O-N-E.

Mike and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary over the weekend. 



(Old fashioned chocolate cake with a salted caramel filler,

complete with the topper from our wedding cake.)



We did the dinner-and-a-movie thing on Saturday night and it was perfect – it felt just like one of our first dates.  Then on Sunday, Mike woke me up with breakfast in bed and a seriously awesome present.  He found me a window frame and sanded and whitewashed it for me.  He was going to make me a blackboard with it, but he knew I would probably have some crafty ideas up my sleeve, so he left it plain so I can make it into whatever I want… He knows me far too well :)

I made Mike a photo book of our first married year - It’s crazy looking back at how much we managed to cram into a year!  I want to make sure we don’t forget any of it.  I wrote in the card that I’d made the book to keep with the traditional gift for first anniversaries, which is paper.  I got a text from him the next day saying that, just FYI, his gift also stuck with tradition, as it was just paper in its pre-paper form.  Haha, I love that guy.

I can’t believe it has already been a whole year since our wedding day.  Time has flown so fast, but the past 12 months have been amazing.  Our first year of marriage has been everything I expected it to be, but so, so much more.  I am more in love with Mike than ever and I’m so excited to see what the next year of our marriage holds.

(The only photo I took of us on our anniversary, oops.)

I love you, babe.  Happy one year (and three days) anniversary xxx

 

A Very Late Christmas Post.

I know, I know.  It’s been forever since I blogged.

I managed to lose my camera cable the day before Christmas.  The day before Christmas, I tell you.  Is that not horrendous timing to lose a camera cable? 

I found it a couple days ago… correction… Mike found it a couple days ago… in the bag he told me to look in when I first lost it... the bag I declined to look in because “I didn’t take it there, so I know it’s not in there.  The last place I saw it was on the stereo.” 


Next time I’ll listen. 

Maybe…

Anyhoo, we had an amazing Christmas and I hope you did, too :)

Christmas kind of snuck up on us this year, but Mike and I were both pretty excited – we set our alarms for 7.00, but were both awake by 6.30, haha!  We had a busy day travelling back and forth between our families, exchanging presents and eating a LOT of food…

Those homemade presents that I promised to share with you are only a month late… or should I say, 11 months early?  But they've arrived none the less.

Moustache mugs…

I seriously love these.  They make great family photos, too – as modelled by my in-laws :)

A painting for my sister, Rach.

I forgot to get pictures of the baking jars I made for my sister, but I did remember to snap the date jar I made for my hubby…

A framed cross stitch for my friend Neva. I might just have to make myself one, too. 

And how cute is the sewing kit that Neva made me?!

And just like that, Christmas is over for another year.  I've been in denial the past couple weeks, but yesterday, I sucked it up and took the decorations off our (somewhat crispy) Christmas tree…   The mantel decorations have come down… and the last few Christmas-remnants around the house will be put away tonight.  Sniff.

Christmas has left the building, people. 

But 2012 is here and it’s shapin’ up to be a good one.

...And there are only 343 sleeps 'til Christmas....

Made with Love.

I’ve done a lot better than I thought I would with my homemade presents.  Everybody has at least one small homemade gift and some have bigger ones as well.  

As much as I would like to show you what I’ve made, you’ll have to be patient - I’m too scared to post them in case any of the recipients see them before Christmas!  But here are some clues…

And here are (some of) the finished products, all wrapped and ready for Christmas morning :)

Yeah baby, those tags are homemade too. 

8 sleeps until I get to give them to everybody!

xx

Decorations Galore.

There are plenty of handmade decorations on our tree this year and I'm so happy with the way they turned out.  Here are some of my favourites...

Twine baubles…

These cost me $0 to make, because I already had everything for them (you can find the tutorial here).  I love how they look on the tree.

