a gift for a friend

Lately Ive struggled with writing for this little blog of mine... not because Im out of ideas or haven't done anything cool with my kids lately, I just get to the end of the day and Im exhausted... and I guess after writing for three years I feel a bit like Im at the end of an amazing journey :)

But then, we do something REALLY cool, or someone mentions that I should blog about it, or someone comments I haven't written in awhile, and then Im sitting here writing again :)

SO!

Yesterday one of the most wonderful people Ive had the chance to have in my life had a birthday yesterday.. actually she got engaged as well so it was  a pretty epic day all round!
But before I knew she was getting engaged, I wanted to make something for her that would let her know how loved she was :)

I bought 6 old milk bottle jars from a local home wares shop. Im absolutely in love with it, even though Ive never really been into things like that before... maybe Im getting old ;)

After buying the jars, Amahli and I bought packets of Skittles, white roses and food colouring.

Once we were home, we separated the colours and filled the front jars with layers of colour.
Then we put the ends of the roses in cups with food colouring in the bottom. I wanted to split the stems so Id be able to put them in a couple of different colours but they were thin stemmed so each rose was only going to be one colour.
We used, red, blue and green.


Leave them sit over night and the next day.....

Voila!!!


Gorgeous colours, bright and happy. Such a perfect gift for a friend, or a hospital beside, or a welcome home, or a a new baby gift.. possibilities are endless!

how to make the best of a monday :)

Jeepers.

How did that happen?? One minute I have a million plans for the two week school holidays and suddenly we are back at school!!
We had a great school holidays.. huge appologies to those who were waiting for posts for things to do...


Anyway, we are back on the school/preschool/madness horse and Im struggling to find balance again... or is it still?
Anyway, Monday dawned yesterday and I knew I had to make it work for me.
Amahli hits me every Monday morning with "what adventure can we have today Mum?" and  I have struggled to find cool stuff for her to do. Through the holidays though, it hit me that we are nearly half way through the year and she is off to school next year so its time to spend some time together!

I had a tonne of washing ( no, seriously. I had 99% of everybody cupboard contents on the floor of the laundry.....not a fun sight) to  fold, and also a delivery to do plus she wanted something fun AND a bike ride so I had my work cut out for me......

But we pulled it off :)

Starting with my delivery, it just happened to be on the North Shore which involved a car ferry trip across the water. My kids love this thing! So that was my first double tick, something fun as well as something I HAD to do.
Next stop was the Koala hospital, something shes been asking me to do for ages. We are so lucky to have this great place to visit, lots of koalas to see and a really beautiful spot to visit. for some reason I was joined by a friendly unicorn for most of this visit... ;)

On arriving home I had the unpleasant job of folding. I HATE this job with such passion. It takes forever, its so boring and relatively pointless and so time consuming. Today I was not going to let it beat me. Dragging all the loads out side to the front lawn on a big blanket, I also grabbed Amahlis bike and helmet. She looked at me with such surprise at being allowed to ride on the road and happily rode around for nearly two hours whilst I folded clothes... soaking in Vitamin D, watching a happy girl, the folding didn't seem nearly so bad :)
After finishing, we put all folded piles inside, grabbed the dog and headed for a walk :)

A really well balanced, fun day :) It just takes some extra thinking to make it work, but its so worth it.