Party time, cake time

It was my little girls' birthday on Monday, she turned three. Wow. I can remember the day she was born like it was just yesterday, but also, it seems like we have had her forever. She is such a good kid, I love her so much.
I made the cake, got quite neurotic about the whole thing, running all over town looking for the right icing and other stuff, like black food colouring. Who would have thought that if I'd just gone to the Cake Making shop in the first place (instead of wasting time and money in places like Woolworths and Spotlight) I could've got everything I wanted (plus some priceless advice) straight up. Live 'n' learn.
Anyway she loved her cake, just loved it.Seeing this photo made it all worth while. Honestly I was so nervous as I have never made a kids cake before and I didn't want to let her down. I even got my Mum to take over the icing because I was doing such a dodgy job of it. But she absolutely loved it. And that was all that ever mattered. I would love to add more pictures of her just staring at her cake but I won't bore you anymore.

Ruby had a fabulous birthday with heaps of presents, a trip to the park, James cake, and finally a trip to the beach and fish 'n' chips for tea. Brilliant.

Australia Day

So today is Australia Day, and man was it hot!!! We adorned ourselves with fake tatts and headed to Yeppoon to sweat it out at the festivities on the beach. There were rides 'n' food 'n' kites 'n' more young girls in inappropriate clothes than you could poke a stick at (how old am I???) Despite my best intentions both Ruby and I got a little burnt. Naughty. Ruby had so much fun, she ate hot chips and ice cream, went on the saucer and teacup ride, and shoved some balls in the clowns mouth to win herself a plastic whistle.

There were so many people down there. Crazy.

What did you do for Australia Day??

And the picture of the sleeping kids? Wouldn't it be nice if that's what happened coming home?

But no. That was on the way down there. Coming home they were completely wired! And yes I know Rubys' seatbelt is not on correctly. She is always slipping her arms out, and if you have a trick to get her to keep them in there - let's hear it. I'm at a loss as to how to keep her in that seatbelt properly.

Moonlight

Wee little Moonlight girl having a bath and going to bed.

We love books all the time

Went to the op shop today and was very good, hardly bought anything! Got a new handbag for two bucks, and a couple of books, about 50cents each, I think.

We have rather an excessive amount of books in this house. Books, books, and more books. Cannot get enough of them. Need more book shelves though.

Got this Make Toys and Presents book which has some easy peasy kids craft stuff in it.

Like the old 'two cans and a piece of string' phone, remember making those?? Now even I'm capable of doing that. I am very guilty of not doing enough crafty stuff with Ruby because I think 'Well I have to get all this stuff out, then make a big mess, Ruby will lose interest in a nanosecond, blah, blah, blah', we decide to do something else instead. But the stuff in this book is so basic and easy which = good.





Ah, note the rubber band gun. I'm sure Ruby would love one of these.








The other book is Moonlight, and I love this book so much. It has no words, just the sweetest pictures ever. I found another one of these books (by Jan Ormerod) a while ago, Sunshine, and fell in love with the pictures so I was very excited to find another one.
Moonlight is about a little girl getting ready to go to bed. She has her supper, has a bath and her Dad puts her to bed. The little one stays in bed for a minute, then she's up...............Dad puts her to bed again...............then she's up. Mum puts her to bed.............she's up..............then Mum and Dad put her to bed again. Sound a lot like bed time in this house really. It is so sweet.
I hope these pictures will load so you can see them too

Oh, just to explain the title of this post, it comes from Ruby. Her latest little thing is whatever she loves, she loves 'all the time'.
"Mummy, I love Daddy all the time"
or
"Mummy, I love trains all the time"
Whatever it is that she loves, she loves it 'all the time', she's such a funny little thing :)

Ok Blogger won't load these pictures for me and it's late, I've got to go to bed. But I would so love to show these pictures, I will try again in the morning.

Posting pictures on Blogger - it shouldn't be hard?

Honestly why do I have all these problems posting pictures, no one else does. In my previous post I uploaded three pictures, all different, but end up losing one and getting two the same. And the placement - bizarre.

So, just to clarify the first pic is the jeans dress, and the second and third pics (previous post), curtain dress on the left. Would upload the other picture again but I don't have the patience to wait for it (and I'm still tired)

Tired...............

I have so much I want to do and I am just so tired. But that isn't

what keeps me from getting everything done. No, the thing is, there's just not enough hours in the day. Truly - the stuff I could get done if there were just a few more hours in the day. I wish.

I'm always doing something, I never just sit and watch TV or whatever. And yet I never get it all done.

Maybe I feel like this because I am, at the moment working my way through my photographs. Sorting my way through every photo I've taken since Ruby was born. Writing on the backs of them and putting them in albums. Trying desperately to remember when each one was taken. Even when I picked each packet of photos up after they'd been printed, I knew then that I should write on them straight away, as soon as I got home.

