*e*

hair goodies

 

i've been having some fun with boring old black elastic making headbands. kind of brings me back to when i was 12 and learned how to make my own scrunchies...oh...scrunchies! so many possibilities with one little hair tie. i was so dorky that i made some out of my school uniform fabric so my hair could match the un-coolness that was my blue gingham dress!

anyway, i've shared 5 of my favourite headbancs (no scrunchies, i promise) over here at today's mama.

...and because i love you all so much, i want to make you (or your little girl) a headband too! tell me which one you like best in a comment below and i will pick 3 names to have a custom headband made just for you! i'll draw the winners and announce them in this blog post sometime over the weekend :)

WINNERS! (please email me!)

 

thanks everyone :)

i feel all motivated to make some for my etsy shop now...send sleep-vibes for banjo and it might just happen!

her best friend

i never want to forget this sweet little girl who loves her uncle sooooo much. she follows him around everywhere when we are together, thinks everything he says is funny and everything he does is clever.

she said this weekend "unky ollie my BEST FRIEND!"

he works away one month on, one month off. the month he is away she says she misses him and wants to ring him, and cries when we can't.

simply put - she thinks the sun shines out of his bum, and *i* of course think it is the sweetest thing in the world!

 

(her little arm wrapped around him just melts me!)

he is the brother closest in age to me, but we haven't had the 'closest' relationship since we grew out of toddler playmate stage. teenage years weren't nice, and from there we both went down different paths.

since our return to australia last year though, our paths seem to have aligned themselves quite nicely, and we have become close friends. it is the absolute best thing that has happened from us being back here. 

i love who he is (...and so does yindi!)

yay for best friend uncles!

weekend camping

this long weekend, we packed up the car and drove 2.5 hours south to donnybrook to sleep in a paddock with the cows...

ok, not really why we went, but a little bonus to the trip! i love cows, they are beautiful creatures - and i enjoyed lying in our tent at night snuggling banjo (who is up to his old every-2-hour-feeding tricks) hearing them mooing. i would have mooed back had i been less sleepy.

anyway, the real reason we went was to hang out with my brother ollie (and his other half kerrie), who owns 100 acres of divine, green, peaceful, hilly, treesy land nestled away down the end of a long dirt track in the boonies!

they have a beat up old caravan set high on a hill with amazing views and this is their magic spot, where they can get away from everything and stay here for a weekend. one day they will build a house on the land but for now, this is their castle -

the view from our tent...

(how's the serenity?!)

over the three days we went exploring the 100 acres - rolling hills, tall grass to run through, trees to climb, old fox skeletons to discover (exciting!), 2 dams, mumma and baby cows, cubbies to build, pure freedom and nothing but the sounds of nature to enjoy.

we also spent a considerable amount of time adoring ollie & kerrie's new puppy, roasting marshmallows and sitting around the campfire reminiscing our childhood and the embarrassing things our family did!

 

 

we fell in love with this place. 100 acres is plenty of room to share ollie! i see a yurt with our names on it overlooking one of those dams in the future...

you could say, it was bliss :)

i miss my scrapbooks

i do.

they are all packed away in san diego and we can't get them out to look through and laugh over and 'remember this!' in fact, i miss scrapbooking (i still cringe when i say the word scrapbooking because i know most people think i am talking teddy bear stickers and weird patterned paper - is there no better word for it?) 

this photo and paper painty storytelling fun is good to do, and good to look back upon.

 

 

 

(all of these were featured in creating keepsakes magazine at different times last year)

i'm not sure if i will ever spend the time i used to making these books of family goodness - i wish i could but the whole three children thing is out of control! plus there are many craft-loves swirling around in me right now - felting, sewing, collaging, repurposing...and there is just never enough time. never enough time!

lately i've been spending time in nicole's awesome studio (which is clean and organised, unlike any room in my own house) and soaking up the creative goodness in there. we have been felting, glue-ing, binding and doing lots of talking and getting all excited about projects to embark on together! 

i don't know about you but making stuff and being with other creative souls keeps me sane...

and - my next adventure...i am excited to be going HERE! incorporating my new crafting obsessions with a bit of the old ;)

so while i'm kind of sad my hardcore 'scrapbook' days are over (for now!), i'm grateful to weave little bits of creativity and crafting into my weeks in various ways, despite the craziness that goes on around me!

where we walk

where we walk, near our house

it is magical

i can still feel the magic i felt when i was a little girl walking here

on this particular walk, the girls and i looked for 'mother nature art' (as it was named) - patterns, textures, pretties made in the bush. it inspired a lot of good conversation, and some funny songs too.

 

we found a lot of cool mother nature art that day.

 

we love walking in the bush here :)

carrots

'bookweek' was one of my favourite things about being a kid in school - dressing up as a favourite book character for the day with my friends.  i had forgotten all about it until a notice came home with ivy to start planning her costume! 

ivy decided instantly that she wanted to be anne of green gables (we have been listening to the book read on cd, i can't wait to watch the movie with her when she's a bit older) and made plans for her outfit - the most exciting part being dying her hair a perfect shade of carrot.

 

we used food dye intended for colouring chocolate, and yeah - it did a good job of dying her ears and neck too. no matter! she still thought it was cool.

i sewed up the simple linen dress l.a.t.e the night before (its official, i am a mother! sewing costumes in the wee hours of the morning!), the apron was an etsy purchase from a few christmases ago, boots + scrumpled socks and lunch in a basket made for a pretty cruisy costume. good one ivy!

birthday wishes

i turned 31 on the weekend, and aside from a new camera (one that will actually focus on things it is being pointed at), which was really a pretend wish - ALL MY WISHES CAME TRUE!

