Boat Mark Two

Couldn't help myself. Painted the boat.

It only takes an hour or two, and makes such a difference to the overall look and last-ability of the boat. Now the girls can go sailing for much longer. With all their friends.

That was Sophie "helping" me with putting the tape on before I painted the white. Here is Rachel ready to sail.

Floating Cardboard

I was scrolling through the Pinterest feed last week when Sophie came along and had a look at what I was doing. She happened to notice a cardboard boat picture that had popped up, and promptly asked if she could have one. Of course I said yes, but of course, it was a little harder than that to actually make.

After a week of asking me, we finally found the time on Monday, when all the little ones were asleep. So I pulled out this awesome heavy duty cardboard from under the house (thanks Dad for getting a new BBQ) and set to work. I figured because kids would be climbing in and out over the sides that it would be worth using some of this precious cardboard if I wanted it to last.

The boat itself came together quite smoothly, thought I wish I had put a little more thought into getting the side angle joins to work properly. At the front point, I scored the top of the cardboard, scooped out the honeycombed support stuff and then just folded the other side of the cardboard over and taped it down. It made everything join very nicely without me having to do any tricky maths or angles or whatever.

At the sides though, for some reason, it didn't occur to me to do this, and so I have a very ugly mess and a lot of tape. But it holds and so whatever. I've learnt for next time.

The mast is completely removable. I put a cardboard glad wrap roll in that the mast actually slips over. I did reinforce the middle board with some extra cardboard and paper towel rolls (what a great variety of cardboard stuff there is just from saving household recycling! Yay cardboard!). Now, the kids can climb over it with out it buckling.

The sail is a scrap bit of fabric from who knows where. I drilled all of the holes to put the PVC piping into the mast, because that cardboard roll was pretty durable. It was good to have power tool usage to make this boat I think. Anyway, beacuse it's all PVC and loops, the sail can collapse completely down and store inside the mast. The mast comes off too, so I can put the whole thing in storage under the house when the kids get board of it. Hooray!

I looked at it this morning and wondered if I should give it a coat of that red/maroon coloured paint that I did the sandpit lid with. Maybe. Sophie looked at it when it was done and asked me: "Will it float?" Priceless.

By Friday, I'm a little sad to say, the sticky tape was not doing an amazing job of holding everything together, so I got the drill out again and put holes in the sides and then sewed everything together with some twine stuff. Brown, so it matches the boat. That's my eye for colour showing there.

I think it worked really well. I used the really random needle that I've used to sew cardboard before. I even took a picture of it this time, so that you could all see what I'm talking about. I really have no idea what it's real purpose in life might be, but I think it works excellently as my cardboard needle.

This boat holds me and four children with room for pillows and toys. It takes up a good third of the lounge room. Sophie and Rachel like to sit in it and read books and watch Play School. Maybe one day, we will see if it floats. First thought, I feel it needs an anchor. And a crows nest. With a Jolly Rodger flag. Yes.

Ten Years Ago

Blog milestone. Posting for ten years.

I almost can't believe it. Has that much time really passed? And look how far I've come! I use full sentences and correct spelling and grammar. Please do not go back and read those early posts. In fact, I'd stay away from all of 2005 entirely, and probably even the start of 2006. I don't know what I was thinking. But now, I use titles, and labels. Have pictures and coherent sentences. So good.

At the same time, I feel like I'm still that teenager figuring things out. Trusting in God to take me where he needs me to go, knowing that I'm going to make a million stupid mistakes along the way. No matter how much I wish that I would just get it right now, I've got loads more learning to do.

Here I am at twenty nine. Husband, house, two kids. And yet, not everything is together. Some days I want to stay in bed because it seems safer there. I wonder if I'll be blogging in another ten years, or if I'll have given it up entirely. Maybe I'll be more interesting then, or talk less about sewing. Ha, that's not going to happen.

Anyway, while I want to be all introspective and cool, and recognise this somewhat significant day, the reality is that I'm sick and sleep deprived. The kids have just gone down for a nap and I should do the same thing.

