birthday eve

tonight
me and my farmer boy just blew up 100 balloons
the lounge room is full
one excited 10 year old boy is in his bed, too excited to go to sleep
and his little sister is in our bed, too excited for her big brother, to go to sleep
and his big sister is in her bed, in the darkness. i hope she is asleep, but i fear she has an ipod in there somewhere keeping her awake. she was tired....im going for the shes asleep theory.
tomorrow
he's going to burst when he gets his new skateboard.
then we are roadtripping it to melbourne so he can skate his 11 year old body around the concrete jungle
we will eat some yum food and follow the leader (him) around the city

oh i hope its so much fun....after last years birthday, our boy deserves an extra happy one. and 11 is a cool number to be.

playing with dolls and fire

this week flew by. fast. 

we are counting down to monday when our big boy turns 11. yep. 11!

we've got his dream present for him. and he really thinks theres no way hes getting what he wants.... because thats what i keep telling him. oh its going to be a fun morning.

yesterday my big girl stayed home from school. she tidied her room, she sang, she played dolls with amelie. it was so nice.....we are having school dramas. she wants to learn singing and drama and cooking and sewing and yoga and english. not all the irrelevant crap that they learn at school. combined with the attitudes etc...of the kids at school....its slowly or maybe quickly sending her crazy. and us too. 

i wish there was a beautiful school. why arent there beautiful schools. why arent all schools beautiful?

:::::anyway.......

this afternoon sindri decided to make a fire. then amelie quickly joined in and made another one next to sindris. and then sindri made another one. three fires. we cooked potatoes in the fire and toasted bread on sticks, spied on a possum jumping on the shed roof, ate marshmallows, rode bikes and chased calves and declared we should do this all the time. 

tonight i noticed Amelie has moved her little dolls bed into my room, on the floor next to my bed. now her doll Olive is sleeping with us too. 

i love saturday nights. and i love sunday mornings too. and i smell of fire. nice.

::: and....

i took brighter photos of my Umbrella Prints 2012 Trimmings entry. I cant wait to see all the entries :-)

and finally :::: if you like handprinted fabric you might like to join in the swap that Leslie is organising. I did it last time and it was lots of fun getting nice surprise parcels in the mail....and sending them off into the world too.

bye x

sunshine and lemons

i can feel some lemon syrup cake eating coming on.......
it was a beautiful morning today. sunny and icy.
the kids played fishing and i did some deconstructing and reconstructing to make a snow white dress for my big girl. its a w.i.p  but its looking good....she tried it on and did some twirling.....i think it may be a yay. you never know, sewing for bigger girls. tomorrow i need to finish it and id prefer it didnt take me all day.

hole in my finger.

i really really want to see Arrietty again. we all do. and i just found out its going to be released on dvd in Australia on May 23rd. have you seen it? and all the other wonderful studio ghibli movies? if you haven't you have a big treat awaiting you.

i need to make a snow white dress for my big girls school production performance. well, i could have bought one...and i did look, and find one on ebay. but then i went op shopping today and found the perfect big puffy yellow dress, which was half price....$3.50, and together with a a few other bits of blue and red fabric, i am going to make the most awesome snow white dress for my girl. fingers crossed and creative visualisation ;-)    and i need to do it by thursday.
other than that.. my farmer boy bought a cockatiel from the farmers market for who knows what reason.....i wasn't there at the time to smack him when he decided we need a bird in a cage. ? ? its in his genes....budgie breeder/farmers going back many generations...... but still! a cockatiel...really??? so anyway....we only had a tiny cage for it ...so today i had to spend $75!! to buy a new cage for this bird...who has been named Graham by the kids...because I was feeling so sad for it in that tiny cage. so i went to grab him to put him in the new cage and he went mental and pecked and bit me as hard as he could, while sindri watched me and almost wet his pants laughing at me....i even said fuck. in front of the kids.! i dont do that. but jeepers it hurt. and it was very funny.
and then the cats and dog were interested to see what was going on. animal mayhem.
lets hope the cage is in one piece in the morning, with a bird inside.
i forget what its like to live with no animals. or kids.
tonight muzz walked out from seeing all the kids in bed and said "we have three kids!"
sometimes it is a freaky thought to think that we are the parents! im Mum!
and one of the kids is a teenager.....next year she'll be 15! freeeaky.
alright....time for zzzzz.....
later. x

i love grey. with a bit of pink or yellow.

