A beautiful room for 2 girls

It has been such a long time coming... We have finally finished one room in house renovations. Esther and Ellamay have moved into a bigger bedroom and it is looking fabulous (even if I do say so myself).

After all the hard work was done (mainly done by Tim - Thanks darling) and before we started painting, I decided to be a cool mum and let the kids have a paint brush each and paint some pictures on the walls.

Note to self: Don't let kids paint on walls before painting again. I love that we did it, but the walls needed to be sanded again before we could paint because kids don't care about making smooth pictures when they are putting graffiti on the wall.

Isn't this colour divine? It is called "Mainstream" by British Paints. And can I just point out one of my favourite things of the room... that chandelier! How fun is that? Esther and Ellamay saw it in a shop last year and wanted it. It was over $100 though, and I didn't want to spend that much. I decided to have a go at DIY and found a few tutorials online that had a similar style to this. Then one day I was walking past the shop and I saw they had a 70% sign on the chandelier. Oh happy day! I bought it for $32.

These are some of the boxes from the flat pack loft beds we bought the girls, sitting waiting to be constructed. That was a task I am glad Tim took care of! I tried to put the bookshelf together and only managed to get 2 pieces together before I gave up in disgust!

We are just waiting on a new blind for the window and then I will take pictures of the final result. Plus, having 2 girls in there means it will need a tidy :-)

We have made a start on Amelia's new room but it is slow going. I don't know how people renovate whole houses and keep up the momentum. Amelia is camping in the lounge room until the room is finished. Her old room was just a bunch of things that lived in that room before she was born. Now she can have her own special space too.

Tomorrow I will share the tutorials I found for that chandelier.

If you go into the lounge room today...

We gained a new family member at Christmas. He is huge.

 

Do you know the kids show The secret world of Benjamin Bear? The kids love it and I think its fun too. I kind of think this is what our new friend is like. He secretly comes to life when we aren't around. He hasn't really got a name so far. The kids have come up with a few but nothing seems to fit. We call him 'the big bear' or 'Mr Fluffypants'. Not sure how that one came about.

 

Even the size he is, he still ends up in some odd places and positions. He was lying on the couch one day with his paws under his head and his legs crossed. He was taking a nap I suppose.

 

The kids like to wrestle with him because he is such a big bear. Although if Ellamay is to be believed she didn't wrestle with Bear, "He wrestled with me". :-)

 

He has also become a favourite place to sit and watch television.

One night I had prepared the couch for Amelia so we could do her physio before bed. When I left the room, she was lying on top of the pillows, all sleepy and snuggled up. When I came back, I saw this.

 

I wasn't sure how he would fit into our little house when he first arrived... but he has certainly made himself at home :-)

The frog

Perhaps I should title this "Adventures in mischief and dirt." My darling girls can find adventure in our yard without any effort at all. This day it was a frog. A frog that they were touching and wanting to keep. Nothing against frogs, but I am not as game as I was when I was a kid to be touching things like that!

I told them they could all get their photo taken with the frog and then they had to put it back. I don't think the poor thing would have survived if they kept "looking after" it.

Amelia's 4th Birthday

Pretend if you will, that it is still September and I am actually posting this on time. HA! Not likely with the way things have been around our house lately.

This is how we started the day, way back when Amelia turned 4. Present opening in bed with the family.

We were going to have lunch at my parents house and tea at Tim's parents house so we decided to sing happy birthday to Amelia at breaky. I made her a little jam toast stack to put the number 4 sparkler in. Big hit - breaky birthdays. Might have to try and keep that up I think.

The birthday girl at Nanny and Parpy's for lunch. And candles in birthday trifle.

Chocolate cake I made, under Amelia's instructions, which we had at Nan and Pa's house. The aunties and uncles were all there for that.

Here is Amelia with her big present. She had to wait all day for this. I felt mean but we had to give it to her when there was time to ride it! All Amelia really wanted for her birthday was her own "Shakey bike". It took a little while to work out but Amelia wanted a bike that had streamers on the handle bars. We found out that you can buy the streamers separately so when we found the bike but no streamers, the problem was quickly sorted :-)

When Amelia started riding, she had real trouble turning the bike at the gate so she would stop, get off and pick it up and turn it around. Esther and Ellamay bought their scooters into town so they had great fun on them while Amelia rode her bike.

The expression on Amelia's face was priceless. She was so proud of her new bike. And she was concentrating so hard.

Okay, so I am biased. She's a cutie. Cheeky monkey. She has been through more than any child should have to go through by the age of 4. She is still a happy and healthy little girl who loves things that 4 year old girls love. Hello Kitty, green, dressing up, riding her bike and scooter, playing with dolls, talking on her pretend phone and making things.

She also knows that "God is the biggest". If she is afraid or if she sees that someone in the family is upset she will tell them "Don't be scared, don't worry, God is the biggest." I pray that her faith will always be so straight forward and obvious to her. It will see her through all her days.

