Barely If this heat keeps up then I won’t be much longer, I feel like I’ve been put on slow roast.

Christmas was fun but exhausting, I’m glad it only comes once a year. Declan was very into it this year, but more for the excitement of opening presents rather than the excitement of decorations, Father Christmas etc. There are photos on my flickr page if anyone is interested.

Mum has returned to blighty, which is probably a good thing as I’m fairly certain she wouldn’t have survived a summer down under. But it also means without her help I am exhausted, between the kids, working on the sites and producing content and marketing them I am shattered, I need a holiday… and some UGC

In unrelated news, my child is a freakin genius, click the picture for more information and note, but yesterday he decided to show off his skills and draw his number, 1-10 and a smiley face, no prompting at all from me, I just looked over and he was counting out loud as he drew each one, exactly as I do when I draw numbers for him. He is an absolute star

Connor is lovely, just full of giggles and coos, he’s looking more like Declan, but their temperaments are still chalk and cheese, I don’t think Connor is going to be quite as high maintenance as Declan. Second child syndrome probably.

We’re working on colours today, so far Declan has got Yellow (yoyo) down perfectly, but the other two he’s not quite so certain of. I love seeing collections of colours, the arty type inside me just squees.

Right, time for lunch.

Declan just used the potty for the first ever time! I am a proud Mummy

For all those naysayers that said I would never publish a book, I would like to present my first novel, written and illustrated by yours truly. My apologies for the poor quality photos instead of scans, but please be aware that I have to protect quality work like this from people who may wish to plagiarise my wonderfulness. Such people are rife in the highly artistic circles with which I mingle.

The book is based on the true tale of Colin The Spider who resides on the fence outside our lounge window, unfortunately I can’t take any photos of the real life Colin as he only dashes out of his little hideaway when he has something in his web, and there’s no way I’m getting close enough to an arachnid to trigger the threads and make him think that there is something in there.

Publishers, if you could please direct all enquiries and cheques to me via my contact page that would be wonderful, please be aware that as a very busy author I may have to rely on my young intern to read and respond to any emails.

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Of course, that’s assuming I can get him off facebook.

I know I just posted, but this on deserves a spot all to itself. I love my sons, absolutely flat out adore them, my cruisey little baby and my sequin obsessed toddler are just fab. Of course there are times when I consider selling them to Angelina Jolie, but 90% of the time they are pure joy.

Today I  made a light tent for macro photography (primarily to use in the CraftBlog tutorials), despite my husband and mother’s doubts as I was making it (though I will admit it does look a little very bodgy) the pictures look pretty good. I’ll probably have a better play around it with it after Christmas when I have enough time (and space) to rig up a better set up with some daylight spotlamps.

Larry is now very chuffed that he can be photographed in his full beauty.

First up, I gave my neighbour her Christmas present at her x-mas party the other day and I have been gagging to show it off on here.

She’s Wiccan so was very excited about it, I’m just chuffed I managed to do appliqué without completely buggering it up. This was also my first time using double fold binding an I am already a convert, I will be tossing all my binding makers in favour of this technique. One of her friends at the party liked it so much she’s commissioned me to make a second one for her.

I’m so happy about how the back looks as well, I already had the perfect FQ in my stash for this and it goes fabulously.

Christmas presents are going along really well, Jen, my BIL and niece are going to be in Australia for a couple of hours tomorrow on their way to the UK for Christmas so I needed theirs to be ready for then. I just need to bind one last quilt and label three others and at least that bit will be done. I’m halfway through my Mum’s mini-quilt, which is looking beautiful, it’s just extremely intricate so I can’t work on it for longer than an hour or so at a time without going nuts. I also have one for Dan’s grandmother that I am flat out scared of. I haven’t started it yet just because the pattern seems so overwhelming and I really don’t want to screw it up, I do have a back up if it all goes horribly wrong, but I just really want this to be perfect for her.

I still have stockings for the four of us to make, and if I have time I might make some stuffed shapes/rattles for Connor, but if that doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen, I’m not going to get stressed about it. I wanted to finish up Declan’s bed quilt, it needs one more row and to be quilted and bound, but that’s now going to be a Birthday present. I started it when he was six months old so I figure waiting a few more months isn’t going to hurt!

