Crowns

This is by no means the first of all that I should catch up on in the Land of Blogging, but I do think it's the simplest little thing, so it's a good place to start: I made the girls crowns. 

They have been absolutely loving going to Guides each week for a year now, and last Friday was Coronation themed. They were invited to dress as royalty and enjoy the night in their fancy wear. Their dresses is another story, but what they needed first and foremost was a crown. 

There are no rubbish plastic crowns in our dress ups, so I offered to make them one each out of felt. They were excited to design them. I think the end result is a little oversized, but meh. It's funny because what I envisioned was basic felt, maybe some cut outs, with loads of sequins. The girls had very different ideas. 

Sophie's crown represented wisdom, so she wanted an owl and olive tree leaves. It was all to be silver, greens and blues. We had some back and forth over the owl design, since she wanted it to be as realistic as possible, but in the end I think it works. 

Rachel was convinced by the sequins, but again, surprisingly few. She wanted her crown to be nature themed. While we were looking for something for the centre, I remembered that strange floral thing that she had kept from when her face was painted last December at the piano concert. It was perfect and now also, not loitering around in my kitchen. Double win. 

The girls had a great night, and you'll have to come back to see what they chose to wear. 

Lunch Boxes

Lunches! A real sign of how the kids are growing. For the most part, I still enjoy making these. Especially when I can reuse dinner from the night before. The one below has some mini sausages with tomato sauce as well as pikelets with golden syrup for the girls to drizzle on. 

Sometimes when I'm feeling pretty lethargic about lunches, I'll remember that boiled eggs make an excellent filler. Even better when I remember to make them cute with Japanese moulds. 

These lunches were both made the night before and kept in the fridge until the girls packed them in the morning. I'm often up and out the door by 6:30 on a work day, so it's either that or the girls make them themselves. 

The girls do make their lunches, probably at least once a fortnight, if not once a week. Sometimes they even make them the night before so they don't have to worry about it in the morning. I get really excited when it's a Japanese lunch like this. 

So good! 

End of April

Here we are closing in on the end of April and once again I'm noticing that I've not blogged this month. Is this the end? Have I joined the ranks of people who no longer blog? Admittedly, most people I know who say "Oh, I started a blog!" usually join those ranks after three or four months, not eighteen years.

Even typing this though, my answer is no. It's not time to end this. I have things I want to document and more that I want to share. Even if my content is somewhat limited and repetitive, and my readership is not wide or varied by any means. That's never been the point for me. Blogging will continue. 

I recently went to my 20 year high school reunion, which was an interesting experience. It was very small, only twelve of us original classmates with a few spouses thrown in for good measure. Most people were those I was friends with, or knew well enough, so it was fairly easy to have a conversation and catch up. What I found the most strange though, was people saying "We haven't changed!" because I'd very much like to think I'm not the same person I was 20 years ago. 

I wonder if anyone else left the night feeling the same way. Surely the years and experience have made a difference to us? Maybe it was just the superficial thing to say, or about what they could see on the surface. My face has the same blue eyes behind glasses and a smile most of the time, but underneath I feel so completely removed from the girl I was wearing that uniform. 

As I reflect on this, I'm quite thankful for my blog, which I think does quite a good job of showing at least some of the changes. I'm going to keep at it, even if it takes a little while to get back into the swing of things. There are still more changes to come, and if you've joined me for the ride, thanks for being here. 

All's Quiet on the Blogging Front (but Pumpkins are Growing)

Things have been quiet, though as always, I've been busy. Not sure I have much more to say really. Maybe next month I'll start going through the back log of photos, creativity, events and memories and start sharing them again. We shall see. 

In the meantime, here are some photos of the pumpkins that sprung up out of our glorious compost from when we did the front garden beds in September last year. For the first time ever we had butternut pumpkins! 

I was hand pollinating some of these, but our neighbours have bees and they were buzzing around most days too. Steve wonders why I bother, but it feels very pointless to have a huge sprawling pumpkin vine with nothing to show for it. 

The pumpkins grew up and over the retaining wall and alongside the water tank. Aside from accidently shading out the little flowers we had there, it's actually the perfect place for them, so we are now thinking we will convert that strip of grass into a pumpkin patch long term. I'm the only real pumpkin fan in the house though, so maybe it's not the wisest of investments. Perhaps it could be used for corn too.