Glitter baubles…

These babies are awesome.  And so simple.  Just paint some polystyrene spheres with PVA, cover them in glitter, leave them to dry and repeat.  Once dry, use a pin to attach some ribbon and they’re ready to hang.  The small polystyrene balls were 20c each and the big ones were 30c. The tubes of glitter were $1.00 each from a local craft store and I only used about 1/3 of each tube to make four baubles.

Burlap baubles…

Also free as I already had everything.  When we were cleaning out Granny’s house, I found some burlap placemats in her cupboard.  No-one wanted them, so I claimed them, with the plan to make something special out of them for our house. 

After making the glitter baubles, I had some left over polystyrene balls, so I experimented with covering them in strips of the placemats.  I tried to stick them a few different ways, but the most successful was double-sided tape.  When they were all covered, I used pins to attach ribbon to hang them by.  Voila!

Clay Ornaments...

I love, love, love these.  I spent $11.00 on some air-dry clay and a Christmas music stamp and then used my cookie cutters to make so many ornaments it’s not funny. 

I rolled out the clay, stamped the music on and the used cookie cutters to cut the shapes I wanted.  Then I used a plastic straw to make holes for ribbon and put them in the hot water cupboard to dry.  The next night I experimented with colouring them.  I stuck to acrylic paint, tea and coffee and I’m really happy with the result.

I also spent $7 on a set of foam alphabet stamps, which I used to make a few sets of decorations with faith, hope, love, joy, peace and noel on them (which will be given as gifts).  I used a mixture of coffee and brown acrylic paint to go over the letters and then I quickly dipped them in a bowl of tea and paper towelled them dry.

I searched high and low for a set of mini alphabet stamps in a typewriter-type font, but to no avail.  After I had given up hope of ever finding them, I happened to stumble across an auction on Trade Me for the exact stamps I had been picturing!  I bought them for $18 and they were worth every cent.  I have used them for so many things in the past week, but my first project was more decorations.

I made these two for Mike and I...

These to give away...

And last but not least, I made some special memorial ornaments for our missing grandparents.  I wrapped them up and gave them to Mike and we had a little moment remembering them all before we decorated our tree.  These ones are my favourite.  I made them for all our grandparents that won't be with us this Christmas.

10 sleeps to go xo

Another Weekend in New Plymouth.

On Friday afternoon, we took the familiar trip down to New Plymouth to spend the weekend with my sister, her hubby and our cute nephew.  We’ve always loved staying with them and this time was no different.  

We had early morning wakeup calls…

We went to the Christmas shop…

(I’m sorry, did I say Christmas shop?  I meant HEAVEN.  It was a-mazing!)

We hung out at home…

We played in the backyard…

And look.  See my sister?  Our next niece or nephew is growing away in her tummy.  By the end of May 2012, Mike and I will be Aunty and Uncle to TWO sweet littles and Levi will have his first brother or sister!  I can’t wait :) 

We headed for home on Sunday afternoon and once again, it wasn’t as hard to say goodbye because we knew we’d be seeing them in just 11 days (only 9 days now!).  It’s been a couple of years since we’ve all been in one place on Christmas morning and I’m so looking forward to it!

xox

Oh, Christmas Tree.

It’s up.  And it makes me so happy.  

Here it is… Our very first married Christmas tree.

Christmas has officially landed.

The house smells like pine. 

And gingerbread. 

There is Christmas music playing.

And the Christmas tree is up.

And there are presents under it. 

Carefully chosen (or specially made), then wrapped, ribboned, tagged and placed under the tree where they will stay for another 12 sleeps.

T-W-E-L-V-E S-L-E-E-P-S.

Too exciting for words.

Busybodiedness.

Ok, so it has been over a month since I’ve blogged – how bad is that?  So much for this being a regular thing! Whoops.

Mike and I have had a bit on our plate lately (slash we have been running around like headless chooks!) and all this busybodiedness has kept me from blogging, but I promise I will be back soon with lots of Christmas projects and fun bits to share with you.

Yay, Christmas!  Can’t believe there are only 22 sleeps to go!

xox