easy birthday bunting

Mucking around with the hipstermatic app on the iphone :)

ahh the best laid plans... looks like the trip hubbin was going on the Bali is now not happening, two days before he leaves :(

Dissapointed over here today....

So I packed up tweedle dee and tweedle dum and headed to the beach :)

What is it about this place? Is is the power of crashing waves? The sound of only roaring ocean, giggly kids and gulls that give the sense of peace? Calm colours of blue, teal, yellow and white? Yes it is :) Its also the wonderful fresh air that seeps into lungs and bones and also the mind, refreshing and re energising.. I love it here.

I have been on a mad stitchy-fest lately...which is nice because I lost it for a bit in there... projects that fail sometimes cause me to throw the damn machine out the window walk away from it for awhile.

i have a little friend who turns 1 next week and is having a party over the weekend. I wanted to make him a nice birthday banner to hang up at the party. So I found this awesome army style fabric left over from something I must have made Jared and got to work.

I cut out triangle shape ( with a square top end) and also cut his name out of stiff felt. This I did by find a cool font on the computer and typing it out. Each letter is stitched onto one triangle.


Then, pinning two triangles together rights sides together, stitch along all but the top, and tehn turn the right side out. I turned each letter into a flag. I added some plain blue flags to each end and also had them alternating along the letters.



Then using black fabric I made a simple casing by folding it on half and half again ( it would have been easier to buy some binding but no time or cash for shopping trips at the moment!) I attached each letter side by side and into the middle of the casing.



I LOVE how this turned out :) Its cute but really boyish and perfect for a decoration for a party!
Just now need to make more for my own kids! ( I did make something similar for Amahlis birthday but it didnt turn out nearly as well as this one, of course)

Once this little project worked so well I also continued to conquer the fear of the the graet stitchy monster when Jumeirah came to me on Sunday night saying she needed a green skirt for environment day ON MONDAY. Good one, kiddo.

So we found a whole heap of green stuff in my stash.

I made a pattern for a panel skirt ages ago and it works really well. the panel I cut out looks like this: ( for a 5 yr old the measurements are 11cms across the top, 38 cms long and 14 cms across the bottom)



trace this onto 8 pieces of fabric.

Join the panels together in whatever order you like, keep it in a straight row to do the hem.


Fold over the hem and sew.

Sew last two sides together.

Fold over the top to make a casing for the elastic. ( for this skirt I made a casing separately and attached it but folding over is much easier)

Insert elastic and measure the waist of child.

Stitch elastic together and casing closed.



Its done!


One environmentally happy child :)

Have hit a big family snag tonight :(
nothing too dramatic but I need to focus on it for tonight.. sorry lovely readers...

catch ya tomorrow

constellations

The last week here, it has rained. No actually that is a gross understatement.
The ocean has gathered itself up and dumped down upon us with such a force and intensity its just ridiculous. We had 82 mm in 24hrs but I swear 80 of those came down in the first hour. Almost every car in the street had somehow got water in it, and at one point, whilst I stupidly drove at night in it, I seriously couldnt tell if i was even on a road or swimming with the stingrays... crazy weather.

But last night, we were given a glimpse of the world outside of the fishbowl... and the stars came out for the first time in a week.

Hubbin has an awesome Application on his phone (ok he rubs it in constantly as I cant get this App on my phone as it doesnt have GPS. Trying to not care) thats called Star Walk. It is really something quite amazing and has totally captured all of us to sit outside and find out whats really up there.

Here is a screen shot of this app.


It really is incredible. And the best thing is, as you move your iPhone around, the constellations and star patterns change to show you esactly what you are looking at. Jumeirah has spent quite a bit of time looking for planets, finding constellations and just gazing at the heavens, slowly gaining an understanding at how vast it all is.
These are our photos of what we can see



When we came inside, she wanted to make her own constellation, so I gave her a piece of black card board and some star stickers and she set to work. Once she had placed the stars randomly on her black card, she joined them together to create her constellation. She named them " Eye Glasses" and "the table bowl".




Jared had a go at this this morning. He enjoyed sticking stars but was just as content trying to see the star he stuck on his forehead. Goose :)



And whilst I dont have the App on my phone, I have my OWN constellation :)

Ok well almost ;)




Carina (Latin for keel) is a southern constellation which forms part of the old constellation of Argo Navis.
It contains Canopus, the second brightest star in the night sky, and the supermassive star eta Carinae
which is embedded in the naked eye visible Carina Nebula NGC 3372.

Seems quite fitting that I am a boat ( of even keel) and contain the brightest star in the night sky, dont you think??

Why not create your own constellations too!!

friday photo

Over at Soulemama, on a friday, Amanda posts a photo.

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.



Thought I might steal that idea today :)

I caught the pure beauty of my little babe today, and the light and life that comes from somewhere deep within.

I am in love :)

milk magic!!/ incidental opposites

One of those sunsets you can hardly tear your eyes away from...one you can never quite capture with a camera, one you cant even try to paint.

