Look what I've started now...

I shouldn't be starting any other projects because I am in the middle of quite a few at the moment (like always!). I decided to have a go at this one though thinking it would be quick. It's rather time consuming cutting out all those flowers but it is kind of therapeutic.

I am on a decorating kick at present. Esther and Ellamay's room is well and truly ready for a make over but the whole house is annoying me. So I will start by doing things that I can achieve easily. Enter - paper flower garlands for the kids rooms. This one is for Amelia's room. I saw this one here and decided I really needed to try it out. I have run out of cut flowers though so I need to trace a few more onto the card and get cutting again.

I have almost finished another character for my resurrection set. One of the women needs hair and the other is started but needs a lot more work. Running out of time! Hope to be back tomorrow with some more pictures of finished felt people.

Little felt Angel

I finally finished the angel to go in my resurrection set. It's been busy here (as usual) and I have hardly done any of my stitching or making things. I have been going crazy! Tim is away for the weekend at more fire training stuff so I have been letting everything slide (translation: the place is a mess!) and have just been trying to get this done. Easter is next weekend and I am not feeling confident about getting this finished. Here is the little felt Jesus I made.
I cut out the felt pieces for two women in the set. I have stitched their arms and I hope to work on them some more before bed tonight. As long as my darling children settle. They are REALLY not good at that.

The angel's halo is made from a round shell bead thingy :). It turned out quite well. A very friendly angel really. A friendly, fuzzy, craft felty angel.

I am trying to figure out how to go about the tomb and cross. I would like to do it different to the original, if I get it done at all.

I would like to make some Easter hair clips too (any excuse for new hair accessories, right?) and I still want to put some flowers on the front of the Easter baskets I made.

There is one other thing I really need to achieve though. Sleep. I am lacking more than usual lately so perhaps I should put that on top of the list. Nah... :O Yawn, too much other stuff that's more fun to do than sleep. Maybe the kids just take after me in the sleep thing.

Project 52 - The tenth date - Photos

This week we set up our photo booth again and took heaps of silly pictures. It was so much fun. We have had that many crazy weeks lately, we were determined to get our 'funny' back again.

Tim and I having fizzy drinks in our grown up crystal glasses. :)

It was Crazy Hair Day on Friday at the school, so Tim had been wearing an afro wig during the day. It became another prop for our photos.

The photo below is my favourite. We look so daggy! I love it!

Laughing together has always been really important to us. In fact, we wrote it into our wedding vows. It was so refreshing to laugh about all these silly photos. It is really pushing myself out of my comfort zone though. I am mostly quite a shy person. So I feel like a real dork posing. But... this really was so much fun, it was easy to forget myself for a bit. Tim enjoyed being silly too. One of the things that caught my attention about Tim when we first met, was how much fun he was. He can always make me laugh.

Check out Project 52 over at Simply Modern Mom to see what others have done for this week's dates.

Crazy Hair Day

Last Friday was Crazy Hair Day at Esther and Ellamay's school. It is a Cystic Fibrosis Victoria fundraising day where school kids get to go to school with crazy hair styles while raising money for a great cause.

Esther went with pink hair and Ellamay went with purple hair. Tim went along (with a big afro wig!) to read a story to the Prep/One class called, Monty. It is about a little girl with CF. It's explains the condition in an easy, kid-friendly way.

The kids at school got to 'style' the teachers hair. There really were some crazy styles. Considering there is only around 50 kids at their school, they raised a huge $790! Great job!

Fabric name badges

I think I may have just worked out how to upload photos from flickr to blogger!!! Round of applause people!!! I have been getting frustrated with this whole blogging thing since I started and now... perhaps I will be able to get things moving along a bit easier. Hip Hooray!

Esther and Ellamay have been getting stressed at school because people are getting them confused. Everyone. All the time. Yes, they are twins. It can't be that hard to tell them apart though surely, they wear two different uniforms. Well, actually. We get them mixed up too. Which is frustrating because they are just so different and we are their parents! Aaaaaaanyway...

