One more........ (pssst....its much higher than it looks in the pictures)
Again, again......
Hey Lady! This rides for kids.........
Kids? Where are the kids? Oh there you are.....Hmmmmm......
Hey boys! You were not playing that chocolate machine were you? No mum, we were totally buying bouncy balls...... Hmmmmm......
Seriously Karisma, bouncy balls all round.....see.........
And we totally were NOT eating chocolate crackles! I have absolutely no idea how this got it my hand! Wasn't me!
He was totally just having a drink of water! And his mama was totally NOT playing on the kids slide either! Thats our story, and we are sticking to it!
Currently on the knitting needles this week is a pair of lace rib bed socks for Cameragirl in pink pure Australian wool. Very lovely and soft to knit with. (Pattern No. 18 from The Big Book of small projects 2 by Patons).
OMG! Would you believe, I finally finished a piece of stitching! With all the running around and playing outside we have been doing these days, it does not leave a whole lot of time for my own crafty endeavours! So I was pretty stoked to have finally finished one of my ongoing cross stitch projects last month!
This one is called "Bonsai and Buddha" and while a bit smaller than my usual choice of kits was a pleasure to stitch.
Anyone who chooses cross stitching as a hobby could tell you that framing your work can get a bit expensive. Indeed even mates rates through someone I knew, the cheapest quote I ever got was $100 and that particular piece of stitching was not very big. You see to frame the work, they have to stretch it and sew it in place and then the finished work is basically an open to air work. Now I prefer my stitching to be under glass to keep it clean and a few years back a lady called Maria from the UK (who was a penfriend of mine) told me how to frame my own work the "bargain way". I was a bit dubious at first, but have since taken on this way of framing my own work with earnest.
You will need..........
1. A frame to suit your work (mine was $10 from a discount store) 2. Some iron on backing, the thickest you can find (I bought this at $3.50 per metre and there is enough to do several projects) 3. Scissors 4. An iron
Now generally when you finish your work you should wash it to remove any marks you may have left on your work if you are like me and sometimes forget that you just put it down to get the kids something to eat. (You should always wash your hands before touching your cross stitch, but hey sometimes we forget!) In this case I did not wash it though, I just ironed it as flat as I could as I knew I would be cutting off the edges anyway.
Next take the back out of your frame and trace it onto the iron on backing and cut it out.
Evenly place the backing onto the back of your cross stitch, remembering to centre it over the picture. Iron into place. (This stops any stitching from later fraying or getting caught in the back of the frame if you ever take it out. It also stops the fabric from slipping in the frame).
Trim off all the excess fabric from around the backing.
Place your work face down into the frame (I generally clean the glass first and make sure its completely dry).
Put the back of the frame back in a "Wallah" Hang your lovely new picture on the wall.
The writing to the left of the Buddha reading from left to right and top to bottom says "Bliss, Well Being, Serenity, Tranquility, Spirituality, Calmness, Harmony, Leisure, and Peace". To the right it says "Health and Happiness". I really enjoyed stitching this piece of work. Every time I sat down with it I tried to think of the meaning with each stitch and it was such a pleasure. Of course I have already started another kit, even though I have not finished two others! LOL! I could not help myself! Really I couldn't!
This week, the lovely Gattina from Writers Cramps is hosting Fun Monday and she wants to see some mess.
Mess! Mess! Did you say mess?
My cage is way overdue for a cleanup! Do you think you could send someone around to do it? Really the service is slack around here!
Now seriously, considering the amount of cleaning I have been doing around here lately, one would think there would not be any mess, but with a household the size of ours, it does not stay that way for very long and I just so happen to have a few shots of a certain mess from the other day when a certain busy little boy was nagging his mama.
The room..........My sewing room........
The culprit........Cameragirl.........
The excuse......Why, she has been busy sewing up a storm (as usual) as this week end she is having a stall at a market in Newcastle for handmade only products. She is only allowed to sell her dresses (her own designs) and the accessories to match. I am to go along with her for the day to keep her company! Should be a fun day!
Mama's theory.......You should clean up as you go so the room does not get into this state all the time! I cleaned it for her last week and its back to messy again! I honestly don't know how she can sew like this! I like a nice clean spot to sew in! But she does it and she turns out quite a lot of work too! (ahhhh what would mama know hey?)
Now go on over to Gattina's place and check out everyone elses mess! I would show you our laundry but that would just be far too embarrassing!
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To Do List for this week.......
