I'm busy sewing!

 I am busy sewing secret things. Well, a few secret things. I have been busy doing lots of other things too. There seems to be so much to do at this time of the year. My Bradley and I have even been Christmas shopping once. (And it's not even Christmas Eve yet!) There's still more to be done. (You can't buy all your perishables too early!) My Lily15 came home from her holiday in Adelaide and brought her sister Molly20 with her. Hooray! More offspring to be Christmassy with!

I have been baking. Lots of gingerbread. Gingerbread biscuits and a gingerbread white chocolate slice which I made last year. It's very popular and whilst I have been to the shops to buy a new supply of moose to go with this slice (check out the link!) no moose have made it to the slice yet. It has been gifted and eaten without a moose in sight!

Loz of Granny Loz fame had a birthday and sent me a present. (How does that work?) It was a Christmas present (I obviously have patience issues!) and included all sorts of goodies from her recent trip away. Thank you Loz! (I have so many ideas for all that fabric!!!)

 And we have been opening a door a day on Sophie26's Star Wars LEGO advent calendar. Not many doors left now. I had better get back to that sewing!

Favourite Things Friday

Mr 11 lego building earlier this month

It seems that I posted my FTF post a couple of days ago. Boy has this week flown by. Here it is Friday again! Lego is my favourite thing this week. Homeschooling has given my children the gift of time. They don't spend huge chunks of time away from home, and sometimes they choose to spend some of that time with lego on the floor. It makes me feel that all is right with the world when my floor is covered with lego. It would start with two or three kids getting out the lego, and one by one everyone else would join in until they were all playing. Some together, some separately, but all would help when someone was looking for a specific piece. A cry would go up, "I need a blue twoer!", and everyone would look until it was found. (They had a verbal shorthand for all the pieces that possibly others wouldn't understand, but they all knew.) Those days are gone now. Earlier this month Mr 11 got out the lego and played by himself. He had a wonderful time, but his experience is so different from the other kids! So lego is my favourite this week. We have had so much fun with it. Countless towns have been built and left for weeks to play with (The kids' towns are always interesting. We attend church every week so their town would always include a church! Lolly shops, toy stores and music shops have featured heavily in their towns too.), and there have also been spaceships. Lots of spaceships!

Edit: Ooops! Go here to see everyone else's favourites!

Sneak Peek and Lego

I set out to design and make a new handbag today. This is as far as I got. It took all day. I think I was tired! The outside is made. The lining is made. The handle is made. But I can't get them all together because I am too tired and keep making mistakes. Ahh well. Tomorrow!

The boys amused themselves whilst I sewed by building with Lego. They had a blast, so I thought I would include some of their photos to keep you amused!

At the shops yesterday......

I got a new camera! My old camera has been a pain in the neck. Needy to the extreme. Every time I pick it up it demands new batteries. Three or four photos later, new batteries! So, my Bradley and I went to the shops to look at cameras. I think the last time I did that was almost three years ago. (Doesn't time fly! I'm thinking of renaming this blog, "Doesn't Time Fly!" cause it seems to be my current catch-cry!) Boy, have cameras changed over the last three years! The biggest change I noticed was that most of them were not pretty. Pffffft! What's with that? Pretty just seems to be so important to me. I ended up with a great camera with fantastic features, but pretty? Well, you can't have everything! I am in the middle of making a new bag for it and that will be very pretty!

Continuing on the pretty theme, my Bradley and I were wandering around an electrical store this morning (Looking for an ice cream maker. No ice cream makers, cause it's winter apparently and no-one eats ice cream in winter! Are we just out of step with the world? Cause we eat it non-stop! No matter the weather.) and I pointed out the electric kettle I would buy next time. (Bradley just bought a new electric kettle last weekend cause our old one died. Are you sensing a theme here? Dead electrical/electronic items.) He looked at the "chosen" kettle and said, "What is the difference between that one and the one I bought?" Hmmm...... I wondered how I could casually bring up the pretty thing....... and then he said, "Apart from the fact that this one is prettier than the one I bought they're the same." Oh my goodness! He understands the pretty thing and yet it still isn't a factor!

Bunches of children have been busy building Star Wars lego today whilst watching (wait for it...) Star Wars! Misses 24 & 13 along with Mr 16 & 9. As someone who has never liked sci-fi it is really strange to find that your children love it. Really strange. Hope you are having a great weekend too!

