Friday's creatures

ha, I'm the laziest blogger. Sorry I haven't been around this week, but I'm back now, that's what counts!

On Friday my littlest sister, Emma, cooked us a delicious lunch - nachos! She & Evie used cookie cutters on herbed (green!) flat bread & then toasted it to make the chips. Genius, huh! Here's a pic of the last elephant chip before Evie ate it:

My birthday's not till the end of June, but Emma was impatient and gave me part of my gift early, Cute Yummy Time, it is very kawaii! Here are a few photos of my fave pages of the book - a very grumpy bunny, cute little penguin & adorable chickie! Hope they make you smile too!!

Mourning the overlocker

The overlocker (or serger) I had been using, my mums old one, is officially dead. I really miss it! I keep going to finish seams, or tackle a project and finding myself stuck! I'm now thinking about priorities. I think I would like a new overlocker for my birthday, unfortunately over-ruling the camera lens, kitchen mixer & pendant lights. (I think my birthday list was a bit over-ambitious anyway!!)

I talked to the man at the Janome shop today & I might get a Janome ML644D.

I just wanted to know if anyone has opinions, comments, suggestions? I'm all ears!

ps - my friend Kate has written a thoughful blog about self care and relationships that's worth a read

Some lovely links - 7

- check out the IOU Project; socially & environmentally responsible clothes (and cute too!), via the red thread

- I'm so loving tie-dyed clothes right now, especially on a baby, adorable! from wee textile

- cute pj's for little girls from I Love Gorgeous. I know Evie would love them (even though we're in the middle of winter!) via babyccino kids

- Ok, so I'm a bit late with this one, but it is such a sweet Mother's Day song! via Marvelous Kiddo

- I love this art, and only wish I had the spare cash to buy some!

- baha! I totally agree, tights are not pants!

Quite a day

Yesterday I left Evie with my folks & went out with my mum-in-law & sis-in-law to look at wedding dresses! Aaaah, I know, exciting!! What a lovely experience, I feel so honoured to be involved! We spent most of our time at one boutique with a really lovely sales assistant - she really knew her stuff, and her honesty was refreshing. I can't give away any sort of details - I'll just say that it was a perfectly dreamy & lovely way to spend a day. [baha! I just realised I used lovely three times in that paragraph!]

The weirdest thing is that when I got home I sat down and at 5pm started to sneeze. A cold had seriously crept up on me! It's a real bugger of a cold too, I had the worst night's sleep ever!! (maybe a slight exaggeration, but it sure felt like it!) Even though I feel so gross, today has been kind of nice. Rog has been a darling & taken Evie out for most of the day (to help his brother move house and now they're out flying a kite!). I've spent the day rugged up on the lounge with tissues, water & some snacks. I've alternated napping & watching tv, it's been lovely to have a quiet house to do it! I've been catching up on Glee, Offspring & Big Love!

Well I'm off to rest a bit more before they get home. Hope your weekend started off healthier!!!

A couple of outfits

I had a lovely evening tonight, a few girlfriends came over and we indulged in tea, tim tams & chatter. Aah, so good for the soul. I love my friends!

Anyway, here's an outfit I wore the other day (for grocery shopping) that I was pretty happy about. I haven't figured out how to use our tripod for the camera. I tried getting Evie to take the photo for me, but she couldn't hold the camera steady. Therefore I went for the old 'photo in the mirror' approach.

Cardigan - Dotti

Dress - Thrifted

Belt - Tie from another dress

Tights - Sportsgirl

Boots - Thrifted

Here's a pic of what Evie wore that day, picked by her of course! I love that she had to pose with her pinwheel & handbag!

Tshirt - Target

Pinafore - Thrifted gift (reversable)

Leggings - Cotton on

Sandles - Thrifted

Handbag - Mine when I was little!

ps - I made this meatless jambalaya for dinner the other night (I had to guess the cooking times because the recipe doesn't mention it) - tasty & thrifty!

