Swap and More

It has been a busy few months here we have had sickness, 60th and 7th birthdays to celebrate, school stuff, ballet exams and life :)

So here is my very late blog for the majestic sea swap I did last month. My swap partner was Deb she did such an amazing job.

Look at all those goodies

The had made items it is such a lovely wall hanging I have it in my sun room, so pretty.

It was such a lovely package and really made my day after been sick for a few weeks. Thanks Deb. I will post what I sent Deb soon.

My family and I have been having some international students over for Sunday lunch, 2 girls from Africa and 1 girl from India. I have made a few Aussie meals for them so now it is there turn, first Dianna from India made a traditional Indian meal for us, this meal is usually served at weddings and special occasions, we were very lucky. Dianna and I went shopping and she showed me all the ingredients we needed, lots of fun.
Can't wait for the African meals. As each girl is from a different part of Africa the food will vary greatly, so looking forward to that.

Also during July we had 2 birthday parties. I made the cakes for both my daughter wanted an ice-cream hedge hog cake and I made a gluten free mud cake for my mother in laws 60th.

These cakes you can eat.

My daughter has been learning about Vietnam at school and last week the primary school put on the festival of nations where they dressed up and put on a parade and items for the parents/grandparents. It was a lovely morning, here is my daughter in her outfit she has chopsticks in her hair, I made the skirt from left over wedding dress material and the shirt is a pj shirt.

My son was invited to a scary birthday party he went as the Hulk, I ripped some old clothing painted his skin with food colouring mixed with water he had a ball.

And finally a week ago my daughter and son cut their hair, I am so pleased to see that now hair dressing games no longer involve cutting. This is the hair do my son did yesterday.

Hi

Well it has been so long since I have been able to blog, what an interesting start of the year I have had.

I am sorry for not being in contact much since my last post. My computer was hacked into the hacker changed my ebay password, email passwords and blog passwords, tried to get into bank accounts and I could not get into anything. Arrrr (and we had one of the top virus and spyware programs). It is finally all fixed now and I can email, blog and ebay again, the really annoying thing is they changed my ebay bank account details so all sales I made the money went into the hackers account, so I have had people buy stuff which I did not know about and pay and not get items so now I have a huge mess to clean up and some very unhappy customers. If you were affected please email me.

We also have had some family and friends loose loved ones including the loss of a baby. So life has been keeping me on my toes so to speak.

I am really sorry if anyone is offended or hurt that I have not been in contact and I very sorry for that. I will try and visit you all in the next week and leave a message. I have missed you all and blogging.

Bek

Miss me?

It has been a while since I last posted, been very slack I know. I have had a great break from making cakes and blogging, it has been nice to spend time with family.

This past month I have been getting ready for the new year, updating my diary and calenders, getting school things in order, spending time with my lovely Children.


My eldest started school last week, she is enjoying year 1 so much and has great teachers, my middle child starts pre-prep tomorrow, I am going to miss him soooo much. I think it will be harder for me to let him go than my eldest child, he is such a mummy's boy. I have found a great pre-prep for him and it is walking distance so we can walk together to pre-prep he has a lovely teacher and a nice little class only 16 so far in his group. He only goes 2 days a week this year so we can get use to being away from eachother lol.

I was lucky enough to find this lovely wardrobe for my youngest daughter, it has lovely Queen Anne feet was already painted (I will give it a fresh coat soon) My 3 year old was having trouble opening the door to get her shoes and clothing out so I picked up the tassel for her she pulls on it to open her cupboard. She is so proud of herself. I put some glow in the dark fairies on the door to help her get over using her night light and it seems to be working. She does not want her night light on now because she can't see the fairies when the light is on. As I will be sanding it back and re-painting it having the stickers on there is a big issue esp with the stickers being white and the wardrobe being white. (I just hate furniture covered in stickers it really gets to me and fridges covered in stuff also affects me, but this is one thing I am learning to live with:D )

I also picked up this great scrap bucket for the chook scraps, I had this tacky ice-cream container on the bench. Don't you just love it, my husband does not understand the need of it as he thinks the ice-cream container was just fine. :D

I am now getting back into the swing of things making lots of cakes and yummy looking treats I have had a lovely break from it 6 weeks of not making any cupcakes and I am now ready to get back into it.

I will pop around and catch up on all your blogs over the next week.

