{Count Your Many Blessings}

This year I have finally put into place something I wanted to do all last year but never got around to doing. I have a big jar that has a simple sign on it "Count your many blessings" on the front.

Quite simply this jar is in a central place of the home and every time a special moment happens or a prayer is answered, a little note with a brief description goes in the jar. This jar will fill over the next year and then on New Years Eve we will open it as a family and look back on the blessings that have been lavished on our family. It's a great way to keep a positive outlook front and centre and a tangible way to see it grow.

Even if you live by yourself or just with a couple, you could still do it with an individual sized jar next to your bed or something...it's an idea totally adaptable to your circumstance.

Why not try it? It's only half way through January and not too late. You could always add one or two notes to describe any wonderful moments that have happened so far in 2014.


Lauren x

{Baby Shower Gift: Bunting Quilt}

A dear friend of mine is expecting her miracle princess soon. We celebrated her baby shower this past weekend. It was a beautiful afternoon catching up with friends, laughing, enjoying delicious pink food and drink. It was divine and precious. This precious princess already is very well dressed and has so many cute shoes and accessories before she has made her grand entry to the world. My beautiful friend (center) is the one expecting soon. Here she is with me (left) and another of our friends (right) whom decorated the whole pink affair with effortless style as she is known to do!

A special arrival deserves a special gift. I tried my hand at quilting and I had SO much fun. Albeit without some of the tools which would have made it somewhat easier (i.e. a walking foot). Hopefully I can acquire one soon before my second quilt attempt. 

{The Fairy Is Coming : Part 2}

I shared before {here} about how the tooth fairy is coming to our house soon. The infamous tooth is slowly getting more wobbly and so I decided to have a play at the sewing machine and with no real plan, attempt at creating a tooth fairy pillow with NO budget, using only scraps.
I have an ever growing stash of fabric, bits and bobs. So, "shopping the stash" wasn't a challenge. I even had an old pillow insert left over after a cushion cover ripped. I cut it open and used the batting to stuff the little creature. 


Its not my best sewing attempt, I didn't even change my thread over to green to match the fabric, but my 6 year old loves it and it was more just a trial run to put what was in my mind into reality.

There is a cute little mouth sewn into the cute monster that doubles as a pocket for the tooth and money.  
 

I am not 100% happy with it, and think I might try another kind of design just to mix it up. 

Q: How does your house celebrate the tooth fairy? Glass of water? Under the sleeping pillow? In a special place? 


Lauren x 

{Extra Special Twinkle Lights}

So, December is in full swing and I hope your enjoying adding touches of festivity to your house. I have been a bit busy over here working on a special project that I can reveal soon, but can share a simple craft that added something special to our staircase this Christmas. 

Materials:
- 1 length of Christmas lights. 
- 3m of stiff tulle in your choice of colours (I chose red and white). I got mine for about $2 per meter.
- Craft scissors. 

{Preschooler Craft Day}

Yesterday I had one of 'those days' with my three year old. If you have had a three year old, I know you are on the same page right now. Mister mischief just seemed to wake up on the wrong side of the bed and the day followed suit until he crashed at 6:00!

I was determined to not repeat this performance. Once the kids went to bed, I had a cuppa, took a breathe and decided to plan craft day. I visited the only place open after normal hours, my local Kmart.

These kits were $5 each and such great value!!

DIY Cars

The great thing is that there is no glue needed, as they are all adhesive stickers. So, no sticky mess! There is plenty of opportunity to practice fine motor skills. There were a tonne of stickers left over, so just print off some plain car templates and you can keep the fun going.



He was so proud of himself and has been playing with them ever since! We might try this one later today also:
Can definitely recommend to have these on hand for an easy preschoolers craft. I think my 6 year old would even enjoy this!
Lauren x

{Confessions of a Handbag Pt 2}

Sometime ago, I wrote about reclaiming my handbag. Part one {read here}was all about how I had made some zippered pouches to organise my handbag.


The first step was a cute kids fabric that contains my kids stuff that lives in my bag. Now that we are out of baby stages of life, it's mostly 'distraction items' as you can see in part 1 (link above).

Part 2:
I have one large pink bag. This is all MY stuff and I can also fit my phone & iPad in here and therefore can lift this ONE pouch out and change handbags at a moments notice and do so very easily.


The small one usually lives inside the larger bag, to make it easier.


The larger bag has a whole lot of stuff from Panadol, pens, band aids, a notepad, safety pins, usually my iPad, tic tacs etc...
The little red pouch at front centre holds all my shopping trolley tokens. I always keep a spare arm band in there for shopping trips to turn my phone into a toddler taming device :




The smaller bag is my girly bag. General essentials from my moxie tins, lip glosses, elastics, bobby pins, mirror and nail file.