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Speaking of superb quilts, this showed up in my mail box this morning…

:-O woah! I mentioned doing a quilt swap with the lovely Holly a couple of weeks ago, and when I posted my crab the other day she expressed some interest went nuts raving about it, and so I offered it quilted up and sent out as a swap, and this is what I got in return! I mentioned a while back on CraftBlog how much I loved the twisted rose pattern and this is such a beautiful interpretation of it. I really need to tidy up my sewing room and get the desk properly set up so I can display this on the wall in there.

This was my first swap and I think I have officially been bitten by the bug, I thought I would be sad to see my little crab (and fabric I’d hand painted!) dive into the depths of the post box, but I was more excited that he was making his way to someone who would appreciate him more than I do.

Mum had been peering over my shoulder one night (as she does!) whilst I was browsing my flickr contacts and she spotted a sad little bunny in Holly’s photostream and absolutely fell in love. I mentioned how much Mum liked the bunny to Holly and, being the amazingly awesome and generous person she is, she said she’d put it into the parcel as well. Mum announced when I told her “He shall be called Marvin!” but by the time “Marvin” arrived Mum had decided he was a she, and so Marvin became Millie. Mum keeps on raving about how much she likes her paws, I am starting to wonder exactly when it was in the last couple of years that my mother lost her mind, I’m fairly certain she hasn’t always been this nutty.

She’s now obsessing over what to send Holly in return for Millie, she flat out refuses to sew on my machine so that’s out, so instead she’s raiding the beading supplies, I’m very curious to see what comes out of it

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Last one, I promise, because I know most of the people who read this really couldn’t care less. My first ever “charm pack” (a pack of usually 35-40 5×5 fabrics squares from the same range) arrived today, along with some fabric for the great project of 2009 and some pirate stuff for Connor’s bumper and bed set. I’ve always been wary of charm packs, but I think I might be a convert. Previously I thought that paying for pieces of fabric not much bigger than what I would consider scraps to be silly, but it’s really quite nice to have a little stack to leaf through and I’m already trying to come up with ideas for what to do with them. The range is “Charisma” by Chez Moi for Moda, really not my usual style of fabric (I tend to be all about noveltys and geometrics rather than florals, particularly vintage style like this) but it should be an interesting journey coming up with something to do with them.

Now that I’ve bored the crap out of the internet, I’m off to bed.

I tucked Declan into bed tonight and as I was closing the door heard him say “Nigh-night Arnie… love you“. I died, no joke, the cute was that overwhelming that it was too much to handle and I am now writing this posthumously.

NB:

• Terrible title courtesy of my hubby, I claim no credit for that.
• The bottom two photos were taken six months apart - the first night with the side off the cot, and the first night in a “big boy” bed. I PROMISE my son has more than one pair of pyjama bottoms, but those are his favourites (I had a hard time consoling him when it started raining and he knew they were out on the line a couple of days ago. I am not kidding here, he sat at the patio doors with his face and hands pressed against the glass and sobbed whilst yelling “OH NOOOO!!! THOMAS!!!!!!” loud enough for Perth to hear). He is very close to growing out of them, I need to buy more Thomas flannel and make him another pair.
• I have no clear pictures of Arnie, he just shows up in the background sneakily every couple of months. I feel that this may mean that I have photographic proof that Toy Story is not actually a work of fiction. I like to think that Arnie secretly spends his nights plotting Elmo’s demise and getting stoned with Leroy Brown the lion, Vincent the elephant and Jules the giraffe.
• Yes. I take great pleasure in naming my son’s stuffed toys.
• I do not remember Declan being that small, or my floors being that clean, coincidence? I think not.
• This was meant to be quick, bed is calling. Night all.