In the meantime; pumpkin scones anyone? 

Measuring Time

I was honestly not sure I'd get any posts out in February this year, but I've found myself with an hour to spare so I'm figuring, why not. Time to catch up on some things I guess. 

Sophie had a birthday in Jan this year which was a bit of a milestone. Double digits. Can it be true? Must be, because the earth is still turning and we are still measuring time by rotations around that sun, so here we are: 10. 

For her birthday, this cool kid got a fun family afternoon at South Bank with a chill BBQ dinner and lots of chocolate cake. 

Her present this year was a room makeover, which we asked the family to contribute to so Sophie could have some autonomy over it, in lieu of usual presents. So just before I spent 40 plus hours painting the ground at the girls school for a week, I spent ten hours painting Sophie's room. 

We had gone to Bunnings and looked at paint colours together in December. Sophie had selected a range which came home and were stuck up on her wall for consideration. Slowly she would remove the ones she didn't want until she decided on the Tsunami colour for her feature wall. Since I was painting the feature wall, it made sense to repaint all the others to match the house while I was at it. 

After that, Sophie had a bit of cash to use to decorate. She chose to buy some LED lights, a Squirrel Girl poster and the white desk you can see in the corner. Other family gave her things for the room - the cute lantern balls, the light box, the collage art on the door. Sophie had fun setting it all up and making it hers. 

Lastly, she had a park play date with her small group of core friends on a Friday in the holidays. Since they are all avid Wings of Fire fans, I took them to the park with the dragons, and Sophie had a dragon guarding her cake, which was full of all the chocolate treasure a girl could want. 

Mural Painting

There was a bit of a lull in January this year, about a week before I was supposed to go back to work, and I realised no one had done any painting at school over the holidays. The P&C have been quite prolific at painting things since 2020, when we started with a tuckshop mural (and then moved on to a garden themed one, the entire prep area and pavers in a garden. This year there was also an ANZAC mural of poppies and a spontaneous bush turkey, but I don't have photos of those.) 

We have a couple of murals that are pre-approved and are really just on the wait list that will get done when people have the time. The school admin also have a wish list of murals that they want done mostly to increase the kids gross motor skills. It was this list that I was looking at when I text my friend Imogen (who usually organises painting things) to ask if she was free to tick some off. 

The fates aligned and Imogen was free, so the two of us went up to school and got to work. We decided that it was time for the senior side of the school to have some love, since we had thus far painted predominantly in the junior half. The mural on the wish list from admin was a city scape with roads that the kids could walk down, give directions with, or drive cars along. 

We cleaned it back and discussed the new mural. Happy with the city scape with all it's learning applications, we began mapping things out, but of course, we didn't want to just paint a boring city with houses and trees. So what was a city, became a rather enormous zoo, complete with oversized animals of every kind, including the mythical. (My justification there is that it gives students the opportunity to use their imaginations, and increase their creativity: learning yo!)

I think between us, Imogen and I spent at least 50 hours painting the mural, and we had other people come and help out too. It's certainly time intensive when you decide to upscale and take the entire area available. When Imogen mentioned that she would label all of the animals (since that's what you'd see at a Zoo), I jumped at the chance to add the Japanese names as well. And when we couldn't find a good inspiration picture for the emu, we pivoted to add a crane. 

The whole mural is difficult to photograph, since it is pretty huge. We talked about adding cool looking insects in the two yellow roundabouts, but when it came to it, we didn't quite get there. Sophie and Rachel, who had been pretty heavily invested in the mural since I dragged them up to school with me while I painted three days out of five, have been vocal in their disappointment. Steve has come to my defence though, given the sheer amount of time I'd already spent at their school painting things. 

For the most part though, the mural is fun perfection. We've given it a protection coat and roped it off to let the paint set before the kids start running all over it. I hope they love it as much as we do. 

Chit-Chat the Squirrel

After my spontaneous decision to graciously make Rachel another cow to be friends with Moo-Moo, it only made logical sense to also make a similar toy for Sophie. Lest I be accused of favouritism. Knowing the girls' love for fluffy things, I had a look through the scraps and figured I had just enough of the faux fur left from making Sophie's Squirrel Girl outfit to make a small squirrel for her. 

