My beautiful ballet dancer:)

Aren't these so cute! They are tiny size ballet shoes, for my lovely little ballet dancer :D Patrick started ballet last week, after we stumbled across a black and white ballet video on you tube of a famous russian ballet dancer and he decided he wanted to be able to dance just like that!

So off we went to see if he would like and and he LOVED it! So much so, that we had to immediately go to the ballet shop to buy him some ballet shoes. This week was his second week and he still had just as much, if not more fun dancing than the first time round. This week, so he blended in with the girls a little better, he wore a pink t-shirt and I made him some cotton knit ballet shorts, as the teacher suggested that boardie length shorts were not the most appropriate thing lol. He is trying to do a curtsy in the picture, because that is what the girls do and he isn't quite so sure that he should do a bow, as that is different to them, so was very happy with me for making his shorts go wide enough to do it lol.

He is the only boy in the class, but that doesn't seem to worry him, the teacher loves having a boy, and she also loves that he loves to dance.

The many faces of Patrick...

Well my gorgeous son does love the camera - well kind of, he likes to play this game where he does a weird or crazy pose, then runs away as I am clicking, then he rushes back to see if he can get back in time to see himself on the LCD before the pic goes away. Our resulting photo session was pretty funny, lots of blurry pics and heaps where he isn't even in the picture cos he has ducked down or run before I can click, but these are some of the best ones :D

The case of the missing ball....

I made a couple of pressies for one of Patrick's friends, as it was his birthday this week. Firstly some denim shorts with animals on the pockets. I did want to have monkey's cos he loves monkey's, but the only monkee fabric I could find was pink and I'm not sure all boys share the same love of pink that Patrick does LOL. Very happy with how they turned out, I even got over my fear of topstitching - glad I did cos I will do it all the time now as it really does look soooo good.

I found a pattern for a ball on a blog somewhere too - will find the link if I can remember where. Awesome way to use up scraps and so easy to make. I did two balls, but Patrick and Maia were helping me stuff them, and somehow, one of the balls has managed to find a home with all the missing pens, single socks, puzzle pieces and rechargable batteries. I turned the house upside down and I couldn't find that damn ball, so there was just one for the present in the end.

New Camera Alert - Prepare to be bombarded with photos

Well last week the old trusty digital camera finally died in the ass. It had been playing up a little for the past couple of months, but I must have finally dropped it one too many times and it cried enough!!!! We did take 3500 pictures on it over three years, so not a bad innings.

It is amazing how cheap cameras are now for what they do though. For just $250, from dinosuars deals.com.au, we got us a 7mp Fuji semi SLR camera with 10x zoom and a lovely big lcd screen on the back. Very happy with it and have been going super snap happy ever since, so prepare to see LOTS of cute kiddy pics over the next couple of weeks lol.

Wooly Delivery :D

I must say I am pretty blessed that I have extremely talented people that want to trade stuff with me and this week was a super exciting delivery of wool from Elissa at The Yarn Cafe.

This was custom dyed for Maia - enough pink to keep her happy and enough other colours to keep me happy. Elissa has called the colourway Maia Jade - isn't it spectacular! I will be turning this gorgous Blackberry Ridge wool into winter longies for Maia.

Also was some super super pretty pink and lilac merino, which I am going to knit into a soaker for Vanessa's little girl who is due any day now.

Apron for School

Patrick needed an apron for school, they have one to leave there cos they do cooking most days. He picked the fabric for the pockets and he decided on pink for the apron - of course ;) with green bias binding.

I thought this would be pretty straightforward to do - and it was, but man that bias binding sucks!! There must be an easy way to do it, perhaps a bias binding foot or something? I had to iron all the bits in half, then sew them on, which wasn't hard, but was very time consuming.

Pretty happy with the end result though :)

Cute photo brag :)

I've taken some pretty cute pics of Maia lately, so just thought I would share :) I wish I knew how to get pics from my mobile phone cos there are heaps on there too, I'll add them in later if I can figure it out.