Is your handbag organised? Or does it look like a shamozzled mess of randomness that could possibly produce a science experiment?
Mine was bordering on the latter before these bags...it's great knowing where everything is meant to be and being able to find stuff at a seconds notice.

Lauren x

{A SUPER Birthday for Mr. 3}

I love how when you get married your family automatically enlarges. In my case (thanks to my husbands large family) I not only doubled my family, I probably tripled or quadrupled it! One of his cousins in particular we get along with very well. When their little man turned three recently, I was excited to put a twist on a gift I'd crafted before (read here) to help him celebrate.

I made the cape similar to what I have made several times by now. However, this time I made a mini version for his favorite toy. The little 'L' is for his toy lamb "Lambie". Isn't it just darling! My boys are so jealous that I now have two capes for my boys and two for their teddies on order and in progress - lol! 

Here is my little 'Mr 3'  posing for the camera to show it to you with his little lambie friend.

Reports in from the birthday boy, and this gift was a total hit! Maybe one of these days I might figure out how to be clever and put a pattern on here ;)

Lauren x

{The Powerhouse Pt 2: Love Lace}

{read part one here}

Well, If you are ever taking the kids to the powerhouse and are remotley 'arty', 'crafty' or appreciate such divine things.....SEE THIS EXHIBITION!!! If you know me at all, you will know that this was something I loved and wishes I wasn't starting to feel the sore muscles of the (as I found out later) worst flu! Taking the idea of lace into many mediums and interpretations was refreshing, inspiring, fascinating and just plain flippin' jaw dropping! :)

{The Old Shirt Gets A New Life}

They say that necessity is the mother of invention right?!
Whoever 'they' are ;)

Problem:
Let me preface the problem by saying this. Before I got married I jokingly (ok seriously) said that "if you think your marrying someone who'll iron all your shirts and any other piece of linen lying around, you are sadly mistaken....I hate ironing and probably won't iron. Ever." Thank goodness He was trained well by my mother in law and actually can iron. He just hates it also. I digress.

Back to the problem:
He gets his shirts dry cleaned weekly and I am convinced this adds life to the shirts and our marriage also! But the pile of shirts on the floor was driving me bonkers! I needed a storage solution.

The answer:

{The Final Christmas Touches}

Well, this will be probably be my last post for Christmas and maybe for 2011. It is very busy around here as we prepare the trimmings for a great Christmas. There is a lot of carols playing, gifts being wrapped decorations and crafts being made and recipes being baked. I LOVE Christmas!

Here are a few of the things we have done to help bring the festive season to life in our house.

1. The Advent Calendar:
Ever hear of 'Real Estate Speak'? Terms like renovators delight or fixer-upper??? Well in 'Craft Speak' a labor of love means something that took much more work than I anticipated, was GLAD to finish but happy I did! This advent calendar was one of those type projects. I know I winged it and made it up as I went, but there was something that I had to contemplate or re-do at several stages along the way. I am very happy with how it turned out though.




2. Snow Dough Ornaments I made salt dough using this recipe from taste.com.au and we cut out mini circles using a lid in the kitchen. The boys pressed a thumb print into half of the circles each and then we painted them white and strung them on a ribbon to make a garland for the tree. 3. Gingerbread Houses: With two little boys 2 & 5 years old, making a full blown ginger house mansion complete with kilo's of sugar seemed a feat that would have me cleaning the kitchen for days and adding an extra coffee or 10 to my day. So, because I still wanted to do this activity WITH my boys, I decided to make it a little different and go 2D instead. This was a BIG hit!!!! (gingerbread recipe here) (pattern for house copied from here) (royal icing recipe here) There are a few other crafts like a hand print wreath and some other ornaments along the way.

So, from my house to yours, I wish you a VERY special Christmas and may your 2012 be blessed and fruitful!

Lauren x

{Stuck for a Crafty Idea?}

I was wasting time....er....browsing on pinterest tonight and I stumbled upon a pic that linked to a blog post "Adventures in home-making : the worlds best sewing tutorials in no particular order".


If you are a crafter, love sewing like I do and are seeking inspiration, here are TONNES!!! Not that I need more projects to start as I have many on the drawing board/ back burner.....but I know I will refer to this in the near future!