Mr 14's new best friend.

Mr 14 must have been feeling lonely because he made a friend this afternoon. He has been building with duplo for the last couple of days. He has also discovered his future career. He wants to be a lego designer when he grows up. (I think every boy does!)

Mr 8 also befriended the duplo dude. He has been demolished and rebuilt several times over since this photo was taken. At the moment he is a bridge!

Lego

It was a lego kind of day today. I love a lego kind of day! It's one of the great joys of homeschooling. Having the time to spend a whole day building, dreaming, imagining, creating and playing.

Playdough

We are a much older household than we used to be. I miss little kid things. Sometimes we have an "athon" of little kidsness. You know, a duploathon, a legoathon, a playdoughathon. Everyone gets involved and plays together. Mr 19 had a yearning for playdough so he made some and played with it. As part of the playdoughathon Miss 11 and Mr 7 became playdough bakers. They made pasties, sausage rolls and pies and photographed them! It was a very quiet day today. It was 39 degrees and I think we are all really sick of the heat. We seem to be getting slower and slower. Today, rather than sew, I spent time cleaning and sorting my sewing space. Mrs 23 came over and cut out a pinafore for her and two tops for Miss 11, so I have things to sew for this week. Tomorrow we are supposed to get a cool change but the forecast maximum is anything but cool. I think we have a slow week coming up!

A Busy Week

Isn't every week a busy week? This week saw some more of that renovation stuff happening. I painted doors this week. Twenty-three of them! The doors in the photo are some of the ten doors I am working on at the moment. I utilise an unfinished hallway to paint doors for the storage George builds me. I love the look of painted MDF and George loves to build with it, therefore I love to paint it! My colour is Wattyl Orchid. (Hey! It's lucky I haven't finished the hallway, huh? It was a plan!!! Really!!!)
This is another room in my unpainted house. We call this the "big couch room" at the moment. It is the original lounge room in our early 1950's timber frame house. Some previous occupants opened this room up and it is now a large room with living area, dining and kitchen incoporated together. We have a corner couch in this room from Ikea's "as is" department, hence the name - big couch room! George has built toy cupboards either side of a large window and window seats inbetween. He still has a little building work to finish (really) before I can paint. This week I sewed the first cushion covers for the window seat. I'm very pleased with them because I think they look like someone else made them! I guess I was nervous about doing this job because I have never sewn anything like this before, but they fit and everything! I am now working on the remaining four sets of cushions. I guess the fact that the texile part of the job is more advanced than the painting part tells you where my passion lies!!! Although I do really enjoy painting too.

The same cushions again! I don't know why I put this one in. Perhaps just to show you that it is a sunny window seat. It's going to be a great place to read on a sunny winter's day! The fabric is not my favourite, but a $3 a metre special from spotlight a couple of years ago. It's 1.5 m wide upholstry fabric and a great bargain. I knew I wanted a window seat somewhere in this house so I snapped the fabric up. George always says it's not a bargain until you actually use it, so I'm really pleased to be using it! Renovating on a budget! Such fun!

This photo shows off my cushion yet again (must change the title of this post to BORING! or Guiness World Record Attempt-to talk about a cushion for the longest time in a blog!) and is proof of our homeschooling status. For those of you who don't homeschool I will explain. We in the homeschooling community know that to be serious about homeschooling you need to have a seriously large lego collection. All the drawers under our 2.9m long window seat contain lego of some description. Okay, maybe it's just the geeky homeschoolers who have lots of lego, and if you are considering homeschooling please don't think the first thing you have to do is buy lots of lego. Not unless you are a geek, anyway.

For mother's day Picklestick sent me a fabric postcard. She sent one to all the mothers in her life. It's so cool to receive a fabric postcard! I was discussing the joys of it with her this week and she said "Well, I wouldn't know. No-one's ever sent me a fabric postcard!" I was crushed. Here was proof that I had neglected my parental responsibilities. Imagine a mother who had never sent her child a fabric postcard! So this week I resolved to right this wrong. I have made a stack of postcards and the first one is going off to Picklestick as we speak. You can see it above, along with the back of the one she sent to me.(On my Ikea bedspread. I love that fabric!) I'm off to sew more cushion covers, to save more money, and to right more wrongs! (This post feels so superhero at this end! Can you tell I haven't been well and feel a little outta touch with reality? Here I come, to save the day!!!!!)