to you and yours.
Thank you for visiting Loobylu again in 2008, especially after I took such a long break in 2007.
I appreciate your kind comments and lovely emails and am looking forward to a busy, bloggy 2009.
xx
I have had a couple of incidents this weekend which make me wonder if there isn’t a mischievous Midsummer Puk in our midsts but mostly it’s been fun and frolicky with some perfect weather to accompany it.
Solstice Goodness:
1. Fairy rings for fairy chocolates. The girls constructed these (above) late last night, as you know Summer Solstice is when the fairies come out, and sure enough there were squeals of delight when gold covered chocolate coins were discovered (way too early) this morning. They managed this despite some discussion as to whether they would come out to play Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Night.
2. Dress-up (fairy wings encouraged) Solstice dinner with roast goodness, chocolate desert and plenty of ice-cream but best of all, a new growly baby guest in a sling at our table.
3. After dinner I walked Kim and Georgina to their car and exclaimed that it really did feel a bit magic-y out. We stood saying our goodbyes and two great owls flew out from the tree across the road – great silent forms in the twinkling dark. Owls here in Melbourne! I know they are around but I have never actually seen one. One perched on the electricity wires under a street light and I couldn’t have wished for a better Midsummer sighting.
4. Christina and Paul’s Christmas get together – macaron mania, beautiful decorations, gorgeous people, new acquaintances with cute patchwork bags, pretty dolls, fancy tattoos…
5. Christmas lunch #1 at Mum and Dad’s. Phil was given a remote control helicopter from my Uncle which is tiny and delicate and hovers like a dragon fly (unless it’s caught in a evaporative cooling airstream and then it’s “duck for cover!”).
6. Happy girls – it has taken a few days to adjust to holidays and rest off that end of term tiredness but I think we are almost there.
7. Happy me – all feels good in the world.
I am running late for a play date – first day of the school holidays and all that, but I wanted to put up these photos of some of the pages of the newest Frankie. Such a sweet magazine – and there are some of my Brown Owls peeps! I haven’t met them all but the ones I know are gorgeous girls – and the others look so nice it makes me keen to get back into the gypsy-style club house next year. Can someone please do a left – right of names for me? I couldn’t find it in Frankie. xx
I’m not exactly sure what I did but I somehow lost the contents of this post this morning so I thought I should put the photos back up but I can’t remember exactly what I wrote about them. The above doll is one I have just finished working on for Lil’s Christmas present. The one below is of Amelia’s doll, still a work-in-progress. I do remember saying that the doll reminds me of a grumpy and slightly aggressive surfy boy who was in my first year Graphic Design class… and that obviously I need to move away from this look and get something a little less surly.
A couple of people asked me how I do the doll’s hair. It’s a bit of a scratchy method which may not lead to hair with longevity but I will work on a simple tutorial soon.
Woah! Where did that whole week go? I know I have been busy and energy levels are on the up and up which is nothing but good at this time of year. I have been sewing and organising gifts and baking and spending ridiculous amounts of time in the local Post Office and having windows put into our dark kitchen which has made a HUGE difference to my general mood. There’s so much light I don’t know what to do with myself. The tree is up, the carols are on repeat, the kids are counting down to the end of school and then to the big day itself… I am starting to think “maybe I should start planning what I am going to feed everyone on Christmas day.”
I have also been reading “The Dud Avocado
But I am all about the christmas biscuits this year (cookies if you prefer). Have you seen this? Gourmet’s Favourite Cookies from 1941-2008. Mostly when I browsed through the photos I thought about the production team having to whip up batch after batch of vintage goodness. What a job.
MixTape arrived in the nick of time yesterday. Amelia was having a no-school day due to a heavy cold but of course around 9.30am she was bored out of her mind, and driving me out of mine. Our friendly parcel postman left a delightful package on the front deck and it was opened to reveal MixTape zine’s Kids Issue. Inside we discovered a quick and easy, super cute tutorial for making Yumstie Felt Brooches and Amelia, with her very rudimentary sewing skills (but only a little help from me), immediately whipped out three. Her favourite bit was choosing the buttons to coordinate with the felt flower and then her next favourite bit was presenting them as gifts to people with great flourish.
