Day to Day

Amy Butler pattern giveaway - oval patchy pillow

I received two of the most beautiful new Amy Butler patterns in my mail box today. *Drool*

Since we're heading into the festive season I thought it would be nice to have another giveaway for my lovely blog readers, as a little thank you for popping in and visiting me during the year.

To win the Oval Patchy Pillow pattern leave me a comment on this post and tell me what you want for Christmas (any cute links greatly appreciated, because I can't think of anything that I'd like this year).

I'll leave comments open until this Friday (3rd December) and announce the winner over the weekend.  Entry is open world wide.  

**COMMENTS are now closed for this give away**

Good luck xoxoxo

7 mice & a hedgehog.

I had a big sewing afternoon today, making the cutest hedgehog you've ever seen and half a dozen little felted mice.

I used some felted jumpers from my stash and the pattern is from HERE. It was a super easy pattern with very clear instructions. I wanted the mice to have a Christmassy feel to them, so I used an old winter/Christmas jumper that I had felted earlier in the year.  I'm giving one each to my 'Little Stitchers' group on our final class this year, with each child's name written on a tag and tied onto a tail.  I'm hoping they'll be well received and a cute break up present for each of them.

While I stitched, Bella worked on a secret santa present for her sweet friend and then set to work making her own mouse using the new pattern.  Meet 'Lemon' :

It was a fun afternoon of stitching.  I need to start working on some Christmas decorations this week, perhaps something from 'Fa La La La' Felt book or maybe THESE Christmas pins. Love, love.

P.S. Don't mind the man's vest that Bella is wearing in the photo above - it's one that I felted a while ago and she has refused to take it off all day.  

Make It Perfect - giveaway winner

Thank you very much to everybody that entered the book giveaway.

The winner is Jodie!  Which Jodie I hear you ask?  Here is Jodie's comment:

WOW! how fun is that capelet!!! You could make it waterproof by using the laminated fabric you bought for your tablecloth Mel. :) As for me, I plan on sewing for my gorgeous new and first niece. DD was never into to skirts and dresses so I plan on making some cutsie things for the newest member of our family....

Jodie, if you could please email me your mailing address (goodsellmx@internode.on.net) I will arrange to have your copy of the book mailed out to you.  Happy sewing!

I'll be back later tonight to share my sewing from today. xox

 

Handmade Christmas

We put up the Christmas tree today! I know it's supposed to go up on or after December 1st, but we were feeling festive - plus Bella has been begging all week to put it up early.

A couple of weeks ago Bella and I started making pompoms to decorate the tree. I decided that we were leaving all the store bought decorations in the cupboard and just doing handmade on the tree this year.  We made nearly 100 pompoms = crazy.

It was a struggle to get them all done, especially towards the end when we hit the 60 or so 'pompom' mark, but I'm so glad we carried on.  This is my dream tree, love it - and I love it so much that I think I'll give away all my pretty baubles and just keep adding extra pompoms and handmade goodness every year.

{Stacked fabric tree tutorial HERE}

All of the handmade decorations have either been made by myself, my Mum (the cute knitted stockings - I'd love more of these Mum!!), my mother-in-law or the kids.

{My felt reindeer tutorial is HERE}

{My salt dough decoration tutorial is HERE + info on the beaded tree HERE}

{Make your own clothespin angel HERE}

There's also our handmade nativity set in our lounge room. I know I share photos of this every single Christmas, but it's one of my favourite things:

I just need to add presents under the tree, Bella and James' Christmas elves and some Christmas tinsel that Bella is crocheting (thanks for the lovely idea, Emily!!).

Thanks for stopping by. I will announce the book winner tomorrow. xoxo

Help Santa Find a Home

{sponsored by Nuffnang}

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I’m thinking if Santa didn’t live in the North Pole anymore (perhaps when he retires one day and a new Santa takes over) that he’d be heading to the hills to live in a quaint little stone cottage.  Inside the house would be simple and cute – of course Mrs Claus would be in charge of decorating - and it would have some sweet features like this: 

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A swinging pod chair, perhaps with a Christmas decoration to replace the blue butterfly, yes?

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A cosy corner to snuggle in - Christmas magazines and books would be piled high for easy  reading.

