The flower girl

I can take full credit for the cute dress but not the cute flower girl - she was a team effort.

My place and yours - A collection

A casual observer in our home might think we collect messy noisy children. Not so. We only have two of them.

There is something else that is threatening to take over our home.

The lounge room...

the kitchen...

my bedside table....

the artiste's residence...

her little brother's room....

my sewing room...

and every available door knob.

And that's not all! I also have 2 huge tubs filled with pictures I have saved and a kitchen bench covered in pictures I haven't edited (recycled) yet. Little Rory (not yet 2) has also started presenting me with masterpieces of his very own several times a day (today's effort was a car that looked like spaghetti). We might need to buy a bigger house. Or rent an art gallery.

More collections over at Mike's.

What's hot and what's not

Hot

* Walking through purple snow to pick up Babs from kindy. The jacaranda trees are in bloom!

* Evening beach visits

* Booking a holiday complete with 5 star beachside accommodation, pool, chef, babysitter, chauffeur and housekeeper (a holiday visiting my parents means mummy gets a holiday too - that is very hot).

* Growing potatoes - there's nothing easier (and they don't need much water). And harvesting them is like digging for treasure!

* The Adelaide Brown Owls who helped me master the art of crochet. And for my next trick maybe one of these (aiming for completion by Winter 2010).

* Christmas swaps

* The Stitches & Craft Show is coming to Adelaide (about time!)

* The world map wallpaper we have planned for Rory's room .

* Mango season

* The book I am reading at the moment.

* These parents. They say parenting their 7 year old schizophrenic daughter is like caring for 100 children at a time. I can only imagine.

Not hot

* What's happening to homebirth in our country.

* Handsewing. I find it quite tedious.

* Wedding rehearsal in 40 degree heat in the afternoon sun. Not hot for little flowergirls-to-be.

* Wedding dress shopping with 40,000 other Adelaideans. Queueing for hours for a changeroom. Trying on 30+ dresses and coming home with nothing.

* Having a brainwave that I should just make the dress, stopping at Spotlight on the way home to buy the fabric, spending 3 hours sewing it and trying it on only to discover I look like a sack of potatoes. Again.

* Gastro. Not hot. But a mummy with gastro is better than kids with gastro. I think. Touch wood.

That was a long list. More hot and nots over here.

Through the front door

Shelly picked a great theme this week - through the front door.

Chris hates the (ikea rainbow) rug. I love the rug. I win.

This is our front door. Only people collecting money and the postie come to the front door. Everyone we know and love comes right on in through the back door. We get so excited when someone actually rings the doorbell because it means an 'official' visitor.

Visit more lovely homes over here.

Headaches and heart palpitations

Headaches and heart palpitations in my creative space this week.

...heart palpitations as I cut into some fancy fabric (I finally started the dress and have even completed the bodice!)

...and i'm not blaming this little boy entirely for the

headaches but he is the reason I haven't been in my creative space much this week.

The headaches are the other reason.

Rocket

It's feast or famine in our veggie patch and at the moment we're feasting on beetroot, broccoli, celery you need razor sharp teeth to eat, potatoes, lettuce and rocket. So. Much. Rocket. Here is my trusty repertoire of rocket recipes so your veggie patch doesn't end up looking like mine -

Risoni, Chickpea and Sweet Potato Salad (a Delicious recipe from a few years ago)

800g sweet potato (or pumpkin)

1 tbs honey

1 cup risoni pasta

400g can chickpeas, rinsed + drained

1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves

2 cups rocket

2 tbs lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 200 and lightly oil a baking dish. Peel the sweet potato and cut into small cubes. Toss with honey and a little olive oil and roast until tender (about 40 mins in my dodgy oven). Meanwhile, cook the risoni then toss everything together. You can serve it warm or wait for everything to cool before assembling and eating.

it looks like the picture so I must've done something right

Spaghetti with uncooked tomato, rocket and olive sauce (easiest recipe ever, thanks Jamie Oliver)

500g pasta

5 ripe tomatoes

2 handfuls of fresh basil

a good handful of black or green olives

2 handfuls of rocket

1 tsp dried oregano

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar (is there a J.O recipe that doesn't have balsamic vinegar in it?)

6 tbsp olive oil

Cook the pasta. Chop everything. Add one spoonful of the water from the pasta and toss everything together in a large bowl. The heat from the pasta will cook the tomatoes.

The rocket pesto I made wasn't so yummy so I won't share the recipe. To be fair, the recipe called for 1/3 basil, 1/3 watercress, 1/3 rocket and I just used rocket (so much rocket so little basil!). Had I followed the recipe it might've been edible. Luckily we had bread to fill up on instead.

4589 and other sewing related news

Here is version 8.0 of the Simplicity 4589 pattern I love so much. I saw a top very similar to this in Witchery and was tempted to buy it before remembering my pledge and gasping when I looked at the $99 price tag. So I made my own. And saved myself $97 (the fabric is from an op shop) which I invested in a new skirt instead (see picture). I'm proud to say this is the first new item of clothing I have bought since the 1st of July.

I have also been wearing it with the spring ruffle top I made a few weeks ago.

This folks is called procrastination. Remember that flowergirl dress I'm supposed to be sewing for that wedding in less than 3 weeks? Yeah. Still not started.

My motivation for finishing the flowergirl dress is that when I'm done I can start on a quilt for Rory's big boy bed. That, and I don't want to be responsible for bridezilla showing up at the wedding instead of my lovely sister-in-law-to-be.

Armed with these two Kokka fabrics I hit the Quilt + Craft Fair yesterday and bought all this. Boys are hard. Spots. Stripes. That's it. Still, I did have some success (so much so I had to ring Chris mid-shop to put more money into my account!)

I felt sorry for the chair...

...so I made it a cushion.

This poor chair is the victim of yet another furniture re-shuffle and is currently homeless. It has a twin in Rory's room. It's the night time book chair. A very useful chair indeed.

This chair, however, was made redundant about 4 years ago when we moved into a bigger house and bought our new couch. Since then it has been shuffled from room to room where its sole purpose has been 'a place to dump crap.' Its one claim to fame is that it was the first place I sat to cuddle both my babies after Rory was born.

that is my 'hooray I'm not pregnant any more' face. the 'holy cow what am I going to do with 2 babies' face starts to appear in photos taken a few days later...

And now it lives in the living room where guess what? Its sole purpose is 'a place to dump crap'.

So I took the cushion off the chair and put it on the couch because it was hidden behind that giant mountain of stalled laundry and we couldn't see it anyway. Sorry chair.

My secret weapon

Here he is in the stripey top.

Initially I was thinking it would be Oprah or a glass of wine or my favourite blogs or a good book or my sewing room or a deep bubble bath from time to time or my daily walks but ultimately this bloke is the one who keeps me sane through this whole raising young kids shenanigan. My secret weapon. Mr Reliable, Mr Dependable, Mr Conservative. And yes, all those traits I love about him are also the ones that drive me crazy (he is also Mr 100-no's- before-saying-yes and Mr Reluctant-to-try-anything-new).

Shhh he doesn't read my blog so we'll just keep this moment of lovey-dovey-ness between us, shall we?

My Creative Space

I've been sitting on the couch of an evening watching movies with Chris and sewing the binding on some place mats (the wedding present). 3 place mats down and 3 to go (geez hand sewing takes forever). So far this week we've watched Angela's Ashes (oh! depressing!) and some documentary about 9/11 (also depressing!). It might be time for something a bit happier tonight.

Abby has been busy in her creative space too. It looks like this by the end of most days. I think she was making love hearts here...