Little Tip for toddlers partys!!

OK - so you went all out for the first birthday and now number two has rolled around. Are you getting more sleep - sure - are you still knackered - ABSOLUTELY! SO why, why, why are you stressing abt a party for a 2 year old. Save the pennies, save the work, save the stress and tell everyone it is "Low Key" party time. Set the trend and the standard in your mothers gang and hear the sighs of relief. All we did was tell the little mans buddies to come down to the park where they had a petting zoo and playground. I brought the cake and it was a BYOTH (bring your own Tim Hortens) - yep ladies I did absolutely nothing for his party and everyone had a ball!! Were we knackered? - NO. Were we broke? - NO. Are we blacklisted from all other birthday parties? - not to my knowledge....DID we just enjoy the day? - absolutely!! So remember, in 2/3 years time there is no way your little one is going to let you get away with this lack of effort - enjoy it now while you can!

Market Days are here again!!

SO after a big break from both markets and blogging I am back! It had been 4 years since my last market at Moss St in Victoria and I am so very happy to be back there again. It really is one of the best environments - great atmosphere, great produce / products, kind vendors and wonderful customers - mix that up with some ambient music and a gorgeous day - what a recipe for a happy market day. 4 years ago I was at Moss St selling tea cosies out of pre-loved (as is the "PC" term I understand) fabric. It was such a great experience and made me decide that I did want to try to sell my products - but there is only so much scope for one item like a tea cosie!! So away I went for 4 years - thinking, thinking abt stuff - experimenting and learning to sew properly with a really kind lady who took me on to help her with her own work. 4 years later I think I am really starting to develop something that could work and that I have such fun thinking abt, making and last minute fiddling with. Sometimes we really don't know where we are going to end up and what it is that we are going to do. I never was that person who knew exactly what they wanted to do for their work - I only knew I wanted to LOVE whatever it was I did. SO I have spent 15 years doing work I haven't particularly loved - spending a lot of time brewing what I COULD do. It makes me smile when people look at handcrafted things and snort or tusk saying - "god anyone could make or do that". When I think of all the painstaking time this little stall has taken to start to bud - it really isn't the easy option that people think!! I still have no idea what will develop from this - but I do feel I am at the beginning of something finally good for me and right now I am loving the buzzing going on in my head!! SO I have come back to my little blog just to say hi - sorry I have been so absent - it has felt a little foggy in UnPc land - but I hope the clouds are now clearing in my head and in the sky!!!

Arghhh the mess is driving me crazy

Why don't they have a house and home magazine for parents of toddlers? Oh I love the way the kitchen utensils are displayed all over the floor and the newspaper carpet is fantastic!! Could we try the porridge texture on the walls do you think? The mess drives me absolutely nuts sometimes..I have to remind my hubby that it takes an awful lot of work to keep my house to this standard of disarray. How the hell do these other bloggers keep their houses so damn perfect looking - you are liars the lot of ya!! So here's a sneak peak of a real "house and home"!!

How the hell do people do it all?

Ahh the holidays

So we have had just an amazing Christmas with the boy!! He was so in the spirit of things and got very much into the present giving and receiving! At the end of the night whilst being put to bed he started to run up to the exposed chimney in his room crying "chimney, Chimney.." as is usual, but this time there was a pause, a point at the chimney and then he said "Santa came"...these kids really can blow you away sometimes can't they with their levels of understanding. We have all had varying bouts of sickness over the course of the holidays which seems to be doing its rounds in our area, but it hasn't spolit a thing as we are all enjoying cosying up to the fire and just hanging out together. I am also enjoying the hubby being around for the boy and have utilised his presence by spending a whole day in the sewing room yesterday - where I finally started and finished the little boy's curtains. I am so pleased with them as a first effort of printing and curtain sewing and the boy is rewarding me by saying "pretty" a lot and "robot"!! Well time to go, pour the wine and enjoy some Coronation St while the boys are doing bath -ahhhhh the luxury of it all.

Bandana Stockings!!

I am in the middle of finishing off Christmas Gifts, buying Christmas gifts and desperately trying to think of some Christmas Gifts (sorry hubby you are the latter!!). My sewing machine broke this evening and I am so proud of myself for managing to fix it!! I can finish off the last projects - maybe - I have in the meantime co-drunk a couple of bottles of plonk and probably shouldn't even be writing this! We have just finished watching 4 Christmases - which was so much better than I was expecting (I am always dubious of the Vince Vaugn) - hubby is now snuggled up with "The Hangover" which he has been dying to watch!!

I wanted to share with you a very cool find!! Bandanas!! There are craft stores with some very cool colours and I have just finished a christmas stocking for the little guys buddy!! It is finished with a camoflage contrast - what little man (or big man) would not want one of these! You can also see here the wide range of colours available and they are only 97c a piece - you need at least 2 pieces to make a stocking abt this size. I have plans to turn the other stash into some decorative flags - but they will have to wait until 2010.

Were those the first flakes of Winter??

Today I think I felt the first flakes of winter!! We live in BC on Vancouver Island and my understanding of winter over here was all daffodils and people playing golf! That is a winter I have yet to see - the 1st one we had here it rained non-stop from Nov through to March (my husband works outside so I got the record breaking stats daily) the 3 since have snowed. I have experienced quite the range of snow from the Northern Ontario, 8ft, nonsense snow to UK snow, where 1cm brings down whole railtrack and motorway systems. I guess if I were Goldilocks BC would be just right - enough to have fun, but not enough to send me crazy. It is also a bonus that we do not "have" to be anywhere - my husband can't work and I was either in walking distance of work or home with bambino, so we would actually just snuggle in with the fire or bundle up and enjoy the quiet outside. I like that things do slow down a little when we get the first snow fall - in Ontario it is amazingly business as usual, whereas here the roads are so much quieter and seem to be reminiscent of older times.

So today, even though I think I felt flakes, it has been a lot warmer outside. The boy and I spent a lot of the morning in the garden - me stacking wood, him unstacking the wood. I was luckily faster than him and did make some progress. I really like to do these sorts of jobs as I do spend too much time indoors and that does make me feel sluggish. When I came in today I felt far more energized than I have in a long time and look the boy has a nap - win, win.

Well I am going to go and see if I can make any more progress on the poor boys curtains that I have been promising. I leave you with a picture of warm things - these rather cute mittens are ones that I bought my wee boy last week at a really great craft fair where things were so reasonably priced (these were $3 - how could you not). I think in the New Year I will post some pictures of some of the cool things I found this year at the fairs - but I need to keep them underwraps at the mo!! Wooly is watching - smile XX