ABC Book Breakdown

Here it is folks! For real this time. There are going to be a lot of photos in this post.

Covered and everything! Have to give kudos to my mum for finding all this alphabet material. I had a half a metre of this stuff, and I used every scrap of it for the cover.

Page one, A. Apple, ant and arrow.

Page two, B. Bunting (of course!), bear, bucket, blue, brown and black. Page three, C. Chocolate cake, cherries, cat and car. The wheels on the car actually spin. The shiny silver buttons came from mum's stash and are actually still so reflective (despite being in her stash for a number of years), that if you look closely, you can see me taking the photo.

This cat and car are my favourite things. I don't know why, but they look exactly like I wanted them to.

D for dog, duck and dinosaurs. I had that dinosaur fabric left over from some cool shorts I made for little boys close to us. I also put some on some scalloped cuffed shorts I made for Sophie recently (sorry not blogged about). E for elephant, eggs and eight. There are eight little beads on a string for counting purposes.

F for four, five, frogs and flowers. Again, I've got buttons on strings to help with counting things out. The frogs are very fat. G for green, grey, giraffe and guitar. The strings on the guitar are actually strum-able (though they don't produce sound), but the kids get pretty enthusiastic about that so I don't think they will last very long.

H for house, hats and inside the house, a heart. I for ice cream and igloo.

May as well tell you now, the pages are bound with left over fabric from a quilt some friends and I made for another friend's second bub who was born two months ago, and also left over fabric from my sister's Bike Bunting (see also here) which I made for her birthday last year.

J for jam in a jar and a jug. K for king, kangaroo and kite. The kangaroo is my second faviourtie thing, which again, turned out exactly as I wanted it to.

The joey comes out of the pouch! Hooray! Sophie pulls it out and then says "It's broken!". Not sure why.

L for lollypop, lions and lady bug. That lion material (and the giraffe and elephant from their respective pages) came from left over backing material from Rachel's Quilt, which I've also used before in the Duplo Bag. M for mouse, moon, music and maroon.

N for noodles, (which also kind of looks like a nest), nine and needle. I think this is my least favourite page, because there is ambiguity about what things are, and the needle is hard to figure out. Oh well. O for orange, octopus (the last thing I made, so it's a little lacking in finesse), one, owl and octagon.

P for pink, purple, pear and pig. Q for quiet and queen. I love how the queen looks, though I'm less thrilled with my quiet face.

R for red, rain, ring, rainbow and a rubbery rectangle. I was pretty stoked when I found that material in my stash. It's actually a table protector scrap. The rainbow is from the same material as the elephant, giraffe and lions. S for sun, square (bummed that I didn't make the square silk), six, strawberries, seven, stars. 

Again, the things you can count are buttons on a string so you can move them as you count, kind of like an abacus.

Trains, truck, triangle, two, turtles, three, tigers. T has so many options! Train fabric was a scrap from Sophie's Train Dress, and the truck was from some cool shorts I made for boys birthdays last year. Umbrella, undies, and unicycle. The umbrella fabric was from a dress my mum made for Sophie. Her doll also has a matching dress. 

I kind of wanted to put a volcano on the V page, but figured a vacuum cleaner was more relateable. Actually mum sewed the vacuum cleaner. Originally I'd drawn it, but by the time I'd sewn everything else, I was over hand sewing and figured I could leave it off. Mum came to the rescue and did the stitching for me one morning. Vase and violin there as well. W for white, windows and watch. Again, one of the last things I sewed, so I was a bit slap dash in the location and placement of that watch. I regret it a bit now, but not too much. 

The curtains tie back and also untie. My other regret with this page is that I didn't put a view outside the window. Oh well.

X for x-ray. And fox and box end in X, which is why they are there. Mum (ex-primary school teacher that she is) assured me that this was a fine way to do X. I hope she's right. I am stoked with how the x-ray turned out though. Y for yellow, yo-yo and yacht. Though Sophie keeps calling it a boat, which is correct, but rather misses the point. The sails on that yacht can move because I only sewed one side down.

Page twenty six, Z for Zip and zig-zags. I was going to do a zebra as well, but I was feeling very lazy by this point. All of the lower case letters were chain stitched on too, and mum did a few of those for me to speed things up. Her chain stitching is much better than mine. Le sigh. I also found out that I can only do about four types hand stitches. Thankfully I didn't really need any more than that. 

I put a sturdy reinforced handle on the side which I'm thankful for because it's so big, but also wish I'd put some kind of closure on the other side too. I sewed 45 button holes to put all the pages together into the cover, which works well. Here is where I let you in on a little secret though. I was in a bit of a rush to put the pages in (Sunday arvo, driven by the mad thought that if I get it finished Sophie can actually use it at church that night) and I was being "helped" by Sophie too so even thought I got all the pages in in the correct order (thank the Lord!), they are all upside down.  