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The kitchen cupboards would be stocked high with delicious sweets, just in case unexpected guests drop by.

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There’d be a black board in the living space, so Mr & Mrs Claus could write nice love notes to each other.

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And there would be lots of kitchen bench space inside, because Mrs Claus would always be baking pretty cupcakes like these.

Now, I have another really fab competition to share with you all today!  Over at http://www.realestateVIEW.com.au/SantaPromotion there’s an awesome new competition running - you can win one of x5 $500 Myer Giftcards (open to Australian residents only) - just in time for Christmas.

To enter go HERE. RealestateVIEW.com.au are releasing clues daily via their Facebook and Twitter accounts.  All you need to do is use the clues to search the realestateVIEW.com.au website for properties that meet Santa’s house criteria.

When you think you have found the property that matches Santa’s wish list, submit your entry on the website to win - enter daily to increase your chances of winning :)  

Goodluck! 

A little bit of weekend cooking

We did some cooking on the weekend just gone, I made some peanut butter cookies and Bella baked a cake.  The peanut butter cookies were so, so good!!  I used THIS recipe and they had the loveliest flavour.  I'll definitely be baking these again soon.

I love the concentration in the photo above, with the tongue poking out.  That icing is orange in colour, because that's Bella's favourite colour at the moment!

I loved reading all of your Christmas book suggestions too and have written down a few of them to find for our stash, so thanks. xox

Get More Value - Week 3

{Sponsored by Kia & Nuffnang}

Hooray! We're up to the third week of my Get More Value posts.

Today I'm going to talk to you about my budget Christmas wrapping this year, making my gifts look pretty under the tree, without the full blown cost of buying expensive trims & paper.  I admit, I've well and truly blown my Christmas wrapping budget in past years - adding purchased decorations and expensive ribbon to my parcels. I love making presents look pretty, but this year I'm making them all matchy-matchy with some simple and inexpensive ideas - definitely no purchasing of the most expensive paper I can find!!

The first thing I did was search for printable gift tags. Oh my, there are so many nice ones to choose from! I settled on THESE ones from Inside A Black Apple:

I bought a huge white sheet of cardboard ($1-10) from the newsagency and cut it down into A4 sheets to pop through my printer, cutting out the tags individually:

Then I made up a stack of pom-poms, wrapped each gift in brown paper and used yarn to tie up the present.  I bought the yarn for a couple of dollars (it's acrylic) and used my pom-pom maker to create the pom-poms.  If you don't have a maker, you can use my tutorial HERE to create some by hand - oh goodness, Bella looks so little in that tutorial.

Ta-da! You have cute+affordable Christmas wrapping :)

This post was sponsored by KIA quality new cars. To celebrate the great value of KIA's new Cerato Hatch, a website has been launched so you and your family can get some great value offers and deals. Check out my favourite deal for this week: 

• Buy a Xmas hamper from Hampers Only valued at $95 + and receive a FREE bottle of Chandon Rose at www.getmorevalue.com.au 

Our Christmas reading list

Long term readers of my blog would know about our December/Christmas reading pile of books, but for new readers (hello!) every December we have a stack of Christmas books that we pull out of storage to read.  We read a new one every day during the month and it's a really fabulous tradition that we look forward to every year.  These are all books that I've bought over time, usually three or four every year, but these last couple of years I've just bought one or two during the festive season as our stash is quite large now.

Today I thought I'd share our top ten books from the stash with you:

1.  Santa's Reindeer is by far our all time favourite Christmas book.  We've had this book for a few years now and it's full of all sorts of information about Santa's Reindeers.  It's not a book that you'd get through in one sitting, because there's so much to read - we usually read a few pages a night until we're done.

2.  Little Rabbit's Christmas is a beautifully written and illustrated story about a little rabbit who doesn't particularly like sharing his new Christmas sledge with his friends.  He decides to go and ride it all by himself - only it breaks - so all of his friends pitch in and help him mend it.  Then, they all play together for the rest of the day on the sledge.

3.  Twenty-five December Lane is my favourite Christmas book in our stash.  It's just the most delightful story of a little girl who steps into a magical toyshop one Christmas eve.  The illustrations are lovely too.

4.  Russell's Christmas Magic is a fun story about Russell the sheep coming to the rescue when Santa is stranded with a broken sleigh.

