Im going to be a boy at kindy

At home today with 2 sick girls now, very quiet... Ive kept off the computer for most of it doing those lovely chores like emptying and cleaning the pantry and the laundry. i havent had to leave the house as a good friend picked up Sonic to go to school this morning and he is going there for his first official sleepover, without his big sister, very exciting.

Ive also made Kindy sheets and a bag for them for Bubba starting kindy next week. She is adamant she doesnt want to go and only wants to go if she can be a boy from now on.  She really is the funniest kid :) I tried to explain to her about the difference between boys and girls (she does have a brother after all) but she wasnt willing to accept the truth... oh to have a girlie girl!!!She always pulls such funny faces for photos, ever since she was a baby. Im putting together a collection of them to make her an album called funny face ;)



The sheets have to be very specific sizes to fit the beds they use and I didnt have time to hunt for something with the right dimensions so I pulled out a Duvet (doona) cover that hasnt been used for a couple of years and whipped up the sheets and a bag for them to go in, with her name clearly on the outside. She will hate them because they are pink but I was not buying the ones kindy was selling at $30 a pop, and they were all disney characters. Why have disney when you can have pretty homemade ones from your mum!(hmmmm... could have ironed it a bit better LOL!)

I also used a bit of mod podge to fancy up her lunchboxes. Im not sure how it will hold up but at least it looks cute to start :)

 

Family Journalling

I have just started an everyday journal for our family to 'scrap' our journey through 2010.  I saw the idea over at the blog,  What I see. This lady is a supa talented photographer and her scrapbooking is amazing.  I quickly raced down to Kikki K to purchase a 'Recipe book', which is what she uses for her journal. The great thing is it has six sections with 30 pages in each, so one a day and will cover the first 6 months.

I have only done the cover so far and the cover for January but the photos are now printed waiting for me to scrap them.  I think the beauty of this is it will be quick and it will encourage me to try to take a photo a day.

My kids love their scrapbook albums and they have sticky finger marks on them to prove this :).  It will be very cool to have a more detailed journal of this year. ... and sadly I think I have only properly scrapped 2 pages in the last twelve months + some albums for gifts which I will post eventually.

So its back into creating and feeling the love :)

Little Miss Sunshine creating

For Christmas I found Little Miss Sunshine this gorgeous book

And quickly put together a little sewing kit for her, with felt, needles, scissors, cottons and some very cool Kombi fabric (she is a Kombi addict :))

 

And then she got creating....

I love seeing her take an interest in the things I do and want to do them too. With her cooking and sewing and scrapbooking she's starting to turn out just like her Mum :)

Last weekend we signed her up for Netball, which we cant wait to start. Little Miss Sunshine is very tall for her age and I have no doubt she will make a great netball player.

The next craft we are going to work on is teaching her to knit and then sew on the sewing machine. I have saved my old one for her.

Bye for now, my baby has been sick for the last four days and Im going to give her lots of mummy cuddles.

Back to school!

The kids started back at school today.

Little Miss Sunshine is Grade 4  and Sonic Grade 2 (already!! how did my babies grow so fast?)

They both had a great first day back and we are so fortunate they go to an amazing school, where they are nurtured and loved. Here are a few pics of them under the beautiful tree at the entrance to their school.

  

(Sonic is wearing the new uniform that is being phased in over the next 18 months.. thats why they look different:))

Australia Day...

We might not be Australian, but as kiwis we are very fortunate to be able to live and work here in Australia. Australians are very patriotic and we had planned to go to the beach for one of the many celebrations being held. Our plans changed so we could catch up with friends, and also when we heard of the hundreds of people getting stung by blue bottle jellyfish at the beaches at the moment.

For Australia Day we went to visit our kiwi friends in Brisbane. They have just renovated their home and it looks gorgeous!!!  We had a late lunch, with burgers in the shape of Australia ;) and dessert was Aussie mess - YUM!!!

