Simple pleasures

Mother’s Day for us over at our household began with a huge serving of delicious banana pancakes. That’s one serve there pictured below – specifically , my serve, my reward from the family I guess on this special day.

We then headed outdoors to the local playground for a bit of a play….

And then made our way to the botanical gardens to spend the rest of the day! Autumn in the gardens is quite breathtaking, check out the gorgeous orange and red colours on this tree that we saw along the way!

There were plenty of dried autumn leaves for everyone to kick around in, I couldn’t resist picking up a few to keep as a souvenir….

All that walking around did make us tired so we stopped by a bench for some lunch and cake!

A pretty relaxing and pretty perfect day it was today! Hope you had a lovely day too!

Homemade surprise

Hello Everyone! Its been a bit quiet over here, hasn’t it? I do have quite some catching up to do but first I’ll start off with this little update of what we’ve been up to!

It’s the eve of Mother’s day and The Dude and I have been busy crafting a gift for his mom.

Since The Dude can’t (and won’t) attempt to knit or crochet, our gift had to be something quick and easy to make! And something practical and memorable of course!

So I was really happy to find this handy online video tutorial on how to make an accordion photo album!

Now, if you like me, have checked out the photo albums in the shops and thought twice about getting one after finding out how much they costed, then this tutorial is really for you! All it needs is some card stock paper, a brad and some elastic and you are good to go!

The tutorial was so easy to follow hat we finished our accordion photo album in under two hours! Here’s our end result….

A little star shaped brad holds the black elastic in place….

Which helps hold everything together nicely like so!

Stick this album in a specially marked envelope….

And we are good to go!

It’s the perfect mini brag book for grandma I think! Pretty sure it’s going to be a hit! Have a lovely Mother’s day folks!

It’s true….

Bugs has turned two!! There are days I wonder where all that time has gone and of course, days when I wish time would pass quicker. But for today, I did really wish that time would stand still for a moment!

We spent our special day at one of Bugs’s favourite playgrounds. The Dude took time off work and joined as well which made it extra special!

After an action packed morning, it was home to a little celebration with home made cake!

I’m still terrible at icing a cake but this turned out quite ok! But as they say, the proof in the pudding is in the taste and this cake got the two mini thumbs up from the little girl in the house!

The Dude and I did spend a bit of time reminiscing about the good old days. It does feel a bit nostalgic when you look back at pictures and realise how much Bugs has grown and change.

But it’s part of life I guess and I’m thankful that she’s developing well and I’ve been able to be a part of this amazing journey!

I’ll end off now with this picture of precious Bugs that was taken during Easter two years ago. It’s one of my favourites and I hope you enjoy it too!

The Easter update

Ok so Easter is officially over and I’m a little late in updating my posts. But that’s because we’ve been having lots of fun touring the peninsula!

Easter for us began with the traditional unwrapping of the chocolate eggs….

Once we had taken care of that, it was off to the grounds of the beautiful Heronswood gardens for a visit!

The Diggers club is also on site. I was really tempted to get a few seedlings and seed packets home, especially after we spotted this….

And this and lots more amazing produce during our walk through the gardens!

But the Dude reminded me about our success rate with gardening -currently its pretty dismal. So instead we did the more sensible thing and spent our money at the lovely cafe onsite indulging in this gorgeous orange flour less cake!

Our next and final two destinations were to beaches. First up, the Dromana foreshore….

And then to the famous Gunammatta beach where we managed to catch incredible views of the surf and the ocean beach!

Bugs had a ball exploring the gardens and the beaches. But she was especially thrilled when the Easter bunny paid a visit in the evening bearing, yes, more chocolate eggs! Here he is, the Easter bunny that I’d crocheted a few weeks ago….

And watching tv with us after we had consumed his gifts of joy…

The holidays have been fantastic for all of us! Hopefully they have been for you too!

Till later folks!

Decision time

For some very weird reason, we seem to be back in summer. The weather has been blazing hot the last couple of days, which makes lots of things uncomfortable.

Thank goodness most of my knitting is complete, now with these two later projects that I’m about to share out of the way!

First up, a little shrug in a deep red colour aptly titled Budapest!

The Budapest shrug has a lovely leaf lace pattern along the edges, including the sleeves as seen below…

Choosing buttons to complete the garment did give me a bit of a headache. I’d initially chosen some sparkly red ones – see those three buttons in my hand. But they only came in a set of three (I needed four) and it was the really last set. So I settled for some metal ones instead. Still works out well I think!

I’d faced the same issue when I finished my latest project – a lovely cardigan that I’ve named Champagne, after the beautiful Red Riding Hood yarn its knitted in!

These pale pink ones were nice but they seemed a bit lost amongst the pink and yellow flecked yarn…

My personal favourite were these pearl oyster shell ones….

But they were a bit too big for the buttonholes…

Same with these wooden butterfly ones that Bugs picked out (she’s into butterflies now), they were just too fiddly to pass smoothly through the holes!

So we finally settled on these antique looking plastic buttons instead! Doesn’t look too bad yah!