Oh I am feeling ready to do another swap so if you hear of one let me know, if I don't find one soon I may just have to host my own....... Creative juices are flowing after my break.

Start of another year......

Well this year is well and truly underway, today my daughter and I went out to purchase school supplies and shoes for the start of the new year. We went to a cafe for morning tea and had this yummy choc moose cake. Yummmm


Here are a few photos of our New Years camping trip we went to Peach Trees near Kilcoy, great spot if you have young children the deep swimming hole has a gate on it, there are lots of Kangaroos and the camping spot is not to far from the beach or some lovely little towns and tourist spots. The bush walks are great for kids and they can ride their bikes around the roads at the camp site. I really like it here this is the second time we have camped here.


It rained a bit, but with our camp set up it did not really matter. Made it cooler :)

I ended up letting them run around in the rain on the second day of rain. They had great fun playing dance freeze.

My son and Woody enjoying some grub, they had lots of fun together. My son was so cute he packed Woody's things (sleeping bag and lamp) and they had to be packed with all our stuff in the boot of the car.

We took the Children to the beach for the morning, we went to Golden beach at Caloundra this is a great beach for Children as the water is not rough.

Hoping you have all had a great start to the new year.

Christmas

Well what a week I had all these plans to post Christmas things and decorate the house but everything has been put on the back burner my Children ended up with a tummy bug and my husband has been out of town for work for the last 6 days, he gets back today:)

On Monday we got the carpets cleaned all ready for Christmas day. (I usually get the carpets done a week before Christmas, as we all end up siting of the floor opening gifts and playing with the new toys). This week we have been trying to catch up with friends.

Here are a few photos of my house, I don't think I will be doing much more decorating this year I still have to finish the Christmas cards and Christmas shopping and baking. I don't know where the year has gone especially the last few weeks.

Our basic everyday table display we have leading up to Christmas, (I change it around a bit when I change the table cloth this is how it turned out today)

I re-decorate the table on Christmas eve for Christmas day.

The Children's Christmas tree.

Some swap goodies hanging up.

On Christmas eve we light all the candles and it looks so pretty.

This will be the last post from me until after Christmas (unless something happens that I just have to post about).

Wishing you and your family a very joyful Christmas and a stress free Christmas. May we remember the real reason for Christmas and share this special time with our family and friends.

Secret Santa Honeypot

Today my daughter and I received a package in the mail from a Secret Santa. We participated in the Secret Santa Honeypot swap, it was loads of fun and we enjoyed making things for someone else. I hope our swap partner liked what we made they should get there's any day now.

Look a parcel from the US.

Look at all the goodies:)

The card was sooooo pretty thank you so much we will be putting it up soon.

My daughter loved this decoration the best. Very pretty.

I love this one look at all the needle work she has done. There was a matching stocking but the photo did not load. I will post another photo later when I have found a place for it to hang.

Aren't these the cutest ever.

And matching mittens. I have the perfect place to hang the skates and mittens and will show photos later.

Just lovely this is going on one of our old door handles.

Everything was so well made and perfect for our house. I think I have worked out who my secret santa is once I know for sure I will put a link to her blog.

Well I am now going to have a coffee and hope my children have some quiet time, we have had a huge day with our playgroup breakup Christmas party.

Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree

I am starting to feel festive. Today we trimmed the Christmas tree. We usually put up decorations during the whole of December. I will post as we make and decorate things.

While my husband and I put up the tree my Children decorated the little wire tree. I use this one for them to put on all the decorations they have made, and then we use other decorations to fill up the tree, I bet in a few years it will be full of their creations. I really love doing this as I find their decorations can get lost on the big tree and can't really be enjoyed. We put the decorations made this year at the front and the ones made other years at the back and side. We put this little tree onto of the TV unit in the family room, so everyone can enjoy it.

Then we decorated the big tree, they are so proud of their handy work:)

I have had a Christmas song in my head all day. You see miss 6 lost her second front tooth today, so guess what she has been singing. How many more days to Christmas??????


Ohh looky here I see a decorations that I got in my swap package.

Ohhh here is another one what a lovely Angel from my swap partner.

The Angel onto is one of Shannon Thompsons creations. I have another one for the Mantel. Will show photos of the rest of the house as we decorate it.

Here is the finished tree.

I also get my children to fill up bowls with baubles. They love to do that and the we put them around the house.