Blogtoberfest–Day 4

Opps looking at the clock it is actually Day 5 here but I am sure in most of Australia it is still Day 4
One more family catch up post, two weeks ago this little boy

Bastian aged 10mths

Turned 4

We had a lovely day at a miniature steam railway (Campbellfield) with the family some friends and one special friend from Kinder (I am not sure if Bastian was more excited of his actual birthday or Riley coming to his party.


Here is the cake I made, it was fun but in future I will not make a cake like this when we have almost an hour in the car to get to the venue, luckily it made it but there was a few times that we were not sure if it would.
Now tomorrow I promise that I will have some sewing photos of some sort

My Creative Space

Opps it has been over a month since I last blogged, and here I was planning at least a post a week this year, oh well.
Why I have not been posting, no major reason, I just have not had time
In fact I have had so little time to sew that it was around 4:30 the afternoon before Bastian started his first session of Kinder that I realised that I had yet to start his Backpack, I had bought the material and this pattern ages ago but had put it aside to “do when I had a chance” over the Christmas holidays. Well the holidays were over and while he did have other backpacks he could use I was determined that he would use the one I had planned. Well 9 hrs later (yes that is correct I was up to 2am) in between feeding Lachie, having to settle him back to sleep on multiple occasions and of course eating, it was all finished. Bastian loves it which made it all worth the lack of sleep, although my darling husband almost got a kick in the shins when he asked me in I had just recovered an existing backpack.

 

You may have noticed a Facebook page link over on the right hand side, that is one of the reason for my lack of time, my Mum and I had set up a little business selling a variety of handmade items. So far we have had a stall one two occasions at Mornington Wednesday Main Street market and hope to get a regular spot there closer to Christmas.
As for other quilting news I have finished Bastian Plane Quilt, but will blog that in a separate post later.
I have also decided on my material that I am going to use for the SIT name bag swap

I had a lot of trouble choosing these as I don’t have a lot of orange in my stash and nothing that is bright and cheerful like all the other badges I have seen around. I was just about to give up and make a trip to buy some more fabric when I found this one which I think will work well with what I have planned. That is my project for this weekend, what’s yours?
More Creative Spaces here

Advent Blog-along–Day 10

Tonight we went along to the Casey Demons Christmas Party (Casey Demons is a supporters group for the Melbourne Football Club)

And following on from my last post about Bastian gaining more confidence, I was pleasantly surprised when he not only asked to go on the bouncy slide, but actually climbed all the way up and slide down all by himself.

Advent Blog-along Day 9

I have decided to just blog when I can this festive season, to many other things going on in the background that I don’t want to bore you all with here. So some of these post may be a bit delayed (like today I have three posts for you)

In many ways my darling Bastian is a normal rough and tumble boy but then he also has an overall cautious side that prevents him from sliding down slides by himself or climbing to high. So you can imagine my delight when he worked out the other day that our driveway makes a perfect slope for his little push along bike.

At first I felt I was a bit overprotective worried that he might come off and scrap his legs/feet or even worse go on to the road, but do the fact that we are very slack and our driveway does still not line up with our crossover (we have only been in this house for 9 years) he worked out the perfect way to stop himself.

(does anyone know how to add video to blog posts without uploading it to YouTube)

2010 Advent Blog-along–Day 5

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday but we didn’t get home from the city until 6pm (and that was after leaving at 7am) so as you can imagine we had two very tired and somewhat grumpy little boys as well as tired Mummy & Daddy. As always the Wiggles Concert was fantastic we had great seats, on the floor 7 rows back from the front.

You can see in background of this picture how close we were to the stage. Both boys enjoyed it, well Bastian loved it, Andrew has video photo of him going crazy when they come out in the Big Red Car, Lachie just enjoyed jumping up and down on our knees and then of course fell asleep in my arms at the last song.

I had to include this one of Anthony just because I could

After the concert we walked up to Crown Casino and had a look at there Christmas display, I was actually a bit disappointed as they have not changed it much in the last 3 years, however Bastian loved it, especially the hanging monkeys that come down from the ceiling. We then caught a tram to Myer and went to Santaland

Where he got to go on a ride on Santa’s train and then after 45min waiting, we went and met Santa. I must admit when I was told how long the wait would be I was a bit hesitant but it was well worth it.