If you've been reading since the beginning - thanks for staying with me! If you've joined somewhere else along the ride, I hope you stick around. I have enjoyed blogging; getting my thoughts out of my head and into the unknown where someone may or may not read them. It's been a challenge and it's been fun, so for now, I'll keep it up.

Lately

So many people have been asking me: "What have you been up to lately?" and I find that nothing big springs to mind. I mean, we haven't done any renos, don't have any big parties planned. I feel like I want to answer: "Nothing much," but that doesn't seem right either.

I've gotten the hang of (as much as you can get the hang of such things) having four kids. The house is clean again. Sophie and I have been sewing. A lot of sewing. She needed new shorts and skirt for summer, now that her winter stuff is packed away. So we've been sewing together. A little arduous, I'll admit, but fun.

When I first told Sophie that I would be making her some new skirts and invited her to choose some material from the stash, she was pretty excited. Then, she fell in love with the first thing I pulled out (a stripey tank top that I thought I could re purpose) and wouldn't choose anything else. Oh well, at least that meant that I got to make the fashionable choices for the rest of the material right?

After making the stripey skirt, where I did a cool thing with the top and made pockets for the front, I also made her this one using a pattern I found a while ago from Melly Sews. First ever drawstring. I really like this skirt. What awesome pockets right?

I tried to actually do a photo shoot with Sophie wearing her skirts, and as you can see, failed rather miserably. It doesn't help that our camera is rather old, or that she's two and a half, but even things like lighting and what else she was prepared to wear were troublesome. I have much greater respect for other bloggers who have their kids in great shots for their newly sewn outfits. Maybe they use chocolate bribes. This is the best photo I have. It's a little bit depressing.

Anyway here is Rachel getting in on the photo shoot action. She looked pretty darn cute in that dress, which looks home-made but is not.

I also made Sophie a pair of shorts out of some larrey floral fabric that I've used before in some tops which I blogged about here. They are pretty crazy, but given that she wears lots of boy-coloured shirts, I was happy to have some out going floral shorts to make her look less like a little boy and more like a little tom-boy type girl.

We spend lots of time outside in the sun, enjoying the sandpit and the spacious backyard. I set up obstacle courses and dump multitudes of cardboard boxes on the lawn for building and climbing into. The kids swing in the swings. We wear lots of sun screen but still manage to look a little pink at the end of the day.

I've been cooking lots of new meals. Pizza buns and roast vegetable tarts. Delicious. This is life. It's nothing big to remark about, but it's a whole lot of little things that add up to a lot of fun.

This is Life

I feel I've finally gotten the hang of having four kids. They all nap at the same time! This must mean I've got it right? Either that, or something terrible is waiting just around the corner to spring on me now that I'm finally getting ahead. Whatever.

Steve and I have spent the last few weekends being handy. We planned, measured, cut, drilled, and even chiselled! I painted. And also hammered. Now we have a sandpit. Words can not describe just how great it is to have this. The amount of hours that my girls alone spend it in make it worth it. Not to mention Hugo and Penelope, and the visitors with kids. So great. 

I've been reading a bit more in my down time. Little things that are easy and make me feel that all is right with the world. Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George, An Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye and more recently a collection of short stories by Garth Nix. These make me want to write more, because he's so fabulous, and at the same time, not, because I could never be quite so good.

There is a furniture place down the road from us that Steve noticed was having a sale, so we wandered on down one morning for a look, thinking we would suss out the price of bunk beds. There were no bunk beds there, but we got a wardrobe for cheep. Then I had to spend a week reorganising all of the rooms, because no one had the furniture they were supposed to end up with. It was fun to go through stuff and organise furniture, but also time consuming. 

In our room, we ended up with an extra set of drawers that we didn't really need, but Steve said he'd prefer my material to be stored in the drawers, rather than as it currently was on a bookshelf. (I did protest because I can fit more on a bookshelf, than in drawers, but not for long, because even I had to concede that I probably had too much material stashed away.)

The good news I have to share is that Sally has magically fixed herself. Not two nights after I was sure she was broken for real this time, I opened her up to demonstrate to Steve just how broken she was and she started working again. I can not explain it, but I'm happy that my sewing machine is back in action. 