        




















grey icy days outside
mean cozy colourful days inside
today amelie knitted for most of the day....first it was going to be a bootee for my sisters baby coming in spring time, but then, while amelie had a shower her daddy did some knitting for her to help it grow a little quicker, and now shes thinking maybe it will be a scarf. it may even evolve into something else yet.....
i stopped procrastinating and finished my umbrella prints trim girl. well i thought it was finished until i took some photos and saw the photos on my computer, and now im not sure i am finished. or whether i like her very much at all. i think i have looked at her for too long.
tonight i cooked roast vegies. i am quite sure i could live on roast potatoes.
sindris lettuce is growing crazyhappily. thats about 1000 seeds in an old calf feeding trough.
miss gingko is at her prettiest right now. the grey skies are a great backdrop for the fluoro colours of the leaves right now.
okay im off to eat some chocolate and maybe do some birthday scheming.....our boy is soon to be 11!
x manda

magical flowers appeared

early morning painting::and my beautiful kokeshi from my visit to japan a few years ago....shes so beautiful, she makes me smile often::and oh my goodness these flowers, hakea im pretty sure, growing on an inconspicuous bush in our garden....this is the first time they have appeared:: what a surprise.

marathon training

ive been painting.
and swatting and swearing at flies in our house
ive been doing the same with our dear dog Rosie (swearing and growling) who has taken up night time barking again
amelie has learnt to ride her new (old) groovy bike in one day. on the second day she rode it about 1km down to my mums to see her cousin Hana

i ran along side her (that was today) and tonight my legs are killing me
it scares me a little how unfit i am
must do something about that
yoga sounds nice (and gentle) would that help me to run driveway mini marathons i wonder.
ive been physically attached to my iphone since i got it. i never knew. but now i do. its too much fun.
ive had all sorts of weird things happening around me. theyve been making me feel tired. now i wear a crystal and find myself asleep very early. i like sleeping early.
i told my farmer boy i would like to be a monk if i wasnt living this life. the silence i imagine would be refreshing....for awhile anyway... until it sent me cuckoo....
i have fabric waiting to be sewn into a dress for me. it has little tiny scattered bird prints on it and its a cacky brown colour and its quite thin. i like it. it was maybe $4 at the big junky clearing sale we went to on the weekend. most of the junk i bid on and won just for fun ended up at the opshop on monday. funny.
gosh its fun to bid. although i need to do more clearing out and less bidding. i have mountains of books to get rid of, and thats after keeping the mountains of our favourite ones.
i want to have a stall at camberwell market if i can ever get one. its booked out months in advance.
oh and i am in fact having a little shop/stall at the square market in bendigo in june. that will be fun. its in the old town hall which is very beautiful. i hope to work some magic and have something nice to bring along with my colouring books.
and now i must go to sleep. i love sleep.

Hi there blog...and lovely blog friends :-)
I have tried to get back here so many times but life just got busy and busier.
And even now, while I would like to sit and have a blog catch up, I'm soon
out the door again to have lunch with my girls..one has started full time work
now that her four babies are all at school, and the other is leaving me here (sob sob) while she goes
on a roadtrip to queensland for two weeks.  We've also been trying to get together for a long time.
life really just gets crazy all at once.
I totally bombed out of the KCWC mid week.....that began with my overlocker breaking needles and
becoming unthreaded. BUT KCWC was pretty awesome wasn't it. I loved the feeling of all these mummas all over the world sitting down making clothes for their kids. Its a good thing. And I love good things. And good people.
Anyway...I do have to go....stuff the fire full of wood so my house is toasty when I get home with three
kids....and it's Friday! Happy happy happy. The weekend is ours.
And even better, this weekend there's a GIANT white elephant auction we are going to. How I love to rummage through other peoples stuff. Maybe we will find some treasure :-) Maybe I was once a pirate? hehe....okay, I'm going...see you sooner rather than later.
x Manda

KCWC day 3

a spotty top for my big girl Veda. big as in she's 13 and taller than me and making me feel like a little mumma. It feels really weird to hug her these days. Of course I still love to hug her though.

I printed this fabric a while ago with a gocco. Today I fumbled around in my room for awhile not knowing what to make. I asked the kids for their suggestions but I didn't like any of them ;-)
So a simple top was all I came up with. It's the style my girl likes....she wears tops this shape over longer tighter tops....like Flashdance????  She is yet to try it on....so that may be another whole story about whether it was a success or not. but either way, I think its kinda nice. And if she doesnt like it, it will fit me :-D  
Have you had a look at the KCWC flickr group? there's a whole lot of great sewing going on.
x Manda

KCWC day two

Day two of KCWC was a crazy kind of one.
It involved searching for more wood for our fire
::Getting new tyres on our car after putting up with a leaky one for awhile
::Watching the rain pour down and wondering whether my boy could actually be out there doing the school cross country racing. (Yes he was. Stupid school - the bus got bogged in mud and could have tipped over. Not to mention my boy came home late, hungry, wet, muddy and shivering.)
::My farmer boy surprising me with a new iphone. My vintage mobile has gone missing and has lived a long life. My boy also chopped up a heap of wood for us so I won't have to go searching for awhile. He's a sweet one.

Annnnd in between all of that, I squeezed in a pumpkin coloured woollen skirt for Amelie. It's made from a piece of fabric I found in Savers...mega thrift shop, ages ago. The colour is so so perfect. And whilst I was out in my room sewing it, I found a tshirt for her with one of my old prints on it. Perfect match!
And now. relaxxxxx.
Oh woops.....I also snuck in a visit to the opshop and found some fabric. You may see it later this week on one of my kids :-)
Manda x