Both boys look a bit tired as it was towards the end of a long day, and Bastian was not too sure about Santa, but at least he sat there which was a change from the last two years. We mentioned to Santa that Bastian was going to give him his dummy’s and Santa told him that Rudolph has just had a little baby who could really use some dummy’s so that would be lovely if he left his out for him. The only problem we had was that Bastian wanted to know why he didn’t get any of the things he was wanting off Santa, but more about that on a later post.

2010 Advent Blog-along–Day 2

As far as Christmas activities today we did zilch, well if you count cleaning up the toys so we can get the Christmas tree tomorrow a Christmas activity then we did that.

However I thought today I would list my Christmas traditions, and as you can see from the list I am big on Christmas traditions –

1. Wiggles concert in the city – followed by the Myer windows, Crown Christmas display, and a visit to Santa and Santaland at Myers
2. Local Carols concert
3. Christmas Eve Santa comes around on a fire truck and throws out lolly for the children
4. Christmas Eve we make cookies for Santa, last year was the first for this one, and was a bit of a failure but I am confident that this year will be better
5. Watch Carols by Candlelight while madly wrapping the rest (read most) of the presents

I am sure there is more and as the boys get bigger they will change some what

Finally here is the picture that was taken while reading last night Christmas story

Wordless Wednesday

more here

Blogtoberfest – Day 19

Today we went to the Zoo and in the words of my three year old we saw

Raffs

Baby aleefunt

Blogtoberfest – Day 15

Okay it is actually the 16 today but I ran out of time yesterday so you will have to have two posts today.

In order to combat my lack of time issue I decided to set up my current project on my sewing table and try to do a little bit here and there between other household chores, work and baby feeds. However I soon realised that when having small children in the house you need to be careful with what you leave lying about.

The other day I was doing something in another room when Bastian comes up to me and says “Mummy I cut” okay I am thinking his paper scissors are safely stowed away so I am not sure what he was talking about…. Then he comes and gets my hand and leads me to my sewing table, points at my laid out material and once again says “See Mummy, I cut like Mummy”  uh-oh

Luckily it is only a 1 1/2 inch square and I have heaps of that material left so I have truly learnt my lesson and all sharp objects are now stored away from little fingers even if I leave my machine for a second.

Blogtoberfest – Day 11

Bastian is a truly fussy eater, I know a lot of people say that there is no such thing as a fussy eater and there are ways of making a child eat vegetables, such as hiding them in other things he will eat. But when the list of healthy things he will eat is vegemite sandwiches, toasted cheese sandwiches, pork or chicken sausages, yoghurt, apples, strawberries & bananas then it is hard to hide other things with them.

So you can imagine my surprise when were out at a 4 year old birthday on Sunday and he polished off all of the grapes that were on the cheese plate and then later on in the day he took a huge slice of watermelon and proceeded to eat 90% of it, only stopping after he accidently takes a bit out of the green rind which he didn’t like one bit.

Then to further impress us last night he sat down to a dinner of chicken schnitzel and a few slices of carrot, mash potato and a piece of asparagus, assuming as normal he will take one look, maybe eat a piece of chicken and push the plate away, only to have him eat all the asparagus and carrot and take extra carrot of daddy’s plate.

Looks like all our recent talks with him about how he is 3 and a big boy now not a baby might be working.

Blogtoberfest – Day 8

A couple of weeks ago my little boy turned 3. Every year I always say, while preparing for his birthday party, “He is not going to have a party every year” and then it comes around and I change my mind. I am starting to think that maybe I just like throwing the parties.

He currently obsessed with Toy Story so I decided to run with that theme, which made me start to think of a cake. Then I saw this post over here (who in turn was inspired by these two posts) and the decision was made.

Please excuse the dodgy photo is was taken very quickly before it was time to sing Happy Birthday

Here you can see it in all it rainbow glory.

I did have other party sweets planned but they all ended up being half finished or finished off just moments before they had to be served. I learnt that it is incredibly silly to try and throw a no-holds bar fantastic birthday party for a child when you also have a baby to look after

Also for any of the new Blogtoberfest readers I have a 2 spots left in a PIF, see this post for more details

Blogtoberfest – Day 6

Wordless Wednesday

More here

(yes I did miss Day 5 I will be back later with a catch up )

Blogtoberfest – Day 3

Today was once again a lovely sunny spring day, we had swimming in the morning and then as a treat we took Bastian for milkshake and to feed the Pelicans.

Once home I was able to finally get some sewing done, unfortunately I can’t show you a full picture of it until after next Saturday.