Subsequently I dug through the material that was now stored in drawers and found the sheet sets that Steve's mum kept from his child hood. I cut out seven capes and matching pairs of shorts. I don't want to give too much away yet, but they are going to look awesome and I still have stacks of that material left (Steve's mum kept two full sheet sets and two doona covers too - material heaven!).

We've been studying Hosea in bible study on a Wednesday night. Though I have done this study before and Hosea is somewhat repetitive, it's been refreshing. God is an amazing balance of love and justice, and the way he always wants his people to come back to him is phenomenal. That's what make him amazing I guess.

Anyway, Sophie has just awoken, so I suppose we will go and do some cooking together now. It's a rather delightful way to pass the afternoon. 

Denim Skirt

The church bush dance was coming up. Every year it's a fashion dilemma. Bush means jeans and boots. Dance means spinning and twirling, which means skirt! Somehow for the last four years I've failed to come up with a suitable solution for this conundrum. No more is this the case!

I was actually thinking about making denim vest that I could wear along with a cool dancing skirt so that I'd have my token bush denim and still be dancing pretty. I looked online for vest patterns and ideas, but they all seemed fairly complicated. I also knew I was going to try to make it out of the plethora of old jeans I had stashed up (just in case I wanted to make a jeans quilt, or a painting apron in the near future you know?) so it wasn't necessarily going to be easy to cut out to start with. I was also running out of time. Two days to go.

Then I hit upon the idea of making a skirt using the jeans. As in, using the pre made and fitted top part of the jeans, slashing off the legs, making a new skirt bottom and then sewing that on. Volia! A skirt that I didn't have to sew zips or button holes for. Not a loose wrap skirt. It sounded good in theory, and I had so many jeans stored (I think twelve pairs (not all mine!)) that there was really no worry about getting it wrong the first time because I had plenty of material (even if I didn't have much time).

So I did it. And I love it.

I didn't get around to hemming it, given the time constraints, and it was just going to be part of the look anyway. Frayed is in right? I think it's fabulous. It could be the most perfectly fitting skirt I've ever made. So comfortable, and warm. Though the bush dance is now over, I'm still wearing it. Fashion be dammed, this is the best skirt ever.

Ok ok, maybe not, I'm sure it's got it's flaws, but I love it, and that's what counts. I mean functioning pockets on a skirt that didn't take three hours to put in!! YES!! What I saw in my head is pretty much what happened when I sewed. At first I made the skirt part too long (because I didn't really measure where I thought it would go on me, I just guessed it), but I just slashed off six inches and resewed it. Perfect! The length is great. Because it's heavy denim, I don't fear it flying up at the smallest gust of wind. It's twirly enough for a dance but modest enough to be worn whenever.

I found that cute lacy bit in a stash from my mum (I've got loads of it, it turns out). I think it helps with the bush dance feel, though maybe not the everyday fashion feel. Oh well. Functioning pockets remember!

Sophie helped me to sew the (re-cut) skirt bit onto the top, while the other three kids slept on Friday morning, which was very nice. She was excited to help me make a skirt. On the down side, as I was cutting the last threads off post sewing with her, she decided to show me that she knew how my sewing machine worked and proceeded to push the presser foot.

I know it's my fault that I didn't switch it off sooner, but now Sally seems to be broken thanks to this enthusiastic demonstration from Sophie. The joy at making this fabulous skirt is diminished by the sadness I feel when I think that I may not make another on Sally.

Maybe that's a bit melodramatic, but I was trying to put a quilt together last night and Sally won't even sew a stitch. I took things apart, and blew out dust, and rethreaded, and looked for possible reasons, but I can't see anything. She's just not sewing. Something is getting stuck and she just won't go. Sigh.

Today I will wear my lovely denim skirt and use it's awesome functioning pockets and twirl and dance with my girls. Maybe tomorrow I'll address the sewing machine issue.