Good job God :)

The word around here at the moment is "experiment".
"Mum, lets find an experiment", " Mum can we do an experiment", " Im going to experiment with water, this bubble stuff and Amahli in the bathroom".
No actually, you are not :)

Its her current buzz word and whilst she is really only just getting the meaning, she loves to use it. And so, I found all over the net, an experiment that isnt too messy but has great results.
It uses milk, food colouring and soap, and also involves rainbows so I was sold.

What you do is fill a plate ( with a slight rim) with milk.

Add drops of food colouring to that ( this part was an experiment in itself as the colours sort of bleed under the surface which was very cool to watch)


Then, carefully squirt a drop of soap into the food colouring drops and watch what happens!!



The scientific reason for this happening is this:

The drop of detergent reduces the surface tension at the point where it dissolves the fat molecules in the milk. The higher surface tension of the surrounding milk pulls the surface away from that spot, dragging the food dye with it.

But really sometimes experiments are just fun to watch :)



We are so clever we made a brain in ours!!

We had to do this a number of times, a) because she loved watching the colours explode and wanted to see if it was different if you dropped soap directly onto the colour or ir you just dropped into the plain milk, and b) cos I had a ball trying to to capture it on film :)

Something else I have been doing a fair bit of lately is talking incidentally about opposites. As a 2 yr old, Jumeirah totally got opposites and loved playing a game where I would give her a word and she would tell me the opposite. Amahli and Jared are starting to grasp the concept so I have been doing a few things to encourage this. Yesterday we played in the water trough.

Feeding time below the water, either that or there was a tsunami

One showed ABOVE the water, one showed BELOW. Boats sailed happily in the above water, and below, we had sea creatures of whales, sharks and lobsters. Amahli had the greatest time, going through about 3 sets of clothes before I stripped her until she'd finished playing.

Jared, in his 3yr old wisdom ( which funnily enough, greater than I give him credit for) sorted them out into their right trays and then began to add sand to the underwater one for the creatures to hide in.
I continued with him later that night when he asked to help me cook dinner ( its just begun and I LOVE it!) and we talked about things that we hot and things that were cold.


Moments of learning like this are easy and fun and give your kids a greater enjoyment in doing the everyday stuff. Once he had finished cooking he showed Daddy that the oven was hot and I later heard him retell it all to Jumeirah in the( experimentless) bath. She, as usual, was full of praise and started to ask him other opposites. 10 minutes later, I heard " Dont worry Jared, you dont get it yet. But keep practising". :)
LOVE :)

whats your colour??

I am having blog issues... possibly its my fault but also I am going to blame the computer :)

So whilst I hit the damn thing deal with it, here is a great little colour test to see what you are really like.

Personality test (from How about Orange)


Mine, scarily enough, IS SPOT ON :)



You are imaginative and creative, you have always new ideas, and you know how to apply them.

You are also able to have an in-depth thinking, you think before acting, and you know how to communicate your knowledge.

Finally you are attentive and cautious, you take into account the needs of others before setting up the defined goals.

How about you??

matching shapes: rockets.

Dont know why we have this cute little cats butt mouth thing happening but man, hes gorgeous :)



Check it out!! We have bean shoots!! I was absolutely stunned to see this little shoot poking out of the ground this morning.

We have also been excited by the tiny buds that have been coming up from our "egg plants". Tiny purple flowers have shown their beautiful faces this week as well to the delight of Jumeirah :) I just love taking their photos and wishing for a macro lens.... one day, one day

I made the decision to have a great day today :)

I find so often, my day starts in a mad rush, I dont actually get the time to ease into the day and thus, I often start it with the wrong attitude. Today, I wanted to see the difference a change of 'tude made....
We had breakfast together, chatting about our day to come, me and the littles planning, Jumeirah talking about the things she was going to do at school.
School run was a bit crazy, but we got home and headed straight outside to play. The littles were a bit surprised, normally I head straight to cleaning, but today was their day so we headed for the trampoline and had a great time.



These two are such great mates. I was worried that without Jumeirah, they would have trouble playing together as she is really the middle man in play, but they absolutely love each other.
I am truly blessed with kids get on so well, most of the time :)

I left them to play for a bit, cleaned the kitchen and vacuumed. They came to find me and I showed them the cool rocket we were going to make out of shapes ( similar to the digger of last week). I wanted to do this type of activity again as Jared really loved it.


So I set them both up and they started to glue and match. Amahli has a very concentrated time but really enjoyed gluing and pasting not only the page but her hands as well :)



Jared absolutely loved doing this and kept telling me " look Mum, I did it!" I love watching him, mastering new skills, realising he is clever and able to do tricky things, growing and learning and having fun :)




They helped me tidy after a snooze, packing toys away, picking up clothes, jumping on making the bed.
Then we boogied till we had to pick up Jumeirah, and came back home to play some more. Somewhere in there, I got the floors mopped and dinner was on the table when daddy walked in the door.
Such a better day... now if only I could work out how to keep this little bubble of happiness going, my week will be a breeze!

And speaking of breeze... heres our little salt dough creations of yesterday swinging in the air :)