Still reading...

There's been a lot going on lately with being back at work and looking for and finding and au pair and with that going on I've found reading helps quieten my busy brain. I'm reading whatever I can find in our house. That means some of David's books and also some of the kids books. Here's my growing list of read books. A good mix I think!

A little present

I decided that since my maternity leave is coming to an end I have to finish a ton of jobs I've wanted to do over the last year. But let's face it who has time to do anything with a new baby!!
So since I'm now down to 10 days until I'm due back at school these projects are calling my name. Since its school holidays and the kids are able to entertain Hamish for a little while I thought I would start sanding our dining room table.
I got under the house and found the electric sander, some sanding paper and of course the extension cord and then needed to take the legs off the enormously heavy table so that we could get it outside. Josh was a wonderful help with that. It's so nice having another man in the house. Not quite as strong as Dave yet but stronger than me. Yay.
With the table top on top of a trestle table outside I started sanding. The stupid table kept moving as I sanded so I had to sand around the edges. I wonder if I'm the only one who gets a sore hand while sanding with the vibrating sander in their hand. AND it was taking forever.
I called Dave of course and asked him to bring some courser sand paper home. He is only around the corner from Bunnings at his new office. He dropped everything to get his crazy wife the sand paper she needed to get the job done. Tomorrow I'll be sanding and sanding and then laquering or staining the top and painting the legs. I might even do the coffee table. We'll see how keen I am after tomorrow though.
Poor hubby only got home from work at 8 pm. A very long day. But he came home with a present for little me. My own little sander. Thankyou honey. You're the best.
These are some inspiration photos I took from Freedom Furniture a little French furniture store. I'm not sure what the colour of the wood is yet under the old stain. When the stain has been sanded then I'll decide on what colour to go with.

Looking back ...

Last year we moved into the house we're in now. I was just finishing work and about 4 weeks off of giving birth to our wonderful baby number four. It was a very busy time. We managed to get organised enough last year to celebrate Easter and even remember to take some photos! It was all a blur really. I even managed to take the kids along to the Sydney Easter Show dressed as a whale. Well maybe not dressed as a whale, but I certainly looked and felt like one. Eveyone thought I was mad taking the kids to the Easter show when I was so close to giving birth. I knew better though. I knew that when baby number four arrived I would have no time to myself let alone the kids. Anyway I'm getting distracted...

I wanted to share a photo from last year and then compare it to another one this year taken from the same spot. My how the children have grown. Josh has gone from looking like a little boy to more like a man. Sammy doesn't look much different, but Isabella seems more grown up and of course now we have little Hamish.

Easter 2011

Easter 2012

This year I got the table ready for breakfast the night before which was just lovely. It meant that after the rush of half asleep Easter egg hunting (we're the one's that are half asleep not the kids of course)I didn't need to rush to get breakfast ready. We got to sit down and eat as a family. While the kids ate their first chocolate egg we heated up the croissants and the adults drank coffee. We then all sat down and ate croissants while the bacon was cooking in the oven. Then David cooked the eggs in our fancy egg poacher (it does 6 eggs at a time) and made toast and we then ate egg and bacon with another cup of coffee. We got to sit around and chat and enjoy Easter relatively calmly. So nice.
We even managed a self-timed photo of the family with my new camera. Very funny. We have a couple of serious ones, but it was much more fun to do the crazy faces. The problem of course is keeping a still face while the little light flicks away. Anyone do self-portrait shots of the family?

The serious one.

Our crazy mob!

 The kids all got pyjamas this year. I was marvelling at Josh's pyjamas that were for a small man. My little boy has grown out of the children's department. : ( He had to see if he was finally taller than his mum. I kept saying not even close. But I think I only have a couple of months of being taller. He is literally growing taller every day at the moment. Here's proof that I'm still taller.

I'm still taller!!

Ready for Easter

I repainted the bunny to match our colour scheme.

It's 'Easter Eve' the kids tell me and I've been busy decorating the house ready for Easter. The older two have been off with their dad, visiting the zoo and having an early Easter. They've come back with lots of Easter Eggs which they're guarding well, knowing their mother as well as they do!
It was nice to have the table ready for our Easter breakfast tomorrow morning when the kids got home tonight. They were nicely surprised I think. I love surprising them with the magic of Easter, Christmas, birthdays etc. You're only a kid once after all.
We've got a menu of warm croissants followed by egg and bacon for breakfast in the morning. I'm guessing that our starter will be some yummy chocolate Easter Eggs that the Easter bunny will hopefully leave for us!! I can't wait to see the kids faces in the morning when they see the Easter Eggs.
I still remember that feeling of seeing the Easter Eggs and waiting impatiently for everyone to be up so that we could go and hunt for the eggs. So much excitement.

Paper cup wreath made in a few minutes with hot glue

Branch decorated with bought eggs.