Finger Painting

Now that Sophie is older, she wants to paint loads more, and now actually has the fine motor skills to give it a good go. Last year I gave her some really basic home made finger paints to play with, but I'd seen this recipe online that I wanted to give a go. It was a little more effort, but made some really great finger paints. Sophie helped, of course, so it was like two activities in one. Bonus!

The consistency is a great balance of thick and smooth. The colours turned out really well too. I was a little unsure how much food colouring to add, but they turned out really nicely. I probably added a little too much, but that's ok, lesson learnt. They live in some hand sanitizer bottles I'd been saving for this very purpose. It makes dishing out the paint really easy. Though, when washing out said hand sanitizer bottles, make sure you don't get any leftover sanitizer on your fingers and then rub your eye by mistake. That burns. 

I think come summer, we will all be finger painting just a little bit more. 

Mail Call

I've been pretty run off my feet the last few weeks so much so that I haven't really had a chance to do much sewing at all. I sit and look longingly at Sally the Sewing Machine some days. Soon, I promise her, soon I'll take you out again.

We had a really busy last week because our niece, Matilda, was baptised and we had a sudden influx of family members hanging around for food and staying the night. Not the least was Steve's Nana who came up from Sydney and stayed a week to spend time with her grandchildren and great grandchildren. It was really lovely, but meant that we had not much free time for ourselves.

The other news that I've yet to share with you is that I've started looking after another baby part time. I wasn't keen when the mum asked me to look after her six month old, but she was really unhappy with the childcare they had and I felt for her. I wouldn't want to leave my girls anywhere I wasn't happy with. Thoughts like "It's only three days a week. You said you'd do term three while they are looking for another place, that's only ten weeks." also crept in to help me rationalise it.

Really, a six month old is so young and pretty care intensive (even when they are as chilled as this one is) because they can't do anything for themselves. Not my ideal situation, looking after four kids under three, but it's for a season.

Anyway, even with all my complaining and excuses about not being able to do anything with my time, I did get a small project done on the weekend which I'm pretty pleased about. It has taken me this long to post because I had to get action photos, which I couldn't do till I visited my parents place today.

Without further ado, I give you a mail bag.

Last Wednesday at my parents, the Sophie saw the postman delivering the mail in the street, which isn't particularly new or ground breaking, but it was the first time that it stuck with her and she proceeded to hop on the little toy bike they have there and deliver imaginary mail all afternoon. "This will not do," I thought to myself. "I can make a mail bag easily, it won't take long."

It really didn't. It took slightly longer because I got a bit fancy and stuck and Australia Post logo on the front and then the Japan Post logo on the other side and made it reversible. But even that didn't take long.

When I took it over today and put it on the bike, I was so glad that it fit, because I made it without taking measurements at all. The thing is prefect and made from scraps. It uses loops to hang off the handle bars that just slip on (sorry Dad, no velcro here). The whole thing is reversible and well made. I hope the kids use it for years to come. Actually, I'm sure they will.

That mail they are all enthusiastically delivering is cardboard that I cut out and wrote on. There are blank ones there for the girls to fill in themselves too. One day. Cardboard yo. It's the best.

Used Again

Sophie is actively engaging in the felt books! I am beyond excited. I know the rest of the world may not care, but it means a great deal to me to see her firstly using something that I've made, but also having developed enough to be able to do so. Here she is using this felt book.

She's gone from not even having the motor skills to open the book, let alone pick out the felt, to actually making faces on the pages. That one there, is apparently herself. Yay for growth and development! Change and progress are happening here people, and I get to be a part of it.

Doll's Jacket

With the sudden cold snap last week, Sophie informed me one morning that Doll needed a jacket. Kids have that real holistic approach to toys. Anyway, I told her, sure we could sew a jacket, and we picked out material from the scrap box.

There was just enough of this spotty fabric. The blue with white is from some table runners from a wedding. I've made loads of it into bunting in the past (in fact, it was the beginnings of my very first lot of excessive general bunting!) The multicoloured spots were from a party dress Sophie wore last August.

