Check this out

Check out Hugs to Hold a fantastic idea aimed at putting a smile on the face of the children who have lost everything in the recent devestating floods in Australia. A soft toy seems like a small thing but could make a huge difference. I hope to get something completed for this soon and hope many of you will join in as well :-)

Also take a look at this awesome giveaway on Heart Felt . She has three beautiful zip purses from Atticus Finch to give away.

Upgrading

Today I upgraded one of Mr A's christmas presents.  Santa gave him this awesome car wallet from Lulu's Closet and he loved it for taking cars out and about (you can never go anywhere without cars round these parts).

Anyway the way the velcro was stitched on meant that a lot of his slightly bigger cars didn't fit so I decided to upgrade it to allow more vehicles to be taken out on adventures.  So I removed the velcro (and the button wheels in the process), added snaps and replaced the wheels.  Voila!

The Dress That Nearly Wasn't

Well that says it all really.  THE dress is finally done.  Anyone who knows me IRL or online will have heard me mumbling and grumbling about this creation on and off over the last couple of weeks.
So here's the general idea

I should have known from my very first oopsie that this wasn't going to go well but it went something along the lines of
* Forget to cut the skirt out on the fold so had to get more fabric so I didn't have to have big joins front and back of the skirt (about now I should have started to think twice about continuing, but did I... NO).
* Sewing the underneath romper part I put the elastic on the wrong side, unpicked it and sewed it again on both legs only to find out that it was right the first time and have to unpick it ALL again and redo it (time to stop sewing for the day you might think?  Well if I had half a brain yes, but I soldiered on!)
* Time to attach the skirt to the bodice and although it worked I'm sure I did it in the most difficult way possible.
* The end is in sight.  Miss M is awake but happily playing so "I'll just quickly sew the romper on and it will be done" - NOT!  Somehow I managed to attach the romper not only inside out but back to front, and I overlocked it before I realised.  Queue throwing the dress in the corner, turning off the machine and going in search of chocolate.

Anywho after that somewhat embarrassing array of errors I got back to this today and here is the final result.

And thankfully for my sanity and that of all those around me it fits with room to grow :-)

And here's my wee girl showing off her latest trick!  Yes she is standing just by holding onto the toy box and yes she is only 4.5m old.  So much for my sit quietly in the corner baby - hehehe.

So after this sewing debacle you may think I will pack up the machine for a while but no.  Look what arrived in my letter box last week.  

My new ottobre mag and some yummy Michael Miller cord earmarked for a winter pinafore for Miss M.  I need to make a new nappy stash for Miss M as well so there will be more sewing posts over the next wee while.

Uh Oh

10.41am

10.43am and so proud of herself!

Nowhere To Park

So what is this post about?  A trip to the mall?  The library carpark on a rainy weekend?  Nope!

Mr A, who is dead nuts on vehicles of any shape, size or variety got the coolest roadways set for christmas.

He was playing with it with Daddy last weekend when he proclaimed "But there's nowhere for the vehicles to park Daddy".  Queue the cogs slowly starting to turn and a trip to the local hardware store for mdf, black spraypaint, a test pot of white acrylic paint and a drill bit.  And so the process of carpark making began.  After measuring, cutting, drilling out the holes, black spray painting, masking and painting (with the help of Mr A, if you decide to try this at home the combination of a 3.5yo and acrylic paint isn't necessarily a good one) we had this.

Remove the masking tape...

and play :-)

Mr A was thrilled and the cars seemed pretty pleased with the results as well.  Now to wonder if 23 car parking spaces is enough or if an extension will be required before too long.

Family Time

Around the start of the new year we decided that we needed to make some changes to how things happen around here in order to have more family time.  We had slipped into a pattern of the weekends vanishing in a flurry of getting the groceries and odd jobs and we never felt like we actually 'did' anything.  So far it's been going really well and we all seem a lot better of for it.  Here are a few of the things we've been getting up to....

A picnic at a local Reserve:

A day at the beach:

And yesterday a wander through the Gardens and play at the playground:

Here's hoping we have many more to add to these over the coming weeks :-)

And finally.....

Here are the first finished projects for 2011 :-)

First up is a nappy that I started making approx 6 months ago - oops.  Thought I better finish it before Miss M grew out of it and it took me all of about 10 mins to finish it off.  I do love it though, first minky nappy I've made (well second actually I made another one for a gift at the same time but that one actually got finished) and it's so soft and scrummy.  I just need to find time to make a whole lot more now to turn our boring unisex/boy nappy stash into a scrummy girly stash.

And my first real finished project of 2011 is this shirt for Mr A.  This is a pattern out of an Ottobre magazine (3/2010) and I made a size 92cm with 98cm length (roughly a size 2 with size 3 length) which fits nicely.  I did have a few troubles getting the sleeves in and sitting nicely but I'm not sure if that was an issue with the pattern or the machine operator.  Mr A loves cars so it was a real hit and even got proudly worn to daycare today.  We did have to have some discussion after he chose orange star shaped snaps for it but in the end he decided the plain cream ones would be okay as well :-)

I love the Ottobre mags and will hopefully be making a lot more clothes for both of the kidlets out of them.