Flying Progress

Well I have to say, I am totally amazed at what a profound effect this flying stuff has had on my life in such a short time!!! I have gone from being stressed out of my head, to having a plan each day, getting my boy to school on time every day so far (this is a HUGE achievement for me!) and not living in a filthy pit wishing it was cleaner. All this in just a week - wow!!

I am finding many of the emails completely cheesy, but I've just set a folder up in my emails and all of my flylady emails just go straight there, so I don't get sidetracked reading every one, I just read the odd one here and there. That encouraged me to set up folders for all of my emails, so now it is not so overwhelming when I open my emails up, I know exactly what I need to reply to and I can find emails again easily when I need them later.

I kinda skipped ahead in the babysteps thing and I have a morning routine and an evening routine sorted, plus I have an routine for work as well, and already I am seeing progress on things that have been outstanding for months and months. Today I finished snapping a pile of nappies that has been sitting on my desk for at least six months if not longer! I have been doing 10 mins a day of snapping and after just 9 days, hooray it's done. Also doing filing in the same way, 5 mins a day of work and 5 mins a day of home and that giant pile is slowly fading away. I nearly wanted to take a before and after picture of my desk, 5 mins a day and now I can actually see the desk and don't have to spend ages digging around in the mounds of paper for what I need. Filing stuff is filed, current paperwork is in it's relevant folder in the filing tray and all the crap is gone - wooo hooooo. And because the desk is so much cleaner, I really feel that it is making me feel more organised and wanting to do more and more, the clutter reduction certainly makes me feel calmer. I'm still incredibly behind with everything for work, but because tiny bits are happening every day, I now feel like I can get on top of it all and I don't feel so overwhelmed that I don't know where to start and just wish for it all to go away - haha, if only ;)

Doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen + benches every night before bed has a waaaaay bigger impact than I imagined, it is sooooo nice to wake up and not groan as you first walk into the kitchen and because it is already lovely to start with, I want to keep it that way all day, so I have been cleaning as I go, so it is staying nice. Brad was amazed last week when he was getting home after 9 and finding a practically sparkling kitchen, kiddies all sorted and in bed, bathroom clean and tidy and washing on the line. Normally if he got home that late and I was doing the whole dinner, bath, bed thing by myself, the house would look like a bomb had hit it lol. Best thing is that it doesn't take any more time, I guess I am just using the time more effectively and doing a quick kitchen clean up feels easier than a hideous clean when the sink and benches are piled with crap. I'm doing a daily bathroom swish too - I made a whole heap of microfibre clothes, size of cloth wipe, the each morning I do a 1 min on the sink wipedown etc, then I chuck the cloth in the shower and while I am showering, do a quick once-over, then chuck the cloth in the bath and do a quick once over just before I run the bath for the kiddies, then pop it in the wash. It's working so well, the bathroom always looks clean now and I can take bathroom cleaning off my weekly (ish lol) cleaning schedule. It encouraged a declutter as well, cos it took longer doing the shower with all the old bottles of shampoo etc, plus toys on the floor of the shower, so I got rid of all of those and put up the caddy that had been in the cupboard since we moved in, so I had somewhere to put the shampoo etc. Plus I went through all the toys and culled the dodgy ones and just keep what fits easily in the mesh bag, so that after the bath, the kids now put all their toys in the bag, so I just pull the plug, pick up the bathmat and it looks tidy again - hooray!

I've also been decluttering clothes and more - six bags gone so far and I can see the floor of our bedroom for the first time in months which is pretty embarrassing - usually we just close the door - that's just been a 15 min a day job too, I really am so amazed what a different 15 mins a day can make!!!