The table ready for Easter breakfast.

The wreath in steps.

At the entrance I put down a table runner that I'd bought on sale at Spotlight for Christmas. On top of that I placed the three wax, battery powered candles I bought from Costco last year. I topped them with napkin rings I also bought on sale from Spotlight for Christmas last year and put an egg in each that had been blown, washed and dried. I hot glued a little chicken to the top of each one. Then lent the wreath in front of it all. A bit of cheap and cheery Easter decoration.
On the other buffet I put our branch that David helped me find yesterday. We went to the beach to hopefully find a piece of driftwood, but I had no such luck. We did have a lovely day eating out and playing on the sand with the kids. But no driftwood. On the way home we drove past all the places we thought we could hopefully find a branch and just before we reached home I shouted to David to stop the car again. This time I was in luck. A gorgeous branch. It didn't have a long bit to hold itself up so I shoved it into a vase with a small opening and then used little bits of wood to wedge it in place. You wouldn't know it from looking at it though. I was hoping to spray paint it white but I didn't have time. Maybe next year. I hung up some decorations that I bought from Bed, Bath and Table for a few dollars. They look very cute. I had also painted some real eggs blue, written the kids names on them and then threaded them with cord. I think it turned out nicely and the kids loved having their names on the eggs.
The table is decorated with Ikea plates and cups and the Spotlight table cloth that I bought at Christmas time on special. I wish I had thought to buy some flowers to decorate the centre of the table with. I had to make do with a bowl with green Easter paper and blown eggs. Not very fancy, but they'll do.
We're all going to drink our water out of wine glasses since it's a special occasion and the kids will probably drink some very weak tea.
As I type this we're sitting on the edge of our seats watching Dante's Peak. An oldie but a goody. Sammy's already asked me who dies. I'm as bad as her with scary movies and hate not knowing what's about to happen. So I had to tell her that the main characters don't die but some characters do die.
I leave this post with a quick look at how I made the wreath. I found the wreath on pinterest and though it was so easy that I had to make it. You can find the original here. Much nicer than mine.
David's downstairs finishing emptying out the office. It's council clean up on Monday and so all the stuff we want to get rid of will be picked up by council. I'm so excited to be able to do up a new room. It's for our upcoming au pair. I will update soon...

Easter favors for Kindergarten

Three days left of school for Term one and 6 sleeps until The Easter bunny visits. There's been much excitement about the holidays, the break from school (I don't think she understands yet!!) and the chocolate that will be coming shortly.
Today as soon as I picked up Isabella she told me how she got Easter eggs from one of the girls in her class today. I totally forgot that all celebrations in kindergarten require gifts of some sort for the whole class. Luckily this usually only entails Easter (chocolate eggs) a birthday (cake or lolly bags) and Christmas (hopefully a Kris Kringle gift for one child). Then there's presents for the teacher at Easter, her birthday, the end of the year and when you're in Kindergarten sometimes every day of the school year. I bet Kindy teachers get a lot of loot during the year. Probably not stuff they'd pick themselves. I imagine they get a lot of flowers that have been picked from gardens with no stems and saved in sweaty hands or pockets, melted chocolate bits lovingly held with warm fingers, drawings, paintings, recycled goods of many varieties. Isabella decorated a cereal box with bits of paper and stickers. Luckily it made its way to school!
Below are photos of how we made our little Easter favors today.

A Lego Mat

I've kept hold of a box of Lego that has been hanging around our house for years. It usually comes out when we have visitors and each time I take it out I'm reminded how difficult it is to pack it away, how much it hurts when you step on a stray piece of Lego and how the box that it's in is just not doing the trick. The Lego only just fit in the box and because the box has handy handles, bits of Lego would inevitably escape through those handy handle holes.

Last week I was given a couple of dinosaur doona covers for a single bed. Hamish is a long way off using a bed and it was a lot of free fabric. I decided that I would cut up one to make into a Lego mat. It looks great! The Lego is now nice and tidy, hanging from a hook on the top of our bookcase.

I've done a step by step photo tutorial below. Pretty much I folded the fabric in half, quarters and then eighths and then cut it in an arc. I hemmed it and measured the circumference of the circle and then bought 5.5m of blue cord and a toggle. I used a safety pin to thread the cord through the hem. Attached the toggle and then tied the cord afterwards. Tipped the Lego into the middle of the mat and then pulled on the cord to tighten the bag around the Lego. Hung the bag up. Simple!

Cleaning is bad for your health!

Running around cleaning this morning I picked up a cloth that I had left on the ironing board yesterday. I had used it to clean the iron with some new iron cleaning stuff. It worked really great on the iron!