I have made them some name badges in hopes that if they wear them to school, it might give everyone a clue to who's who.

I had visions of buying a badge maker off ebay, coz, we're sure to need more badges aren't we? The price was WAY out of the price range. I thought about using large self cover buttons but I would have to wait to go into town to get them so I came up with this instead.

I cut disks out of scrap photo mat board (extremely useful stuff). Glued on a circle of felt to pad it a little and cut the edges so I could stretch it neatly over the back.

I traced the disk using a disappearing ink pen (I have only just discovered how cool these are) onto the fabric, and then wrote the name on. I used 6 strands of embroidery cotton to stitch the name. (Didn't take a photo of that.)

I sewed the edge of the circle of fabric a bit like making a yo-yo and then attached a brooch bar. 'Scuse the messy stitching. I am an impatient stitcher and it's the back anyway.

Ta-da. I am so clever. (The photo got cut off a bit - oops). Of course, Ellamay decided that she needed to add a full stop to the end of her name with black texta. And Amelia decided that Ellamay's needed some other colours on it so took to it with texta as well. At least they got one wear out of them. I will try to rub it off, it's not too bad. I might unpick them (if I can be bothered) and replace the mat board with plastic canvas. Then they would be washable.

There you have it. A really long post about something crafty with pictures and everything. I am currently working on the Angel for my resurrection set (almost done that) and the next little bag for the birthday present. And some more hair clips. And I really want to start a stitching project...

Project 52 - The nineth date

This week was a talking date. No extras. Well, aside from a jar of jelly lollies :) and a cuppa.

Life has been hectic (as usual). It had been a particularly 'turbulent' week at work for Tim, with some major restructuring going on. Add a few issues with the kids, the fact that we hadn't had a chance to talk much and you get a recipe for stress.

So we sat down and just talked. Talked about the week and work and kids and home improvements and even managed a few laughs in between.

I am really loving this time each week. I know our Friday night is going to be about us. I like that. We haven't been able to do much in the way of extras along the way for one reason and another. That is okay though. I just like that it is about Glenyce and Tim for those couple of hours a week.

I am looking forward to when it gets darker, earlier at night as winter gets closer here. It usually means the kids will sleep earlier and we might be able to do some different things for date nights. I have high hopes of another photo shoot in the next couple of weeks.

Check out Project 52 over here.

More hair clips

I love to make hair things. Probably fairly obvious by now. :) A quick hit of something crafty and the kids get some more slightly above average hair accessories. They look really cute on too! I think some bunnies for Easter might be coming soon :)

Little felt Jesus

Here is the first installment of the Easter Resurrection Set I am attempting to make. This is my little felt Jesus. I think it has turned out pretty well, even if he is a little round. I have stayed pretty close to the original so far. Mine has felt hair and the original has yarn. And mine has red spots on his hands for the nail scars. I really like how friendly he looks.

I have cut out the felt to do the angel next. I have decided to put a disk of plastic canvas in the base of them to help them stand a bit flatter. I am also trying to think up some ways to make my set a bit different to the original one. We shall see. At least I have started it and I still have a bit more time before Easter to get it finished.

Project 52 - The eighth date

This week's date, over a cup of tea, we looked through a shoe box full of memories and letters from when we started going out and through our engagement.

This is one of our first 'dates'. No, that is not Tim on the Harley with me. He paid for me to go on a harley ride. It was one of my dreams. I had to hold onto some random guy... not quite what I had in mind. :)

Some of the first movies we saw together before we were actually going out.. I won a bet and Tim had to take me to 2 movies. He threw the results. :)

A certificate my sister made for us because we were bugging her so much being in love. Something that people find funny to know about us is that Tim and I were next door neighbours. We still lived at home with our parents and siblings when we started going out (and right through our engagement). Needless to say, my sister got over us being around all the time.

I had to get my wisdom teeth taken out not long after we started going out and I got a dozen roses for my trouble. This is the card I got. Funny. :)

As much fun as it was remembering where we have come from and what we did back then we are glad to be in this moment. We are going to be celebrating our ten year wedding anniversary in May. We are pretty proud of that. Life has certainly been a roller coaster ride, but the life we have now is more than we could have dreamed back then.

