Sunshine & a Paeony Bud

Yippppeeeeeeeeeeee....hoppity...hoppity....hoppity hop!

Our paeony bud is opening!  Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!!!

Last year, the bud stayed a bud, this year, it looks like we are going to be Lucky!

I am so excited {figured you hadn't noticed}.  Want to see it again?

It is going to be a really lovely deep pink.  I just can't wait to see all its beautiful and unfolded and frothy and frilly petals!

...and on other gardening news, after all this lousy rainy weather we have had, it was nice to venture into the chilly sunshine and schmooze around our garden...

Some spinach seeds planted a few weeks ago are growing nicely.  I will soon need to find them a bigger home.

This is the spinach that I planted ages ago.  It now has some beautiful baby leaves.  I am holding out for lovely beeeg spinachy leaves.  You can also see my rosemary, parsley and mint here.  The mint is starting to go nuts - yay for Pimms and lemonade and crushed mint!

The sunflower seeds that I planted are flourishing in this pot.  I think that we may need to find little stakes for them soon.  I also need to figure out what is finding the sunflower leaves so tasty...and find something else for them to snack on...  Those pretty purple flowers are Honesty.  It was a mixed pack of seeds that I planted last summer.  They never flowered last year.  So nice to have them pretty-ing up the box this year.

Well, it is a gorgeous day here again today.  I best go get dressed, as there is sunshine to enjoy and time is a-ticking!

Have a great Sunday...

Cupcake Tea Towel Skirt {Tutorial}

Okey Dokey...I may as well join in with the blog-land tutorial frenzy.  Well, it is my kind of a tutorial, I am assuming here that you have some sewing know-how and don't need me to tell you how to thread your sewing machine...or to keep the sharp stuff away from the baby....

Fingers crossed this actually makes some sense to someone.  When you are trying to concentrate, too many baby/toddler breaks can really mess with a persons brain!  If you have ever put a tutorial together, you would understand how much brain power is required.

Here we go........

I have been hoarding this cute cupcake tea towel for about 2 years.  It came as a set of 3 from Ikea, I gifted the other 2 but decided to save this one for Something Special.  What with a certain little body in this house being skirt-obsessed at the minute, it has become....a Skirt...what else do you do with a cute cupcake tea towel?! {other than weigh it down with real cupcakes that would last for all of 5 minutes}  But, it needed pockets.  It also needed some cute trim, but in my mad sewing frenzy while Chloe napped/entertained herself, the pom pom trim/spotty tape/ric rak were all forgotten...sigh...

So, grab your tea towel, chop the thing in half.  My tea towel was a bit wonky in its squareness, so I straightened it up by cutting the original top/bottom hems off.  I kept the side hems intact, as I figured that would save me having to overlock my side seams later.  Then from one of the halves, chop a 12cm strip off of each side.  Chop 10cm off of the top of each 12cm strip so that you have 2 pocket tops.

You will need some extra fabric for your pocket linings.  I had some skinny quarter strips which I cut 2x 12cm wide strips off and then just squared them off.  So they were 12cm (w) x less than 25cm long.

These are your pocket pieces.  You might want to finish the raw side seam edge of the pocket lining before you sew it all together.  I didn't think of doing it at the time, so ended up zig zagging along the raw edge when those seams were sewn.

Pin your pocket strips together - sew and finish the seams.

Top stitch the pocket tops - where the skirt bottom meets the pocket lining.

Line up the hem and seam of the pocket panel and skirt front.  Fold the pocket lining so that the top and seam of the pocket panel and skirt front line up.  Pin and sew and finish the seam.

Front seams all stitched and ready for ironing. 

Pin the pockets to the front, then pin the skirt back to the front.

Sew the side seams.  Ooops!  Spotty tape was forgotten.  I had thought about stitching it into each pocket somehow as little loops....anyhooo...

Reachy grabby trouble!  This is the bit about keeping the sharp stuff away from the baby!

Finish the hem edge, turn up 2cm and sew.  Iron the hem.

I like to sew my elastic in rather than do casings.  Mostly because I hate it when cased elastic rolls and twists.  Do what you like, but this is my method.

Measure your elastic length, sew the ends together.  Make sure your elastic is a few centimetres shorter than your waist measurement.

Mark your elastic and finished waist edge into quarters and pin together at those quarter marks.

Fabric and elastic edges all lined up and ready to sew.

Using a small zig zag sew the elastic to your skirt, stretching the elastic as you go. 

I hold my fabric and elastic taught and together by pulling and pressing it over my sewing machine with one hand.  Then holding the fabric behind my needle/foot with my other hand I help to pull it through.

When the first elastic edge is sewn, fold the elastic/fabric to the wrong side and stitch down the bottom edge of the elastic.  My elastic was about 18mm wide, so my stitching was around 15mm from the top of the skirt edge.  I used a small zig zag, but a straight stitch would be find too. 

As you sew, the elastic needs to be stretched out again.

....and you are Done!

