Advent Blog Along #8

What I am creating: 

This is to go into the teacher's gift bags. I am so pleased I had enough for me!! It has some of my beautiful DoTerra peppermint essential oil and along with the subtle scent of coconut - and after scrubbing my skin I can't decide whether I want to eat myself or bury my face in my baby soft skin. This stuff is awesome and I shall be making more of this!!

I embroidered a Christmas Tree ornament and I have hung it on the outside of the bag. I have red and gold ones as well.

All this creating is making a right mess - I'm drowning at my desk. Tomorrow after all the creating is done, I am going to give everything a good tidy up and have my hub ready for the next round of creating.

What I am doing:
Poor Mop injured her ankle yesterday so was forced to stay home today and rest it - under protest!! The rest of her classmates were going to have a busy day filled with lots of tearing around and water games. So today was a fairly quiet one.
Today's Advent Activity was to paint wooden angels.

They didn't quite get enough time to finish them before dinner - so I will show you the finished product tomorrow.

What I am listening to:

Advent Blog Along #3

What I am creating:

Colouring-in... I was in a bit of a dark mood when I started this, but by the time I had finished I felt a lot better. I can tell my mood by the colours I chose LOL!

I pulled out the old hexie quilt top again with the aim to finish this top and ready for hand quilting before I start my next scrap project with my quilting group in February. 

What I am listening to:



(This song always reminds me of my Pops (who passed away 13 years ago. I always miss him at Christmas time.)

What I am doing:

Getting excited because it's getting closer and closer!!

Choosing fabric for another present to make. I am pleased to say this came from my stash, so stash slashing is still happening!

And finally..... drum roll please......

The girls finished the-craft-project-from-hell.

They are pleased with it and have proudly hung it in their rooms.

It's been a busy day and I am looking forward to a quiet evening. 

Advent Blog Along #2

And on this second day of Advent, this is what my day looked like.....

What I am listening to:



What I am creating:

What I am doing:
Remember those Advent Activities?? Well those woolen wreaths?? Let's just say I am having less than devotional thoughts about my mother in law at this moment. WHO thought that this would be a great craft for kids is beyond me!! So tomorrow I am bringing out my glue gun and going to stick the hell out of the stupid thing, get it finished and move onto much cooler crafts that don't require a trip to the psyche ward afterwards!!! *pant pant*

I hereby make this declaration: Any crafts that require my constant input will be tossed promptly in the bin. There is no joy in it for me, or the kids.

But here is EJ's project - all finished and he is proud as punch with it.

It's that time of year! {Advent Blog Along #1}

It's Advent Blog Along time! My most favouritest time to blog!

If you haven't joined in on this fun time, give it a go. You get to blog whatever you are doing during advent and it's loads of fun. If you are joining - let our lovely host over at Carrose Creations know.

I'm going to do Advent Blog along a little different this year. My format won't be it's usual wordy way - instead it will be short, sharp and shiny and in list format. Getting my listography on!

So on the first day of Advent, this is what my day looked like:

What I am creating

(colouring-in)

What I am listening to

What I am doing

(this is Advent Angel, who tells the kids what their special Advent-activity is for the day)

We started off using a wreath kit that MIL sent the kids to do.

So it started out alright.....

But then this happened.......

After an hour of trying to untangle cheap, nasty horrible yarn, I threw it in the bin in a fit of frustration and got some of my own yarn from my stash out for the girls to use tomorrow.

The boy faired better, and made a Christmas countdown craft. He did very well and was able to do it all on his own. 

Tomorrow hopefully I will be able to show you the finished product, when they finish the project.

School holiday crafting

Mum? Can you teach me to crochet?

I look at my 7 year old's big blue eyes. I hesitate.... She's only seven. It took me a whole afternoon to learn just one thing. She would get frustrated with her lack of process and give up. She held up a ball of yarn from her craft box eagerly. "I could make Bunny a scarf!"

I nodded, "I can teach you" and I head to my craft room to find a hook for her to use. I show her the basics: tension, how to hold the yarn, how to hold the hook and how to do a chain. 10 minutes later she is deftly and skillfully chaining.... alone.

How does she pick things up so darn fast!!???

The next day she was doing trebles like a pro. In fact they were so good, I couldn't tell the difference between mine and hers!

Advent Activity with the kids (Advent Blog Along #10)

Last year I started the tradition of doing Advent Activities with the kids - this year we have attempted to do them but have found ourselves swamped with other things. Last week sometime we started cutting up strips of old scrapbooking paper to make paper chains.

Here they all are working hard... while the eldest who generally hates looking at the camera decides that THIS is one way that she will!

Let's do a funny photo Mummy!! Ok then on the left we have baby girl doing a "pick-your-nose" pose. In the middle we have dear son doing a Quasimodo/Chucky face. And then front and center we have big girl attempting to cut her nose off... with the wrong end of the scissors. Yes. My children are VERY awesome and you should be VERY jealous! :P

Here are the results of sticking and chaining for most of the afternoon. The toy room is starting to look festive, but I think we can do better. That will be our next crafty advent activity. Right after we get back from Melbourne for this wedding.

Tomorrow's post will be the last until Wednesday because I will be too busy being a bridesmaid and not doing anything remotely Christmassy!

Frozen Party? Sure... why not?

My littlest is among the millions of Frozen fans out there. She LOVES it. This year she asked for a Frozen themed birthday party. Sure.. why not?

The morning of the party arrived... and it was storming! It was supposed to be an outside party!! Common storm! Pass already! But as the morning progressed, more and more storms developed. Then we had a doozy of a storm and the call was made to move it inside.

I made up cute little party bags

The birthday girl

Anna & Elsa's Chocolate fountain was VERY popular!

We had Frozen/Snow themed food. This was just one of them.

My A-MAZE-ING husband made a snowflake shape with cupcakes. (Baked & decorated by him - I suck at baking!)

We made snowflakes out of paddle pop sticks and decorated them with glitter and gems.

We played pin the nose on Olaf. 

We also played Blindfolded Snow Shoveling - which is a hilarious game!

Here are the party girls all having a wonderful time!

My beautiful Milly with her gorgeous cake.

And this? Biggest mistake I have ever made in parties - but it was the most fun for the girls. We made snow. They played with it for ages, but it made them and all the floors in my house messy because it was tracked EVERYWHERE!!

We did other stuff, but I don't want to have a mega load of photos and bore you to tears with it. My darling girl ended the day happily and as I was tucking her in that night she sleepily said "Mum, that was the best party EVER! In the whole wide world!" That made my tired feet and crazy week worth it. I also overheard the girls tell Milly "This is the best party EVER!!!" Yep... my head is swollen. :)

This is the house the kids built (Advent Blog Along #22}

A while ago when we were in IKEA we found these cute little gingerbread house kits. So we bought them for Advent Activities. Here is how it went down. Forgive the blurs, but it's kinda difficult to balance on one leg while taking photos.


EJ building his house.

Milly's finished product.

The other side of Milly's house.

Santa will have a hard time getting down EJ's chimneys! They are full of lollies!

Mop's house. 

Kids Christmas creating {Advent Blog-Along #15}

What does 3 lovely, creative children + Glue + Paint + glitter paint + paddle pop sticks?

Well here are the the lovely, creative children....

and here is what you get........

Snowflakes made by Milly

A Christmas tree and Reindeer made by EJ

And a HUGE snowflake by Mop.