Anyway, I better stop raving on about the flylady, I can get a bit carried away with excitement sometimes LOL, plus I need to get finished up on the sewing room declutter - I did take a before and picture of that - I am sure the after ones will be amazing :D

So yes, after initially being very unsure, I reckon flylady rocks and I won't go back - bring on the super organised and destressed life!!! :D

My big schoolboy and his school 'handbag'

Well my grown up boy went very excitedly off to big school this week. I can't believe how time has flown!!! He has been busting to go and this morning he gave me a hug and semi clung to my leg for about a minute then he was off! He was so confident and ready for it :D Last year I decided that I would make him a schoolbag and asked what he wanted, showing him pics of backpacks. He did not want a backpack AT ALL!!! lol, instead he wanted a pink handbag with a rainbow on it! A big ask indeed!

Eventually I decided to do the Meena's Marsupial Tote in the stitch and bitch book. I made it a bit bigger - about half bigger, so instead of CO 16 stitches, I CO 24 and adjusted the rest accordingly. I knitted the base in pink, then started the colour changes for the body, 10 rows for each colour, but changing one of the strands of wool every 5 rows so the colours would kind of merge into each other. I was fairly happy with the end result, although the yellow wool was actually machine wash so it didn't felt doh! All knitted with cheapy stuff from spotlight :)

This is before felting:

This is after felting (three times through the wash on hot lol):

I'm a flybaby!

Well after posting last night on NC asking for advice from the flylady gurus, I have decided to officially give it a go. Anything has got to help at this point! Of course I couldn't possibly follow the babysteps as they have given it - all you are supposed to do for the first day is shine your sink, then on the second day, get straight up in the morning and have a shower and get dressed inc shoes (jandals or leather jandals if I am feeling extravagent for me though). Then you start reading two mins a day of the numerous emails they send you etc etc. I just kinda crammed the first week into the first day, but I am pretty sure I can handle it ;)

It was wonderful this morning to get up and find a totally clean kitchen and no crap all over the benches, with dishes to make me shudder, I really did feel better about the day from the beginning. Best thing was that we were all dressed, had brekky, cleaned up, I did some knitting on Patricks bag and we went on a long walk to the park and a play, all before 10am, when we would usually just be getting out of our jimmy's!

Trying to keep Brad on task is a different story though, I have *reminded* him (he calls it nagging) to put the dishes in the dishwasher as soon as they are finished with several times already, plus he has this really bad habit of leaving tins and milk bottles etc by the sink to get washed out before putting in the recycling.

Hopefully I'll get into some good habits and will be able to reduce some stress! I'll update in a week or so how I am going :)

What a week!!!!!!

This week just wasn't meant to be, it really should be erased from my memory in case I suffer PTSD because of it! It all started on Monday really, when I spent half the day researching and buying a coffee machine. I'd been wanting one forever and the lure of long weekend sales finally made the decision for me. I really couldn't afford the time off work, but I knew that Brad wouldn't be working until Tuesday night, so I figured I could catch up on Tuesday. That was the start of it really. Brad was actually called in to work on Monday night and ended up working until 11am Tuesday, so plans to work on Tuesday went out the window as he went to bed as soon as he got home.

The rest of the day was chaos, shyte car trip to newy with the kids constantly fighting, nightmare shopping mission, then the clock in the kitchen was wrong and I missed the post cut off, so any work I did get done was a waste of time cos I didn't get posted *sigh*. Then more fun fun fun, about 9pm Maia started vomitting, the biggest one I think I have ever seen, poor thing was so upset and then I had to spend half an hour cleaning up - yukko! Soooooooo not much sleep Tuesday night cleaning vomy and looking after sad Maia, plus Brad was only supposed to work til midnight, but he ended up working til 8am, so that blew Wednesday for my work as well. Maia being sick meant I couldn't visit some friends and their new bubbas on Wednesday either :(

Wednesday was shyte as expected, trying to keep kiddies happy and quiet while Brad slept, but to top off the crapness, I flooded the bathroom when I was filling the bath up and not paying enough attention to what I was doing arrrrggghhhhh. I only realised when the water started dripping through the light fitting in the kitchen!!!!! Lucky it was the light over the sink LOL.