So better late than never, right? Amelia's birthday was over a month ago and I can hardly believe I am organising Kinder for next year for her!

Once I have uploaded all the photos from last weekends Echidna Day, I will share the all about the animals we saw on our adventure, including the sleepy echidna.

Have a great weekend.

Amelia's birthday

Amelia celebrated her fourth birthday at the beginning of September. (I am so far behind in posting!)

And guess what her big present was? 

Our baby girl is getting big!

Daddy time

Having to get through a dose of whooping cough in house full of people with lung conditions (Esther, Ellamay and I all have asthma and Amelia has cystic fibrosis), was a little stressful. The whole family was given strong antibiotics to get on top of the infection. Tim and I had tablets which were easy enough to swallow but about an hour later left a yukky taste in our mouths and made us feel a bit queasy. The 3 girls had some pretty horrible suspension mixture, the kid version of what we were taking. It had the same affect on them too. It required lolly bribery to get the kids to take it. Orange tic tacs were the best. Medicine, drink, tic tacs.

Amelia though, was not so easily convinced to begin with. We struggled and strained with her. The antibiotics she usually takes are apparently "yummy" and the new ones were "too yukky". It was horrible to have to force her to take it when she has to take medicine all the time. After one particularly terrible episode with medicine taking, Tim took her into her room and they lay on her bed talking about her art works to settle her down. Daddy can make things better some times. One benefit of being in isolation for the week was having Daddy time.

We were so relieved when Amelia realised that she had to take the medicine and started to take it quickly and without complaint. She is our super brave girl.

Esther and Ellamay went off to school today for the first time in over a month. HOORAY! I hope they have a great day, get exhausted and go to sleep early tonight. What do you think my chances are?

Book Week 2011

I had high hopes of posting this on the Friday this happened. Or at least on the weekend after. Here I am, in September and I am sure this happened in August. I am so tired at the moment I can't be bothered looking up the right date. Better late than never. Life has been full lately. Trips to the big building (Royal Children's Hospital) with Amelia and since then sick kids and sick kids and just for good measure, sick kids.

Esther and Ellamay's school celebrated Book Week.

Ellamay went as Pippi Longstocking. We recently read the Lauren Child illustrated version. The kids loved it. I am a fan of Lauren Child. Her work is so dreamy. (I'd love to decorate the kids rooms completely inspired by her work.)

I had to wire up Ellamay's hair and I started early in the morning because we hadn't managed to have a trial run. Fortunately, it worked.

Esther decided she had to be a skeleton. Not exactly story book motivated. Don't know if she has read a book about skeletons before. Whatever. It was a last minute decision. She just wore black clothes and I cut out a skeleton from white card and we stuck it to her with double sided tape. Is there nothing that stuff can't do! I had quite a few comments about how much work I had put in and being clever, which is all very pleasant to hear but I had to correct them. "I love the internet!" If you would like to print a skeleton to cut out (and wear) here is a link to where I found it.

Amelia was dressed up for getting messy at daycare, but insisted on wearing a crown. She wasn't so keen to talk to the principal.

So there you are. Completely late. But I had to post something to tell you we are still around. Posting may be pathetic for another couple of weeks. Can you believe I have had kids home for 2 weeks now because of this nasty virus that has settled on our house and now it's time for 2 weeks of school holidays! Sigh. How am I going to entertain them!?

Matchbox house and doll

As I mentioned in my post here, I am trying to cut down the mid-craft pile so I can start some new projects. I have actually managed to do some stitching of late. Oh my, it does drag on! I try to do some stitching at night after the kids are in bed but that is not working because I keep falling asleep! I decided I needed to get back to stitching during the day. I do find it hard to be motivated when the kids decide they need to do sewing at the same time. Sigh. Oh well. It is actually what I want. I want them to be interested and learn about sewing. Can't have it both ways I guess.

This is the first matchbox house that I have almost, just about, nearly completely finished. This one is just about the same as the one I found on the this post here. Oops! I didn't mean to do that. I tried to change things a bit for the next two I made. Which I don't have photos of yet because - not finished yet.

I created a tiny felt doll to go inside the little house too. So that means I have to make 3 tiny felt dolls to go with the 3 tiny houses. I have also now made 3 tiny quilts and have prepared 3 tiny pillows. The tiny possibilities!

Esther, Ellamay and Amelia all seem to think these are pretty cool. So do I actually. Wish I could get away with wearing one. Soon I will have to find some ribbon to tie them with. And get some photos of the kids with them too. I really like matchbox crafts (remember the camera for Esther and Ellamay's birthday un-party) I will have to find some more crafty ideas. I was excited to find you can buy blank matchboxes from the craft shop back when we made the cameras and now I have restocked the supply so bring on the matchbox ideas.