Yummy dinner recipes

I made a tasty pumpkin soup for dinner tonight. To give a bit more flavour I popped all the veggies in the oven for a roast instead of frying them. The only bummer is that my blender gave up the ghost partway through, so it was a slightly lumpy soup!

Another recipe that we tried & loved the other day was curried lentils. Really easy. Although it was meant to be a stew, it was quite runny & we ate it like a soup (tasty!). It also took a couple of hours longer in the slow cooker than the recipe suggested, but I'm not complaining when it provided my family with 3 or 4 meals!

Gah, I know this post isn't very visual or inspirational, but tonight I'm too tired to do much about it! I'm off to bed, here's hoping that tonight I'm not woken by a little girl (dreaming or wetting the bed!) or a wailing cat (for some reason they love our yard!!)

Some lovely links - 6

wow, so much loveliness to share!

- cool spoons!! from creatively christy, via Hello, I'm Tiger

- cute bags for little ones! from the journals of giddy giddy, via handmade charlotte

- beautiful little girls dress (would make someone a very cute flowergirl!) from Sweet William, via Pirouette

- gorgeous handprinted textiles at Saraleeparker, via Charlotte's Fancy

- a delicious sounding cake (orange semolina with raspberry coulis!!) at Indie Fixx

- really cool urban chicken coops at Going Home to Roost

New cushion

Meet my new cushion, I made her the other day and I love her! A dear friend gave me a lovely tea towel (Mozi) for my birthday last year, but I thought it was too nice to use. For a while I had it pinned on my wall to look at, but finally decided it was time to turn it into a cushion. Of course as soon as I sat down to sew the overlocker stopped working! It's my mum's old one (about 20 years old) and it was mine until it broke, bummer! I think I might be buying a new one for my birthday. Instead I just zig-zagged the seams with my sewing machine (old school). Because I was making this cushion 'pillow size' I used a classic pillow pocket fold to hold the insert, easy peasy.

So anyway, here is a shot of the new cushion posing with my existing cushions!

ps - I've been waiting to publish this post for a couple of days, but Blogger has been super stupid! anyway, here it is!!

Mother's Day outfit

Ok, so here's what I wore for Mother's Day. (Rog took the pic for me)

Cardigan - Sportscraft, gift

Dress - Handmade, gift

Belt - Tie from another dress

Shoes (not seen) - not worth seeing!

Would you believe that my mum made me that dress when I was 15! (yes, about 15 years ago). I found it in a suitcase of stored clothes the other day, I'm so glad that I held onto it! Now I just have to wait for the matching bolero to come back in fashion!!

Evie was feeling left out, so here's a shot of her in Mother's Day finery (she was concerned about getting cold - what a crack up!)

Hat - Dotti, gift

Jacket - unknown brand, gift

Dress - Pumpkin Patch, gift

Rubber Boots - Target, gift

ps - the cake I made for Mother's Day was delicious!! (as well as gluten & dairy free!)

An engagement!

My sis-in-law, Laura, is engaged!! I'm super dooper excited!! (as you can tell from all my exclamation marks!)

When I got married eight years ago, blogs didn't exist. I used wedding magazines (yes, conservative & quite boring ones) to plan my wedding. Which I must add, we considered completely perfect at the time - it was a lovely day! If I got to do it all again now, with the internet as my friend, it would be totally different and a wow of a wedding!!

I've already started trawling blogs on Laura's behalf (not that she needs my help, I'm just too excited!).

Here's a list of my fave wedding blogs:
100 Layer Cake
Green Wedding Shoes
Once Wed
Snippet & Ink

And a photographer, Christine Pobke (from Australia!), whose work I love.

I've also started hunting down inspiration for my little flowergirl! (who is, understandably, over the moon!). So far I've found these, these & these!

I know, a bit too excited! I might go have a cuppa & relax - I think you'll be seeing more wedding posts from me in the future, sooo fun!