Thursday started out well but went to the crapper after my trip to newy was a complete waste of time and my stress levels were hitting the roof. I had to pick some stuff up to finish off some orders that really should have gone Tuesday or Wednesday except for the previous days stress meltdowns, but the two people I needed to pick stuff up from weren't home. I couldn't ring them on the way to check whether they would be there because I left my phone at home and just presumed they would be cos they always are (except for today waaaahhhh) so my whole trip was a complete waste of two and a half hours and I wasn't able to get the orders out and I had to drag the kiddies back to newcastle later in the day to pick the stuff up. Plus Maia slept for some of the way in the car so she didn't want to go to sleep, so Patrick didn't want to cos she was away and they were both still up at 10pm!

Today wasn't looking too bad, until I realised while I was packing Maia's daycare stuff and realised that she didn't have daycare cos I changed the bloody day til Thursday!!!!!!!!!!!!! So that was two days of daycare this week that she had missed, neither of which we could afford the time or money for her to miss - although not much choice about the public holiday on Monday ;) Crap, crap and more crap!!!!!!!!!!!!

I REALLY REALLY hope that next week is going to perk up, not sure how much longer the stress free moto is going to hold for at this rate. So right now thinking happy stress free thoughts and wondering how I am going to hold it all together. My super organised plan doesn't work very well when Brad's shifts change at the drop of a hat, so I probably should just presume that I won't have his help at all any time in the next eight weeks and any help I do get is a bonus. I was looking at flylady the other night and wonderfing if that would help, but I can't launch in with babysteps - I don't have a month to get things cranking on the organisation, super mum, super business owner thing, I need it to be NOW! Plus I'm not a good morning person, but I gotta try something or I will crack it for sure *insert hysterical laughter here*.

Right, best get into the nights work as the sounds coming from the kiddies room are starting to fade, maybe I will get lucky and they will actually go to sleep at a reasonable hour tonight. Here's hoping!

Ottobre goodness!

Oh my! Not just one but two Ottobre magazines landed on my doorstep this week and I can't wait til I have some spare time so I can get sewing!! :D :D So many great things to sew up and heaps for winter too which is fab! Even Patrick was excited, he wanted to start RIGHT NOW!! But what to do first??? Maybe first I need to figure out how to use the patterns LOL. All the patterns go over the top of each other but in different colours so you can see what you are doing (I guess that is the theory anyway), so I got some tracing paper to see if I can make sense of it all. Wish me luck!

Patrick's Bag WIP

So far not too bad on the pink rainbow handbag for Patrick. I am totally loving knitting with double strands on big needles, it knits up sooooo fast, I'm stoked to get through so much of the rainbow already, I will easily get it finished before Patrick starts school next week. I decided against using the pink the whole way through and instead I am changing colour every five rows, but each colour gets 10 rows, so hopefully when it gets felted, it will all blend nicely into a varigated type rainbow. That's the plan anyway ;)

Back from camping

Emerald Beach was just lovely, rained pretty much the whole time, but we didn't mind and the kids didn't mind, so it was all good. We love the campground there, so nice and relaxing and just lovely to go to sleep with the sound of the beach. It was mega stressful getting out of here though, I didn't sleep at all the night before we went away, cos I had sooooo many packages to get done up. I would love just one holiday where I didn't have to try and cram a whole weeks work into the two days before we go, just so I can have some time off. Will have to make sure I plan future new product launches a bit better too, not the best plan taking off less than a week after the d'lishes started out with a massive sale LOL.

We had lots of wildlife friends at the camping ground, including a giant monitor lizard, some kangaroos, lots of smaller lizards and cheeky possums trying to eat our food lol. Patrick thought the monitor was amazing, Maia wasn't so sure ;)

I got a bit of knitting done as well, finally got the i-cord done for the Russia PK shorties, put in the elastic for my boardies, although had to leave it safety pinned up cos I forgot to bring some needle and thread, plus did two ballband dishclothes and a heap of Maia's skirt.

