a little bit of this and a little bit of that....

(forgive the font change and size mixup - i really thought i had it this time)

oh life can be so hectic with 2 kids, one in school one at home, working thurs evening and all day saturday, plus every 3rd sunday. whilst living in an unfinished house 45min from greg's work and 30 mins for ally's school.

sometimes i feel like a taxi driver, who makes meals, does housework and semi-regularly gets to zumba (which is oh so addictive i wish i could do more)

last year alex and i signed up for a christmas card swap on http://kidscraftweekly.com/ - these are the gorgeous cards we received from around the world - we really enjoyed being involved thanks amber - the big snowman at the bottom is the stunning card alex made at school for greg and i - she's such a talented chicken

the cards we received =>

we've done a few cool little jobs around the house the most fun

(and successful) is our first paver/stepping stone up to the car - it took 2 bags of cement, some mosaic mirror tiles and some cut up glass tiles to make my snail paver - we are so pleased with how it turned out - the pic is taken whilst the cement is still wet - it looks better since it's dried and greg has scraped the tiles clean - i'll get another pic (yeah sometime karen sometime)

the snail paver in question =>

i've managed to do some sewing too - very enjoyable toothe first was a custom set of pads for a gorgeous lady who lives locally and found me via nurture nappies - ooh i can't wait to show you how beautiful they all turned out - was so exciting to create beautiful pads again

16 pads in a bag =>

and these gorgeous little aprons - i made this one for miss annette

one of the teacher aides at alex's school - i really wanted her to some colour so chose 2 eric carle prints - one from hungry caterpillar and one from brown bear

i made myself one for work too - it's very cool and i will have to get pics of it on

miss annette in her apron =>

t'was the season for handmade decorations

had lots of fun this year making decorations

the last 2 years i've participated in a decoration swap - there were only 4 of us this year so i made 2 stars each - one wire and bead star with a cloisonne (?sp) bead as a feature amongst lots of wire and seed beads and one felt star - plain red on the back, yellow with a star bead/stitch detail on front edged in gold thread blanket stitch and stuffed with polyfil

on our cutest little tree (it's about 70cm high fibreoptic) you can see lots of handmade stars (3 felt ones, one is mine, one from megsie at pint and one by di - who also did the stocking and red/green paper wreath - as part of the aforementioned swap); a hand detailed house, 3 paper flowers and a blue bird by marnie of onewetpants; lots of wire/bead shapes that ally and i did together and ally's little paper/peg deorations. i did the star on top reusing the beads off some wine charms i'd been gifted by kathryn shaw (see ozebaby.com.au) before she found out we don't drink. i did buy the red balls and tinsel from coles as the first decorations of this season as greg doesn't know where all our old ones are and i didn't want to leave the tree bare for my 5yo.

the gold/pink wire and seedbead ball was done for the school tree - i shaped the wire around an inflated balloon then spent about 4 hours wrapping wire and feeding hundreds of tiny glass seedbeads onto it - each family at the school was asked to make a decoration - i think only a handful did. as we are moving ally next year we wanted to give a piece that would remind them of her - so it's gold and pink (her favourite colour); handcrafted and unique - just like our bear!