Of course I didn't.

I hope I will from now on. Because this is a huge job. Thousands and thousands of photographs.

A couple of nights ago (before the photo sorting started) I cut out a heap of things ready to be sewn up, mainly pairs of pants, a couple of dresses. All cut from op shop fabric or old clothes. That's one of the things I love most about my sewing. Sewing new things from old things. Pants from tablecloths, dresses from old curtains or tea towels. Must take a picture of the tea towel dress and show it here. I like it. Going to see if I can dig up a picture of a couple of dresses I made quite a while ago now, one is made from some old curtains, and the other from fabric from the op shop with an appliqued flower which was cut from a tea towel. I made them to put towards a stash of things which I was going to take to a market stall. But that kind of fell by the wayside and now I'm thinking maybe, Etsy?? If you had a little girl, would you put them kin something like this?

Just waiting for the pics too upload, found a couple of extras so I've put them in to. Just so you can see what 'new from old' can be. One of the dresses (with a blue and a brown vintage button) is a little denim dress which was made from a pair of old jeans, too easy. Actually I used two pairs of jeans, one pair for the actual dress and then I cut the pocket from a second pair to put on the front of the dress.

The other dress I made from a skirt which I, very sadly , did not fit into any more. I didn't want to get rid of it so I just made it into something that Ruby could wear.

Oh man, sorry for the dead boring post. Blogger is taking so long to upload these pictures.

Two posts in one night

I just have to share this. As usual when my kids are actually in bed and sleeping and my partner isn't home, I'm wasting time (haven't even washed the dishes yet) on the internet. Anyway I was on a Photography site and found this link and, I swear, nearly peed my pants laughing (although I got a bit concerned as I scrolled down that I might actually see a picture of me and my family on there)

Please you must check this out

http://listoftheday.blogspot.com/2007/09/great-olan-mills-photos.html

This is Portrait Photography, the good ol' days
I think we've probably all been victim of this kind of photography at some point. I know for a fact that my mum has photos very similar to some of these proudly on display in her house. Ugh.

Pick any cake you like sweetheart.....

. Truely if this face was looking at would you want to say no to her birthday wish?
















It's her birthday in just under 2 weeks, she'll be three. A couple of weeks ago I handed her a Womans Weekly Birthday Cake book and told her to pick a cake, whichever she wanted, I will make it for her.
She flicked through it very quickly and cast it aside.



Announced that she would have a James cake, thank you very much.That's James, Thomas the Tank Engines' mate, if you weren't aware.

Now usually she doesn't stick with things, she forgets, or changes her mind.
But not this time. She has spoken of the James cake every day since.

I'm not a cake maker. Have never made an actual kids birthday cake. For her first birthday she got cupcakes, and last year it was chocolate mud cake (out of a box, how embaressment)

So I've been a little concerned about how I would pull this off.

But today we re-visited the Cake book (which obviously I've never really looked at), and now we're both happy
























I'll frost him red (as James is red, not green like in the picture, because that would be Percy)

Mmmmm, we'll see how we go....................................

Mad kids

Ruby at the park this morning


Bailey, my new nephew (my only nephew actually)

It's been a while between posts.......................

We survived Christmas, just. Christmas day was nice, went to my sister-in-laws parents' place for lunch, nice family. The rest of the Christmas season was a bit of a struggle. Other in-laws. I'll say no more.

I've had a quick trip down to Brisbane to visit my sister who had her first baby, Bailey, early December. He is a real cutie. I love new babies. I would've called it a flying visit, except there was no flying involved, we got the train down. 'We' being me, Ruby (3 at the end of this month), and Clary (nearly 10 months).Going down actually wasn't too bad considering it was 10 hours overnight in a sitting carriage (couldn't get a sleeper!!). The kids were good, slept,lovely. Only bummer was I had to hold on to Clary while he slept, so no sleep for me :(

Coming home you'd think things would've been better, we were on the tilt train, so only 5 hours and it was during the day. Ummmmm. No.

We had 'that' person sitting across from us. You know. A sausage short of a barbeque. Fixes in on you, wants to talk (loudly) to you, tell you all about their life, scares your kids. (Ruby crawled under my chair at one point, and normally she loves to talk to other people, anyone.) But we made it, we're home.

Wish I could've stayed down there a little longer. Wish I could also have seen my other sister, Sally. Would like to add a link to her newly started blog, but that could be a bit beyond me at this point :)

Clary is getting his first tooth and whether or not that is the reason he no longer sleeps for longer the 2 hours at a time I"m not sure. I hope it's the reason. I hope this is not permanent. We've had some hellish nights.

We were all a bit feral this morning so headed out to the park, it was stinkin' hot but Ruby had a ball. Screamed her lungs out as I dragged her away before she dissolved into a pool of sweat.

OK let's see if I can add some pics here.