Twelve times round the sun....

 Wow, just wow ...she is TWELVE!

She is so grown up and beautiful, clever, bright, silly, funny, quirky, fit, healthy, fun, loving, tall! and deliciously wonderfully herself. I do love her so.

She put it a request for a Ferrero Rocher Croquembouche cake... I think I may have actually had a panic attack just before construction began but you know what? Melted chocolate is my friend - it didn't hurt that we are deep into autumn and the weather was quite cool.

I made dozens of little 'roses' out of the chocolate wrappers and added some thin toffee shards to make it pretty - She was delighted, I was pretty pleased. It tasted divine!

I made a dozen little cupcakes too - one can never have too much chocolate cake.

From little things...big things Bloom. Making Peg Dolls - the book tour continues!

This post brings me such delight. Two years ago, maybe a little more, I recieved a comment on this blog which read something along the lines of "I have an idea. Please email me". The author of that comment was Margaret Bloom of we bloom here, her idea was a swap, a peg doll swap. In the months that followed I made a firm and treasured friend and my house slowly but surely became home to dozens of tiny peg dolls...

In the years since, our family collection of tiny peg dolls has grown beyond the walls of the little doll house they first populated. They now peek out of bookshelves, stand tall on windowsills and dance upon tables. I find them in baskets and tiny boxes, in pockets and bags... in the bathroom and in beds. They never fail to make me smile.

And then, one day Margaret told me she was writing a book. A book to be filled with the little people and sprites, gnomes and creatures that were filling her house too! Over what felt like an eternity she fed me with little morsels and pictures that made me croon. I can't remember a time I was so restless with anticipation.

From the very beginning my favourite was the Michaelmas dragon; I can't explain why but I LOVE it. For me there was no question, it was going to be the first doll I made when I had my hands on the book.

And then it arrived :) The book feels great in my hands. It is weighty and bursting with colour and cuteness! There are step by step instructions to make over 60 different dolls - dolls for every season, dolls for festivals, story telling and sheer sweetness. Patterns made to follow exactly or inspire new ideas. Doodle pages and painting tips, snippets of stories to make you want to read more. All things to make you smile.

I am so gratified to be part of Margaret's Making Peg Dolls blog tour (tho it is very likely I would have sulked and refused to answer emails if she had not invited me). I hope to do her creativity and cleverness credit with this little story crafted from a few wooden peg dolls, a bit of paint, felt, silk and just a little twist on the patterns in her book.

Tell me a story - The Paper Bag Princess

 by Robert Munsch & Michael Martchenko

Once there was a beautiful princess (Elizabeth). She lived in a castle and had expensive princess clothes. She was going to marry a prince named Ronald.

Unfortunately, a dragon smashed her castle, burnt all her clothes with his fiery breath, and carried off Prince Ronald.

Elizabeth decided to chase the dragon and get Ronald back. She looked everywhere for something to wear but the only thing she could find that was not burnt, was a paper bag. So she put on the paper bag and followed the dragon....

 

...Finally Elizabeth came to a cave with a large door that had a huge knocker on it. She took hold of the knocker and banged on the door. The dragon stuck his nose out of the door and said. 'Well a princess! I love to eat princesses.....'

Elizabeth is a resourceful and clever princess and the dragon is a bit of a flaunt - 'is it true, said Elizabeth, 'that you can burn up ten forests with your fiery breath?' 'Oh yes,' said the dragon....

At this point I must abandon my story telling because I don't want to ruin the middle or the ending! It was not my intention that you would read this post and immediately sucumb to the overwhelming desire to buy two books - just one! The Paper Bag Princess has a most fabulous and unconventional ending and can be found free and well loved on the shelves of your local library. Making Peg Dolls by Margaret Bloom on the other hand is so new it is nowhere near a library shelf and will be so well love by you and yours, you would never want to return it anyway!

You can get your very own copy from one of these places -

• Amazon
• The Book Depository
• Barnes & Noble
• Waldorf Books
• Powell's
• Booktopia

You can get more sneak peeks and treats by browsing the official blog tour -


February 4th:  The Crafty Crow
February 5th:  The Magic Onions
February 6th:  The Toymaker
February 7th:  Clean
February 8th:  Anna Branford
February 11th:  Red Bird Crafts
February 12th:  Art is a Way
February 13th:  Softearth's World
February 14th:  Chocolate Eyes
February 15th:  Rhythm and Rhyme
February 18th:  Wild Faerie Caps
February 19th:  Sacred Dirt
 

 

Hawaii

Day 1... a Monk Seal just hanging out on the beach soaking up the sun - so beautiful. We are so lucky!

Almost time... turn your volume up and whistle along

At the end of the month you could have your very own copy! Want one? Have a little look here

A final visit from her tooth fairy...

Children have 20 baby teeth. I know this now, tho I hadn't really thought about it until a wee toothfairy began visiting five years ago.

My big girl and I read a story way back when that first little tooth wiggled out. The story was by Shirley Barber, the pictures were beautiful. The story was ok but what I love is that it planted a seed that baby teeth become stars. From there our own story emerged.

