Here are the things that have kept me busy the last week or so. Miss Fab and I have been creative to bits, working on making some surprises for Little B’s birthday. It has been fun and I have learned a few new things too. So I will share, cause I am nice that way.

I will start with KravA-pA! This is the name the birthday girl gave to one of the dolls in my handmade toys book. Not just that. The girls would say the name, after looking at the page, and then crack up like there is nothing funnier out there. And then again…KravA-pA! Muahahahaha.

So, I had to make her.

Big sister joined in too. She weaved two friendship bracelets.

She made these two lovely fellas.
She chose the fabrics, the colours. She stitched up on the machine and did the hand stitch on the faces too.

The packaging too, of course.

I have been discovering crocheting. I have never done it before, even though it seemed interesting and I think I enjoyed the idea of  its versatility. I don tknow why, but I thought it will be a good idea to delve into it now.

It was not hard at all. In a night I had a grasp of it. And the second night I crocheted half a hat. Not planned that way, but my wool ran out, so it ended up a tiny little hat. I finished it up with a handle, cause I thought it will look nice as a soft basket of some kind. Then I left it around until I figure out if I want to keep it or not.

Next I was ready to follow a pattern. You think there is nothing to it, but I beg to differ. Patterns look like alien language in code and then scrambled with eggs.

But yours truly did it without a hitch. Thank you, thank you:

What am I doing with this beauty? With these wonderfully fancy stitches?
I am eliminating them, thats what I am doing.

I am felting, babeeey!

I stitched two of those squares and a big thread and the whole thing went in the washing machine.

And then I had a beautiful fluffy puffy bag (and the gift wrapping for it)

I was hooked!

Hooked I tell ya. Even Mr.Blab was impressed.

My eyes were scanning anything in my field of vision that will be suitable for felting.

Voila! My half hat turns into a basket:

This one went into  a simple paper wrap, but I made a custom bow for it.

Those are wonderful. Next time I will try the recycling version
(if you are keen, get the instructions from How About Orange)

Just in case our newly five year old is not impressed with our handicrafts, we had Mr.Blab get her a scooter and he ordered her a bunch of “Lego guys”, the latest being the favorite play buddies lately.

Now to the most anticipated part – the cake.

The order went something like that:
Chocolate cake with hmmm…white top…colorful, rainbow frosting!

Right.

Luckily I had some volunteering help:

I admit, I was not excited when she expressed enthusiasm to “help” me, but I handed her the tools and held my breath. Maybe even my eyes were closed, I am not sure.

She did the flowers.

She did not disappoint. Not even a bit.

The swoosh is just a defect in the way the cake baked. It is a wonky cake.

At first I thought we will make a hilly cake, then while we were working, we thought we will make a path in the big crack…then Miss Fab suggested bushes. I did bushes and then decided to just fill it up with grass.

And we ended up with 5 fairies somehow.

Couldnt have been more perfect.

Ok, I am tired now.

And I am getting a cold.

And we are off to celebrate a birthday…

I have a lot of dreams. One of them is of me enjoying a big studio in the house, where I spend lovely hours designing fabrics, meters and meters of them, then printing them and sorting them out to send to my extremely (of course) happy and satisfied customers. In my dream I am very good at it and the room is abundant in colorful graphic fabrics and big working tables.

Now back to reality, in which I have never done any such thing, short of doing hand prints with the kids on a t-shirt for Mr.Blab for fathers day.  The kids have been asking for aprons, ever since I said I had thought of giving them some as Christmas presents.  Cause they would not get that idea from just watching me. I seem to have no problem with the  wiping of food and gunk on my clothes while cooking. And I wipe a lot. Kind of in a daze. Maybe that is why they asked for aprons…to save themselves from ending up like me! With gunky pants.

Then I found this calico fabric, which seemed perfect for some printing play. And we went for it. We started doing the fabric making.

The kids chose their designs. Ms.Fab wanted to do cherries, so she cut off two circles on one stencil and the stems on another. Then she chose the colors and off she went.

