Day to Day

Cousin time

A little bit (or a whole lot) of cousin time is always fun.  Icy poles, water bombs, water pistols and sunshine, equal a good day at home.

We finished off the day with popcorn, a movie and a sleep over for Bonnie.  Good times.

Today I'm going to start machine stitching up the hexagon cushion and I'm feeling excited about that!  It feels really good to have finished all the hand quilting and be kicking a WIP from last year in the bottom.  I'll share photos soon.

I hope your Thursday is a good one :)

Seven

Today my little nephew turned seven. Seven! Happy birthday sweet Oscar, we love you so much xoxoxo

Watching football

We headed off this morning to watch my nephew (Oscar) play his second game of football.  Little boys are so cute to watch on the field - pulling up their socks, tossing the ball in the air, getting a kick in now and then and looking all excited about their big game.  

We hadn't seen the kids in a while and I'm not sure if Miss Bonnie was more excited to see Bella's new Blythe dolls, show me her monkey socks and sparkly new shoes or finally receive the present we bought her home from Hong Kong.  Either way, she was like a little rocket - jumping, rolling, shouting, running and totally over excited.

Now we're home to a nice warm house, cups of tea and a piece of yesterday's chocolate cake.  Life is good.

Post & bake

Thursday = looking after Miss Bonnie! 

James had a student free day today, so he was home and was a very good cousin, entertaining Bonnie most of the day.  This morning we pulled the old cardboard post box out of the shed and there was a whole heap of letter posting happening.  Then, I gave Bonnie a huge stash of postcards and she had a lovely time spreading them out all over the floor, all over the house and in and out of the postbox.

James had also promised to do some cooking with Bonnie - cinnamon scrolls.  After much searching on the internet for a suitable icing mixture for the top of the scrolls, we settled on normal old fashioned icing and I must say it was pretty yum.  The scrolls themselves were even yummier. I love that my boy can cook!

 

Hooray! Afternoon tea all baked and ready to enjoy.

Bonnie and her blanket

It must be crochet season in Tasmania! Yesterday Bonnie arrived for a play with a new blanket that her Nanny had crocheted for her, she was so proud of it and couldn't wait to get it out of the bag to show everybody. 

We had a fun job of choosing and pinning little crochet flowers onto the blanket squares, ready to be sewn on later by her Nanny.  There was great discussion about which flowers we'd use, which colours would go where and how Bonnie wanted the job of choosing the pins to hold the flowers into place.

We also had to get a photo of Jessie on the blanket by herself - Bonnie's request ofcourse.

Plus a photo with pins and flowers in toe.  This little one is always so proud of showing off her new things and I think Jessie the doll looks pretty happy about it too :)  

Distracting

 

A bit of creative painting was needed today to distract this little one from her tears.  She really didn't want to stay at Auntie Lissa's this morning.  It worked and she churned out about 10 green masterpieces, insisting on wiping her hands, table and anything else that the paint accidentally made it onto while she was painting.  I love this age (3.5 years) as I can happily leave the room if needed and know that the paint will remain where it is supposed to be, without covering my entire lounge room with little droppings of green!

I also sorted out some of my yarn.  This could be the millionth time that I've de-tangled the basket full.  I'm not imagining it will stay this cute for long either!

And a yummy (seriously yummy!!) postcard book arrived in our mail box.  The cards are amazing and such good quality.  Here's a peek at two of my favourite cards from inside:

 

Eating sand.

Thursdays in the school holidays usually equals a day with Oscar and Bonnie, two of our most favourite people.  We headed to the beach early this morning for a play.  Miss Bonnie had quite a tantrum this morning (ahem, shall we say quite a few large tantrums), several of which occurred at the beach.  She is always extremely well behaved at my house, so it was very out of the blue for her.  I even received an entire handful of sand in my face and mouth because I was trying to discuss said behaviour with her (Bonnie you will enjoy reading this when you're older sweetie).  Come lunch time (and realisation that she'd missed out on a treat due to her behaviour) the sweetness reappeared and we had the old Bonnie back.  

I really don't mind this kind of thing - bad behaviour, sand in mouth, being told that I'm mean, arm crossing, the likes of a 3 year old working out the boundaries.  It's all part of growing up, learning right from wrong etc.. and I mean come on....she's seriously cute and totally eatable in those little yellow bathers.

Master 5 was perfectly behaved all day.  I could probably have a munch on him too.

Oh and my handmade beach blanket. Now that sure is eatable!  

And grapes. Grapes covered with sand, now they're definitely not eatable...but since I had sand in my mouth already, I thought well, why not. 

Two girls in a bucket.

Extra sunshine, bathers, sunscreen, cool water, Bella, Bonnie and a big blue tub (we're all of out blow up pools at the moment).

 

 

 

All stitched up.

Yay, I finished it!

 

 

 

Oscar and Bonnie had first look through.  There were lots of questions "James, did you make this page? Why did you draw that? What's this?"

 

In the end I just hand stitched the book together.  I was nearly going to add some cute chocolate ribbon down the spine, but decided to keep it simple and just let the drawings do the talking.

Apparently fabric books are the new accessory for this season too!  I'm not sure how much sun they'll keep off though.

There was even greater excitement when Ed Emberley's 'Make A World' book arrived in the mail this afternoon.  I've seen several of Ed's books around blog land, so I decided to order our own copy.  It's a really lovely book, full of super easy to follow instructions on how to create all sorts of things to make your own amazing world.  I'm going to track down a few more of his books now I've finally had a peek inside this one.

From banner to book.

My Mum was here the other day and suggested that I turn the autumn/winter memory banner that we've been working on into a fabric book.  Usually once I've settled on an idea I don't tend to sway from it, but I loved the thought of a memory book - we can pack it in the camper with us to look at, inbetween making up new memories for our spring/summer version (or perhaps that will be a banner).

These school holidays have gone so quickly and because I've been sick we haven't been able to do nearly as much as we had planned - Bonorong Wildlife Park and Hastings Caves were two day trips we won't have time to do now and there was also plenty of crafting that we missed out on doing too.  But, today I woke up feeling determined to at least finish our winter/autumn memory banner/turned book!!

Since each Thursday of the school holidays is cousin day - Bonnie and Oscar come for a play - it seemed like a great opportunity for sewing, while little ones were busy playing this morning....

 

{Playstation games in the bedroom}

 

{Bonnie insisting that James be the patient in the doctor game she was playing - Bella on the wii}

 

So, with a little helper (who was very intrigued about my sewing machine) I set to work and sewed up all the rectangles together.

 

I also stitched some eyes and lips onto the front cover of the memory book.

 

And now I'm busily top stitching each rectangle.  That's as far as I've thought - no idea how I'm joining the pieces together to make the book, but I'll figure that out this afternoon.  Now....more cuteness:

I could eat Miss Bonnie :)  Vintage style dress from HERE.

And Miss Bella reading (and looking) through her new addiction - Shop Girl (a new magazine for Mums of tween girls), which I actually bought for myself to read!!

P.S. Don't forget the give away over at Little Snoring - there's still time to enter and it's a fabulous give away.