6th June 2009
I can tell Winter is here because I am spending time looking at beach-holiday destinations and imagining how nice it would be to lie on the warm sand. Hmm. Byron Bay looks nice in wide-angled photos. I seemed to remember doing similar browsing in the middle of Summer, imagining chilly destinations including the Ice Hotel in Sweden.
Because it was a more than a little Wintery here today, the girls and I spent large amounts of time drawing pictures for each other to colour. And when I wasn’t answering to the call of “Mum, draw me! Draw me!”, I made rock buns – have you ever made Jane’s rock buns? They are delicious and lemony and I highly recommend them. Leave them to cool a little when they come out of the oven, but make sure to eat them while they are still a bit warm. Lily did not eat hers (which is unsurprising, as she is a non-eater in general, unless it’s bread or chocolate), but the rest of us devoured two each.
22nd May 2009
Lily and I have been working on getting our letters together for Christie’s Kid’s Mail Swap. She’s making beautiful butterflies to mail off on Monday. How good is that kid’s sense of symmetry? I promise, I did not micro-manage that! Other creative things I have been doing this week? Not much… The heating is back on so I am thawing out and beginning to feel like getting up and writing again. Every day in May has been a bit quiet these last few – I wrote myself bored on Tuesday and haven’t got back to it since. I still need to break out the sticky notes and work on the structure. Maybe I’ll have a burl this afternoon while Lil sleeps – although now I’ve said that, of course there’s no chance of her napping at all.
More My Creative Spaces here – thanks to Kirsty! I’m late again as usual.
21st May 2009
I asked Amelia to clean up her room on the weekend and after about five minutes she said to me, “You know how Nanny cleans up my room sometimes, well what happens if she gets bored and needs a little break?” and I thought about my Mum and how she cleans and I said “Well, she wouldn’t actually stop until it was done, would she?” and Amelia totally agreed and I knew we were both thinking of the same image of my Mum as a whirlwind of action. Neither Amelia nor I are like that when it comes to being tidy – making mess? Yes. Putting it all away again? If we have to, and then it’s very slowly and reluctantly. So instead of going back to clean her room again, she decided she needed to sit down and write to Nanny to get some words of advice.
Translation:
“Dear Nanny, You know how my room is always messy, well I do try to tidy it up but I do not know how to do it. Can you give me some advice? From Amelia”
And instead of cleaning up the house for some afternoon guests right now, I am posting a blog post about it. So – there you go. Like Mother, like daughter.
24th November 2008
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….
27th August 2008
There was a little Mr Mom moment in the kitchen this morning. I came out in the kitchen to find Phil cleaning Lily up after her breakfast with the vacuum cleaner! He looked at me and said “What?? This is highly effective!”.
The funniest bit was Lily telling my Mum later in the day all about it, and Mum turned to me and said “Did she just say daddy cleaned her breakfast out of her sleeve with the vacuum cleaner?”, Umm, yes she did.
** Portrait of Phil by me and Lily.
10th August 2008
I left a doodle in blue pencil on the kitchen table on Friday night. On Saturday morning after breakfast I found a little elf had elaborated on it in yellow texta. I like the composition.
How about this freezing cold weather?! We’ve had the heating turned up an extra notch and the kids are all into lego, library books and pancakes so Winter is still okay around here. I had forgotten how exceedingly delicious it is to get into bed early with rain on the roof, the electric blanket on and a good book.
File under inspiration – from my weekend of blog browsing: felt balls (what to do with all those yarn scraps!), sampler pillows with two colour embroidery, elves on mushrooms (via the Lark), gorgeous toys from Udder and primitive tea and coffee stained creatures from Little Black Crow Studio.
