Big birthday bird love

My big boy turned seven last week. Seven seems like a milestone of some sort, as if he has mastered this boy-hood caper and for the first time I am seeing glimpses of the man he will grow into. He has one massive front tooth and an equally massive gap next to it.  His shoulders are getting broader from swimming laps after school and for the first time in his life he needs a shirt size larger than his age.

In the last year he has gone up twenty reading levels and when I tuck him into bed late at night sometimes he is curled up next to a book and a torch. (Mostly, it would be the Lego ideas book which is not what I would describe as cuddly). He is absolutely quirky, but with some sort of bonus magnetic charisma.  He stands out, but so far he has no idea and consequently does not care one jot. I am curious as to when peer pressure will catch up with him, hopefully we have a few more years.

He has been wearing his white ankle school socks pulled right up to his knees for two years.  Recently I made the discovery that at least one of his friends is now adamant about wearing his socks this exact same way. More shocking was the discovery that the other school mums thought I was making him do it!

He has friends, real friends who he disappears into the school rainforest with, to build humpees and fairy gardens and to look for creatures.  He has found his tribe and we are grateful, so, so grateful for this little group of mates who share a love of science and nature but who also tolerate some less than tactful commentary on how they could do their work better. We loved filling our yard with an inflatable plastic structure so that the tribe could all come over and celebrate a bird inspired birthday.

We did manage to follow his party suggestion list quite well, there was a pass the parcel, musical chairs, a scavenger hunt, hosing on giant slide, sausages and chit chat for the mums. And the best part of his day? That Rainbow lorikeet cake. His love of birds, particularly lorikeets and other colourful birds, has endured for the last few years. He loves colourful fish and rainbow colour schemes with the same passion. Like me, it's all about the colour.   Presents were easy, Bird badges, Bird Bingo, a rainbow clock, and another Usborne factual flap book to add to his collection and of course some lego.

And the gift that almost made him faint with excitement? Well that would be this framed bird teatowel that I found for half price at the WAC. Although I am secretly hoping he grows out of it so I can have it back.

We love you Roboboy, with your terrible knock knock jokes, cold spoon tricks, cheeky smile, complete inability to lie, and resolute commitment to being your own quirky self, even when it results in dire humiliation for your mother. It has only taken seven years, but  I have almost forgiven you for getting me out of bed at 430 am for the first three years of your life. 

Rainy day blues

It has been raining pretty solidly here now for close to three weeks. The ground is boggy, the dryer is running almost continuously and the windows are misty with condensation. It was the  perfect weekend to take the kitchenaid for a spin and pop out some melting moments, that lasted all of about five minutes. Luckily, despite a hint of cool autumn in the evenings, the days have been warm enough to get out and enjoy the rain.

When the rain eased back to a drizzle we headed out to hunt down some puddles and some mud.

There were dams to build, and mud to splash in .

Miss Liongirl was keen to fill her flower basket.

We snipped a bouquet from the  huge native trees on the footpath blooming with flowers and full of feasting rainbow lorikeets.

And then we trotted home to enjoy some wonderful treats that came my way this week. Having crafty mates is fantastic when you have a birthday. My mum made me this lovely bag,

And one of my sewing group gals made this gorgeous one for me too.

And then just when yet another day of rain was enough to leave a girl slightly unhinged, an unexpected parcel arrived at Betsy's front door. From a blog buddy in another state no less.

Allison from Just Underneath sent me a little pile of  blue goodies to chase away the rainy day blues. A gorgeous tin for my fledgling collection, a lovely little vase and a cracker of a tea towel that is a pretty good match to Betsy. Al, you sure now how to perk a girl up.

And miss Liongirl so enjoyed filling up that little vase with her basket of teeny tiny plucked flowers.

We love it Al.

We hope now that we have more that half our usual annual rainfall done and dusted 9 weeks into the year, that the rain might move on, to other places that need it more. In the meantime, if you too are a tad soggy, I can highly recommend a batch of these.

Rainy day melting moments.

3/4 cup butter creamed with 1/2 cup icing sugar.

Add 1/2 cup self raising flour, 1/2 cup plain flour and 1/2 cup cornflour. Mix until forms a dough. 

Roll into small balls, flatten with a fork and bake for 12-15 mins in 160 degree oven.

Cool and make icing.

I cup of icing sugar, 2 tsp butter and 1 tbsp hot water. Mix until forms a thick paste and use to glue to biscuits together.

Makes nowhere near enough ( about 10 iced biscuits). Scoff with hot tea on a rainy day. Next time, triple the quantities. 

2012 Before and After

I was unsure about how to start this new year. Do I acknowledge the last twelve months at all or do I just sweep it all under the rug and make a fresh start today? This last year has been the least chaotic for our family in a long, long time. We did not buy a house, sell a house, have a new baby, have children that were constantly sick or needing operations, start at a new school/kindy or discover any new dietary limitations for anyone in the family.