Little B wanted an elephant. I was all prepared to draw this lovely specimen we have on a growth chart, but she insisted on doing it herself. So she did. And she drew the best elephant I have ever seen. I shall call him Elvis Elephant, as he looks like he has some wild stylish hair, dude.  I cut up the stencil and off she went.

Then the fabric dries for entirely too long according to a child’s time perceptions.

And here comes my part, just in case you thought I am just a lowly photographer in this story, not an actual contributor to beauty and aesthetics. I whipped out the sawing machine and turned the fabric the girls created into aprons. With frills!

I am no great sawing goddess. I dont use patterns and/or plans. It all happens in some sort of a creative mind blur. I have a general idea of what I am trying to do and then hope it works in practice as it perfectly does in my head. It rarely does, but I get close.

And there you have it.

It was so much fun, I want to do it again. But this time I want to be making the printing and designing.

I wonder what can I make out of the fabric…new pants probably?

Christmas morning started at 8am.
Ms.Fab let us sleep in a bit, even though she woke up at about 5am.

Then the fun began.

I dont know if you remember from last year, but we dont wrap presents anymore. Instead we have a sack we use to bring out the gifts to each other. We run around and play Santa. Its half the fun. On top of that we get to stick our heads in it and dig presents out.

Exhibit 1:

The fooffy skirts I mentioned in my late night update were a hit.  I thought Little B will have more fun with it, but I was wrong. Her sister definitely got most out of it. I think they ended up being a bit “itchy”, so next time I have to think of something to line them up. They did look fun.

The Baklava couldnt care any less about the festivities. He found himself something to do while we were being silly. For example, he decided to reorganize the DVD drawer.

This is what you are supposed to do when you receive a present, in this case a book.

Exhibit 2:

The Baklava sneaked in and got one of my chocolate presents. All alone in the dark corner of the room, he pushed, pulled, tore and got to the bit that was of interest to him. The other kids kept on wanting from me to “share”. It was a good thing to do, they kept on convincing me. I am still not convinced.

The kids had piles…piles of handmade gifts for us.

Like little Snake guys:

String Tick Tack Toe:

(my personal favorite)

Japanese faced balloons with little pieces inside to make sounds, for little brother.

My  bone, Flintstones necklace.
I wore it all day.

And so on and so on.

They were wonderful. I cant wait to see what they will come up with next year.
The creativity factor is reaching quite pleasing levels.

We revealed the big present from Mom and Dad. The tipi.
Please note the decorations, hand drawn, hand cut, hand ironed personally by Mr.Blab.

The rest is yours truly.

We are quite chuffed about it.

So we left the girls with the gifts. Mr.Blab cuddled Baklava for a sleep and I went to make some lunch.

This is a beautiful little candle from a dear friend of mine:

Tradition has it that we enjoy a big stack of crepes for Christmas morning.

So that is what I did. A bit stack of crepes that took me over an hour to make.

First some savory ones – cheese, parsley and capsicum.

Exhibit 3:

Then free selection – jams, honey…

…cherries, vanilla ice cream and dark chocolate sauce.

Need I mention that it was yummmo. I distinctly remember the kids licking plates.

Then more playing.

The tipi and the cardboard house were center of attention.

See the clothes line?

There was a moment of a break to eat the frozen melon slushy we made yesterday.

And more playing.

I wish I could say the day was mellow and relaxing. But it wasnt. It was nuts. It was crazy and fun and loud and messy.
It was hot and sweaty.

I especially loved the moment when I was laying on the grass with a full colander of freshly washed cherries and chatting with the girls. This was mellow.

Not much else was. Oh, maybe the times when the flaps of the tipi were closed with all the kids inside. Maybe that was mellow too. But I dont remember, my brain is tired.

Remember the skirts?

This one?

Exhibit 4:

Late in the afternoon we had some fun with them.