See? The letters on the inside cover are upside down there. You can't tell from the outside, but if you hold it so it's the right way up looking from the outside and then open it, you'll be looking at the Z page. Such is life. I could fix it, but I can't bring myself to do anything but admire it at the moment. And lovingly stroke the pages. I sincerely hope that you get the chance to do just that too, because it's a lovely feeling.

It's an ABC Book

Here it is. Well, here is a photo of all the completed pages, waiting to be sewn into a book. I originally thought I'd make it for Sophie for Christmas, but I've noticed that she's really into letter recognition of late, so I thought I'd better not miss it while she's excited about it and put the fast forward on sewing it. (Can you find here the sneaky clue photos came from? Click here, here and here to refresh your memory.)

I'll do a detailed post, with better photos, soon. It came together on Sunday, so it is actually finished now, which is a great relief. Sophie loves to look at it, which is even better. I was hand sewing so much over the last few weeks that I actually pinched nerves in my shoulders. Maybe too much sewing is bad for me.... Nah!

Now, before anyone wants to compliment me and say something along the lines of: "Wow, you should sell these," can I just say that it would not be worth it. Sure I made this one with lots of left over material (in fact the pages were an old bed sheet that I cut up (around the random orange stains that were on it)), so there wasn't a lot of cost involved in materials, but if I were to buy alphabet material and all the other associated things to make this book to sell, that would be a huge output.

Not to mention the time that goes into it. I've been sewing for five or six hours a week for the last six weeks. And I've had my Mum helping. Even if I were to say my time is worth something as little as $10 an hour, I'd be wanting to charge $300 just on my time alone. It's nice to think I could make money off things like this, but the reality is, you really can't.

I do know, however, that what I've done for a little girl (and other little children who will also be using this book) who I love very much, won't go wasted. It's worth it to know that she will turn these pages every week for quite a while. That she will remember that Mum made her this book. That it might even last her childhood and be given to her own kids. There is no way I could buy that.

Final Clue

Our household was a bit struck by sickness this week, so I feel I've done nothing, but thought I'd share this to make it feel like I have done something. 

I feel I'm just giving the answers away. Get ready for an epic post soon.

Egg Heads

This is what we grew in the holidays. Sophie called them "Dad" and "Sophie" and pretended "Sophie" was Cinderella, going to the ball. She's creative like that.

Week One

I've been embracing being back at work this week. I know that my attitude always affects the kids, so I feel like if I am positive about having four kids then things are going to be much smoother. And they have been, so this is good.

Part of this has included lots of baking with Sophie. On Friday, we made something that was worth a post. Sophie calls this the Flower Cake. 

It's actually just a sponge with some icing and jam in it, but the part that replicated the picture from the book (Sophie wanted to make a Rose Gateau, which we were missing several ingredients for) was the petals on the top. They are marshmallows cut and dipped into hundreds and thousands.

It was incredibly hard to get a photo of Sophie with this cake. She was too busy licking the icing and begging me to cut her a slice. 

Fun times. 

Water Play

So I've seen ideas for this before on the internet, but as always, it took a little while to come to fruition.

A water play activity board. Made of all recycled materials! The board it's on is actually four pieces of the ply we had up on the windows when we renoed them in November last year. I knew they would come in handy. I liquid nailed them together and then did some reinforcing with some bolts we found in a tool box. Not sure what we got them for originally, but they were excellent for this.

Again, I painted it with some more of the leftover window paint (still have a half a tin! Will it ever end?) All of the containers are recycled ones that I staple gunned on. Fabulous. The girls love it. It's a little high level for them at the moment, but they do love pouring the water and getting wet.

The one downside is that when there is no water, the next logical step for the girls (and other visiting children) seems to be that sand should be poured in. It's not the end of the world, but it is mildly annoying. Anyway, the whole thing is fixed to the fence with only four screws, so it's easy to remove, which will probably happen come winter.

For now, long live summer and water play!

Another Angle

Here is another shot of what I've been working laboriously on for more than the last few weeks.

Any ideas yet? I'm a little sorry I couldn't make the first clue and this one slightly more ambiguous by changing the colours in some Photoshop-type editing program on the computer. I don't know where the GIMP has gone, but I couldn't find it.

Sneaky Peek One

Hello!

Quiet here in the blogaverse because I've been busy (duh), enjoying my holidays (hooray!), and working on things (of course). Here is a small taste of something that will no doubt take a massive post in the future to tell you all about.

Wonder what it could be?

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.