Saturday summation

This morning we caught a tram into the city for the annual Free Comic Book Day. This is an annual event where we visit our favourite comic book store and get to choose a couple of free comics each! (Evie picked Toy Story & Kung Fu Panda). We also love seeing people in costume - you know, Batman, Storm Troopers, the usual! Roger used to be a huge comic book fan as a kid, and FCBD is getting us back into comics, a fun family event!

Here's a pic of my little superhero (from a year ago) to add some visual interest to this post!!

This isn't any patented superhero, just one from her & Auntie Laura's imagination. And yes, that is a dilapidated looking 'monkey ear' hanging from her beanie!

Then we headed over to the Bowerbird Markets, also one of our favourite events!  A delightful handmade & design market held twice a year. We didn't buy anything (apart from tasty snacks) this time, it seemed that most of the stuff was 'big ticket' items (ie, too much cash!)

A few of our favourite stalls were:
Studio 8 - cool art & fashion (read the 'About Us' page!)
Lex Stobie Design - amazing furniture, ahh, I love it!
Ink & Spindle - lovely hand printed fabrics
Susan Frost Ceramics - a gorgeous array of ceramics that need to be touched
Roman Corporate - great robot art!

ps - I'm currently cooking a flourless chocolate cake (found here) for mother's day lunch tomorrow, should be super tasty!!

Evie - Style master

Evie loves choosing her own clothes, and I love the combinations she comes up with! Sometimes crazy plus crazy equals edgy fashion - on Monday it just equalled crazy!

When Evie came into my room I said 'you look cozy' and she said 'no mum, I look awesome'. bahaha! Such confidence!! (and yes, that is knee high socks & sandals)

Beanie, Jumper & Dress - handmade gifts

Scarfe - hand-me-down

Socks - Myers

Sandles - thrifted

Yesterday morning Evie let me braid her hair & put in little ribbons (adorable!). She picked a lovely little outfit too, here's a couple of pics of her doing her favourite princess puzzle.

Dress & Shoes - thrifted

Top & Leggings - Target

After lunch Evie decided on a costume change, and rocked it! (although too excited to stand still for photos)

Dress - thrifted gift

Top - Target

Leggings - Cotton On

Shoes - thrifted

Crazy hair - models own

Yard work

So much time was spent in our yard this past weekend! We moved/pulled down the chicken house, moved/rebuilt the cubby house and moved one of our new garden beds - phew! It was cold and drizzly, but somehow that was quite perfect!!

Here's a pic of our chookies (there are four of them, one must be hiding!) in their temporary housing:

I know, not very fancy! It's an dog cage and old fencing for a small run. (Since then I've added an old curtain over the cage for some coziness!) The main thing is that the chooks can be locked in the cage at night as protection against foxes, which we have in our area. We're hoping that the chooks will only be like this for a couple of weeks while their new, much nicer & bigger, house & run are constructed!

Here's Rog pulling down the old chook house:

It was a filthy job for him. This chook house began its life as an avery, and when we moved in we converted it to a chook run. Unfortunately it began to fall apart and a fox got in last year (only minor injuries, Rog ran out just in time) - since then it's had some fixing up, but nothing too fancy!

In pulling apart the chook house Rog discovered more mice, this time about a dozen in a nest, gross! Evie loved chasing them around the yard with Rog, and spotting them kept her quite occupied. She has a tender heart: Rog caught a couple in a bucket. One managed to jump out. Evie helped the last one out with her little broom, 'It needs to find it's mummy, it's lonely', aww! Couldn't really tell her off for that!

I don't have any pics of the moving & re-building of the cubby house (now much closer to our back door, where the chook house was). The good news is that Evie's been playing in it heaps more, a trend that I'm hoping will continue! So here's the girl herself instead, looking very helpful with her little broom! She loved Roger's earmuffs and told me, 'I've seen these in a Christmas book'. She means a Christmas carol book, and the earmuffs worn in the snow for warmth! (Obviously it doesn't get too cold here!)