It was just so nice to come back feeling like a human and not a stress machine. I've got sooooooooooo much work to catch up on and emails from probably back in December even, my mission is to get caught up on that stuff first, our BAS is disgracefully late, I'm surprised the accountant has not hassled me about it actually. Plus I have some friends who have just had, or about to have babies that need nappies for their stashes, so I need to get on to that too. Even with lots happening, I've got to keep the stress down though - my motto for 2008 is no stress!

Current WIP's

Wow four posts in a row - can you tell I am procrastinating about getting stuck into the packing ROFL.

Currently on the needles I have a knitted skirt for Maia. I'm just using plain colours (pale pink, eggplant type colour and sage in random thick/thin stripes) as I didn't want to use one of my pretty wools in case I stuffed it as I started this on NYE and I couldn't be bothered looking up a pattern. I could have gone to Ravelry (sp) for the first time, but I was too worried that I would get sidetracked with all the fab stuff and not actually get the skirt started - I got my invite about five weeks ago, but have been too scared to look until I get some currently unfinished projects out of the way - I would end up with about 100 WIP's lol. Anyway, I decided to just use my shorties pattern with an enclosed waistband and continue my increases past the hips and to the bottom of the skirt instead of stopping them at the hips. I'm tossing up whether to put some short rows in or not - I might on the next one if I think I need it. Hopefully it will work OK. It's nice and easy and should knit up pretty quickly.

I also have to do the i-cord to finish off my russia PK soaker and get that off with the other collection of stuff I have here, one package went last week and I hope to get another off this week.

I want to finish my boardies before we go camping and if possible make another pair for Brad - this time with the fabric around the right way, so he doesn't look like he wants to be back in the eighties with shiny shorts ;) I also want to do a shirred top for me, cos I think it will be pretty hot and I don't really have any singlets or anything that aren't daggy as, I've got some great voile so it will be nice and cool.

Tomorrow I will try and finish off the curtains for patrick and maia's shelving. The curtains are all done, but I changed my mind on the applique when I saw it. I was just going to do 'P' and 'M', but there is plenty of space for their whole names and I think it will look better. I went and got some more vliesofix today from spotlight so I can finish it off (plus got some more fabric ssshhhh hehehe).

Maybe a skirt for Maia as well, she's had a growth spurt and although her old skirts and dresses (the size 0 ones lol) still fit her, they are getting a little short, so she often just runs around in a t-shirt/singlet and nappy/undies/nudie bum. Not sure everyone else at the campground will be as happy for her to run around nudie all the time as we are ;)

Phew - that is so much! I'm sure I can get it done though, five more sleeps til total relaxation that's what's driving me, ahhhhhhhh can't wait!!!

What a night!

8pm tonight my new range launched and I tell you what I was so totally nervous, I had that whole fastheart rate, flushed thing happening. Not sure what I was so nervous about really - maybe that no-one would want to buy them or something, especially after I copped a bit of flack about the manufacture. I expected that though, there does seem to be a stigma about MIC, but at least I know I am doing it in the best way possible.

Luckily, there nothing to be nervous about in the end, they seem to be well recieved and the orders are as I had hoped, now I just have a HUGE packing night ahead of me, might have to get another coffee ;)

Why you should never delete anything from a memory card without checking 100 times that you have it saved elsewhere...

It's official, I am an eeediot. A few weeks ago I was cleaning up the memory card, because I got sick of all the different folders on there from when we swapped the card into other cameras - I could never remember which folder was the one to look in, so I deleted what I thought were folders we didn't need anymore.

On Friday night I realised that one of those folders I deleted, was in fact a very important folder, it was the folder that had all our pics of London, Nickster and Mark's wedding, all pics of Vicky, Chris and Georgia, all the holiday pics from London, China etc and all pics we had taken of the kids from about March until now :( :(

I just about cried when I realised what I had done :( Such a stupid thing to do for something so important - it's not like you can get pictures like that back. Luckily we had the SLR with us while we were travelling so we have some pics, but I think it would have been 100 or more pics that I deleted.