Now, if I had a co-operative child, a picture of a cute modelled cupcake skirt would follow.  Ava has slept in it and worn it during the day time too, but when the camera came out she made a run for it.  But, I don't.  Have a co-operative child.  So you get a picture of a rather fancy cupcake instead!

sourced here

I am not sure I would want to eat this, but it is certainly pretty...and I like the spoon/fork decoration too...

Twinkle Twinkle Chocolate Bar

Ava has been singing Twinkle twinkle chocolate bar for weeks.  That is as far as she gets - repeating it over and over and over and over again!  We thought that she had heard it on TV, from one of the kiddies programs that she enjoys...we had never heard it before.

Anyhow, Chloe and I have just returned from a session at our local Childrens Centre where I thought about asking if there was such a song.  There is!  Apparently there are many variations.  I am going to have to check this out on You Tube at some point....ja, like I don't have anything better to do with my time than surf You Tube for kiddies song variations!!

The lyrics we have just learnt are:

Twinkle twinkle chocolate bar

My dad drives a rusty car

Pull the leaver

Push the choke

Off we go in a cloud of smoke

Twinkle twinkle chocolate bar

My dad drives a rusty car

Obviously, using the Twinkle tune.

A quick Google found a slightly different version here

I best be off - Chloe is a-snoozing and I have some pj shorts to sew for the girls {and tops, if I ever get around to them!}, before summer arrives.

The Blankets are a-Growing

Ok, so they are growing r-e-a-l-l-y  s-l-o-w-l-y, but you have to admit that I am making progress.

No prize for spotting the goat!

Yup...no space for photography minus children allowed in this house!  See the other little leg?  {and my mismatched socks - whoops}

Anyhow, the blanket is 7 blocks x 5 blocks.  I have just started on the opposite side of the blanket.  When that is done I will join the 2 halves.  I was going to take a photo of the back too...to show the dreaded weaving in that still has to be done.  At least you can watch TV and weave at the same time - so there is at least one upshot...but....UGH!  Oh, the back pic never happened....

A high-speed crawler came speeding through and I gave up.

My ripple hasn't had many more rows added either.  I am not massively keen on that pale green bit at the top, but am hoping that it will blend in ok with the pale blue and the next warm colour...which I am yet to choose.

I wasn't happy that the camera strap was dangling in this photo, so took another photo....

...then Ava arrived, so I took another photo....

...speedy baby arrived, so I took another photo...

...I gave up altogether!

I am hoping to have a bit of hooky time tonight, joining a few more little squares to the flower blanket.  Fingers crossed for a good evening.

Through the Eyes of a 3 Year Old {April 2012}

It never ceases to amaze me that a 3 year old, like almost about to turn 3 kind of 3 year old, can take some pretty Amazing photo's.  These are just some of the photo's Ava took during April.

She took these photo's with my Canon Ixus 960 IS.  Pretty good, no?

At least I spared you seeing me in my pj's!!

Ava's 3rd Birthday

It was Ava's 3rd birthday yesterday.  I can't believe that she is no longer a toddler...I guess that it has really been a while since she was an 'official' toddler.  She recently discovered skirts and the last few days has demanded to wear one - day time AND night time!  She only had one skirt that I made her a few weeks ago, which she had been refusing to wear.  Then...BAM..all of a sudden she is refusing to take it off!?

Anyhow, for her birthday I made her a little circle skirt out of some gorgeous cotton fabric that a kind lady gave to me.

Twirling demonstration...we still need to work on getting the skirt twirling properly!  We also need to work harder on getting those fingers out her mouth more permanently...

Here we are again, this time modelling her new shoes, which conveniently arrived in the post on her birthday, and eating rainbow birthday cake.

Just to confirm....she did in fact sleep in the new skirt last night.  I had to peel it off her this morning to get it in the wash basket.

Her birthday cake was rainbow cupcakes.  I was a bit over enthusiastic about the amount of food colouring needed!  I mixed up 5 different colours, and put a dollop of each into the cupcake cases.  The recipe is my favourite - Mums Beat & Bake Cake.

They were iced with a lovely light (and pink) buttercream icing piped on with a round nozzle and then decorated with Dr Oetker sprinkles.

Candles were lit {again and again and again}. Happy Birthday was sung {again and again and again}.

Cake was eaten and enjoyed.  Tongues (and no doubt tummies) were stained.

Cupcake wrappers were compared and admired....well, by me at least!

I made her one other present - memory coins.  I bought the coins from here and the images were inspired by these.  I still want to add colour to them, my coloured markers only arrived in the post today, and seal them with beeswax and olive oil.  Will do a big reveal when they are properly finished.  So far, she has enjoyed the memory game...and has invented her own tiddly-winks game with them too!

It was a good day and a really, really busy day yesterday - even although it poured, Really Poured!  By 5pm she was completely wiped out.  I still can't believe that our precious, adorable, clever little girl is 3 already....

...now I just have to come to terms with baby Chloe turning 1 next month - when she will soon become a toddler...