Merry Christmas

Okay so I am a bit late but that seems to be the story of my life lately.  I still have a whole lot of other posts half written hat I need to get done as well.
We had a fabulous christmas day here in this part of the world.  The sun was shining and it was very summery so we made the most of the weather and the kids spent much of the day happily playing with their new toys.
Here is our christmas in pictures.

Reindeer snacks

Snacks for Santa

Seems Santa came visiting

Present time

Morning tea time and this Christmas thing is pretty exhausting.

Christmas lunch outside under the gazebo

Fun in the paddling pool

Time to paint up the cool wooden race car from Uncle Allan and co.

Our christmas Day tipple to go with the scrum my roast beef.

Aiden's puzzle ball

I think that shows that a good day was had by all :-)  I hope everyone reading this had a fantastic christmas with family and friends.

FO Karise KAL

Way back in Nov (I told you I was way behind with these posts, I participated in my first ever KAL.  For those of you uninitiated this is a Knit-Along, where a group of people all knit the same pattern in a given time frame.  The one I joined in on was hosted by Lilith of Old Maiden Aunt yarns through her Ravelry group and was a 'small shawl KAL'.  Although I have knit a couple of shawls I had yet to knit one for myself so I took this opportunity to interrupt my rather hectic knitting schedule with a selfish knit that I knew I would actually finish because I had a deadline.
So the rules were pretty simple.  Choose from one of three designated patterns (or do all three if you are really nuts) and go ahead and knit.  There were spot prizes along the way and some prizes at the end to keep everyone motivated, with an extra entry for completing your project in OMA yarn.
I have quite a stash of OMA yarn now but most of it has been in the 'too good to knit' pile.  Yes I really am that crazy but any true yarn addicts will understand exactly what I mean by that.  I mean how tragic would it be if I took one of these prized skeins of fabulous yarn and turned it into a project that just didn't work, I didn't like or it didn't fit!!!!
As indicated by the title the pattern I chose was Karise which is a lovely triangular small shawl and I decided to knit it in OMA cashmere/merino/nylon in color "Seen the Ocean".  This would have to be my all time favorite yarn ever to knit with, it is the smooshiest (yes I'm sure that's a word) and softest yarn ever and therefore is perfect for a shawl that I can snuggle into on a winter day.
I did make a couple of changes to the pattern, I made the central plain stocking stitch part smaller because I have knitting ADD and get easily bored, especially when I am waiting to start lace, then I did some extra repeats of the lace charts to make up the size.  I actually made the overall shawl one lace repeat smaller than the pattern suggested and the final size I have after blocking is perfect for wearing as a scarf :-)
So here is my finished shawl.

And it gets even better because I was the lucky winner of one of the random draws and received this most spectacular skein of merino/silk in Bramble from Lilith.  You know how I said the MCN was my fav yarn ever?  Well I might have to review that once I have knit this baby up :-)

Super Easy Fuge Slice Recipe

Here is the super quick and easy "no-bake" fudge slice recipe Mr A and I used for the teachers gifts this year.

Melt together:
4oz butter
4oz sugar
Tbs cocoa
Cool slightly and stir in a beaten egg.  To this mixture add one packet of crushed plain biscuits (we used wine biscuits but any plain biscuits are fine), then add in any extras that you want.  We did one batch with chopped up dried apricots and one batch with chopped up marshmallows, but you could also add choc chips, sultana, raisins, anything really.
Press into a flat tin and set in the fridge.
DONE

See told you it was easy, enjoy :-)

It's That Time Of Year

The "silly season" and as a result I have been doing everything BUT blogging even though there is so much happening that I have to blog about.  Somehow it is suddenly only a week until christmas day and as usual I am completely disorganized.  In my defense I have had a lot of extra "stuff" going on this year which I may post about later, and even without that there have been christmas parties and birthday parties galore as well as daycare trips and all the usual shopping and organizing (in theory).
I thought I would kick off my catch up posts with our most recent achievement which was the completion today of our gifts for the teacher's at Mr A and Miss M's daycare.  I know that the teacher's are doing their job in looking after my kids three days a week and that we pay for it but in reality I couldn't be happier with the care they get and the opportunities that they are given while there.  As a token of thanks I like to do a wee something for them each year and every year I seem to leave it to the last possible minute and get in a bit of a stressed state over it.  This year, of course, was no different, well actually it was because this year all was finished at about 3pm this afternoon instead of 10pm tonight :-)
Anyway after umming and ahhing for ages over what to make and coming up with many good but completely impractical ideas I decided to keep it simple and also get Mr A to help as much as possible.  So here is what we came up with.  Each teacher will get some fudge slice (we made two batches together, one apricot and one with marshmallows) and a marshmallow snowman, along with a gift tag hand made by Mr A.

Here are some pics of Mr A carefully crafting the gift tags, all I did was supply the materials and give him a list of the teacher's names so he knew how to spell them.
Step one:  Cut out the picture (from left over fabric scraps)

Step Two: Stick it on

Step Three:  Write the names

Here are some pics of the goodies we made.

And the whole lot all ready to go :-)

Mr A tells me he is going to hand them out all by himself tomorrow so we will see how that goes.  Here's hoping for a bit more blogging time between now and christmas to catch up a bit.