Autumn Leaves

I did it, I actually did it…

Free Motion Quilted that is. Now it is not perfect, in fact far from it but I am pleased with the finished result. It helps that I know that my friend who little girl it is for would love anything I make, especially that I did it all myself. So without any further rambling from me here it is
 

It has a pieced back as well



And here is a close up of my quilting, not a clear close up but you don’t want to see a clear one showing all my mistakes.



Also there is current a few lovely ladies, Heather and KarrieLyne that are giving their blog readers a chance to win a AccuQuilt Go

And finally just because I can here is a new photo of my two boys

Sailing

I was lucky enough to take Bastian sailing on the Gippsland lakes with my parents for a week, it wasn't till the night before we left that I started to panic that he would not like the boat, or even worse get seasick likes his daddy.

He had a ball, the only thing he was not to keen on was when we had to use the motor due to lack of wind or to motor into/out of berths etc.

In fact he found it so relaxing that he fell asleep on both days when we did a fair bit of sailing.

I think it is safe to say that we have a little sailor on our hands, just like his Granddad.  Granddad was very happy that he enjoyed it and even more so that by the end Bastian was telling everyone that Granddad's boat goes "woosh" and noisy speedboats go "boom boom boom boom" complete with a screwed up face to show his dislike for "stink boats" as granddad calls them.

Now I just need to find a way to cure seasickness and I can arrange my dream family holiday for a few years time, once #2 is born and a bit older

Long time no post

To my two or three loyal blog readers, sorry for the length between posts, much has been going on and time just hasn't been around to post.

So what has happened since my last post,

I went to the Don't Look Now workshop at The Patchwork House, have got lots of homework to do from that, there is a picture of my practice piece over at me flickr account here

Then I spent a week at the in-laws at South West Rocks which was lovely, I am very jealous of the lovely location they live in, was able to spend a couple of days at the beach and visiting the local tourist locations.

We then drove up and spent a week with my parents at Twin Towns resort, Tweed Heads. This is the view from our room


We also went to Movieworld, SeaWorld and Currimbum wildlife sanctuary. Bastian loved all three, at Currimbum he got to pat a possum, feed a kangaroo and have his photo taken next to a wedge tail eagle and a koala

Here he is on a train ride at Movieworld



and meeting Cookie Monster at SeaWorld,



Then not long after we returned my little baby boy turned 2. We had planned a day at Puffing Billy but due to icy cold winds and rain we changed it to a afternoon tea at Grandma's


His cake was nothing special as I thought I would have to transport it on a train, I was planning on making a actual train cake but thought it might be to hard to transport, oh well there is always next year.

Well what is next, well that is a very good question just before our holiday we decided that it was time to extend our little family of three and well before we new it, I am pregnant, #2 will be making a arrival towards the end of April next year.

I will be back later for a quilting update of what I have been doing, which is not much really

Mr Electron

A lot of you in blog land would have seen Miss Buttons. A cute little armless lady that can be made in various clothing options seen here, well it turns out that she has a brother.

Ladies and ladies (don't think any Gentlemen read my blog) introducing

Mr Electron

And here is a pic of his proud new owner, just because i have posted a new pic of my darling boy recently

A Boy and his bike

Even though Santa already went a tad overboard this year for Bastian, we decided that he really really need a bike, his first bike. So when Nan and Grandpa told us to buy something for him and they would pay for it we decided to buy a bike for him, and a helmet of course.





Even though he is only 15mths, we decided to make him wear a helmet from the start. He is so cute with it, it you try and put it on before he is on the bike he cracks it, but as soon as he is sitting on the bike he lets you put the helmet on and do it up. He is already try to put he feet on the pedals (can't quite reach) and he watches the pedals go round and round.

Santa Photo take 2

The Sunday before Christmas we all got together at my at my parents house to see my Mum's extended family for Christmas. My dad had even put in a special request for Santa to visit.



And low and behold Bastian loved this Santa and allowed him to have a cuddle.





I think he is starting to realise that Santa = Presents, doesn't take them long does it.

Santa Photos

I was determined to get a Santa photo with Basitan this year, even though everyone told me that this is not a good age for them.


So one Saturday after a make up swimming class we trundled down to our local new shopping centre to see Santa, Mrs Claus and Scobby Doo arrive on Thomas the tank engine with the aim to have a photo taken with Santa. Once it was our turn we said hello to Santa and went to sit down, when the tears started, then Santa recommended that Mummy sits on Santa's lap holding Bastian, and that it when the howling started. The result....