And there’s lots of other awesome stuff in this MixTape issue – The Crafty Lady profile is of Amber Carvan who is one of my heroes – (20,000 subscribers Amber?? Holy MOLEY!) (and who is selling her newly revised for 2008 Christmas Craft book which is totally worth buying and downloading), I want to make the Naughts and Crosses Pouch, and put together a nature table, and grow some grass hair, and make puffy paint… and all that!
Nichola and Justine have sent me five copies of The Kids Issue to give away to five Loobylu readers (because I did the cover!) so leave me a comment letting me know what your favourite Christmas craft or activity for kids is and I will randomly pick five lucky recipients. Comments will be closed on Friday afternoon at 2pm (Melbourne time).
** Comments are now closed! Thanks! **
That house is getting bigger and bigger. I know it’s not going to last, but I quite like the way the structure fills with the early evening sun and glows yellow, spilling fragments of light into our house in new and odd places.
And all is quiet tonight – which is amazing because it’s Lily’s first night in her new BIG bed and it’s a very big event.
That’s the bed! The mystery object from last week. I found a cheap bed frame on ebay, found a place just up the road that powder coats stuff ($90!) and voila! Not quite the Cath Kidston beauty but it makes me happy and it was thrifty and Lily loves her NEW BIG RED BED. The quilt is a very old one from my childhood which I think is one of my Grandma’s very first pieces. It’s pretty loud, but sadly getting pretty faded in parts and is a nice stand in until I finish my bazillion other projects and make Lil a new quilt. Maybe it will just stay that way.
She looks so tiny in that bed. I tried to take a photo of her in it while Phil read her bedtime stories, but in every single photo she is a complete blur of movement - she was tucking herself in, rearranging her pillows, moving her blanky into a better position, finding that her pillow was slipping etc etc.
And don’t forget those rabbits on auction!
Finally I have got a little bit organised and have sewn the buttons on my 5 Marshmallow bunnies and they are ready to go on sale, just in time for the silly season.
After lots of deliberation I have decided to list them on ebay rather than etsy as there are only 5 and I have had a barrow load of enquiries – so I couldn’t think of an easier way to let everyone have a fair go at getting in. Because of this, I am donating 5% of the sale of the rabbits to Oxfam Australia and it’s only a three day auction so I can get them off as soon as possible so that they will reach people in plenty of time for Christmas.
Please note that these auctions are in Australian dollars.
I had lots of bits and pieces left over from making Amelia’s (still unfinished) quilt, and they are being put to good use. Over the weekend we decided that Tali (the doll for baby Georgina) needed a quilt to go with her new bed. Amelia has been working on a kind of freeform patchwork for a while now, and finally it had a reason to come together. She handstitched 12 of the 16 squares before losing steam and handed it over to me to finish, quilt and bind. I think it looks pretty spiffy! The collage is just a little fun thing she put together using a bunch of the left over selvedge scraps which I kept, thinking they might be useful for something someday….
Pip revolutionized my life today by introducing me to the Next button in Google Reader… read her instructions and enjoy! I was totally overwhelmed by all the blogs I subscribe to in my reader, and will often just return to my 10 – 15 oldest and dearest because looking at everything is just too much. But now I have started a-fresh. I haven’t gone the whole hog and deleted everything like Pip has done, but I have marked everything as “read”, and will enjoy hitting “next” from now on to flick through the most recent updates from all of my 236 favourite blogs (I can’t bear to delete a single one!). I have found so much inspiration in just one day using this new method. I am hoping this sense of being all sorted will last.
I have started thinking about decorating for Christmas (this year I am thinking of embracing the Southern Hemisphere Summer a bit more and decorate with a kind of Midsummer-fairy-woodland theme… though I may run out of energy, as is my way, and just cut out a million paper snowflakes again. They do look pretty). There is lots to be found to start me thinking and scribbling lists. Top to bottom: Mouse House and Family from Pottery Barn Kids, vintage wall art on etsy (sadly sold!) via How About Orange, a super cute mushroom ornament found on Sew, Mama, Sew, Heidi’s gorgeous card houses (she has the link to the templates on the bhg site) and lastly (and so cool) is a detail from Michelle’s beautiful Solstice calendar. Such an inspiration!