I've never sewn a jacket before, so I did a quick google for a pattern and Sophie helped lay out the pieces. She was a little confused as to why we weren't just sewing, but went along with things. As always I feared making it too small, so I cut excessively large and promised myself I'd use at least a centimetre seam allowance to make it all come together nicely.

Then proceeded to use the smallest possible seam allowance I could so Doll ended up with an enormous jacket. I did cool cuffs with the contrast spots, which was good. The sleeves are about twice as long as they need to be, but I can't take them up because of the cool contrast spots cuffs, which is  bad. Also, I put facings in. What do I know about facings? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Never sewn them before in my life.

I ended up sewing the sides in a heap and even putting a tuck in the back, but it's still pretty bad. When I tell Steve about this, he says: "Don't worry, Doll will grow into it."

Despite the bad fitting, Sophie loves Doll's new jacket. Here she is buttoning up the invisible buttons that I haven't put on yet. It's a win.

Confetti Bunting

Just wanted to share some shots of the cool bunting I made for Mum's 60th earlier in the month. I wish I had taken photos during the day, when it was all set up and there were no annoying fluro lights getting in the way of the awesome, but oh well.

Out of 90 sheets of cardboard, I punched roughly seven good circles. This gave us roughly 630 circles to work with. We sewed them together (random pattern of colours) with some metallic thread on Harriet the Husqvana. It was a bit of an ordeal because the metallic thread was really tricky to sew with and we also had issues putting it on the bobbin. Not to mention that we had kids running around left right and centre too. That almost goes without saying really.

Anyway, what we ended up with was a sufficient amount of excellent confetti-esk bunting. I hung it with some parts just falling down which looked really cool (sorry no photos of that particular feature). When Mum and Dad took it down, Mum diligently folded it carefully so that we can use it again. Hooray!

The Cinderella Dress

It's been a long time coming, but I'm excited to share this with you. Sophie finally loves dress ups! Hooray!

Yes, I know she's only two and a half, but as someone who loves costumes and dressing up as someone else for a while, I feel like it's taken ages for her to get to this stage. Now that she's here, I can have loads of fun sewing even more fun things for her! Yes!

That said, I know that my little girl is growing, and is going to keep growing pretty noticeably for the next few years. So I didn't want to make a dress up dress that would fit her now, and not in six months time. That just felt like a bit of a waste. 

To combat this problem, I thought about how to make a dress that would be able to grow with her, so she could wear it for at least a year or two. The best way to address this would be to make a wrap dress, that could expand with growth. I went to my basic Five and Ten Designs bodice and from the size four, I redrew the back pattern piece to make it cross over and wrap around.

I figured this way, while she's still a size two, the back pieces would just wrap tighter and have more overlap, and then as she grows, it will just be less and less. There is still overlap at the size four though, so it should be able to stretch out till at least size five, or maybe even a six if I'm lucky. Could be that this dress will last for four years! That'd be great.

I had a stack of gauzy fabric in my stash, and I asked Sophie which one she liked. I made the skirt pretty long (she nearly stands on it when she runs now) so it will be able to fit as she grows too. To me, one of the essential design features of any pretty dress up dress (especially a Cinderella ball gown type dress) is that the skirt be pretty big and poofy for fun spinning.

This fits the bill. I hate gathering more than ever, and did a lot of hand sewing to get everything in place before I finally stitched it together, but I'm glad I did. It was worth it to see her spin around in it. 

I also wanted the dress to be big because I knew she'd just be throwing it on over whatever she was already wearing. I mean - that's pretty standard for dress ups right? That means that this dress is going to get a lot of wear. Sophie was running around the yard in it when I was taking photos. Also checking the dirt and plants and splashing in water.

Here she is rescuing something from under the fridge the next day too. Quality Cinderella moment.

I did some fancy rolled hem stitch on Olivia the Overlocker for the sheer hem. Some of it worked, kinda. It was about twice the width that I wanted, but whatever I tried I couldn't make it smaller. Also, I had about thirty centimetres to go when something started to not work at all, so if you look closely, there is in fact a small amount of dress that isn't hemmed at all. And I was almost out of thread.