From time to time we have these crazy series of shots. I usually suggest something and we end up having heaps of fun with it. This was no exception. Enjoy exhibit 5:

Mr.Blab couldnt stand not being included and barged in a few times.

Clumsy, dude. Clumsy. Where is your skirt anyway?

Learn from the professional:

We finished the day with a bowl of popcorn and “Ponyo” the new movie from Hayao Miyazaki – we love his work.

Phew!

Its quiet now. The troops are all down and the night is cool and fresh.

Happy Holidays! I send you my most bestest wonderfulest amazing..est wishes for a new year.

Last exhibit: Hugs.

This tip has been waiting to be shared for a few weeks now, but today is your lucky day.

Ok, now, go to your local hardware shop and grab a bunch of paint color swatches. We picked a whole line of similar intensity ones, so they work well together, but you be creative and go with whatever. Yellow and black for a Bee party, shades of green for Saint Patrick and so on.

Then decorate at your hearts content. I put the kids to work and they did big circles on ours, as we had a Dot themed party.

They had too much fun with that.

Then I used some white paint and sloppily wrote the letters.
Some string and little cute pegs we had lying around and
Voila!

I have a few left overs and I wonder what else we can make of them. Maybe I should look around, I am sure people have gotten creative with this free source of colored paper.

Thrifty out.

I am running a bit late with it all actually. Last night I had to just force myself and sit down and scramble some kind of invitations, as its only 2 weeks now til the big day. The big day of turning an actual age, although I think it must be quite nice to be in that zero stage.

So, here I was, sitting on the floor, digging through the craft supplies trying to figure out what to do. The only thing I knew was that the theme is dots. Why dots? Well, since you asked – the story begins more than a year ago, when I got home after the first ultrasound carrying a picture of this little blob of a thing. I presented it with suitable fanfare to the girls and after a bit of to and fro and lots of questioning eyebrows, I asked them what we should call it.

Me: It kind of looks like a blob…dot…

Little B: Dot! Dotty Dotty – exclaimed the little girl jumping around in total excitement and appreciation of her own genius idea.

Choir: We shall call iiiit…Dottyyyyy Dottyyyy…trala-laaaa

And the rest is history. These days Caramel Popcorn is Dodd Man, but he is not a little Dot anymore, so thats ok. Its acceptable. We evolve. We cannot be stopped from progressing.

Anyway, back to the poor woman sitting on the floor trying to be creative (while watching Dexter, but that part kind of makes me look uncommitted, so I would rather not add it to the story).

First I had to assess how much supplies I had and whether I even had enough quantity of the same paper to do something. I found some. I even had some scraps of dotted paper, left over from another project. Yay! Now what size can the invitations be?…Whats the biggest piece of dotted paper I can have for each…Its too hard. I should snack on some chocolate chips.

Eventually I figured it all out and cut up some ones from the red paper and got ready to glue and craft, as you do. And then it came, my own genius idea. And the rest is history. Lots of history happening.

The best part is when you open the invitation:

Surprise! And I stuck the cut up ones on the back, not to waste them.

No Poohs, no Wiggles, no trucks and other stuff that are completely not me. Simple and I hope it makes a person smile.

I dont want anymore toys. In fact there is a decision not to buy any more, unless its something Oh, So Fantastic We Have to Have it Or Our Lives Will Be So Much Less. And I wanted to let our guests know about that little tidbit. So I put something like:
“Mum has put a ban on new toys, so save your money…”

I ran it through Mr.Blab, as he is the proper expected English language wrangler. He was watching baseball and was pretending to think while peaking at the game.

Mr.Blab: How about…something like…we choose not to buy any more new toys…

Me: Nah, that makes us sound hoity poity. We choooose, cause we are so gooood.

Mr.Blab: Hmmm….yeah…..

….

Me: Stop watching the game

Mr.Blab: I am not…how about…something…We have decided not to buy new toys…or something like  as an alternative to buying new toys you could consider…yeah…hmm…we would appreciate no new toys and…

Me: What? So what am I supposed to put down?

Mr.Blab: I just told you.

