17 months

To my darling little princess

As the days and months march on its hard to remember that just a short time ago you were that little new born bundle - Im so grateful to be able to look back over these letters to you - to reminicse over all the little things you no longer do, to be amazed by all the things that you have achieved, and to look forward to all that your life has in store for you in the future.

I thought by the time this letter was written I would finally be able to announce the fact you were walking, but no...you have taken those first tentative and unbalanced steps, you are standing more often than not as you go about your day, but the actual walking is still not happening. In the last few days Ive watched you get up and take a few steps all by yourself. Its the first time Ive seen you do this with out prompting from one of us. You are beginning to realise that you can walk, and Im sure it wont be long until you are officially toddling around the place.

You love being outside, but because you are not walking its a bit hard to get out there much at the moment. We try and get to the playground when we can. You love to watch Isaac, and swing and climb onto everything.

You have discovered you can climb onto Isaacs rocking horse and have quickly become very proficient at rocking yourself on it. You think you are very clever.

Your room is nearly complete - its been so long in coming. We are doing the final bits & pieces. The holes from the old curtain rails etc were filled, and the other weekend Daddy & Isaac put a coat of paint on the walls to freshen them up. Ive finished all the art work for the walls. I love that you notice when ever a new piece gets put up, and that you are excited and point out the birdies and the butterflys around your room. All that needs to be finished is your quilt. The top needs quilting and binding. Ive dropped it at the shop, to be machine quilted with a pretty little flower and heart pattern - it should be back in about 4 weeks.

It is so cute watching you try and imitate what everyone else does. You try and brush your hair, you copy how Isaac washes himself in the bath, you try and put things away in the toy boxes while Im packing up, change the channel with the remote control, and attempt to help fold the washing (which is very NOT helpful). The other day Nath was playing on the xbox when you spotted the other controller. You grabbed it, sat yourself up, and while looking at the screen started trying to push the buttons. You dont miss a thing!

It hasnt taken you long to work out an effective way of expressing your self if you are being annoyed by your brothers. You pull this face and let out a mighty yell. You dont scream or squeel, its a cross, dont mess with me sort of yell. Very un-lady like!
Last week I attempted to make my first ever dress for you. It looks so gorgeous on you, I cant wait till summer arrives and you can wear it.

Your last eye tooth finally cut this month. Hopefully thats it...until the two year old molars start to make their presence felt!

Its been a busy month. Two weeks of school holidays, we have celebrated Mandy, Monice, Isaac & Daddys birthdays and also welcomed your new little cousin, Bailey Jack, to the world. Lots of family time. You got lots of cuddles form Nanna & Pappa who returned from an eight week trip away...they couldnt believe how much you had grown up, or that you're still not walking yet!!!

You have started getting really cuddly and Im loving it- who could ask for anything more from you than all those precious sloppy kisses and cuddles.

I love you baby girl, so, so much!!!!

Mummy xxxx

creating

The older boys went back to school today. With just the three of us at home, we returned to our normal routines. I even managed to get both the kids down for a sleep at the same time. I took the chance of some uninterupted time to jump on the sewing machine again. Caleb is the only one that has missed out on having something sewn for him, so this is what is laying on his bed waiting for him to return home from school. New PJs. I hope they fit! It was Craigs birthday a week ago and while he was at work the kids and I wrapped presents and made a cake and even blew up a few balloons. I thought we were all finished when Isaac piped up - "we gotta have birthday flags" . He loved helping me make all the birthday bunting for Jacintas 1st birthday party, and now thinks that along with a cake, a party needs flags LOL

I remebered this newspaper bunting that I had seen. I chopped up some triangles of newspaper and let the kids loose with textas and crayons. They did a great job, and it was nice to see them all co-operating and working together...for a change!

Happy Birthday

I cant believe that my first born turned 12 today ! Only one more year till we have our first teenager in the house...should be fun having a teenager, tween, 4 year old & 2 year old ! ?!

As usual the birthday person gets to choose the meals for the day - Caleb is just like his Dad - once your up its breakfast time...Im not quite so enthusiastic about mornings, and the request for pancakes was fine, but it would mean waiting till at about 8am to eat - to long, he had cereal.

So I made the pancakes for morning tea - one giant blueberry pancake as requested!!!!

Excuse the messy hair - I think we all had a bad hair day at this house today LOL

Lasagne is the dinner request, but since between birthday visitors, housework and tending to kids I decided to sew my first ever dress for Jazz today (what was I thinking doing it today!!!!) I think it will be a bought one from the shop - oh well he doesnt mind!!!

Happy Birthday Mate!!!

On to the project that took up most of my day. I got this fabric for about $1/m at spotlight a while back. I wanted something cheap to practice with. I woke up this morning and decided I wanted to make a dress. Ive never attempted to sew a dress before - my biggest achievement to date was PJ pants! Im really not a good pattern follower, so I got one of my favourite little dresses that looked relatively simple and drafted a pattern for the bodice, studied how I thought it was put together and winged it from there. Eventually I got there - and I only had to unpick one little section. Now if little Miss ever decides to walk she can check out its twirling potential - surely by the time the weather warms up she will be well and truely walking! I think she likes it!

