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

Labour Weekend.

I've been meaning to post this since Monday night, but every time I sit down to do it, I get caught up looking at all the pictures I came home with from our lovey weekend. 

 Is this not the most cutest nephew you have ever seen?

I just love him to bits.

We got to spend a long weekend with him and it was bliss.

He is learning and changing and growing so quickly and there is so much to catch up on each time we see him.  It’s hard to believe it has only been a month and a half since our last visit!

He is just delicious and Mike and I couldn’t get enough of him! 

Neither could my parents.  They love being Ma and Grandad to such a sweet little man.

Seeing as it was a long weekend, we got to stay for an extra day, which meant we got to squeeze in a lot more than we'd normally have time for... 

Like target practice in the backyard.  The first time I've shot a real gun - and no, I don't plan to make a habit of it, but shooting cans in the back yard is fun.  And by the way, my aim is FAB - four out of five cans on my first try!

We went and watched 4x4's... I ended up carrying Levi in the front-pack, so I only snapped two less than average pictures - one of the 4x4s and one of the baby.  Surprise.

Oh, and Mom, Sarah and I managed to measure, cut, piece and sew an entire cot quilt in one day.  One day I tell you.  And ain't it purdy?  Props to Mom for all that sewing!

I came home with just over 600 photos.  Not bad for a two and a half day visit…  Levi and my camera have a love-love relationship.

It was hard to say goodbye, but not that hard – he’s coming to visit us next week.

I.  Can’t.  Wait.

Sixty-One.

There are 61 sleeps until Christmas. 

One of my most favourite things to do at Christmas is something our church does every year.

They go out into the community and find people in need.  They get alongside community groups and find people who are facing illness or going through struggles, people without families – people that are not expecting a special Christmas. 

No names, just details are written on decorations – single mum, six year old boy, grandmother raising grandchildren, elderly man – and hung on big Christmas trees and then then we get to choose a person off the tree, take home a gift box and fill it up with things for that person. 

We don’t know who our gift will be given to, but we know that it will bless them and that at Christmastime; they will know they are loved.  That somebody, a stranger, cared enough about them to fill a box with beautiful things, just for them.   I love that.

This year we chose…

I am so excited to fill our Christmas box with sweet baby girl presents for this precious wee girl’s very first Christmas. 

I heart Christmas.

Distractions, Distractions.

72 sleeps ‘til Christmas and I am not quite where I planned to be with my handmade gifts, I haven’t done much at all. 

Correction: I haven’t done anything at all. 

Oops… I should probably get started, but there are so many other things going on that it’s hard to concentrate!

I have however made a dent in decorations.  Yay!  Decorating the tree is one of my most favourite things to do at Christmas time, I can’t wait :)

Speaking of trees and pretty things on trees… Remember our plum tree and all its blossoms?  Yeah, they’ve gone.  So sad  :(  I loved looking out the kitchen window every morning and seeing them.  I’ll let them off though, because in their place are baby plums. 

HUNDREDS of baby plums.  

 And look what else we found down the back… 

                                    

A peach tree!  It’s full of blossoms and it’s so puurdy!

See how easy distracted I am?  Instead of making gifts I’ve been taking photos... Of trees.  Oh dear.  I must get crafting!

“Happy pretend birthday, Dad. Sorry about the cake…”

My Dad’s birthday was two weeks ago, but we didn’t celebrate it until Monday just been.  My mom surprised him with a trip to Rarotonga and they flew out on the day of his birthday, so we decided to wait until they got back before doing anything for him.

Rach and I decided to stick with the tropical island theme and throw him a Luau Party.  And by party, I don’t mean party.  I mean a family dinner with a theme. 

Rach organised the decorations and I did the cake.  I was planning to do an island cake with waves up the side and a towel and palm tree on the top.  It went pretty much to plan, until about ten minutes before we left the house…

As I was getting the branches out of the hot water cupboard to finish off the palm tree, I accidentally knocked one of the branches and it snapped off.  Then, because the rest were unbalanced, they backwards rolled off my hand and dropped on the floor.  Miraculously, only one branch crumbled off, but it was bad and I was now two branches down.

I tried to mould them back together without any luck.  I tried adding extra fondant.  I tried meringue icing.  And as a last resort I tried hot glue and chopsticks (seems logical, right?), which worked really well on two of the leaves, but the other two wouldn’t have a bar of it, so I was left with a set of two really great stuck-together branches with chopsticks hanging out the sides and two very sad-looking, half-crumbled branches.  Fab.

I decided to leave it and go to Rach’s before I got too stressed about it.  I wasn’t really concerned about the leaves by that point; I was more concerned about the naked palm tree trunk that was looking “a lot like a turd on a stick.”  To be honest, not quite what I was going for.

Rach thought it was hilarious.  We had another go at fixing the leaves, but after realising there was no possible way to make it work, we were left with two options – dismantle one of the plastic pot plants from her doll house, or cut a green flower off one of the leis.  We chose the latter.

When Dad arrived home, I picked up the cake to show him.  He was a tad stunned...  I looked down and realised the flower had fallen off – he was quite relieved when I replaced it and explained what it was meant to be!  Thankfully, the rest of the night went smoothly and I think it’s pretty safe to say the cake tasted much better than it looked…





That awkward moment when Dad blew out his candle… and the top of the palm tree fell off…

(excuse the poor photo!)

Happy birthday, Dad!

I love you lots.

Already?!

I can’t believe it’s the weekend again!  This week flew by - It seems like just a couple of days ago we were driving down to New Plymouth to see this little guy…

We had such a great weekend with him (and his mom and dad).  He is growing so quickly and he has changed so much compared since the last time we saw him.   

He was pretty stoked to see us.

He’s very clever; he can roll over all by himself.  If you give him your fingers, he can pull himself up to stand and if you hold your hand out, he gives you high-fives.  It’s official.  My nephew’s a genius.  And very cute.

It was so good spending time with Sarah.  It’s been far too long and talking on the phone just isn’t the same as hanging out in person.  We had a good catch up and I’m looking forward to the next visit already :)

It’s always hard to leave, but did much better this time (there were no tears in the driveway this time!).  Maybe because I know we’ll see them again next month.  And the month after that.  And the month after that for CHRISTMAS! 

93 sleeps and counting.