Check out other Project 52 date over here.

Cute little bag

Here is my latest finished project. Wow! Another finished project! I am doing well lately. It's just like the little bags I made Esther, Ellamay and Amelia for Christmas. It was a birthday present for a school friend. I love how the yo-yo embellishment looks. Cute! I think I might make something like that for my hair. (I love hair things at the moment). This bag turned out better than the previous ones because I left a longer space at the top of the side stitching. It means now that it is all sewn together, it has a bigger opening.

I have another one of these bags to finish for another of the girls school friends before the end of March. I will have to post some pictures of that too. You know, just to prove that I have actually completed yet another project. I am usually great at starting these things... not so great at finishing. :)

I hope to get some photo's of some hair clips and head bands I have been making lately. I am also in search of some Easter crafts to make. This year I thought I would have a go at making a Resurrection Set, something like this one. I can't find any tutorials or kits anywhere. It would be great to have a decoration like a Christmas nativity but for Easter. I have started it. Just as well Easter is still a little while away is all I can say!

More felt food

Dounuts here

Cupcakes here

Eggs here . Bacon - I just drew a few wavy lines, cut a pattern and bam! Bacon!

Cookies - Circles of tan felt with free hand cut pieces of brown felt cross stitched on. Blanket stitched together and stuffed.

Here is some of the felt food I have made. I would still like to make more. The kids haven't been playing with it as much lately though.

It's all made from craft felt. Some of it is pretty straight forward to make with no actual tutorials that I followed. I am sure if you google around you can find anything though. There is also more photos and links here of the food set I made for a birthday present.

I made lot's of sets of cookies last year for the girls kindergarten friends birthday's. They were a great hit.

I really want to make a cake like this. Perhaps I can work towards that for Esther and Ellamay's birthday in June.

Project 52 - The seventh date

It was my turn this week to come up with our date. At the start of the week I had great ideas of a candle lit supper outside under the stars. I would make a nice plate of berries, maybe some chocolate and some nice sparkling grape juice. It would be very romantic and a chance sit back and relax in a different setting. We would forget about what had been going on inside of our house for a time and talk about everything and anything.

This week has been another rotten week though. Tim's hours were terrible. Between work and fire brigade stuff, he was worn out. We hardly got to talk all week. I got offended by a few insignificant moments. And I held a grudge. I was angry with him.

So, Friday night came and I wanted to skip the date. I had stuff I could be doing. I went through the motions, prepared the food as I had planned but only sat on the couch. Tim always knows when things aren't good. I wasn't hiding it well though. I cried. I talked. Tim listened. We got it sorted. I apologised for being a cranky woman. Tim was sorry for the way the week had gone.

In the end, our date was a good way to vent, catch up, move on and have that much needed time.

I hope this next week goes better and our next date will go smoother. I wonder how everyone else did this week for their Project 52 date?

Cardboard kitchen and a bit of felt food

I thought I would post some pictures of the cardboard kitchen we (I) made last winter. It lasted a good six months or more til it was thrown away. That's not bad for something made of cardboard and hot glue. And it was thrown out because kids stopped playing with it not because it was completely worn out. I would have just given it a new paint job and added some more hot glue and it would have been fine.

It started with the oven above. The inspiration for this came from one I saw on Martha. I had already started making the felt food and so the kids needed somewhere to cook it. Naturally. We didn't really want to commit the money or the space to a wooden kitchen, although some of them around are super cool.

I made the sink and fridge next.

Finally, the microwave and the kitchen dresser.

As it was all made from cardboard boxes the kids could pick it up and move it around to whatever and where ever they wanted. They played kitchen's and restaurant's. The oven was the favourite. The kids helped paint all of it. And when it was getting a bit worn looking or they were bored of being stuck inside, we would just give it a new coat of paint.

I was sad to let it go but I hope to make some more box furniture this winter. Maybe another kitchen? This is high on my list. When I get a new glue gun anyway. :)