A plane was flying over heard writing in the perfectly blue sky... we figured it was Telstra advertising ... it read CALL MUM (although I wasnt quite able to get it all in one shot... should have changed to widescreen now that I think of it!).

So it was a lovely day. On February 6th is Waitangi Day, which is New Zealands national day where the signing of the Waitangi Treaty, between the Maori and Europeans is remembered.  Here in Brisbane a Maori Arts festival is being held on Waitangi Day, and one of my supa dupa cool friends is going to be displaying her photographs, she is amazing and talented and the photos give me goose bumps.

www.manamaoriarts.blogspot.com has all the info about this for those of you in the area.

A day at home...

We have had a quiet day at home today.  My littlest has a high temp and sore throat and has spent the day doing very little, as I write this she's just woken up from a nap (very out of character).

This morning I actually got a little bit creative :).  I have been covering school books ready for Wednesday and the new school year and because I have a strong aversion to Contact/coverseal I usually resort to good old brown paper.  We had been given some great precut book covers from the NZ fire service and they were awesome to cover the books with. My cousin also put me on to reusuable plastic covers from the Newsagent. They were perfect for the text books and can be used again next year.  The rest got the brown paper treatment.

Today I played around with some scrapbooking paper on Little Miss Sunshine's and she was so happy with the result. Unfortunately, I still ended up getting out the dreaded contact to cover them at the end but Im wondering if next year I try Mod Podge instead.

So here are the pile of books and the few I decorated for her...

 

 

Then Little Miss Sunshine made us Gluten Free pikelets for afternoon tea.. from scratch... on her own. I love watching her grow more confident in the kitchen

And a sign of approval from Sonic :)

THis same boy has stayed in his PJs all day too ... hehe!!

So what did you do today??

Tomorrow Im going to share some of the great goodies I bought in New Zealand and a little project Ive started working on.

By the cool of the pool..

Its hot.. always hot. We have been to two different local pools in the last few days  and the one today was the best by far. The kids and I have been before but this time hubby came too.

The pools are set beside the ocean and they are lovely, lots of shade for relaxing and loungers too if you are early enough.  The kids pool is huge and one end has a shade cover, there are slides, fountains and its not too deep.

we were there for 4 hours and our children got a little too much sun.. but was a great day.

 

I want to host a giveaway...

I have a few goodies, including some cool fabric I bought in NZ and want to host a giveaway, but how can I do this when I have hardly anyone visiting my blog? If by chance you visit, please give me some ideas!!

We are off to a friends house today to catch up and have a swim. Hope my kids behave, yesterday they were awful when friends came here ....

Prepare to be overloaded

So this is supposed to be a craft blog and there's been very little crafting recorded on it while we have been in NZ.  So today I will bombard you with pictures of our holiday and then tomorrow its back to some serious creating!

The Christmas corner at my sisters, the kids and their cousin posing on Christmas eve.

Finished stockings for myself and my son, Sonic (his previous one had something spilt on it so I had to make a new one)



ROTORUA... the Redwood forest (Hubby and his brother went mountain biking through here and also took the kids for a walk)



Thermal pools and bubbling mud

 



Enjoying time with cousins at Skyline Rotorua (a ride up the Gondola, luge back down, chair lift back up and do it again.. until you fall off, like my eldest and end up with a large graze full of rubber on your stomach which requires days of dressings!! poor wee sausage - its all better now thankfully :))

 









 

Ok, so Aussie has the Big pineapple, big prawn, big banana etc... but New Zealand has a BIG corrugated iron Sheep and Dog (being a farming country of course) there's a shop in the sheep and the information centre and public toilets in the dog... its a little place called Tirau



 

Then it was back up North for the New Year and a trip to a carnival at Mangawhai ... the place I would most want to live in NZ

 

 



Ok... thats enough today its taken me ages to load them.... tomorrow I'll do the rest!!! Going to feed my children lunch and be creative for the afternoon :)