Sewing Fun

Today I have had great fun with a craft/sewing product that I've never used or even seen before. It is iron on vinyl that makes your fabric 'water proof'. I was making a bag with beautiful fabric and thought it would be good if you could wipe it out if there was a spill of some kind inside and the fabric didn't get stained. So after a little research I discovered this iron on vinyl at Autumn Threads. It is so simple to use, just peel off the paper, put the sticky side on the fabric, lay the paper back over the vinyl and iron. Then you can sew it just like normal fabric.

I can already think of so many wonderful things I could make with this product. Beautiful baby bibs, bags, fun kids aprons, placemats, the list just keeps going. I am looking forward to experimenting with it more, but so far I'm super impressed.

I also received my most recent fabric shopping parcel in the post today. I finally bought some fabric I've been drooling over from Funky Fabrics. I am super impressed with this shop. I put the order in on Monday and received it on Wednesday. Now that is quick!! And when one of the fabrics wasn't quite right, they emailed back within 2 hours of my enquiry offering new fabric and I get to keep the one that wasn't right. I would recommend Funky Fabrics to everyone. It is a family based Brisbane company and they are just wonderful to deal with. I'll be going back.

Now check out those funky fabrics. How cute are those owls!!
I can't wait to make some fun clothes for my boys with those.

Slowing Down

I am absolutely not good at slowing down. I always have projects, things I want to do or get done. Cooking, sewing, trying to get through my 'handmade' christmas list, scrapbooking, blogging etc. However, at present I am in a bit of conflict with my body. My body is very much telling me to slow down but my head still thinks I can do all these things.
As you can see, my body is going to win this one for a while.



So this space may become quiet for the next few weeks as we adjust to this little one joining us.
I'm sure there will be photo updates as soon as possible but I'm not making any promises for now.
I am going to try and rest a little!
(as much as possible with a 3 & 1 year old in the house)

** SLEEP IN **

It has worked - the boys both slept till 6:40 this morning. Now that is just unheard of in our house so I am very excited. After months of 5am or there abouts I finally decided to remove the daytime sleep for Isaiah and after a few days for his body clock to get sorted out it worked. I am truly amazed how 'not hard' it actually was. I had built it up in my head to a huge challenge to keep him awake during the day and how much hard work evening routines would be because he would be so tired - but you know what - that was all just in my head. He stayed awake no worries and the evenings were just the same as normal, no melt-downs or major issues. Hooray for my big boy. I guess that shows me just how ready he was.

That fact that Isaiah slept in also meant that Jai slept until 6:40 as well, instead of being woken up by his brother. (The main downside to sharing a bedroom). So today we start another transition - moving Jai to one daytime sleep instead of two. He did really well today and made it till 11:30 till he nearly fell asleep eating his lunch, very amusing for me to watch.

Somewhere under that wrap is Jai, sound asleep.


My boys are both growing up - yes, it does seem too fast
but it also means we can do so many more things that we used to.

Transitions

There are so many transitions about to happen in our house and a few I have been trying to resist. Some I can't stop - like a new baby coming very soon but others I have a choice. And I must say for the last few weeks I have been rather selfish about the choice I have been making. It seems it is time for Isaiah to lose his daytime sleep. He has been waking up really early in the morning and having more trouble going to sleep at night. But he always has great daytime sleeps - no fighting it, just straight to sleep and I would have to wake him after 1.5hrs. But I can see that perhaps if we lose this it might mean better night times and maybe, just maybe a sleep in past 5am. But I use that sleep time for things for ME, sewing , resting and blogging. I was really resisting this change because I don't want to spend the time training him in quiet time, I just want to have time to myself.

Well, I've decided that this isn't really a very good idea and I actually need to do what is best for my kids and the whole family. So from now on this bed will look like this all day - no big boy sleeping in there during the day anymore.

And we will be doing some of this for quiet time. After at least 20mins quiet reading in our reading corner.

Do you have quiet time at your place?? I'd love to hear what activities you use to keep your kids entertained and quiet?

