Merry Christmas!

I hope you all had a lovely day.

Here are my gorgeous children wearing their Christmas shirts - unfortunately I didn't manage to get them all in a photo together!







The Bumbo seat was Evelyn's Christmas present from us :)

And here's the last of the Christmas food:



Christmas cake with marzipan (only imitation though, next year I WILL make my own) and royal icing, which didn't set properly hard. But it was still yummy!



Chocolate truffles.



Coffee truffles.

These are the things that were on the old camera; the second & third batch of truffles, and another batch of gingerbread, are on the new one.

Christmas shirts:



(The elastic on Emma's sleeves ended up being a bit tight, so I chopped them a bit shorter and loosened the elastic.)

My mum's present, my first effort at quilting, a bit messy but she's my mum so she can't complain, hah. It's a wall hanging for the kitchen.



Mini steamed puddings. I made 12 to give as gifts.



A doll sling for my little cousin:

I do have things to post, but I've yet to work out how to get photos from the new camera, so I keep forgetting.

Nearly ready for Christmas - I've made my mum's gift, made and packaged the truffles and mini puddings that everyone's getting, made all the children's Christmas shirts, iced the cake (although my royal icing is refusing to set hard, bah), wrapped some of the gifts.

I've run out of wrapping paper, but I have some as-yet-unused Christmas fabric that I'll use for the rest and just make sure I reclaim it from the chaos. I refuse to go to the shops and buy more, not through any anti-consumption principle but simply because the shops are way too busy and I can't be bothered.

Being productive

TiKKi dress for Evelyn's Christmas present:



Chocolate truffles for Emma's teachers:



Gingerbread cookies for playgroup (cut and decorated by Emma):



Lesley's vanilla cupcakes for Emma's last day of school shared lunch tomorrow:



The icing is tinted with beetroot - no artificial colours - and you wouldn't know it from the taste. Yum! I am always keen to find more natural ways of doing things, and I know at least one mum in the class avoids artificial colours entirely for her daughter.



And just to freak out any non-Aussies reading (and maybe some Aussies too), this was a spider on our wall last night. My knight in shining armour a.k.a. my partner Garry killed it.

Hand puppets

A present for a friend's little boy who is turning three. Hopefully he likes them, I know my son loves to play pretend at the moment.

A month already?

Whoops, it's been a month since I posted. I just haven't had time to get much done lately. Evelyn's knitted dress for Christmas is coming along, only about 6cm to do now.

Tonight I made Christmas shirts. A peasant blouse for Evie, from this tute, which was SO easy, and I painted a red T-shirt for Alastair. Remember it's summer here, if you're reading this from the Northern Hemisphere! I'm not happy with the paint - it was my first try at fabric painting - but I'll see what it looks like when dry. If I still don't like it I'll applique some Christmas fabric over the top. I'm making Emma a blouse in a co-ordinating fabric.

Christmas cake

Yum. I love home-made Christmas cake.

It has to be made the proper way - in advance. I'm soaking the fruit in brandy now, for 2 days, then baking the cake, wrapping it tightly, and 'feeding' it with alcohol over the 6 weeks until Christmas. Then marzipan and royal icing.

My kitchen smells of alcohol, heh.

I whipped these PUL nappy covers up to raise money for a friend in need:







They all sold, so I'm happy. I just had so much PUL fabric sitting around from when I was addicted to co-ops, and really, my kids can only need so many covers (Evie is in the mediums I made for Alastair atm, and Alastair only really uses them at night cos we use AIOs during the day).

I recently bought the Little Comet Tails Crescent Moon Yoga Pants pattern and I love it! I have grand plans to make some flongies & florties (fleece longies & shorties) for the two younger ones, but it also fits Emma, who is nearly 6 and big for her age. Of course the length is way off ;) but that's easy to extend, and this pair I wanted to be about knee length for summer anyway:



They fit really well and Emma thinks they're comfy, which is a big deal as she's very fussy about what she'll wear.

In action:



My two little helpers helping me ice Emma's birthday cake (her birthday isn't until Thursday, but we celebrated with the family on Sunday because my FIL works 1-day fortnights and that was his day off):

A productive day

Why was it so productive? Well, Friday is Alastair's daycare day (and Emma's in school). Technically he goes to daycare so I can work on my university studies, so obviously I can craft to procrastinate ;) It's ok, the final assignment isn't due until November 10! (Never mind the fact I have Emma's birthday before then, with two events to plan for that.)

This had been sitting, cut out, in my WIP pile for ages because the fold-over elastic and TouchTape were out in the shed. Done, one large PUL cover for Alastair:



(I also polished off a couple of other things in the pile - an old work skirt that needed the identifying tags unpicked because it was a branded uniform but I really like the skirt and want to use it when I start working again, and a carrier that needed mending.)

One mei tai with hood, for ME this time:



This is going to get worn to the 'Reclaim the Night' march/rally tonight :D It's in Amy Butler Nigella twill, with cotton drill straps.





And I started on a Christmas present, my first-ever attempt at quilting. It's going to be a quilted wall hanging for the kitchen:





Obviously I still have to back it and quilt it. I know the piecing isn't quite square, but it's made with love, which is what counts ;) I swear it's not as uneven as it looks in the photo, though! I love love LOVE the coffee fabric (it's Morning Roast, by Timeless Treasures).

I'm taking the pledge!