Monday (Grocery shopping)
Monday (A visit from the Avon Lady (who has conned me to do my own orders online)
Tuesday (Dentist Appointment for TC)
Wednesday (NLNL homeschool group, picnic day, all day)
Thursday (Chipmunks playcentre for a birthday party, all day)
Friday (Ice Skating with CChomed homeschool group, all day)
Saturday (Craft Markets at Newcastle)
Sunday (Satsung at Cooranbong, hopefully)
Sew two faerie dresses for two cute little girls (by Thursday, no I have not started yet)
Buy two presents (this would require shopping Eeeeek!)
Somewhere in between all this, cook for the army everyday, clean the house, fit in some school work
Help Cameragirl paint the room next to hers so she can turn it into her own sewing room
Help Cameragirl get everything ready for the markets on Saturday!
The problem with all the homeschool activities is that they are all in different directions and travel takes time. Hence the reason the whole day gets booked for those ones. The trip to iceskating is 45 minutes each way. So it can be hard to fit everything in for us! LOL! Oh but its fun! Most of the time!
Clean that sewing room AGAIN!!!!!!! (Now I guess I better go get started! Gameboy has just told his mama to turn OFF the computer and go make those dresses! Cheeky little devil! Catch you all later!) Hugs and smoochies xxxoooxoxoxoxoxo
Why? Because TC had to hand in a piece of artwork a few weeks back and of course left it till the night before to do it (as you do!). She had been far too busy making her costume for SupaNova in Sydney to be bothered with mere school work and all...woops! The subject at hand was "Conflict" and I just love the way she chose to express it............
This part is on a separate smaller canvas........
This poor guy, didn't quite make it......
Not bad for a last minute job hey? TC is far more comfortable holding a pencil than a paintbrush, she would much rather be drawing with attention to the smallest detail. So its always a pleasure to see her doing something out of the norm for her.
Not to be left out The Book Fairy pulled out the canvases too and joined in.....she prefers a more abstract approach to painting, using bold bright colours, she often adds things to her art, like ripped up books, buttons or what ever else might take her mood on the day, and she loves to paint with her hands.......the picture of the tree in the first shot is one of hers too, she made it for Cameragirl, I must take a closer picture of it.
I do apologize to my girls for posting pics of them in the jammies but hey! Its not my fault they go and get creative dressed like that! I am a paparazzi mama afterall and I have so many of them dressed this way! Might as well be comfy when you are in your own home!
Yesterday afternoon, that busy little boy managed to sprain his ankle playing soccer! Now his mama being as she is, checked it out, weighed up the time factors of 6 hours at the hospital or a little TLC.........Hmmmmm.........(when she knows very well its NOT broken but muscular) How did she know? Why, she put her hands on it!!!!! Trust her, its fine! She did however buy a bandage and wrap it up for the afternoon and then he went out to play with his mates and was of course a miraculous cure!
Tonight he decided his bandage was much better use upon his head! Don't ask his mama, she has no idea, just wrapped it up for him (as long as she was allowed to take a picture!)
Thats my boy! What can I say? He takes after his mama! So proud! He he! Now Im going back to my plurk (who by the way thinks my karma sucks so much that I can't share a picture with my friends! "Ow wude"
On Tuesday night Cameragirl thought it would be a great idea to teach Zak how to use the Over locker. She has been very busy sewing up dresses and accessories to sell at a market stall she is going to next month. It dawned upon her that she could totally use Zak as child labour if only she could teach him how to over lock all the raw edges of her pattern pieces for her and therefore saving her time to get on with the harder work.
Now in theory this may have been a marvelous idea (FOR HER)! After showing him the basics, he whipped up this little pouch (with supervision of course) and was very proud of himself. He then started to talk money and the whole child labour thing came down to more of a business arrangement! (Well.........not quite!)
Never underestimate a homeschooled child, they are, after all, educating their parents don't you know! There is NEVER any putting one over them! So, after doing his math and trotting off to bed planning his new income, he decided in typical Zak fashion that he would start his own business thank you very much! He wants to start his own Etsy store and sell hand made articles of his own! No free labour here! Not when there is possibly money to be made!
Cameragirl went off to TAFE the next day and decided to stay overnight at a friends house, leaving poor mama with the little monster she had created!!!! (Thanx dear!)