5. Aussie Jingle Bells is another fun book. It comes with a music CD and we like to sing along, reading the words in the book to the tune of Jingle Bells.

6. An Aussie Night Before Christmas [Board book] is all about Christmas, Australian style.  There are kangaroos pulling Santa's sleigh (I mean, car), sweet possums asleep in the tree and all sorts of Aussie presents in Santa's sack.

7. Santa's Aussie Holiday. Another Aussie story about Santa going on holiday and exploring the country.

8.  Dear Father Christmas.  A gorgeous little book with real letters from Father Christmas.

9.  The Night Before Christmas (Mr Men S.)- I used to love Mr Men stories when I was a little girl, so I was pretty excited to discover that there is a series of Christmas ones available.  We have 4 of these so far from the series - The Night Before Christmas (Mr Men S.), Little Miss Christmas, Mr. Men: A Christmas Carol and Mr. Christmas (Sparkly Mr. Men Stories).  

10.  Olive the Other Reindeer - Okay, we don't actually have this book in our Christmas book pile, but I'm adding it this year!! I've seen it around the net and it looks just gorgeous.  Plus, we don't have any Christmas pop up books in our collection yet :)

Do you have a favourite Christmas book that's not on my list? Please let me know if you do, because I'm always on the look out for new books.

Plus, don't forget to enter the Make It Perfect book giveaway HERE.

'Make It Perfect' book giveaway

A couple of weeks ago I received a lovely new book in the mail to review, Make It Perfect by Toni Coward.  Goodness, there are some totally gorgeous projects inside, including all the full sized patterns to complete each project with.

Here are a couple of projects (above) from the book, but there are so many more cute things to sew - lots of garments for children aged 6 months to 5 years and some really delightful women's clothes too. I actually had the slippers all cut out ready to go but Bella took one look at the sweet capelet inside the book and begged me to sew it for her.  She calls it her 'explorer cape' and it's just perfect for backyard exploring! 

Ofcourse the pattern for the capelet only went up to a size 5 child, but I had a go at following the lines and enlarging the design to suit a 9 year old and thank goodness, it worked!  The instructions were lovely and clear to follow too, which is always a big plus when you're sewing something for the first time.

The capelet had the sweetest fabric tab to keep it closed, but I exchanged that for an elastic loop - mainly because I was feeling lazy and my little explorer was waiting impatiently for her cape to be finished.

The scallop at the sides really makes the cape just that little bit extra special, don't you think?

It's fully reversible too.  Bella chose the fabric - it's Heather Bailey, Nicey Jane and she made the matching glasses!!  I promise it does sit nice and straight - it's just that she had her hands tucked up inside somewhere when I snapped this photo.

See, I told you it was perfect for exploring:

'Make It Perfect' goes on sale this week, 22nd November.  You can pre order a signed copy HERE.

Today though, I have a fabulous giveaway for you! Penguin Books are generously giving away a copy of Toni's new book, Make It Perfect.  Leave a comment on this post to enter, telling me what you're planning to sew this season!  

The giveaway will be open until this coming Friday (26th November).  It's a really fabulous sewing book, so goodluck!!

**Comments are now closed for this give away. The winner will be announced shortly***

 

Pasta & sweet gestures.

Last week Bella decided that she wanted to try her hand at pasta making, so we asked Nanny Joan if we could borrow her pasta maker for a few days.  She set herself up in the kitchen, watched a YouTube clip on how to make pasta and then within half an hour had her pasta to put in the pot of boiling water.

She made just enough for lunch, mixing in some home cooked pasta sauce before declaring it was the best pasta she'd ever tasted in her life.

By the way, Bella doesn't wear glasses - they're 3d ones from the cinema that she modified for herself by removing the plastic.  She wears them most days - to school, at home, out shopping, um...pretty much everywhere. 

After lunch I fell asleep on the hammock outside for a good hour.  When I was woken up by a girl whispering "are you awake?" into my ear, there was a little package sitting on my neck, all wrapped up and tied with pretty yarn.  Inside was that sweet crocheted bracelet that you can see in the photo above, which was created for me while I slept.  It fits perfectly and I'm not planning on taking it off until it breaks.

I love my kids, they're so good to me!