Our complicated child in this last year has seen his paediatrician twice. Prior to that he was known by six specialist paediatricians and a selection of therapists. For us, it is quite a novel thing to only be dealing with the usual, the everyday. There are of course ongoing complexities for our family but they are all old and familiar and I am a seasoned veteran with these and mostly in the last twelve months life has become much simpler. 

My chosen word to represent 2012 was " Grow". Ironically, this is the first year in six that I probably did not have to grow much at all. In hindsight, the previous six years that were so hard, so challenging, caused me to grow so, so much. Of course you don't realize while you are doing the growing.  So this year was perhaps a year to "Bloom" instead. For me that meant being able to take the time to do things that make my heart sing, instead of just doing what is needed to keep everyone else afloat. 

There is a lot of colour and pretty on this blog. There are a lot of frills and fluff. When your life is a layered cake of complex and difficult, it is so good to have a space to go that is all about the icing and sprinkles.  Here are all the befores and afters from this year while I crafted and created to my happy place. (I didn't feel that I did much at all this year, but surprisingly it's not as insignificant as I thought).

What became of my gratitude project? The one where I planned to post a letter of thanks every day for a year. Well, I did around 90 and then gradually life just got in the way. Many months passed and I had not written a single thank you. Then our much loved neighbours, the Menace brothers, moved , to the new house they had built a few streets away.

They may as well have moved to the Outback. Our yard was suddenly quiet after school and I realized that the year of  precious memories of happy, noisy  gangs of children playing in my backyard was a moment that had passed by. I wrote my neighbour (the mother of those wonderful boys who accepted my complicated child wholeheartedly) a thankyou card for making such a difference in our family's life, just by sharing her children with us. 

She turned up at my house a week later to thank me in person. She told me that she had just been out doing a presentation to the Country Women's Association in rural Queensland. That she had been envious of the solidarity and support that these country women had for each other. That she was saddened that her life in our little suburb did not reflect this kind of care and connectedness. And then she arrived home the next day and there was my card in her letter box. We both had a cry. And if that is not a sign that this gratitude project is an exceptionally meaningful commitment, well just bludgeon me with a hammer.

I did in fact write a list of resolutions last year but given my penchant for scribbling on scraps of paper, it is nowhere to be found. I suspect I achieved very little of it. I am only cross about not doing a camera course to learn how to use my camera properly, I did try three times but each time the course was on a day that I work. Hopefully, this year it will be easier to make it happen.

This year, I suspect is going to be very full, very busy. There is supposed to be a renovation for Betsy you know. It is supposed to start in March. I know in advance that it is supposed to take around four months. I have the good sense to know that this could be delusionally optimistic. I also have the good sense to know that it is probably going to be somewhat painful to live through but at the end it will be so, so worth it.

But the mantra for the year ahead I could not distill down to a single word this year. About a year ago, a lovely girl posted a few comments on my blog. I popped over to her blog to see what she was all about. I liked her blog a lot. It was about living simply, with less. Strangely, after commenting that day on my blog she did not post again and has not for over a year. So I won't link you over there but will say thank you to her for providing the words for me for 2013.

Less Stuff, More Life. 

I have felt bogged down by our stuff for the last three years. We have been culling and selling and donating more than I could ever have imagined and we are not done yet but we are getting there. As each item leaves our house, I feel a bounce in my step. It all started when I read this book, It's all too much by Peter Walsh a few years ago, when we were moving into Betsy and realized we had way too much stuff. 

Much of our stuff was child related paraphernalia and as time passes much of it is no longer needed. A small number of the most treasured toys and books have been boxed up to keep, most is going or gone. It is getting easier to be ruthless and emotionally detach. I am quoting William Morris daily.

"Have nothing in your home (life) that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."


Ugly serviette holder made by me in Grade 9 woodwork- gone. Shoes from my wedding that were ugly and uncomfortable - gone. Every sipper cup in the house- gone. Thankfully milk glass and vintage sheets fulfil both criteria to stay  so there will still be some very selective op shopping.

Luckily, these two are both useful and beautiful so they get to stay. Hugs are a rare commodity, sometimes she gets lucky and he tolerates it. This is twelve months ago.

This is yesterday. She is catching up with him now, soon they might look like twins.


Happy New Year to you all and may you all have more life and less stuff this year too.

The green dancing girl dress

I've got the bug. The sewing bug that is. The rush you get ferreting through a stash of fabric, drawers of doilies and the sublime beauty of pink ric rac. Liongirl and I went to Spotlight  just to get the 6 mm elastic. And then I stumbled over this gorgeous green dancing girl fabric and she found the roll of sparkly pink bling ribbon and the next thing you know were were in cahoots, making another dress.