*a few hours to myself

*homemade presents and cards

*chocolate cake

*day-spa in my living room

*family walk in the bush

*a date for indian food with my man

it was a sweet and simple day at home where i was treated like a queen by my loves (really, ivy would bow down and offer me things in a posh english accent. and yindi would copy. it was classic!). all a birthday should be indeed!

i did :)

a little announcement

yay! there will be a limited amount, and limited (but some brand new!) designs available today/tomorrow...so if you have been waiting, here they are! thanks to all my lovely customers, i will send each package with a kiss :)

my etsy shop here

and hopefully some other fun stuff coming to the shop in the next few weeks too...

outback adventure continued...

here she is people, our home on wheels. what a beast! the best camping we've ever done thats for sure - running water, a toilet and all! it was so big that mick and i could barely reach out to hold hands in the front, and the children were conveniently so far away that i could pretend not to hear them whining for food. those smart people from maui even put a dvd player into the back of this baby and when things started going downhill in the back there (which believe me, they did), i cranked on 'little house on the prairie' episodes and all was well.

we drove and drove and drove then pulled into a creepy looking old cattle station to sleep for the night. it was dark and strange and i had visions of dodgy old bearded outback men hiding in those tin sheds with rusty old saws, just waiting till we fell asleep. in the morning it didn't seem quite as scary but c'mon, imagine this at midnight would you?

hours more of driving the next morning led us to our destination - karijini national park. this was our gold at the end of the rainbow, a place we had heard of from friends and dreamed of going to. it didn't dissapoint us. hundreds of kilometers from anywhere else is this vast open land with red dirt and sparse bush...

with deep gorges cut into the landscape.

 

you could almost overlook the face that they are there, but they are, with treasures hidden below.

we spent the next few days camping here in karijini - exploring and adventuring down these gorges in search of magical pools to swim in. it was SO stinking hot and dry up the top...but down in the gorge it is a completely different climate! cool air, crisp fresh water, ferns, moss, amazing twisty root trees! it was bliss.

climbing down into the gorges was not for wooses! in search of one particularly appealing pool (kermits pool - i never ended up taking a picture of it) we had to climb down steep rocks, a 5 foot ladder and wade through chest deep water in a skinny part of the gorge to get there! the girls were amazing and climbed and swam their little selves through all the segments with glee - much to the amazement of other hikers coming up out of the gorge.

'fern pool' was my favourite (that's ivy having some chill out time under the waterfall, imagining a whole world of fairies and magical creatues coming to dance there at night i'm sure), it was big and deep and so pretty with the waterfalls.

 

we met some cool couples and families and loved hearing their different stories. many were travelling around australia for several months, our children played together and it was nice on this particular day to have some help getting back up the tricky gorge (and have this 'action shot' taken of our family).

cooking dinner one night in the camper this rascaly dingo trotted on by the window. there were lots of warning signs around for dingoes and i was happy everyone was inside, though he seemed harmless enough. ivy was over the moon to see one!

it was so hard to leave karijini! it cast a spell on us all and we can never forget this time we spent there. it was so good to have this week together, just us. so very grateful we had the opportunity. from karijini we drove, drove, drove only stopping for fuel and a 6 hour sleep at another (not scary!) cattle station to get the camper back in time. all up we drove over 2400 kms/1500 miles.

(sorry chels, i chopped off tassie!)
we all stank like you wouldn't believe by the time we arrived home and EVERYTHING was covered in red dust, but oh we were happy! our bodies and souls had been fed and we made memories that we'll enjoy forever.

family adventures are the best :)

outback adventure, part one!

the adventure all began just a few days before setting off.

mick greeted me in the early morning with news that a camper was available from standbyrelocs - a site he has diligently been checking for the past 6 months in hope of such a camper. it's a great website to bookmark if you are keen for a cheap, last minute trip - campervans need to be returned to major cities so they offer super low rates and petrol money to get it there! the stars aligned for us finally (we have missed out on one a few times before), there was a 6 person camper needing to be driven from broome (2,000 kilometers north of here) to perth, AND we were able to score flights up to broome with frequent flier points, AND it was school holidays, AND i agreed to it! mick was a happy man. this has been his dream for a long long time.

so to broome we flew!

2.5 hours after leaving perth (wearing cardis and footsie pajamas!) we arrived in hot, humid, tropical broome where we had 2 yummy warm days enjoying the beautiful beach and exploring this fascinating, multicultural, artistic town.

  the colours were SO inspiring. red red dirt, lush greenery, crystal turquoise water. (shame about the crocodile and deadly jellyfish warning signs on the beaches that made me too nervous to send my children into such pretty water! but luckily our hotel had a nice pool)

ivy was deeply fascinated by the aboriginal art and culture we came across and has been busy with dot painting and doll making since our return. it was also a great way for her to connect with the stories she has heard from mick about his time on a mission in remote alice springs aboriginal communities.

banjo was never happier than the afternoon where we let him eat sand on the beach

 

the next morning however, it looked as if someone had built a sandcastle in his nappy!

so (with sand hiding in various crevices), we packed up our bags, had our last showers for the week, left our hotel and moved into our camper for the week. it felt so good to hit the open road!

stay tuned for the rest of the story tomorrow ;)