Luckily the NC gals came to the rescue and Rebecca found a program on the internet that restores things off your memory card and yay, some of them can still be restored!!! A lot of the older ones and the ones from the first part of the trip (the wedding *sniff* and London stuff) are gone. I am relieved to have some of them back though! I wish the new pics I had taken had gone over all of brad's pics of rotton fruit for his uni assignment, that were restored lol.

So I am going to go and buy a couple of new memory cards tomorrow and one will just be for the camera and will not be used for ferrying stuff from the desktop to the laptop etc - just for the camera! I will download all pics regularly and make back-ups - things like this are just too precious to loose!

Chrissy Pressie for meeeee :D

I've been trying to decide what to spend my Christmas and Birthday money from Mum on and narrowed it down to a knitpicks set, a dying starter kit or an ottobre subscription. I've been looking for a single ottobre magazine for ages, so I could see what it was like, but have had no luck. I decided to check out the website again after someone on EB mentioned it (haven't looked for ages) and I didn't realise that you could actually look up each of the magazines and see what patterns are in each one. They look awesome and heaps of stuff for boys which is great, because I am pretty sure it won't take long til I am sick of the same old shorts pattern ;)

So Ottobre is my decision, I'm very excited - please fly fast to me lil magazine :D
www.ottobredesign.com if you want to have a squiz.

The Black Rainbow Shorties

Irene from Jolly Jumbuck (http://www.jollyjumbuck.net/) is a genius and I have her to thank for getting me well and truely hooked on knitting! She owed me some stuff from a trade we had done earlier in the year and when we first organised the trade, I was going to get her to knit some woolies, but I decided that perhaps I could trade for some addi's and wool instead and knit something myself.

Well what I got was spectacular, the black rainbow wool was to die for, vibrant rainbow colours, it looked like licorice allsorts. When I started knitting it up, even Brad went wow for real (and not just to make me feel like he is interested in what I am doing lol). I also got some Spring Zing and Ice Cream Princess on Maia - just had to have that one cos of the name - they both still need to find suitable projects.

The black rainbow was crafted into my third pair of shorties and I am happy to say that my knitting was up to the standard this gorgeous wool deserved - no mistakes at all :D Here are some pics - this is over our biggest night nappy - a large lotus, they somehow fit just as well over training pants which is awesome. I wasn't 100% happy with how the frill came out, but I think that is just my perfectionist nature, cos I don't hate it enough to frog it ;)

Thanks Irene!

Happy New Year!

A bit late, but that seems to be the way it is with me at the moment ;) Maybe that should be one of my new year's resolutions, no more being late.... hmmm not quite sure how to make that happen hehe.

NYE was pretty quiet for us, Brad had to work, so it was just me and the kiddies. We went into town with Leah and fam to watch the fireworks. Kids loved it, although Maia got a bit scared and was happier sitting in my lap than jumping around like Patrick was.

We came home afterwards and although they told me they weren't tired, this was my two beautiful cherubs by the time we got back, awwwww. Then a spot of knitting whilst having a bacardi breezer watching the fireworks on telly and that was it - very tame!

I have a couple of resolutions for the New Year as 2007 had it's ups and definately had it's downs, but the worst part is that it seemed to fly by so past, I've misssed out on so many things. I've been a very slack friend and not been in touch anywhere near as much as I should have with my friends and family, so I want to make sure that is a priority in 08. I also want to declutter our house and get our budget back on track - there is no way we will be going to Italy next year if we don't start seriously pulling finger and saving some $$. We have to get rid of our crap too, because paying storage fees for crap we barely use is such a waste and really, if something has sat in a box for 5 years, do you really need it ;)

And most importantly, I want work to be more like a job and less like my entire life, there is no point having a fab business if you are going to kill yourself with overworking. I've been feeling so overwhelmed with it all for the past few months, I really want to get past that and be able to have a few nights off, instead of working every single night (unless I fall asleep with the kids because I am too tired). Which brings me to my last resolution - get more sleep, I would prefer to look like I am on the young side of my nearly mid 30's, not the old side ;)

Happy New Year!