The navy blue floral fabric has a story of course. About a year ago at my first ever Suitcase Rummage the lovely Kimberley had a bundle of fabric from an estate sale. The story goes that the elderly lady who owned this fabric had brought trunks and trunks of beautiful fabric with her on a steamer from England many many years before she ended up in a house on Bribie Island. And now some of this lovely old fabric which had been carefully folded for decades has been lovingly added to a little girl's green dancing girl dress.

I myself could have left off the pink bling. But in order to get miss Liongirl to contemplate a dress that is not pink, we had to have some incentives. And she loves her bling. The pocket was essential for her travelling companion, Guinea Pinny, her toy stuffed guinea pig rescued from a $1 claw machine. Fingers crossed she will frock up tomorrow and let me take some photos.

I discovered the The Cupcake Parlour at West End the other day, and had to take a little assortment to share with the sewing gals. There is nothing more wonderful that chatting over a cuppa, a petite cupcake and some crafty creating with like minded pals. Especially when you put your bobbin in backwards and need help sorting out why everything you are stitching is self ruffling when it is meant to be flat.

And what were the kids doing today, while I finished adding the bling to the dress?  Well, first they colour coded my buttons,

then Roboboy colour coded all my pin wheels so they were in a rainbow formation. Then they watched The Little Mermaid. I had to share the look on my boys face watching the romance scene in the movie when the prince is working up to kissing Ariel in the boat.

Sheer unadulterated joy. You would never guess that only hours before this same child approached me in the bathroom  with a proposal. To sell his sister. (He was quite serious). I in turn grappled for a satisfactory response for his logical brain. I informed him that unfortunately as they were a pigeon pair, they sadly could only be sold as a set. He was disappointed but understood completely.

I wanted to say thank you to Kate from Foxs Lane for inspiring me to make the green dancing girl dress. About a year ago I bought a miss Liongirl a peasant dress from Kate and have been building up the courage to sew my own ever since. And fitting that I finally get it together for this slightly auspicious day of my 200th post. Back soon with a little giveaway to celebrate this bloggy milestone.

Backyard adventuring, the flowery way

We are back from a glorious little adventure up to Toowoomba to enjoy a few days soaking up the spring sunshine at the Carnival of flowers. There is nothing better than going for an adventure somewhere in your own backyard and it amazes me to discover that just over an hour away is this taste of a much colder place where there are actual different seasons and not just extremely hot and not quite so hot.

We rented a gorgeous little queenslander cottage close to the centre of town and spent four days exploring the spring delights on offer.

We scootered our way through masses of beds of poppies, tulips and an assortment of other colourful blooms in Queens Park.

We relished in the child themed floral displays at Laurel Bank Park. The space themed garden beds were incredible and I couldn't get it all in the shot so there is a picture of the map instead! Not to mention the wisteria arbour with the most incredible aroma, if only they were serving scones and tea in there.

We joined the twilight crowds at the fair, staying up late to see the spectacular fireworks. Miss Liongirl had her first Ferris Wheel ride while Roboboy had his first mouse in a ball experience.

Can I say that once inside these giant inflatable balls, your children will just run themselves ragged and it is like the cone of silence in there. Wishing we had a set for home!

We sampled some playgrounds with the best views around. This would be Webb Park set right on the escarpment.

With the longest steepest slides and the fastest pedal whirly thingies.

We loved exploring all the secret paths in the Japanese Garden.

And of course a cafe stop at Picnic Point is a must.

Brindabella Rose Gardens  was my treat, a rose and a clematis were stashed in the back for the drive home. The magnolias and rhododendrons were spectacular and we caught the tail end of the azaleas and the start of the roses.The garden also has numbered paths which kept the kids busy working out where to go next.

In the midst of all this adventure, the kids experienced their first hail storm and were so excited to duck  out and collect all the 'snowballs' when it rapidly blew over as quickly as it arrived.

And would you believe we even managed to squeeze in some oppie time, and of course it was the one op shop that we stumbled onto by pure chance, that had the vintage sheet stash. I will do another post about the wonderful finds but in the meantime I will leave you with some windy sheet love.

So, now that I am completely inspired after all this spring colour, I cannot wait to show you the goodies that I managed to ferret out. In the meantime, the Carnival of Flowers runs for another week so if you don't have anything planned for the second week of the school holidays, I think there are some good kids activities running too.

We stayed at Ashbrooke Cottage and could not fault it for location and found it perfect for little kids, there was even a long long concrete driveway for scooters.

And a perfect front porch for stopping to smell the flowers.

Can I just add that I have obviously only just worked out how to make collages, just in time as with this  many photos I needed it. Cannot believe how easy Picmonkey is to use. Lastly apologies for such a long long post. Back soon with some colourful vintage goodies.