He proceeded to nag, nag, nag all day to use the overlocker, in between running in and out of the house with his friends while I was trying to clean! Then thinking after a trip to the beach in the afternoon he would forget, I tried to sit down and play on my computer for 5 minutes, he started again. Nag, nag, nag, nag! By the time I had sat down it was after dinner and I still had work to do so was not in the mood. So then he decided to sit on my feet and demand that I teach him to knit! (He had learned before but forgotten how to do it). He now thought a few scarfs would be great for his shop! I quickly showed him and that kept him busy for all of 5 minutes till, after dropping several stitches, he gave up and he started on the nagging again! (Cameragirl !!!!!!!)
This morning I got up and felt like sewing myself but discovered a big mess in the sewing room and no sewing scissors! (ahem Cameragirl????), I tidied up a little and the little devil jumped in the chair and started sewing before his mama could plant her butt herself! So I gave in and let him go for it. Checking on him every now and then to see what he was up to!
I busted him trying to cut the threads with a pair of beading pliers and found him a smaller pair of scissors to use. He would not tell me what he was making!
He then hand sewed his two pieces together and proudly showed off his new invention.........
This invention is a pencil holder to carry your pencil around in! After trying it out he however decided it might not sell as it was a bit uncomfortable to wear! But he did have fun making it!
Now I am off to make some sandwhiches and take him and his brother down to the skate park to burn off some energy! This morning he has been getting up to far too much mischief!
Zak! What are you doing now??????
"Nuthink!!!!!!!"
Really! Nothing of mine is sacred I tell you! Nothing!!!!! I hope you are all having a lovely day! Im going outside to play! See ya later! Hugs and smoochies xxxxxxxx
Well as some of you have probably noticed, I am a bit of a dreamer (in more ways than one). This week in particular has been a busy one as far as the dreaming goes. I have been dreaming among other things (a lot of other things) quite frequently of snakes. The first time it happened I was a bit like "OMG" (I have lived with a ridiculous fear of snakes for most of my life, so was a bit wary. (Okay the first time I was terrified!) I was a little concerned that I might step on one in my bare feet or something. I mean really they are supposed to hibernating at this time of year, but I saw tracks on the dunes at the beach yesterday so not all of them are!) Of course I quickly realized this was not the case. I of course also noticed that the first snake was a beautiful cobra and we don't happen to have them around here!
Dreams rarely ever mean the obvious, well for me anyway. They tend to be much more cryptic and if one does not pay close attention, one may miss the whole message all together. Now being used to this as I am, I have kind of learned to read into my dreams a bit, therefore, I did not miss the message at all that these snakes were offering! I simply chose to ignore them and of course they were doing the whole "You're NOT listening!!!!!!!" thing back at me. They started to invade my dreams with full force. In fact no matter what or who I was dreaming about, there was bound to be a snake or a hundred of them under my feet! And they were not predjudiced at all, there were all types and sizes all vying for my attention.
Now do you think I was scared? Of course not! In fact I got so used to them, I was more concerned that I may step on one and hurt it! I started to take them for granted. Occasionally noting the beauty of ones scales, the sound of its hiss, the way they all connected and put up with each other although they were all different. Far from being the scary, cold, disgusting creature many would lead us to believe. They are warm and silky and purely beautiful! And finally after dreaming a night of at least 20 different very vivid stories (very tiring for me), it took one little black snake, with three eyes to catch my attention. (He was really cute and suddenly grew legs and was behaving like a puppy! Bizarre!) But it took that for me to stop and look at the snakes all around me. To even notice them. By now they were swarming all over the room and walls etc. You see in this particular dream I was busy trying to save some children. Not quite sure what from but I was totally focussed on doing so and getting them out of the place they were in.
After extracting one of the children and admonishing the lady who was with me for leaving the other one behind, I finally looked at those snakes and thanked them. I acknowledged their presence in my dream and promised to heed their message. Now what that is would be far too much to explain to you. Just lets say I have been extremely lazy and despondent in a lot of areas of my life and they are telling me its time to wake up and get on with it. So I offered up my thanks and a whole lot of love and suddenly Im standing on this balcony, all by myself, singing my heart out. There was only one rather big black snake laying next to me and a smaller one between the cushions of a couch that I kept standing on. (Don't worry I did not step on it! I totally had "don't step on the snakes" radar by now. LOL)
There was an immense rainbow in front of me and guess what I was singing? Rainbow Connections (Now I used to love this song by Kermit the frog when I was a kid, but have to say Sarah McLachlan manages to pull it off far better than either Kermit or I could ever do it! Just beautiful!) Here, have a listen..........