Enjoy wasting time...I mean dreaming! ;)


Lauren x

{Guest Blogger from PLAID : Pinwheel Tutorial}

Here is a wonderful guest post from the very creative Kerryn from the newly published "Plaid" blog. Her blog is new so pop over to it and have a browse at her very crafty ideas and cute kids too ;) She wrote a fresh never-before-seen tutorial written for you and I have been very excited to share it with you! Here it is:

Thanks Lauren for having me here today at your fantastic blog!

I have been reminded recently of how beautiful and sweet pinwheels are. So, I decided to make a few and see what could be done with them. After seeing how easy they are to make I have decided that they will be the theme for my daughter's birthday party in October.

So, let's get to it...

To make a pinwheel you need the following supplies...
- scrap fabric
- fusible webbing
- iron
- fabric scissors
- hot glue gun or other glue
- bamboo skewer

If you’d like to put your pinwheel onto a card then you’ll also need...

- Card stock

- Stamps, ink, glue, buttons etc

1. Grab your fabric scraps and fusible webbing cut out 5cm squares of all

2. Fuse the webbing onto the wrong side of one of the fabrics, wait for it to cool, peel off the paper backing and fuse it to the wrong side of the second fabric. Trim away any frayed edges and you will be left with this...

3. Cut 4 slits in the square starting from each point on the square. This doesn't have to be too exact, just make sure there is a section in the centre of the square in-tact.

4. Trim away a small section of the corners. This will make sure the centre of your pinwheel is neat.

5. Get your glue gun and place a dot of glue in the centre. Take one of the trimmed corners and glue to the centre of the square. Repeat this for all 4 trimmed corners using a dab of glue each time.

6. Cut off a section of the bamboo skewer and glue it to the back of the pinwheel. You can finish the pinwheel off with a cute button.

7. Now get some matching cardstock out and embelish / cut / stamp away until your happy, then glue the pinwheel on. I have used tombow craft glue to attach the pinwheel.

Ta Da!!! One very cute pinwheel card...

Now go forth and make pinwheels :)

Thanks again Lauren for having me here today!

Your welcome Kerryn. Thanks for sharing that gorgeus pinwheel tutorial! I am definintley going to try some soon ;)

{Crafty Supplies}

I thought I would take a moment to share a few of my favourite online crafty suppliers. There are many i visit, but one of my favourites at the moment is "Craftumi" which I found on madeit.com.au. This place is an Aussie craft shop that never closes (that could be very dangerous lol).


The other one I love is the infamous 'ETSY'. I love buying handmade, vintage items on there, but there is a whole section dedicated to supplies. Just select supplies in the drop down menu at the top of the page (third option) and search away. With the Aussie Dollar being so strong, I ordered some supplies today and it was actually cheaper than listed in the US dollars (woooo-hooo! Gotta love a bargain).

I hope you find some great things online and I would ove to hear from my other crafty friends if you have a place as a 'go-to' for supplies.

Enjoy;
Lauren x

{Bags with a difference}

As a part of my blog - a weakness of mine is following and reading what other bloggers have to say. I have found many fascinating blogs latley - one of which is Naomi's blog "Seven Cherubs" (named after her 7, yes 7, kids! I think she deserves a medal for that alone. Apart from her wonderful happy inspiration, I found a post recently that moved me.
She posted on twitter about a giveaway which I just had to check out. And this one stopped me in my tracks.

It was for a bag from a non-profit company called "Biddy Bags". This is an Australian buisness (love that) making bags like nothing I've ever seen before.
The concept is that in Redcliffe QLD, mature aged Australian women create handmade products for women. They sell them on the website and when you receive an order, you also recieve the story of its maker. How amazing is that!!!
You get to benefit from women who have spent many years perfecting handmade crafting skills, support them (they recieve over half the profit) and help keep these art forms alive! It is a great initiative and as they say "Biddy Bags is a social and a fashion statement". Find out about their cause and meet some of the beautiful, wise and creative Australian women who create for them.


So, go over to their website and check them out, I know I have an order coming soon!
Enjoy;
Lauren X

{A Nap Time Sewing Project} Handbag for a princess

My little Mr 5 has a party to go to on Sunday for a little girl whom he quite likes and they go to prep school together. Actually they first met when they were in Mum's group at 6 week old's and they re-met this year.

So, I had some fabric laying around and wanted to make her something special. I have been looking for a nice handbag pattern for ages and when I found this one, I just knew it would turn the fabric into a perfect gift for his little 'girl' friend.

