13 Years, Whoop Whoop

So today my son turned 13!!!! I can't quite believe I have two teenagers in the house!!!!

We had such an awesome starting with a fantastic cake made by Kate (post coming soon about cake :). I whipped up a bunting/garland happy birthday sign, which I LOVE, and will totally use for the next birthday. Pretty simple using a background I had previously painted, cut into rectangles, draw on the letters, then fastened with some cool twine and mini pegs. We got ours from Typo, but you can pick them up at various $2 shops as well.

Our family, Kate's family, and his best mate spent the day together.

We went to two different skate parks, had fish and chips on marine parade in Napier, went to ocean spa for a hot swim and got to see some of the Indian festival, Dawali, at the sound shell.

Probably the highlight was at Sk8 zone in Napier landing his first ever back flip on his scooter. Check out the video.... How super cool is my boy.

We love him heaps, he is such a quirky, intelligent, funny, individual. God was awesome when he gave him to us :)

mim

Hey Baby

So I hosted a baby shower today for one of my best friends. It was really fun. I decided on a kind of bunting heavy, cool scrapbook paper, doily, typed theme ha ha. You will get the idea with the pics. 

I made a really good carrot cake with the best cream cheese icing. So it is only the second carrot cake i have ever made!!!!!!!! The first was just after tama and I got married. I didn't really have all the correct ingredients so I was kinda like oh this will do, and this, and it will be ok without this..... boy was I wrong!!!!!!!!!! it was tiny, like hardly rose at all, and the cooler it got the harder it became until it was time to cut it and the knife didn't even make it in a cm led alone the whole cake. 

I am pleased to say todays cake was great, moist (aarrghh hate that word) lots of flavour and a hit.

Instead of using the words baby shower I decided to call the day 'Hey Baby' kind of like a welcome to the little one.

Lots of fun games, great food and drink, laughs and wonderful presents.

At the bottom of our door is a board with blackboard paint so I wrote a wee welcome sign for everyone

My yummy cake :)

I grabbed the clip boards from church and attached doliys with 'Hey Baby' written on them and a pen for all the games so people could lean on them.

Guess the weight, date, sex. Cute little cards I cut out and tied together with twine. I typed them up on my daughters typewriter.

I made a wee book out of cool paper for people to write a prayer, blessing or some advice for the new baby and mum and dad.

Some of the pages. I did them all sorts of colours and shapes and sizes and sewed them altogether

the fluffy pencil case

So my youngest daughter had a bit of a sad weekend. She found out her best friend is moving :( We are all pretty upset as the family is pretty special to us.

To cheer her up we popped into town (I use that work loosely as we only have one main street of shops, small towns gotta love them!!!) as she wanted to buy a fluffy pencil case.

Well due to the a fore mentioned lack of shops we could not find one anywhere. I suddenly remembered i had a whole lot of fluffy fabric in a variety of shades and off we went home to make one.

She has a great sense of style and chose the purple fluffy and aqua vintage zip!!! very cool.One pencil case made in about half an hour and one happy wee girl, yay

crochet bebe banket

So my lovely cousin Fiona has had her precious baby girl!!! I am so excited. Don't miracle babies just make everything great in the world.

Our grandparents passed away recently and we are a super close family so it was a big loss to us. I knew i wanted to make something really special for Fiona and the baby that could be a reminder of them also.

Then it came to me. Granny and Grandad were big spinners. They would dye all their own wool and spin it. I had a bit already and my Mum gave me what she had and i crocheted up this baby blanket.

I am so pleased with how it turned out and will be not only something really special as the homespun wool came from them but also super useful in the cold winters of the South Island.

It will be winging it's way to the South Island 2moro, yay for miracle babies...and crochet

I just love all the yummy homespun tones on this wool

My little scalloped edges

The underside, I crocheted the edges together

I washed it in wool fabric softener to really soften it up, it came up so well and smells great.

quilt pics to come....

Made the coolest quilt on monday!!! thats right it took only 1 day!!!! My camera is being an egg so will have to wait to get the pics up aaarrrggghhh, but it is lovely and now safely in the hands of a good friend and her new baby boy.

stay tuned........

little purse of goodness

So lately I have been making these little beauties to give away for birthday pressies.

I really enjoy crochet and with four kids and only one income money can often be tight. No cash + crochet = great bday presents.

They are really simple to make and i now have a couple of styles going on. The four small peggy squares joined together, or the two bigger squares.

After I have sewn them up I find some fabric that will match and sew it into the inside.

I got a huge bag of sewing bits and pieces from my grandma after she passed away. In the bag were HEAPS of old vintage zips. These are so great and there are heaps of different colours.

Am pretty sure my grandma would be super happy to see them being used.