Change is Good
We had a pre Christmas dinner on Sunday at Bonnie & Oscar's house. I sewed the elf costume that Bella is wearing in the morning before we went - more photos later, it has cute pom poms and bells along the bottom edge and we revamped some toe scuffed shoes with pom poms too.
Anyhow,jJust a quick post tonight - more tomorrow :)
I have a teeny weeny Christmas tree display happening this year. I was going to add a couple more fabric trees to it, but last night stumbled across THESE and decided that I needed one to pop on the wall behind the trees.
Mine's a little different - I used gauze for the tree, beading for the baubles & blanket stitched the edge:
Then Bella and I worked on some special Christmas items for her Blythe doll (Ruby). Rich still hasn't quite finished Ruby's doll house, so she's been slumming it on the floor in Bella's room - she has her own little corner.
We wrapped presents for Ruby to pop under her tree too - Bella sewed the teddy bear herself & the necklace was part of a discarded decoration. There was also some paper bunting to be sewn:
Ruby's tree is holding little felted balls that Bella and I made together last summer.
It still wasn't feeling quite Christmassy enough though, so I whipped up a festive bed cover for her too. I used some more of the my super cute fabric from Retro Mummy.
I think she's ready for Christmas now! Not long to go either - just 6 sleeps left.
Today we went shopping. Not just your ordinary, everyday kinda shopping. Shopping for a porta-loo (porta-potty) ready for our summer camping. That's exciting stuff when you're used to using a fly ridden drop toilet, usually containing a mosquito or two (or in summer, twenty million of the suckers). There was also a whole lot of begging from the kids to buy everything else in the store - including canoes, boats and every piece of camping equipment known to mankind.
They settled for a new winter hat (for Bella) reduced to $5, a sweet (and on sale) new camping chair for Bella because she's grown out of the old one, t-shirt for James (bargain $15) and the amazing porta-loo. Roll on camping!
After lunch there was a little present exchange between Bella and her best friend, some afternoon stitching (Bella's own hand drawn bear design) and a double batch of rum balls. A great first day of the holidays!
P.S. Sorry - no Christmas craft today, tomorrow with fingers crossed.
School is over until mid February! Hooray!
We had lots of sweet treasures sent home - reindeer mask, handmade goodness for the tree, school books to sort through all in a sweet bag to hold everything.
And while Bella was enjoying her final day of school, James spent the day entertaining his cousins (Bonnie & Oscar) while I cleaned and baked.
And some top secret mailing was sent off for my Tarisota secret santa.
We're going to try and spend more hours at the beach this summer and since the weather is warming up down here now, the kids have already been for quite a few dips. We usually go after dinner - Rich runs the beach, I walk the beach and the kids splash along behind us in the water. That was yesterday.
Tomorrow is Bella's last day of school. I relish this time of year when I can have both of my two home and hang out with them over the long school break. James has been off for a few days already (he's in high school) and today we had some errands to run, last minute shopping to do, Christmas day t-shirt buying for James (yep, he chose another polo shirt Kama! LOL). There's this teenage thing happening at the moment too where James walks two metres behind me every where we go. It's okay though because I can remember walking two metres behind my Mum when I was a teenager too!
We were checking out the lolly department in Coles in the above photo - buying sweets to make THESE. This afternoon after school we made 50 of them ready to take to school with Bella tomorrow. They are so cute!
Oh and there has been some pre-holiday games creating happening at home too. Bella made her own board game the other night. She worked on it by herself for two hours solid. It's a little bit like Pictionary (okay a whole lot like Pictionary only much cuter).
There are a whole lot of rules written on the side of the board game. She's made a few complicated games in the last year or so that have the most elaborate instructions. But, this one is really playable and quite a simple concept. We call her 'the maker' at home. Bella can make anything when she puts her mind to it. You know, I always wanted to make things when I was little, but I never quite knew how to construct them or hold them together etc.. Bella does. She knows her way around a hot glue gun, needle and thread, makes up her own knots to hold things in place, can fold a piece of paper in a million pieces to get the design she's after. I cannot wait to see what she'll be creating in another 10 or 20 years time!
Remember my fabric necklace that I made last month? A couple of nights ago I had the urge to make a Christmas one for Bella. I let her choose the fabric - she chose well too, settling on a yummy Christmas print from Retro Mummy and then I whipped it up on the sewing machine.
Introducing my new wall art:
This idea wasn't mine, I found it in the Christmas issue of Inside Out magazine and fell in love. Yesterday Bella & her friend Claire worked on painting the pictures for me - with a little help from James and Claire's little sister Eva. We used some beautiful paints by LuminArte that have the most divine shimmer to them when dry. The girls added glitter and sequins too. I just love it.
Here's the creamy caramel recipe:
Ingredients:
1 cup caster sugar
90g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1/3 cup glucose syrup
1/2 cup sweetend condensed milk
How to:
Grease a 19cm square cake pan (we lined ours with baking paper after greasing).
Combine sugar, butter, syrups and milk in saucepan. Stir over low heat without boiling until the sugar and butter have dissolved.
Bring to gentle boil - boil, stirring for about 7 minutes or unti the mixture is a caramel colour. Allow bubbles to subside; pour into pan, stand 10 mins.
Cool before cutting - we keep ours in the fridge.
Recipe source: Women's Weekly Sweet
A couple of weeks ago I came across THIS sweet tutorial for making dolly peg Christmas angels. I bookmarked it to do with Bella and today we finally found time to do some crafting. We changed a few things due to lack of supplies - green sequins, pink hair, golden paper wings, but gosh she's so cute and looks adorable hanging on the tree.
Bella's friend Claire was over, so they made three angels each.
While I helped the girls to work on these, James set about creating his own evil angel with giant pincers (that's teenage boys for you).
We also worked on a huge paper Christmas tree for the wall, but I'll share the finished photos of that tomorrow.
Oh and the post wouldn't be complete without sequined cuteness:
Thankyou to those that asked for the creamy caramel recipe - I'll share that tomorrow too.
Kids Christmas crafting has started. Finally.
Plus some baking for the school Christmas cake stall. Apricot balls - recipe HERE and coconut ice.
Ice cream in town today. Always good.
Bella's purchases from The Beach Market - a sock monkey and a cute button bracelet (now a necklace for monkey). She also bought a monkey and bracelet for her best friend Claire out of her own money, which I thought was incredibly sweet.
And James' cooking for today - yummy creamy caramels that he baked for us. I love it when he cooks!
Skye emailed me through some new stock arrivals over at Kyoto General Store. I thought I'd share some with you:
Totally cute - available from HERE.