Staglands

As everyone knows December comes along and life seems to go into overdrive and get more than just a little crazy.  This usually means our weekends are packed before we even blink but last weekend we found ourselves in the rather unusual situation of having a free weekend.  Woohoo.  Some time ago I got vouchers for cheap entry to Staglands on one of those 'deal a day' websites so we took the opportunity to use it.  We were lucky enough to have fantastic weather too which helped :-)

Staglands is a wildlife reserve that is about 30mins drive from where we live.  The setting is lovely and there are lots of lovely places to have picnics and plenty of space for the kids to run around.  We went late morning and started our visit with a picnic lunch before checking out all the animals.  The children both loved it, Miss M particularly liked pointing out ever duck that she saw (it was her favorite word of the day) and Mr A was very ken to see the horses (until we actually got to them).

Our visit in pictures.

Picnic lunch

Miss M's first foray into photography

A friendly rooster

Mr A walking through a tree

Miss M and Daddy following

Kune Kune piglet

Donkey (Miss M was NOT impressed by how noisy it was)

Swan and rainbow trout

Peahen

Mr A taking a photo of Daddy in the stocks

Miss M having a ride in a railway cart

Mr A finally meeting that horse he was so keen to see

A lovely Clydesdale

Fluffy Chickens

Miss M being a daft girl and loving it.

Communication

As a parent one thing that never fails to astound me is the level of understanding babies have well before they are able to communicate effectively (although I am aware at how effective the crying kind of communication can be from a very young age).  As both Mr A and Miss M were relatively early walkers we were often amazed at how they could follow simple instructions well before they were doing much more verbally than mimicking the odd sound.  They could both understand things like "take that to X" or "It's bath time now" with no problems at all.
Equally as astonishing though is the desire my children have had to communicate with us and therefore feel more 'included' from a very young age.  As an enthusiastic first time mother I read a lot of blogs/books/websites about various aspects and methods of parenting (and promptly ignored most of it).  One thing I read in passing was about baby sign language and having no desire to try and teach my child full sign language I didn't think much of it.  Then I decided that a few signs could be useful so we concentrated on two simple things, a sign for 'more' when in the high chair or eating, and a corresponding sign for 'all done'.  Both the children picked these up very quickly and it has made meal time so much less stressful.  More than this though, I soon noticed that both children over time developed their own 'signs' for things.  I shouldn't have been so surprised, we all 'sign' for things constantly whether it's pointing to something or waving goodbye.  Recently Miss M has added several signs to her wee collection and now as well as the ones above she has her own wee signs for  'hat', 'shoes' and 'bath' and probably others as well that I can't remember off the top of my head.
Maybe buoyed on by this ability to let us know what she wants, or perhaps because she has a big brother that never stops talking, her verbal communication is now coming ahead in leaps and bounds.  Over the last few weeks she has gone from saying 'Mama', 'Dadda', 'Ardin', and 'hiya' (along with a constant baby babble) to adding the following words to her wee vocabulary
-Duck
-Meow
-Oof oof (woof woof)
-Baa (although we often have angry sounding sheep for some reason)
-Mine
-Bye
-Up
-Down
-Shoes
-More (often in conjunction with signing but not always)
-Maya (the cat)
-Mole (the other cat)
-Nana (as in banana)
and last but not least she has a very cute wee sing song collection of notes that is the name of her favorite soft toy.
I think it is really easy to forget just how much babies and toddlers understand just because they are unable to tell us what is going on in those amazing wee heads of theirs.  Miss M is already able to figure out what is about to happen and what needs to be done to make that happen, which is quite a complicated set of thought processes for a wee munchkin.  If we mention going out she will rush around bringing her shoes to be put on, then either find her hat or furiously start signing that she wants it before she heads to the front door and waits (not all that patiently, hehehe).

I guess this is just a set of recent observations really but we are at a really rewarding and exciting stage of Miss M's development right now and I am loving it.  I am of course also a little bit sad that my baby seems to be growing up so quickly, they don't stay little for long.

FO: Stashbusting

Recently I have dusted off the sewing machine again.  There were a couple of reasons for this, the main one being that I needed to whip up a quick baby gift and really didn't have any time to knit anything.  I was trying to decide what to make and realized that one thing we have really appreciated and used this time around were some nice new bibs, everyone knows that second babies end up with mainly stained and well worn bibs.
So I did some stash diving and came up with some fabrics I thought would work, drafted a pattern and voila here is the result.

I did get a little carried away and while I was on the go made a few more for Miss M as well so I could throw out some of the very tired looking old ones.

While I had was in a stash busting mood and spurred on by having some nice new bibs for Miss M I decided that it was also time to refresh the cloth wipes supply.  We have separate stashes of these that we use for faces and for nappy changes and both needed a bit of a boost.  Again all fabrics from stash.

While I had the machine out I felt it was only right to finally finish off a dress I started for Miss M many months ago, luckily it was too big when I cut it out.  It is a simple wee vintage pattern and I am pleased with the result although if I make more I think I would rather have ones that snap on the shoulders rather than this one while opens all the way down the back.  The fabric is some super cute needle cord.

And on Miss M.

Now I am all inspired to sew again and plan summer wardrobes for the kids, if only there were more hours in the day *sigh*.