After seeing the way that she ran around the garden in it, I think this is an ok decision, because I can see myself re-doing the hem anyway. Also, the bit that isn't done is wrapped under the top layer when she puts it on, so you can't even see it. Win!

Not to be left out, here is Rachel, posing with our Cinderella book. Cinderella in this book wears a pink ball gown, so that's probably why Sophie's Cinderella dress ended up being pink, rather than the "traditional" Disney blue.

Doll House

We live in a lovely street where we happen to know most of the neighbours. It's been a real blessing. Last week, our neighbours from across the road gifted us with a doll house. Their daughter is a little old for it and they thought our girls could use it.

Sophie was so delighted to see it, and Rachel was pretty happy too. They have spent a considerable amount of time putting things in and out and opening the doors and windows. It's the new thing. But of course, it needed a few extras. I had been planning to finish the Cinderella dress that afternoon while Rachel slept, but instead I found myself sewing with Sophie.

She picked out the material and sat on my lap while I showed her how to keep her fingers away from the needle. We sewed the mattress for the bed and she helped to stuff it. Then we sewed two "blankets" for the dolls and a pillow. Sophie loves to tuck in the dolls. Rachel likes to throw it all out onto the floor.

Even though I'm really task oriented and sometimes interruptions like this can drive me a bit nuts, I found that I was happy to put aside my planned sewing for some quality time with Sophie. The thing is, I love her, and I want her to grow up to be a strong, capable young woman. I want to invest in her, to teach her things. I'd also really like it if the things that I love, she also loved (so the fact that she wanted to sew "like mum" was a bonus).

Even though it was an interruption and put my plans back, the time that I took picking material, sewing with her and helping her afterwards was valuable. It was worth while. It was important. Maybe knowing this is what means I've made motherhood my career choice right now. I want to spend my time and effort investing in these kids.

I'm praying that what I'm leaving them with is more than just sewing though, that it's a life time with Jesus. It's a pretty big deal when I look at it that way, but God always gives us what we need by his Spirit. I know I wouldn't be able to do it any other way.

Fun Food

No idea where I saw this idea on the internet, but I gave it a go for the girls lunch sometime last week. I looks pretty funky and from the reaction the girls gave me, it was a bit of a win.

Those fun owls are sitting on a nest of leafy green cress from the stuff Sophie and I grew (post here).

Life in Progress

It has been a long few weeks. Busy. Hectic even. Sleep deprived, and at the same time, catching up on sleep (is there a word for that?). But I guess it's time for updates.

We had Rachel's party, and then some surprise family visitors from Bundy, then another party, (which we set up for outside, then it started to rain, so we had to set up for inside as well), then some more surprise family visitors from Bundy, then my Mum's 60th party, which had loads of extra family up to hang with as well. One night, Steve got home at ten to six and I was asleep on the couch by six. It was even an effort eating dinner at eight before I went to bed.

I punched about 700 circles out of cardboard to sew into bunting for Mum's party (had to ask Steve if he thought I had done enough, and he did some maths and worked out that I had about 65 metres of bunting, which I figured was enough). It looked amazing on the night, so it was worth the effort. Bunting always does though, right?

I've been looking after the kids (as always), though I've been without Hugo for a week and a half now, thanks to school holidays. And it really feels like a holiday. Two kids, so easy! Sophie and I have been continuing to grow things. The pumpkin seeds have taken off and been transplanted. Despite Rachel's best attempts at pulling them up and eating them each day, they are growing steadily. Hooray!

Sophie is now more happy about the idea of dress ups, so I've made a Cinderella dress for her. Pretty excited about it, so I might give it it's own post. YAY!

Another really exciting update is that I've gotten my act together with publishing my next book. It's taken me a while. Just to clarify, this isn't the one I just wrote and finished a few weeks ago. This next one is a compilation of three short stories (fairy tales) that I had written a few years ago. I've only just gotten my act together with uploading it all to Amazon now. So hopefully I'll have another exciting publication post soon too. (Well now I have to do it soon, because you all know about it. :P)

Anyway, I'd better get off here and go write some thank-you cards for Rachel's presents. Then I can cross another thing off the to-do list.