I think money for teeth is meaningless. At least for my own child, who when her teeth started to fall and new ones bud was only 6. Instead her fairy left her little beads she could thread onto a bracelet, each bead came with a sprinkling of pink fairy 'dust'. (How cute was she?)

She started to write little letters and her fairy wrote back. Their friendship grew and the big girl asked questions like how the beads were made and how she got the gems for them, what happens to the teeth, why she was sometimes late....

 

Just so you know, Gnomes make the pretty beads that grace her bracelet and they live deep under the ground among the roots where they dig for gems. A few years ago I got a little fairy door to sit at the trunk of the tree her aunt painted on her wall– to make it safe for her fairy to get in and out, stay out of the rain (because fairies cannot fly with wet wings) and also so she could avoid the cats in our house.

 

Teeth seemed to fall in pairs or clusters with sometimes long stretches of months between fairy visits. A few months ago the last lonely one wobbled its way out, a little note was written and she waited.... Pandora (her fairy) visited one night and left a little note asking her to be patient, she had not been forgotten but she needed more time.

Five years of creative story telling wove a beautiful blanket of joy around me and my girl. Her bracelet was full to bursting with 19 beads and no room for one more.

Lindy Longhurst is a localish artist, her imagery is full of colour and whimsy; perfect for a fairy tale. Pandora visited Lindy and together they created a final gift for my big girl in trade for her last tooth.

 

Lindy's attention to the details of our story is exquiste. Here is my big girl and her final tooth, on her wrist is her beaded tooth fairy bracelet. She is wrapped in the quilt I made her for her 10th birthday.

Here is Mia, her cat, who sleeps quite regularly on her quilt and is sitting patiently by the little fairy door. In the sky are 19 bright stars, one for each of her baby teeth Pandora has already collected.

This is Pandora flying in to collect the 20th tooth, trailing behind her is her magic pink fairy dust

and here are the gnomes, deep in the ground amongst the roots with the gems.

Thank you Lindy from the bottom of my silly, sentimental, fairy tale heart.

You can go meet Lindy in person, every Saturday & Wednesday she is at the Eumundi Markets on the Sunshine Coast. Failing that, visit her website Serpent Mandalas, her blog or like her on Facebook and best of all you can go shopping at her etsy shop!

Oi! No eating in the patch!

Tis strawberry season... the girls and I took my mum (who is visiting) for a little drive up the coast to some lovely ripe strawberry fields... we skipped a little though the rows and picked big fat, ripe berries and plonked them into our tubs. Loads and loads of them, there was some overflow - they were sweet and warm from the sun... they made our tastebuds tingle

It really was a delightful way to spend an hour - cause it just doesn't take that long to pick a couple of kilos of strawberries.. and I am only feeling a little guilty that we all ate one (or two) in the patch because a quarter of us can't read signs anyway.

and another quarter of us (me) paid $16 a kilo for the rest! Eeek! Ah well there are worse things to spend money on.

Happy holidays.

Pyjama Party

A week or two ago the big girl's piano teacher had piles of quality clothes all over her music room, she said she was clearing cupboard space and was asking just $2 an item. We found four beautiful little cardigans that fit nicely, a pretty skirt and a pair of funky PJs.. think we spent $12.

Now the big girl is not as long in the leg as a ladies size extra small and the shirt from the PJ's was never going to fit (besides a t-shirt is much more comfy to wear to bed than a shirt) so I hemmed the pants for her - draw string waist so no problem there.

I grabbed a pair of PJ pants from the wee one's drawer and set about making a matching sister pair.

I think it took less than an hour from inception to done. No hems either because I used the bottom of the shirt for the bottom of the pants!

They are cute yes?

When the pants were done, I still had two sleeves of fabric left... hmmmm

A bedtime sleeping companion of 10 years deserves a new pair of PJs every now and then too don't you think? (I made some for the wee one's doll too but she won't get the doll or its pants til her birthday)

Tween in the house

My big girl is now a tween.. I had a little cry - a crazy happy can hardly believe it type cry. Her birth was an absolute stand out incomparable moment in my life, so many emotions and sensations crammed into seconds and then the mothering began..

 

So last Saturday, about an hour short of exactly 11 years since I first heard her voice, I raised a glass full of fine Australian Sparkling, met her daddy's eyes, took a sip and smiled.

 Happy birthday sweetheart. x

Bit a bling for a broken limb

The big girl broke her foot.

The big girl's mother took two days to take her to the hospital.

The big girl's mother felt a bit bad.

The big girl's mother is seriously back in the good books!

Lessons in colour part 2

Even though I did a test 'swatch' it was with plenty of nervous energy that I dropped the shawl, I have been knitting for the last two weeks, into the simmering pot of red dye.

But I am SOOOOoo glad I did it!

 Let me just show you what it looked like finished in the old colour scheme

and now...

The first picture up the top shows the actual colour better than these last couple (late afternoon, poor light, high ISO bla, bla). 

I am feeling very pleased with the result and am delighted that I can wrap up this gift and give it to a beautiful friend next week when she turns 40... She says she is not celebrating but I think she will like it all the same.

Possum in residence...

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

 

Ahh! might make a banana cake now I'll have some spare*

*Banana has been Possum trap 'bait' up til now.