I’m really happy with the results and especially of the fact that these were completed before Easter! They are both going to be my little birthday presents for Bugs who turns two next week! *Gasp! My baby is two! How time flies!*

Bugs’s still a little young for bubbles but at least she’ll have Champagne for her birthday!

Find out more about the designer for my Budapest shrug, Stephanie Japel, here!

And click here to find out more about Georgie Hallam who designed my Champagne cardigan!

A new lesson

Parenthood teaches you a lot of things…..

Like how the rules that you grew up thinking were important are actually not….

Like how sometimes just letting go and relishing in the moment can make life a lot more happier than it usually is…

Especially when there’s water play involved!

The old me would have pulled Bugs away from the water feature, fearing that she might catch a chill (something which I’d grown up listening to) or dreading the inconvenience of needing to change a feisty toddler out of wet and into dry clothes.

But hey, summer is officially over, there aren’t many hot beautiful days left so why not enjoy it while we still can!

I’m hoping that i can keep up my new live in the moment mantra as much as possible! There’s lots more of life to enjoy this way! We are off now to soak up more of the sun and snack on new season mandarins! See you soon!

Our zen place

The Botanic Gardens is a lovely place, tranquil and beautiful….

Perfect for long walks and calming souls…

It’s tough being a toddler sometimes. The world is such an exciting place – lots to do, see, touch and taste! It gets particularly frustrating when people don’t seem to understand what you want or like to do! That on top of needing to grapple with changes to your body makes things extra difficult! That’s why the wide open and unrestricted spaces of The Gardens are fantastic for Bugs! That’s where Mommy lets her roam free and….

Stop and explore whatever catches her interest…

And when it’s time for a break, there’s always a bench or two around the corner to rest our tired feet (or erm… stand in this case)….

The Gardens are our favourite go to place when we are seeking to find a bit of inner calm!

Well in case the pictures and post don’t do it for you, I’ll leave you with this famous last word that I learnt from yoga class might restore some balance in your day!

“Ohmmmmmmmmmmm…..”

Cool apples

This is Bugs’s favourite book of the moment…

In it, Gerald the Elephant ponders about whether it not to share his delicious ice cream with his best pal, Piggie. Only thing is that he has to make the decision fast….

Inspired by the story (especially after reading it more than ten times a day), I thought it would be a pretty cool ( pardon the pun) idea to make an ice cream for Bugs. Especially after this free knitted ice cream pattern caught my eye!

There’s three delectable ice cream varieties to choose from but I wanted to stick as close to what Gerald had as possible. So I chose the simple sugar cone and classic scoop combo.

So here you go….. One fat free, unmeltable ice cream (grass flavoured I suspect) for a hot day!

On other news, I’ve made my seventh pair of shorts for Bugs! Seven! Can you believe it? I can’t! All i know is that I’m totally addicted to shorts now!

This pair was sewn slightly differently to the previous pairs. I’m loving the waist band finish – that’s the book that I referred to in the background, a Japanese sewing book. It took some time to figure out what to do from the pictures but I’m glad it all worked out in the end!

It’s almost the end of Feb! Where has the time gone? Hope your day is sunny and sweet! Till later!

A new purpose

Bugs’s been eating tons lately which meant that we’ve been needing to buy new and bigger clothes for her. Like this plain white tee that we got from K Mart recently.

Only problem that it got a bit stained after the resident Picasso had a drawing session on herself – you can kind of make out the blue and brown stains in the picture below.

I thought it was a real pity to throw an almost brand new tee away. So after a few moments of googling, I decided to make it into a tee shirt dress!

There’s heaps of tutorials online that you can find on how to make one so what I did is nothing new. First step: cut the tee to desired length. This was a great chance for me to cut away that stained portion!

Next I got some fabric for the skirt bit….

Sewed and gathered up the fabric….

Pinned and sewed it to the previously cut up tee….

Added a little bias tape to the end of the skirt (because as usual I am a klutz in measuring the length of the skirt and it came up a bit shorter than expected)….

And voila! One tee shirt dress done!

I’m pretty stoked at the results! I can foresee I’ll be making more dresses the same way in the near future! Especially with the little artist in the house!

Here’s another shot of the dress – have a great day folks!

Time in the sun

Happy year of the snake everyone! We’ve been a bit busier than usual lately celebrating the new year. Bugs has been tagging along with us as we scuttle about running our many errands of late. So today we decided to take it easy and take Bugs to visit one of her favourite play spots of the moment – The beach!!

We stopped by the brand new playground for a look see….

There was lots to explore, like this huge circular platform that turned when you pushed it….

Or even running the extra fine sand through your fingers was interesting enough for little minds!

The view from the playground was pretty stunning no matter which part you were at….

If you look closely enough, you can see the great Spirit of Tasmania ship docked at Station pier in the picture below!

And but of course no trip to the beach would be complete without an actual trip to the beach !

Whoever knew that seaweed could be so fascinating!

Oh if only everyday could be this idyllic! One can only dream!

Have a great day everyone!