Now it was not until I woke up that I realized this was just another message for me, and what a lovely one. I took the time out first in the morning to go for a long walk on the beach, sit on the hill and think about my mad night of dreaming, even write quite a lot of it down. You see the messages were quite full force, I won't share as some of them, as usual, were things we would rather not know about. In fact one of them offered up too much information and even a name. Way too clear for my liking.
The funniest part of the dream though was some lady leaned over the balcony just as I finished singing and I was laughing with joy. She smiled at me and started to force feed orange and tomato juice into me! YUK! I love tomatoes and fresh orange juice but mixed together???? Oh well, the rainbow had put me in such a good mood, I decided to oblige and went out and bought some juices and mixed them together and forced it down. It tasted horrid but I am going to try drinking it for a while. Mainly as I feel maybe I am lacking in something I may need out of it. Who knows?
What I do know is that I did not dream about snakes last night for the first time in ages and when I got home yesterday, after stopping off for the juice and lots of fresh fruit, in my inbox was this email...............(click to embiggen)
Co-incidence? Maybe! But this week I also happen to have seen several real rainbows in the sky and even some in the strangest of places!
There was a bit of an earthquake in the ocean the other day bringing with it warnings of a possible Tsunami along the coast. Being typical of aussies this did not bring fear or mass evacuations! In fact the local surfers could not wait to get down there and ride the "big" waves.
Sadly for them, there was a body boarders comp going on so the local surfies had actually hexed the waves. In fact the ocean was down right flat!
So sorry, the tsunami's been cancelled! Never mind boys! Maybe next time!
Even a lazy trip to the beach offers great learning opportunities for a 4 year old. Take for instance yesterday afternoon when we went for a very quick trip down onto the sand. It was quite cool and windy but that did not stop us.
I'll Let Isaac (my little friend) tell you the story.........
Well, first we counted all the steps going down to the beach... (I chose to count them ten at a time! There were so many!)
And then I decided that climbing and sliding would be fun!
Its also fun to bury your legs in the sand. Today the sand feels cold and soft. It tickles your fingers!
I found a feather.....
Did you know feathers are good for writing with? I can write my name........
(Note: I wrote my letters on top of each other instead of sideways)
We almost controlled ourselves and did not get wet! Well some of us did....LOL....
Really it was just too much for a boy to bare! It was calling me! I heard it! If you listen really hard, you might hear it too! (It sounds like this...wshhh, wshhh, wshhhhh)
And you know what? The water is really warm! Just like bath water! WooHoo! But if you did not bring spare clothes, make sure you hike your shorts up!
Did you know that your feet sink if you stand in wet sand?
I really love the beach and I am hoping Karisma will take me again today! But Zak wants to go and climb trees so Karisma said we might go to the park instead. Maybe though Surferboy will take us again in the afternoon. But for now, I am going to play with playdough! And then I am going to get Karisma to make bubbles again! I really love bursting bubbles! Today I bought along my own bubble wand so Karisma can make me BIG bubbles to burst! (I think she was getting a bit sick of blowing them! She's such a pushover! hehe! She even played cricket with me yesterday afternoon and she really does not like cricket! She told me! I just laughed at her and told her to keep throwing the ball! And SHE DID!!)
Oh but hang on! I just remembered! She also promised that we could make bubble paintings today! We will need to blow some little bubbles for that! And I am going to make sure we do it! Coz I'm four years old and I never forget a promise! Especially an important one! And bubbles are VERY important! See ya later everyone!
Upon entering the car, on the way for his mama's first ultrasound..... (Note: He calls Karisma, My Yaysa)
Y: Hullo Yaysa, come on, we gunna looka da brudder or da chister.
K: Oh are you going to get a brother or a sister?
Y: Yeah! A chister. (Quickly changes subject when he notices Karisma has a piece of toast in her hand) Oh you got toast Yaysa? (Karisma hands over the toast, woops, nice clean Mr Yakka is now coated in vegemite. Oh well, what are aunties for?)
Later back at home.......
K: Yakka, Is your mummy going to have a baby?
Y: Yes
K: Is it a brother or a sister?
Y: A chister
K: Is the baby in your mummy's tummy?
Y: (Looks at K like she is stupid) NO
K: Well where is the baby then?
Y: (Looks at K likes she has really lost it) I AM THE BABY (Shakes head in disgust and walks off)
Clearly this boy has better things to do than discuss intruding babies!