Tutorial - Replacing the Elastic in an Itti Bitti Modern Cloth Nappy

Ive had quite a few of my itti MCN un-usable due to the elastic going. Today I had a go at replacing it. I cant believe how easy this was, even with my limited sewing skills! To show you all how easy it was, I wrote this tutorial :) Hope its easy to follow, and all your unwell itti's are on the mend soon!

Replacing the Elastic in an Itti Bitti D'lish

As you can see the elastic in this nappy is stretched so much, it is no longer functional. This tutorial will show how to replace the elastic. Im very much a beginner sewer, so Im not sure if this is the 'right' way, but it works and its simple. Ive used elastic similar to the one that was already in there because its all I had here. Id would be preferable to use something like swimware elastic.

Step 1 - Start from the centre front of the nappy.

Carefully unpick the seam from the centre point out each way. You should be able to see when you reach the part of the nappy that has been overlocked - stop when you reach this point on either side. You will unpick a section about 9cm long (this was in a large nappy)

Step 2 - Once you have unpicked the section of seam, turn the nappy completely inside out through the unpicked section.

Step 3 - Cut three pieces of elastic about 3/4 of the length of the stretched elastic. This will be too long, but I found it easier to trim the excess later than try to judge the exact amount.

Step 4 - I have left the old elastic in the nappy and stitched the new over the top. You could unpick and remove the old elastic if you wanted. This is what the stretched leg elastic in the nappy looks like before putting the new piece in.

Hold one end of the elastic over the point that the old piece started. Using a zigzag, stitch back and forth several times to secure.

Step 5 - While stretching the elastic as much as possible, stitch along the full length with a zigzag stitch. Once you reach the other end stitch back and forth several times to secure. Trim off excess elastic.

The nappy should now look like this.

Step 6 - Repeat with the other leg elastic, and back elastic.

Once they are all done turn the nappy back in the right way.

Step 7 - Stitch the opening closed. You could hand stitch it, but I just ran a line of machine stitching across. You can see it a little, but the minky hides it pretty well, and it was much quicker than doing it by hand.

All finished, and the nappy is ready to put back into your stash!

9 days old

There is just something so precious about a new born baby. Yesterday I got to have a nice long visit with my gorgeous little nephew - Bailey Jack. We took LOTS of photos. The sweet little boy who has spent the first 8 days of his life sleeping was not going to give in and nod off for a snooze. No amount of feeding, patting, rocking could convince him! Probably didnt help that he was surrounded by the chaos of Isaac, Jacinta & Georgia !!!

He wan't at all upset, just didnt want to close is eyes and go into that deep, dreamy floppy newborn sleep so I could play around with posing him. Oh well, we still got some gorgeous shots of him - and I did manage to get him asleep just long enough to pose him for one sleepy curled up shot on the wooden bowl! Tell you what - the boy has no bladder control at all - LOL - I lost count of how many times we had to clean up after him !!!

So here are a few of my favourites....

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and my three most favourite of all.....

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Re-Useable Shopping Bag

Since the banning of plastic supermarket bags here is SA we have gradually worked our way through the stash of them we had in the cupboard. Im really glad they were banned, they were an environmental nightmare, but they were also very handy. Nice and compact and a great size for so many things.

I have bought a few cheap little fold up shopping bags that live in my handbag. They fold up nice and compact and are much easier and nicer to use than the 'green bags'.

How hard could it be to whip one up out of some fabric I thought? A while back I got some end of bolts of fabric from spotlight. Great patterns for the older boys, I plan to make some summer PJ pants from it and maybe even new quilt covers (I got about 15 m of each one!) and it worked out to only about 50c/m. what did I have to loose? (Except my sanity maybe!!!!) All I had to do was unpick a bag ( I had one that was starting to come undone at the seam anyway), draft a pattern from it, cut out the fabric and sew it up! An hour or so I thought - no worries! More like two and a half !!!!I guess it wasnt really that hard. Ive never really used bias binding before and I hate pinning things before I sew. Note to self - when trying to use said binding always pin it first to avoid unpicking and having to fix!!!! I sewed, unpicked and re sewed two of the four sections before I finally admited defeat and pinned it first..LOL it was then still a little tricky, but so much quicker and easier! Its a little rough around the edges, and apart from having a bit of trouble getting the biding to sit nicely around the flap section, Im really happy with the way it turned out. Should be a handy bag for one of the boys...if Isaac will let anyone else near it!!!

I can see quite a few of these getting made. I also want to try and draft a pattern for the black "greenbag" that I tend to cart all the kids stuff around in. Its the perfect size, but its pretty ordinary to look at - just need to find some suitable fabric and I will have a go!

mixed media - 3 year old syle

Isaac was playing around with a pen and paper while I was cleaning the other morning. Id handed him a couple of tazos and stones I found laying around. When I went around to the lounge I found this little treasure set up on the coffee table. It made me smile.