So I thought I had washed my hands well but apparently not as well as I thought. I rubbed my eye and my eye started hurting a lot. I rinsed it under the tap but it was burning more so I got David to rinse my eye out. It was very red and it looked like it had a blister on my eye. I called the community nurse number and she thought I should go into emergency.

At the triage counter the nurse sent Me straight through and had a litre of saline squirted into my eye. Not comfortable at all! The doctor then checked the ph level of my eye which was at a 9 and considered quite high. To do this he stuck a piece of paper on my eye. Ouch. He wasn't happy with how much moisture he managed to take from my eye so he did it again. Double ouch.

Then more irrigation. More wet hair and ear and everything else. I think I left with a very clean ear. The doctor then put yellow dye in my eye to check that my cornea (the see through bit on the top of your eye) wasn't damaged. It wasn't luckily, but it does make you realise how quickly you could lose your eye sight. Scary.

We're getting eye drops from the chemist and a take away coffee to cheer me up and then we're off home. Eye is still stinging but much better than before. When I got to the hospital it felt like my eye was on fire. Not nice.

Wizzy world

This morning we had planned to go to the Harry Potter exhibition at the Power House in the city. The only problem was that when we tried to get tickets on-line for today they were sold out. Frustrating. David booked and paid for the tickets for next weekend so we don't miss out altogether. I was disappointed and so were the kids. So what do we do today? We didn't really know. I googled 'what's on today in Sydney' and found a few things on but nothing that excited us. So after Hamish woke up from his nap we got in the car and went exploring. First off we went to Roseville Chase to check out the national ark under the bridge. Very wet. And no coffee. Not so good for us that needed a caffeine boost to get through the rest of the day. Hamish started getting cranky because of his teeth and so we stopped at the closest place to where we were for some afternoon tea. Whizzy World. It was noisy and full of stinky, sweaty children but there was coffee and a relatively comfy spot for our bottoms while the younger ones happily played. Bliss for parents. Josh and Sammy were less than impressed. We sweetened them up with cordial and biscuits.

New hair dos

Sammy has been asking me for a couple of weeks to have her hair cut. She desperately wanted a fringe again. The last time she had a fringe was when she was about 4. I was worried that she'd change her mind and then have to spend ages growing it out. Well after a couple of weeks of badgering by her I finally succumbed to the pressure and let her have it done. It cost  $10 and made her very happy. She also looks gorgeous with a fringe and SO much older. She suddenly looks 16! How did I end up with such a gorgeous girl!

My beautiful girls.

Josh's hair seems to have a life of its own. It just grows so quickly! I wish my hair would grow quickly. Since I had Hamish and a ton of my hair fell out I've been waiting for it to grow back. It's finally starting to grow, but it looks like baby hair and Hamish is now 10 months old. So you can see how I would be getting impatient. Well Josh's hair has been getting curlier and curlier the older he gets. He really doesn't like his curls at the moment and always wants it cut really short. Maybe one day he'll appreciate the curl and grow himself a huge afro. But in the meantime we try and keep on top of it by keeping it very short. That way the curl can't be seen. Josh is also looking very old. And what a lovely young man he is growing into.

Josh with his newly cut hair.

Craftiness

I've been trying to organise a craft day on a Thursday since last year and it really hasn't gotten off the ground. Part of the problem has been this stinking weather and then the other part of the problem is crafty stuff is just plain old daggy! But I LOVE it!!

So over the last two weeks I've made some stray twine covered balls and a recovered a couple of cushions. I'm very happy with what they look like and the way they've made my home a little more homely!

Here are the photos.

French macarons

I had a wonderful friend offer to make chocolate macarons with me last Thursday. The weather really sucked and so they weren't wonderful, but luckily the company was. I even froze the finished product and then ate them the next day. Just gooey and sweet. Good but not a macaron. I WILL somehow create the perfect macarons before the end of the year. It is one of my new years resolutions after all.

Craft and firsts

Today Isabella was drawing beautiful pictures for the family and also wanted to write some letters and numbers which we worked through together.
She needed a box to put her precious things in. Thank goodness for cereal boxes!! They make perfect boxes for precious pieces of paper and are fairly easy to cover and decorate. We used contact I had lying around from covering school books, ribbon I had from making hair clips and a little person we tore off of a greeting card.
And with all of that business Hamish has decided that learning to crawl is a waste of time and he is now standing at every available opportunity. That means when I put him down to sleep he's like a jack-in-the-box and a spring loaded one at that! It took 2 hours to get him down last night. Such a fun game standing up in the cot. He stands, can't work out how to get down, screams until someone saves him and lies him down and then up he gets again. He thought it was very funny. Me, not so much.

Yesterday was the first time Hamish crawled properly for a distance. I think it was because he had a play date with an older friend who has the crawling thing down pat. They were very cute together and I'm sure will be great mates. They'll be going to the same school when they're finally ready in another 4 years or so. I'm sure the time will fly by.