I am resisting the urge to write about last year’s Christmas ornament disaster (for the clickphobes - I bought a handpainted ornament for Declan last year that was beautiful, it fell from where it was hanging and smashed into 23895620936520 pieces), but for the record I am still upset about that, we picked up a replacement the day after the accident and as it was so close to Christmas they had hardly anything left and no holly, so I picked up a blue bauble decorated with a reindeer, it’s no where near as lovely as the holly one was. The stall is open again and I went back to buy a bauble for Connor and with the intention of getting another holly one for Declan with 2007 written on it. They had no holly baubles. I cried, I swore, I got over it and decided to buy some blank baubles and make my own.

Hmm, so much for not talking about it… onto my actual S&T.

This is Father Christmas, a new addition to our house he was a gift from my youngest sister and is completely awesome. Advent calendars (like stockings) aren’t as big a deal here as they are in the UK, and the main flaw (and I believe the reason they haven’t taken off) is that they are all chocolate. Chocolate + Australian summer = a river of brown goo when you open your advent window. I’d been meaning on making a felt calendar with little pockets, but have been short on time, and so my Mum pulled Santa out of her suitcase and all of my problems were solved!

He’s filled with jelly babies, and Declan is obsessed with him, every morning the first words out of his mouth now are “Ho, ho, ho!” and he’ll run to Father Christmas and asked to be picked up. We’ll count the numbers until we get to the right day and then he gets a sweetie. He spent the first couple of days hanging out around the bottom of him with the hope that he’ll get another sweet, but I think he’s worked out now that it’s only once a day, although if you walk past carrying him then he’ll make an overly dramatic lunge towards the wall in the hope of grabbing a jelly baby out of a pocket.

Unfortunately there won’t be much more Christmas in our place this year, a few bits of tinsel will probably do it, I weighed it up and decided that the festive feeling wasn’t worth spending most of the day trying to keep Declan out of the tree, or having him frustrated and upset because he isn’t allowed to play with the ornaments. The tree will be going up on Christmas eve so that we can put the presents under it and taken down on Christmas day. Scroogish? Probably. Sensible? Yes.

Click here to see other people’s S&T entries for this week.

No seriously, LOVE. Where else can you find anything as superb as these “Novelty Adult Lamps“

Wait, it gets even better, three guesses what you have to flick/press to turn them on

And, don’t forget, they make a great Christmas present!

I sooooo want to get these for our bedside tables and Dan won’t let me, how can a marriage survive unless you fully embrace your wife’s love of tacky shite??

I will admit that I totally swiped this idea from Crystal’s Post discussing Christmas Movies, I’m feeling festive having finished up the Christmas shopping and thinking about getting the decorations up this weekend, it got me thinking about all the movies that get me in the festive mood.

So, in no particular order…

1. Muppets’ Christmas Carol - I love the Muppets, and combined with Michael Caine as Scrooge they’re even better and perfect casting of Stadler and Waldorf as Marley’s Ghost.
   
2. Jingle All The Way - I can’t write a movie list without Arnie showing up in it, this gets panned far more than it should. In the clip Arnie has just been convinced to come to a Santa warehouse where he’s been promised that he can buy the action toy for his son that he spends the entire movie searching for.
   
3. Die Hard - My mum is arguing that this isn’s a Christmas movie, Dan and I are saying otherwise. It’s set at Christmas, Christmas music plays over both the opening and end credits, and there are terrorists of ambiguous european origin, I’m not sure what else you could ask for in a Christmas movie. I couldn’t find any decent clips for this, so you get the bunnies version instead.
   
4. Gremlins - I watched this with my Dad one weekend when I was about eight, came home to Mum’s place on the Sunday night and had nightmares for the entire week. I have no idea how people still manage to write this off as a kids movie, it still scares the crap out of me. Phoebe Cate’s back story of her Father’s rotting body being found stuck in the chimney a couple of days after Christmas adds to the totally not safe for kids element.
   
5. Hooves of Fire - Animation by Ardman, voiced by Robbie Williams and music by Mark Knophler, Christmas movies reached their peak in 2000
   

Honourable mentions also go to Love Actually, It’s A Wonderful Life and The Snowman, but they just weren’t quite good enough to make it to the top five.

What Christmas movies get you in the mood for the festive season?

Click here to see other people’s S&T entries for this week.