Little shoes

How cute is this picture? Amelia is holding some little shoes. She is so in love with them.

They don't quite fit though :-)

Photo booth fun

For Esther and Ellamay's birthday, they had some friends over for a little (un)party. See, it wasn't really going to be a proper party. There was no cute invitations. No party games planned. No big lead up. I just planned with my friend (who happens to be the mother of the kids friends - convenient, yes?) to have 3 of her kids over, if every one was healthy and we weren't busy.

My (un)party idea got out of hand of course because how can I look at all the cute stuff on the internet and not get inspired to just make a little bit of stuff? Okay, so I might have went a little overboard. Especially for an (un)party. It's what I do. I planned some making things for the kids to do.

I thought a photo booth would be fun too. I saw these photo booth props linked on facebook. I spent the tedious task of sticking them onto mat board and cutting them out. In hindsight, cereal boxes probably would have done the job... but they were pretty sturdy which is what you need with bouncy kids playing with them.

They went over well, although I think more fun was had with them after the kids left and the grown ups had a turn. :-)

Turns out chocolate malt sticks work as moustache's too.

I will get around to posting the crafts at some point too.

Esther and Ellamay turn 7

I can hardly believe our little baby girls are 7. They are acting so grown up now but are still happy to watch little kids tv shows. They still like to get a cuddle of mummy and daddy, though they are referring to us more as Mother and Father these days. I think that has come from watching Mary Poppins.

Here is Ellamay opening the felt sewing things, hoop and book. All "cool" presents apparently.

Esther opening the Littlest Pet Shop Blythe doll. I was on such a winner with that! The girls have been in love with all the Blythe dolls they have seen on the internet so it was pretty exciting to get their own little ones.

Here is Amelia with her new book. Not her birthday obviously. Does anybody else have to do presents for younger kids on siblings birthdays? I only gave Amelia a couple of things - I hope that by next year she will understand that it isn't her birthday so she doesn't get things.

Here are the birthday ice cream cupcakes the girls had that night. They wanted an ice cream cake. In the middle of winter! My hands were frozen by the time I was done! I saw some ice cream cupcakes that had brownies as a base. Yum. I kind of ran out of time to try that one though. If you are interested, here is the link.

It has been a month since their birthday. I am so slack with the blogging lately. The kids are on school holidays at the moment so I am still fighting for the computer. Perhaps since my birthday is coming up, I can drop a few hints for a laptop of my own (that works) *pretty please with sugar on top*. :-D

More birthday stuff to blog and some other crafty endevours too. See you another day :-)

Thinking about birthdays

Esther and Ellamay are going to be 7 in June. As they are about to be 7, they no longer want "baby stuff". Yikes! Trying to work out what will be good gifts is a bit tricky. I decided to go with some creative gifts. I like to encourage their creativity because I want them to grow up being able to look at something and have the skills to make it themselves if they want to.

Using my vast collection of acrylic felt, I cut out some simple shapes that they can practise their sewing skills on. I also cut out some Little Pink Houses and some owls. Follow the links to find the patterns for them. The owl is actually a pattern for a teething toy. I thought if they don't feel like sewing some of these, the shapes can be glued onto a canvas as a cute picture for the wall. I have packaged each felt project in little click bags and even printed the little house picture out so Esther and Ellamay had a reference for it.

These are some other bits and pieces I have bought for their kit. I am including some coloured elastic head bands that they can sew some of the felt shapes onto.

I have also bought some kids stitching books. I will share those another day though. (Need to take more pictures).

Scraps of a birthday project

Craftiness! Hooray! I do still have a little bit of craft left in me. I know it's been lacking around here. I hope I have got my groove back now. Esther and Ellamay are turning 7 next month. My wee little babies aren't babies anymore. I have been trying to come up with suitable presents for them but have had a hard time this year. They are getting so grown up apparently.

I have been working on sewing kits for them. It was a great idea because I have such a huge stack of acrylic felt to use up and it is perfect for them to learn to sew with. And I can whittle away the stack. Everybody wins! :-)

My next project is to take photos and post them here so you can look at all the pretties.

Hopefully, I can steal a bit more time on the big computer to do that. :-)

Royal wedding watching

Did you catch the Royal Wedding at the end of last month? Our little darlings were excited that it was on telly. Can you believe I let them stay up until 10.45  P.M. to watch it?! Madness is what that was. I paid for it the rest of that weekend too. They were a bit tired.

You will have to excuse the mess. In between watching intently on the TV, they were busy making royal flags, playing with Princess Kate paper dolls and Esther made a letter E fascinator which she wore for most of the night. Unfortunately, not in any of my photos :-(.

I painted their nails, they dressed up in sparkly material and we had a royal dinner of chips and pasties. The kids loved it. And the thing about royal weddings? You remember what you were doing when you are older so you can tell the story to your own kids.

I am glad royal weddings don't happen too often :-)