There is no squirrel included in the Menagerie Pattern, but the only real feature I figured I needed to capture was that tail. I ended up just tracing out the shape that I had used for Sophie's costume but on a much smaller scale. I was on the fence about sewing it to the back of the squirrel so it would be permanently up or letting it fall free, but Sophie said she'd prefer the flexibility. 

The squirrel has been named Chit Chat, after a squirrel character from the Wild Robot books. I should say that I made both Chit Chat and Mini Moo-Moo last year, I think in late November/early December, but life got away from me and I'm only just getting around to posting about them now. Busy busy. Sophie just turned ten this January though, so I wonder if Chit Chat will be the last soft toy I make for her. We shall see. 

Here is Chit Chat, Mini Moo-Moo and Star Tiger together.  

Oh, how far I've come, and how many lovely friendly soft toys I've made these girls. Makes me hope that my newest little nephew Archie will also need some cuddly friends in his life too. 

Mini Moo-Moo

 Ahh, Moo-Moo. Was there ever a cow who was more loved than this? Since I've made Moo-Moo, she's had a very full and loved life, including a couple of surgeries to help her through. Not sure when it was, but Rachel noticed the bit of fabric that I had had leftover from making Moo-Moo in my stash and asked if I could make a second cow. 

Initially I told her no. Then when she asked again, I told her no. Then when she asked a third time, I told her I'd sell her the fabric and she could make her cow. Rachel bought the fabric. I realised I'd need to do a bit of hand holding, especially since the amount of fabric was quite small, found the pieces of cow pattern and scaled them down so they would fit. 

We spent an afternoon figuring out where to put and pin everything, then put it away for a couple of weeks before she cut it out. Watching Rachel cut the pieces I began to doubt my initial plan of having her sew the cow herself. The fur fabric was just a little too tricky to deal with for a beginner sewer. 

So I bit the bullet and sat down to make the cow. Rachel informed me that this cow, already named "Mini Moo-Moo" was a boy cow, and was not to be a baby for Moo-Moo, but in fact her friend. She even had a story of how they met and became friends written down before Mini Moo-Moo was made. 

Not being a girl cow, I was sadly deprived of udder making, but otherwise this cow came together about as smoothly as the last one. Mini Moo-Moo is made with the same cow print fur and some brown and white felt. He is about the same size as the Pikachu I originally made with this pattern, maybe a little bit bigger, and is the perfect friend for Moo-Moo and Rachel. 

And, since I was suddenly making a new soft toy for Rachel, I figured I'd better make one for Sophie too, so come back soon to hear all about that. 

Bucket Drum Dampers

One down side to teaching music to a bunch of kids is that you generally want to get them drumming and that is loud. When they are little and just using their hands, it's bearable, but a class of 25 grade 6 students all using bucket drums with sticks in a confined space is not. Last year I ran lots of my lessons outside to combat the noise factor, but it's not always feasible. 

So I took the bucket drum home in December and did a shout out to my community for anyone going through their old towels over Christmas. With the donated towels and sheets, I cut circles and sewed three layers together on Olivia the Overlocker to fit the top of the drum. Noise damping success! 

Glad I could recycle the towels before they were thrown away, and have saved my ears in the process. The sad news was that Olivia began making funny noises as I sewed the last five or so. I assumed she was protesting at the thick layers of towelling I was making her sew, but after taking her to the sewing machine guy, it turns out the plastic casing on her motor is cracked. Alas for my hard working Olivia! 

Library Crawl

Yesterday the girls were grumpy, so today, I took them on a Library Crawl. It's like a pub crawl, but you visit lots of libraries and spend time reading books and borrowing in each library.

It really made a difference to how we were all feeling about life. So much reading and book exploring. 

Sophie was on a hunt for Wings of Fire books each time, and often would spend time reorganising the section on the shelf so the books were all in order. Is that some signs of OCD that she's showing maybe? 

I also caught her talking to the books. Librarian in the making perhaps? 

We came home with 27 books between us, and I read and returned one on our journey as well. Not a bad day at all. 

I have a slew of draft posts waiting for me to write/finish and while I've crossed off nearly all of the things I had on my to-do list at the start of the holidays, I found while chatting to Steve tonight that there are a bunch of new things to do, probably before school goes back in a week and a bit. Blergh. Hopefully I'll be able to kick my butt into gear soon, but in the meantime, I'm going to go read some books.