I first stumbled on Made By Rae when she started a theme on her blog called "Celebrate the Boy"....as a sometimes crafty Mum of two boys, I was very interested! So I printed off her pattern for this Buttercup Bag and started cutting. It was a very easy pattern to follow and the steps and diagrams make this very easy! Here are some photos of the finished project. I also bought some more fabric today so I can re-make it for me ;)





Enjoy;
Lauren x

{Build-a-Cubby Kit} A great gift idea for "mini men"

I love giving my children toys and experiences that teach them but also develop their imagination. In my humble opinion, too many toys these days hand the experience to them on a 'silver platter' and don't allow them to imagine, create, change and experiment. Thats's why I love things like blocks and lego.

So when Mr. 4 was invited to a birthday party for a friend at prep I thought a bit outside the box. I remeber seeing something simailar ages ago online somewhere (that sparked the initial idea) but it was so long ago and I have no idea where I found it. When I track it down, I will definitley give credit ;)

I put together a very basic draw string bag in a blue fabric from my stash to put it all in and attached this tag:



Here are some pictures of what I used to create the kit:









Enjoy;
Lauren x

{A gorgeous car mat for my gorgeous nephew}

As a mum of two boys, my handbag is often filled with extra's for them like dummys, drink bottles, crayons and of course CARS. My boys are OB-SESSED with cars!!!

So, when I saw some of these (in varying styles) online in my blog roll, they very quickly made it to my "to-do list" of projects. So, a month or so ago I started to put together something and decided to make it for my nephews 3rd birthday.
It is baisically a small quilt FULL of activity and I was so happy with how it turned out. I think I am going to make one for my little man's 2nd birthday in June too. The things that made this car mat so cool for me was the 'parking garage storage' for the cars and the portability of it, making it really easy to pop in the handbag and take anywhere. My boys just loved the ducky's and the petrol pump (the shoelace pump made it functional and a big hit).

A fun project and I can't wait to do it again!!!!

Lauren x

{Mr Magorium and My Bow Tie Boy}

I just love watching children play and imagine and it's so sad that we loose this as we get older. Recently we had family movie night and watched Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium whichh captivated our 4 year old beyond belief. He loved watching the craziness of the toys and the outfits (Eddie's hats and Mr Magoriums suits in particular).
This may have influenced him to put together his outfit for church last Sunday which I am kicking myself I didn't get a picture of. He chose to wear (no matter how I hinted otherwise) thongs, jean shorts his white button up and collared shirt and black bow-tie from his Aunty and Uncles wedding last October. ALL TOGETHER! So gorgeous. So, I found some fabric in my stash that Mr Magorium would swoon over and fashioned a Bow Tie for my boy. I had no idea how to start so I looked at his wedding one and just kinda guessed (helpful i know ;)

The basic idea of supplies was:
*2x large rectangles (mine measured approx 16cm x 13.5cm)
*2x small rectangles (mine measured approx 8.5cm x 11cm)
[NOTE: I would also have cut fusable interfacing if I had the right thickness on hand....it would have made finished product much sturdier]
*1x long piece of the same fabric about 7.5cm x 15.5cm to create the tube around the center of the bow tie (in hindsight this made almost enough for two so length could be much shorter even about half)
*1x length of thick sturdy elastic with enough length to fit around neck of your child


Method (without interfacing):
1. Place the same size rectangles right sides together and sew around with 1/4" seam leaving a few cms on the boarder to turn inside out.
2. Repeat with other rectangles.


3. Turn them out and top stich around the edge to finish nicely
4. Using your long piece, fold in half length ways right side together. Sew a 1/4" seam along the edge making sure to backstitch along both ends (this helps give seam strength when turning out on itself.

5. Place the small rectangle on top of the large one and center it. Run a little stitch a few times back and forwards in the middle to secure them together.

6. With the 'tubed center piece' place it around both rectangles to 'mask' the finish product and measure how much you need.

7. Sew it into a loop and cut off excess and turn inside out so seam is on inside (you'll have to take care making sure your seams match as closley as possible here for a good finish)
8. Tightly roll rectangles together and feed through the 'tubed centre piece' and then 'fluff out' (for lack of a better term) to reveal the desired look.
9. Using your measured elastic, thread through the tube and then stitch over the ends followed by a reverse stitch (I did this twice as I wanted to make sure it was sturdy).


10. Move the seam on the elastic so it's under the center piece to make the look more finished.




TADA!!! Told you it was easy. When I handed it to him he just loved it, but chose a fabric off the shelf and said "now Mum we need a bag to keep it in because this a very special bow tie". So with his chosen fabric I knocked up a quick carry bag for him to keep his tie in. Maybe he is catching the sewing bug like I have - hahaha!

This is such an easy project and you only need basic sewing skills. I just love the look of this I might just do one for me as a headband with some fabric a little more girly *ideas flooding head as I type* lol ;)

Enjoy;
Lauren x