack order for 2011 Christmas. They have been selling extremely well with 54 made to date and 21 to make over the next two weeks.

As we were out so late, Bastian & Daddy went to see Puss in Boots at the drive-in and Lachie was with me at my parents while I traced out letters, we didn’t to open and read our Advent book yesterday so first thing this morning while having breakfast we opened and read

Now to go and enjoy day 3 of the Christmas season and I promise to come back and blog about it later