Peter Pan

My girls have been slowly introduced to some of the Disney classics, including the animated version of Peter Pan. Rachel took to Peter Pan more than Sophie, and last week, after she insisted her ordinary green hat was her Peter Pan hat, I thought I'd make her an actual Peter Pan hat. 

Image from DisneyStore.com

There are a plethora of Peter Pan/Robin Hood style hat DIY's floating around, but I used this tutorial as my base. It said it was toddler sized, and given Rachel is two and a half, I thought it would be perfect.

It was rather enormous for my little Rachel, so I did some adjustments and then it fit perfectly. Made it with just green felt and red felt for the feather. It's a little bit like Christmas actually.

Rachel loved it. I did some stitching on the feather to give it a bit more style and I really like it. It also made it curl a little which was nice. I didn't originally sew the feather in, but have had to recently, because otherwise it gets lost in all of the adventures to Neverland.

I thought Sophie would be able to use her Tinkerbell costume to play with Rachel-Peter Pan, but Tinkerbell is not really a main/nice character in the movie, so she usually plays Wendy. Time for another costume, right? 

While I was away in Melbourne (before I made the Peter Pan hat), the girls played Peter Pan and Wendy quite a bit, and Steve was delegated the character of Captain Hook. Sometimes the girls even refer to him as "Captain" which he is quite ok with.

Ricey Bento

Finally, I give you: bento with rice!

Honestly, just had some leftover rice in the fridge and gave it a zap in the microwave in the morning. The girls really liked their onigiri, though Sophie took all of the seaweed off first (and ate it) before eating the rice. A little unorthodox I'll admit, but if she's eating it then it's a win.

Now that the girls are older, I'm going a bit crazier with cute picks and forks for them, which they love. These bento (pictured on my not-clean stove top), include onigiri (rice balls), apples, mango, pretzels, cucumber, capsicum and tomato and olives.

Updates on Life & Commissioned Work

Well, what is life but a crazy roller coaster of busyness? I can't believe how the last few weeks have flown, and finally today I've had the chance to sit down for a minute. What can I say? Things are busy. 

I'm officially on holidays from working full time, though not on holidays from looking after my two little girls. I did get a break last week when my sisters and I had four days in Melbourne together. This was amazing kid-free time, and wonderful sister time. We did loads of stuff together, including shopping, which is never my favourite or choice past time, but it was necessary and bearable (even, at times, fun!) with my sisters. They are ruthless shoppers, so I learn a lot with them. 

Since I've been back in Brisbane, I've continued neglecting my Cert 3 studies, though I know it can't last and enjoying free time. Before I went to Melbourne, so pretty much the end of November, Steve was super busy with work. He had a retreat and then a conference, which he was a speaker at! 

Exciting times for Steve, though it pretty much meant that all his spare time was spent working on that and there was a big crash after it was over. So much exhaustion for everyone. Steve did get to work on a game for the Hololens for the conference which was a big highlight. You can see a demo of the game here!

I'm giving myself this week to enjoy being on holidays and get my head back into gear doing things around the house and then I'll get studying again next week. I've been working on a few things around the place too, mostly sewing related and also Christmas present related which is therapeutic and wonderful. Hopefully I'll be organised enough to post about them with relative efficiency. 

I was organised enough to finish the commissioned sewing I had before the end of November. Small victories! That is a faded-out-photo-preview so that I don't spoil any Christmas excitement accidentally (small chance, but you can never be too careful). I'll write more about it after Christmas. Just know that it was done and looked very swish.

In other news, our church is going through some changes at the moment, and doing some serious thinking about the evening service. Steve and I have always gone to the evening service and have generally loved it, but they are really looking at changing things up next year. We've had lots of discussion with people in our bible study who are pretty worried about things.

I don't really know where we stand, but I'm surprisingly calm about the whole thing. I mean, things change. This world that we live in is always changing, people are doing different things. I think seeing the girls growing every day is a really good reminder of that - they are always changing, developing, grappling with new ideas and concepts. So am I. Every day there is something new to deal with, some new fine line to walk.

So, though change can be upsetting and painful, it's also ok. And no matter if we end up changing churches, or our church changes, God is the same. How I feel about Jesus is the same. At the end of the day, weather we worship in the evening, morning, with people or without, Jesus is still the life-changing miracle worker he will always be.

Ironically, last week I taught the girls a bible verse which is so accurate for this situation.

"Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever." Hebrews 13:8

Amen.