Me: ???? Which part?

Me.Blab: The whole part

Me storms out the room, cause there is only so much half arsed thinking I can take, when trying to be a genius in a night.

This is what spurted out at that time and what is gracing the invitation:

“Mum has forged an all out war on new toys, so do save your money. A note from you with a special message or a memory of the birthday boy and his first year can be deposited on the day in a keepsake box and will be greatly appreciated”

Done.

Now the party. It never ends

This has nothing to do with diaper poops and gifts of the kind. Well, maybe it does, but not in a direct kind of way. This is about a friend that started making cloth diapers, something I have been meaning to do for awhile now, but just dont get to it, so I am quite jealous in a way, there is a bit of envy in me, a bit of grinding of the teeth, a bit of “I wish I had done this”..well, you get the picture, but she actually did it. And not only that, but now she is trying a little business going, as her kids cant take any more diapers, even if she stuffs them in their clothes as safety padding.

And because she had so many and she has one of those warm kind hearts, can you frikin believe it, she sent me not one, but two absolutely free diapers for Caramel Popcorn. Yeah, she even paid the shipping from the other end of the world. So I am getting this package, and the two jewels pop out and melt in my hands. Only other cloth diaper freaks can appreciate this, so dont shake your head in disbelief if you are not one of them.

Sofness, squishiness, warmth and fluffiness.

Mmmm….

So, I thought the least I could do is give her some blog props and show off her wonderful work and if any of you are in search of a cloth diaper check her out. I dont know how they will stand up over time, but my initial reaction is glee. Hurry, before she gets big and her prices get unreasonable, cause isnt that what always seems to happen.

KatyBird Diapers

Thank you, my friend!
And good luck.

I was a big city kid through and through. Give me streets, give me cars and crazy traffic, I was at home. We could find a play area in any nook or cranny and hidden parks, backyard stairs and after dark school grounds were our places.

Things have changed. The crazed city doesnt quite cut the mustard. The paved roads and manicured lawns leave me wanting for more. For something with substance and meaning.

The problem is that my green thumb is undeveloped. No one cared for it before, heck, no one knew it might be there. So the poor thing has hidden and wilted away, but I will revive it. I will CPR it. I will bring it back to life, shock it if I have to, cause I bloody need it. I bloody want to know why my bloody basil is not growing well.

Clear!

Peep…peep..BANG!

Yeah, the tomato is looking good, but those basils havent budged an inch in the last few weeks. They dont grow, dont die, dont change, just sit there, challenging my poor wilted thumb. So I dug out some plastic cups and made them little houses. It has been raining for awhile and I wondered if all that pounding and moisture might be making them unhappy.

But we dont despair. We forge forward. We cleared more land and I ordered some more organic seeds and we put the strawberry punnets to work – recycling you see.

Clear!

Peep…peep..BANG!

And then while I was digging, I found these bags that our king size sheets came in. They worked perfectly like a little hot house for the seeds to grow up in.

Now they better do that. Grow I mean. Cause if they dont, I will not be happy and Ms. Fab’s monitoring project will not work.

It is so satisfying. Even just watching them grow. Its best when I call to the girls to bring me some herbs when I am cooking and they run like mad to pick the greens. I get in a dreamlike bliss just thinking of the summer days when we can pick some green and purple tomatoes, yellow cucumber, chocolate brown capsicum, chill them in some ice water and make a fresh yummy salad to enjoy under the tree. Its so simple and yet so good for the soul.

So we are learning together. Getting dirty and messing about. Clearing weeds and mixing up smelly seaweed/fish fertilizers. Now lets see if the crop will respond.

Clear!

Peep…peep…BANG!

If not, we can always try again. Its way too fun not to.

.

This is an example of packed lunch. But not only that, its a great example of mother’s love really. There is no other reason that I would stand in the middle of the night cutting out shapes and arranging lunch that will most likely be messed up before its even opened.