I, Georgina, pledge that I shall abstain from the purchase of "new" manufactured items of clothing, for the period of 2 months. I pledge that i shall refashion, renovate, recycle preloved items for myself with my own hands in fabric, yarn or other medium for the term of my contract. I pledge that I will share the love and post a photo of my refashioned, renovated, recycled, crafted or created item of clothing on the Wardrobe Refashion blog, so that others may share the joy that thy thriftiness brings! Signed, me.

I'm aiming to do this for the children as well.

Starts November 1!

Bargain-hunting

I went op-shopping last week for the first time in ages, and of course didn't find what I really wanted - summer clothes for Alastair - but found some other things. A nice dark denim skirt for me, Barbie T-shirt for Emma, and these:

From Surprisingly Domestic

A handbag with tags still attached, in giftable condition - $5. Not my colour, but it'll make a nice Christmas gift!

From Surprisingly Domestic

That's $22 new, in as new condition for $1.75, and will fit Evelyn this summer.

Then on the weekend we went to Spotlight and I finally bought the drill for the next mei tai I want to make, and found this for $5 down from $25:

From Surprisingly Domestic

Alastair loves Dora! It's slightly scratched, that's all. We put it low on the wall so he can hang his own things :)

Recipe: exotic dairy-free ice cream

From Surprisingly Domestic

I 'invented' this tonight (most of the custard apples aren't ripe, but one big one blew off the tree in high winds the other night, so I ripened it with some bananas in a bowl).

1 large ripe custard apple, flesh scooped out and de-seeded
3 ripe kiwi fruit (I used gold), skin removed
1 egg
about 1 cup vanilla soymilk (or use plain soy/rice/cow milk + some vanilla extract)
about 1/4 cup sugar
about 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Throw ingredients in blender and blend.

Put in ice cream maker.

Eat.

Of course, if you don't have a custard apple tree in your backyard, this is probably kind of expensive ...

It's nice and creamy because custard apples are well, custardy, lol.

FO!

From Surprisingly Domestic

From Surprisingly Domestic

Next project is this in this:

From Surprisingly Domestic

(Tiger Cub on organic wool from The Yarn Cafe)

Argh! I'm an idiot.

:(

I try and keep my unused yarn in plastic tubs with lids, of course, but I have been careless about my unfinished objects, because, well, I guess I planned on finishing them sooner rather than later and it didn't happen.

Today I pulled out a pair of shorties for Alastair that I'd started working on LAST summer, and here's what I found:

From Surprisingly Domestic

From Surprisingly Domestic

Waaaah. I threw it in the bin because it wasn't that much work and the wool was eaten in quite a few places.

Lesson learned. I'm going to check my other UFOs & try to keep them safe.

In better news, the capris just need the crotch grafted and the ends woven in.

A productive day

Have I ever mentioned that I like crime fiction?

Our bookshelves are overflowing, so when I saw an offer on Freecycle for one in our suburb that would actually fit in our car, I snapped it up. (I love Freecycle, but given that we have a smallish car with no towbar, it's not actually feasible to collect many things from it!) Then I moved a lot of books around.

It fits about half my crime fiction collection:



The rest of our fiction collection is here (I'd say about 80% of it is mine!):



In contrast, here are the books poor Garry has to read (they're all computer books):



Evelyn's capris/shorties (I think they'll be capri length now and shorties in summer) are coming along nicely too:

Nectarine tree:

From Surprisingly Domestic

From Surprisingly Domestic

Custard apple:

From Surprisingly Domestic

Yum yum.

Food. Yum.

I've been rocking dinnertime this week, if I do say so myself.

Monday we had sausages & heaps of roast vegetables (potato, sweet potato, pumpkin & beetroot), with broccoli and cauliflower. Home-made chocolate ice cream and raspberries for dessert (the raspberries were frozen, of course, I *wish* we could get fresh here). Tuesday I put the leftover roast vegies on a pizza (Garry also took some with pasta for lunch, and then I had leftover pizza for lunch today, so it was pretty good value), with crusty garlic bread & more vegies. Fruit salad with vanilla & cinnamon whipped cream for dessert. Tonight we had hoi sin mince & vegies with Chinese cabbage and egg noodles. Ran out of yummy desserts, though :(

Last Friday Emma and I planted some seeds (carrots in the garden, and parsley in a large pot). I'm hoping they germinate soon :)

The fruit trees are doing quite well. The orange and plum trees out the front (established before we bought the place) have flowered nicely, so I just need to keep the fruit fly off. The young ones out the back - well, the nectarine one is doing great. It had a whole heap of young fruit - and then Alastair and a little friend decided to pick a handful each *sigh* at least they didn't try to eat them. There are still about 20 on the tree, hopefully the bugs stay away. The peacharine (cross between peach and nectarine) only has a couple of stunted fruit that don't look like they'll grow, but that's because half of the tree was dead and I didn't prune it until the beginning of spring. Since I pruned away the dead part the rest looks a lot healthier, so hopefully next year. The other plum tree has 6 or 7 young fruit. The mandarin tree only has one bud. The grapefruit is flowering, and I think I killed the lemon tree, lol.

This one is not really my crafty endeavour at all - well, only a tiny part.

I scored a new Beetlebums all-in-two nappy at last week's stocking (which, believe me, is hard to do), and Mel was kind enough to include a small offcut of the fabric so that I could make a matching shirt. I was just going to do a white singlet or shirt, but happened to have a shirt that's exactly the right shade of blue. Obviously it was meant to be ;)

From 20081006

From 20081006

Yeh, the applique's only half done; Alastair woke up too early from his nap. Such is life.