Farm life learning

Today we learned a wonderful lesson about farm life. We were down the paddock watching the lateral move irrigator go cross a channel for the first time on some bridges that the boys made. Hoping for no excitment really - we didn't want to see it fall in the channel but wanted to be there just in case something interesting happened. Well, no - it didn't fall in. Yay for strong bridges.

But our lesson came just after this when Isaiah was allowed to go over near the channel to look and see if all the wheels were off the bridges. He started walking over but stopped and came back to me and said 'there's a snake mummy'. I am super excited about this because this is the first time he has seen one before me and he did just what I've always told him to do. "Stop, walk and find mum". Hooray for training in advance. It was a rather large brown (poisonous) snake.

Later on when we were driving around one of our dams we saw another black one swimming in the water. This is one downside of the warmer weather but it is part of our life now and I'm so happy with how well Isaiah did when he saw his first one.

Saving the Jumble

A jumble is a biscuit that Scott's grandma used to make all the time. Apparently there were always jumbles in a tin in the freezer and you were allowed to get two out for afternoon tea. However, Grandma is no longer with us and so there were jumbles no more.

After Scott mentioning these jumbles again recently, I decided to try and see if I could replicate them for him. Now I think I should mention that I have never seen or tasted a jumble so I have no idea what I am actually aiming for.

So I did an internet search, as one does when trying to find something these days, but the recipe I found there was deemed to be no where near it. So we made phone calls to relatives to see if anyone had the recipe - fortunately, one aunt did. So we were on our way.

The next problem was the shape of these biscuits. Apparently they were a log shape with little bumps along the length of the biscuit. This was achieved using a biscuit pusher. But nobody really remembered what Grandma's looked like. And where would we find something like that now days.

My father-in-law found this at a collectors fair - he is so good at finding treasures for me!

Anyway after trying a couple of the inserts, we discovered that this is not what Grandma used. But a very cool vintage kitchen tool all the same. So time for more research. I found this next one on ebay with a description stating they didn't know what it was, perhaps for making biscuits. It turned out to be just perfect.

Well, now we have the pusher and the recipe and here is the end result. Biscuits just like grandma made.

We have saved the jumble!! Perhaps we should all think about what special things the older people in our lives make and ask them for the recipe or patterns now before it is too late.

Addition of swings

A couple of weekends ago we had the addition of swings to our fort. One is a tyre swing and the other a 'log' swing made from a log we found when we were camping awhile ago. This log swing is great for spinning - Isaiah is really good at it. Jai is still working out how to balance on a round seat!

They love sharing the tyre swing together.

There are more additions to come - a walkway across the top of the swings with a steering wheel, binoculars and so much more. Everytime I go to a park or playground I come home with another idea. But you know what, the kids don't even know about what's to come and they love playing on it, just how it is.

This reminds me of something so important.



Live in the present moment - not what's to come.

Fresh Eggs

This last week we had some very special friends visiting - so not much blogging happened - sorry about my absence.

Let me share a little of what we got up to while they were here.

One afternoon we decided to have coleslaw for dinner, but alas we had no mayo. No worries, we'll make some. But this requires room temperature eggs and all mine are kept in the fridge.

What to do? What to do?

That's right, go over to the chook yard and check for fresh 'room temperature' eggs.

And here we have the results.

And the mayo and salad were delicious.

Catching up

I am currently working on my digital scrapbook for last year (trying to catch up) - I haven't even started one for this year yet! I must say I haven't been very inspired for the last few month, but thanks to a friend's encouragement I have rediscovered the enjoyment I get from preserving past memories. It takes me back to the time/day when the event happened and I relive it again. Over the last couple of days - five mins here and there - I have done this double page. A camping trip to El Questro with Scott's parents. Do you see how small Jai was?? Just 6 weeks old. I can't believe that soon there will be another one that small!

I will keep sharing more as I do them - who knows when that will be!

Changing View

This is the view from the front of my house - from the deck and out the kitchen window. How it has changed over the past few months, from cold winter frost through to a beautiful developing crop. I am really enjoying watching it change each day. I'll keep showing you my view over the next few weeks as it will change lots more yet.