I am sure we all want to be good moms. Even though I may not agree we are all doing a great job of it, I do think the vast majority of women with kids want to be good at it. Its only natural, we love the little creatures more than anyone we will..ever. I was thinking the other day after ordering some anthropology books from the State Library, what in the world am I doing. Why am I even doing this. I kept  on searching for something lately, reading online (as part of my addiction, you see) various book excerpts. And I think I may have figured it out. I am not as concerned about being a great mom, but with what this actually entails. And to me, in short, that is – happy children that grow to be happy content adults. And I think the fact that those are in such a short supply and there are so many, way too many, screwed up people, running around in circles, doing all sorts of self-destructive things, makes me think that what our society considers good parenting is just not so, according to my judgment of it at least . There must be something else. And since for everything else I turn back the clock and try to think as a cave person, because even though to us that is waaaay back, genetically its just the other day and whenever you try to outrun nature, not much good happens.  So, I have been wondering how do more primitive cultures raise children.

And that is what I am reading about now. I am almost done with “Children of Different Cultures” . A fascinating view of selection of small towns across the world and their way of socializing children, making them part of the community. Next, I have “A World of Babies” – “The truly extraordinary chapters of this book, so imaginatively written as “Manuals of Child Rearing” for seven different cultures literally all over the world, are testaments not only to the astonishing variety of ways in which those challenges are met, but, as well, to the sheer ingenuity of our species in coping with the task of replacing itself”.  Which will be followed by  “Our Babies, ourselves – how biology and culture shape the way we parent” - “the first book to explore to what extent the way we parent our infants is based on our biological needs and to what extent it is based on culture – and the startling consequences ignoring nature’s imperatives can have on the well-being of our children”.

Some may think I have gone bonkers or that I am over thinking this too much. I will disrespectfully disagree. Well, maybe respectfully, the other one is not nice. The way I see it, Mr.Blab and I have only been exposed to the westernized idea of what a parent is and what a parent is supposed to do…and how…and when. But, as with many other things, that is not the only way to approach the subject. Far from it. By reading about other ways, I am actually able to consider the alternatives.  I am actually able to make a choice of how to best raise my children, not just following the status quo that is inevitably ingrained in me. Essentially, lift the blinders off and see the whole array of possibilities and THEN make a selection.

I want to know why I am doing something. “Thats the way its done” doesnt quite cut it.

Cutting out cucumber pac-man and carrot stars  at 1a.m. in the morning is love. The fact that they made pasta at kindy that day and she didnt get to eat her lunch is – life.  I would still do it.

.

The other day, while Ms.Fab and I were at our favorite book store, I stumbled upon a book I have been eying for awhile – mostly electronically. In person though, I was having trouble resisting.

Softies – 22 friends for you to sew and knit

Its not the only toy craft book I have been protecting my wallet from, so I handed it to my daughter with a comment of something like “That looks interesting…”.

She looked through it and the sparkle in her eye told me the wallet is in trouble. “We can make one of those for my friend’s birthday!”

Money paid, case closed.

The fabrics were chosen by her and she took care of the face and name embroidery on the tail ribbon.

Finished off with a pack of pillow and blanket and a custom made wrapping paper.

Perfect fit for the sleep over birthday party.

I hope the girl is not disappointed we swayed away from the Barbie.

Maybe a bit late, but I have been meaning to chat to you about this for awhile, so here it is.

This is my favorite present from Christmas. No, it was not for me, it was for Mr.Blab from the kids, but its still my favorite.

I bought 3 thick stretched canvases and painted two of them dark chocolate brown. Then we hid in the bathroom and the kids made prints and peace signs. Baby Blab didnt comply much, but we managed to get him to cooperate…with a bit of force . No, no babies were harmed in the making of this art.

Then Ms.Fab and I filled the prints a bit as they were not strong enough.

Voila!

Love, love, love how they turned out.

I have no idea how much Mr.Blab liked them. Well, I guess he said he loved them and he put them up straight away, so I will take that as approval.

What was yours? If you remember from that far back?