Playsilks and Dye Fun

I've been wanting to get Aurora some playsilks for months now (since just before her birthday) but couldn't justify the cost of buying them from someone despite how much I knew she'd love them - I thought about buying fabric to make some but the thought of hemming them all put me off. A blogger I follow reminded me that I could do it myself by posting about her homemade playsilks.

Dharma trading to the rescue with undyed silks and silk hankies and I got to use some of my enormous kool-aid stash.

Picking colours. All my kool-aid bagged by colour.

 

I dyed 10 30x30" silks, 12 hankies (a 30x30 silk and a hanky of the same colour and then I tie-dyed the two extra hankies) and then two longer silk scarves.

I thought about having Aurora help me but because of the boiling water I decided that I'd surprise her with them after a nap.

I dumped the whole bucket of them on her lap to see what she'd do.

Playing dress-up.

I had a lot of fun doing this and I'd love to get more. I have a ridiculous stash of kool-aid and it would be fun to use some of the colours I didn't get a chance to use this time.
They've gone through the wash once (cold water and handwash cycle) and besides one colour not being quite set and running a bit (damn), the colours are still just as bright.
The kids at MG love them too.

Much of the same

It feels like we've been playing catch-up since my last post and I wish I could rewind time for a chance to slow things down and get things done. (I haven't even sent out my Christmas cards... eek!)

I did a little bit of working over Christmas taking Santa photos. Even though you can get some trying customers, I really enjoy it (this is the second year I've done it).
We had our usual busy Christmas, opening presents here with Grandma on skype, off to SIL's quickly to give presents then to MIL/FIL's for lunch and then off to visit some extended family for dinner. I'm always amazed at how many people are on the roads on Christmas day. It's a really common thing for people to visit multiple family members on the big day (it's like everyone tries to cram visiting every single family member in on one day) so there's a typical rush in the morning, just before/after lunch and just before/after dinner. Despite all the rushing around and driving, we had a great day.

The garden has hit it's peak and is now on the way down. We've gotten a few dozen grape and cherry sized tomatoes off our little plant and we'll get about a dozen regular sized tomatoes off our other bushes. They've struggled quite a bit with the heat - especially since our nights haven't been cooling off at all. I managed to get one very pathetic looking carrot and hopefully we'll be harvesting some corn in a few weeks.

My flowers have definitely hit their peak, I need to get out there and clean things up a bit. I was at the store yesterday and all the spring bulbs are out! So excited! I bought some tulip bulbs (my favourite) and I'll pick up a few other things, it seems like I have way better luck with bulbs than I do seeds. I might pick up a few big pots for out front to put bulbs in.

Other than that, there's been a few crafty projects which I might save for other posts and of course the regular baby wrangling. Except I think I need to start calling her a toddler now!

Christmas Crafting

On Fridays Aurora and I go to rhyme time at the local library and most of the time two of the girls from MG come along. To make it worth the drive for them we try to go for a bit of a walk and we usually always have lunch (there is an awesome chicken shop in the shops by the library). This week we decided to do some Christmas crafts as well.
I whipped up some corn starch dough using this recipe. I made six batches of white, three batches of red and two batches of green (I coloured the dough with Wilton's Icing Gels - the red took a lot of dye, one small pot of Christmas Red, No-taste red and about a quarter of a pot of burgundy, the green was one pot of kelly green).

There are a few reasons I chose to do corn starch rather than the traditional salt dough and one of them was that these corn flour ornaments were VERY white, a lot of the salt dough ornaments I've seen are sort of yellow-y. Another was that I happened to have corn starch and baking soda on hand (I later went to the store for more to make my mega batches) and another was that I get baker's eczema from flour and even though it's not that bad, I try to avoid it when I can.

After our lunch we got to work kneading and rolling out the dough. We decided to do our white ornaments first then our green and then our red to avoid colour mixing. The dough kneaded up beautifully and was very smooth.

We made a little over two dozen white ornaments, and a little over one dozen each of the red and green before the girls had to go.

After the girls left I made a few of my own ornaments. Aurora was asleep while they were here so I didn't get to do her hand print ornaments earlier in the day. The girls also left me their cookie cutters to use so I decided to cut out some letters. No idea what I'll do with them (glue them onto a plaque?) but they might make cute Christmas presents.

We're going to get together to decorate our handprints (we're going to turn them into Santas) and then we'll take some of the others to MG to decorate on the 12th.

Proof that I knit!

I've been trying to write this post for a week or so now and keep getting interrupted! I've picked up a few shifts at Glen's work doing Santa photos so we've had a busy few days.

This doll feels like a long time coming! I started knitting it in September to have ready for Aurora's birthday and just when I was nearly finished I got hand, foot, and mouth and couldn't knit (it was SO painful!). I always have a billion projects I want to make at the same time but decided that before I started something new I had to get this doll finished.

I poured over my Jean Greenhowe pattern books to find a doll I wanted to make. I've already made a few and wanted to make one I haven't made before (since Aurora will eventually get the others I've made). I decided to modify one of the patterns in the book since it was the right sized doll and I could just add/not make other bits. I used the Robin Hood pattern for the body and the Cinderella pattern for the hair and then just added my own skirt (I made the Robin Hood skirt but without the belt it just wasn't looking right).

Overall I think it turned out well even though there was some fiddling and re-knitting of some bits (the main hair piece was waaaaaaaay too small the first time I made it). Now to decide if I want to make a small doll for Aurora for Christmas!

My first trip to South Australia

We made a semi-spur of the moment decision to make the most of Glen's rare 3 day weekend and go away. We didn't really have a concrete idea on where to go as long as it was somewhere we hadn't been to before, not an easy task when you haven't been many places! We were looking at places 2-3 hours away but I randomly suggested that if we were going to drive 3 hours away, why not just drive for 5½? And if we were going to drive to northern Victoria (near the NSW border) why not just drive to South Australia? With that, we decided to drive to Mt. Gambier.

 

 

 

 

They don't do big "Welcome to..." signs like they do in Canada

Click Read More to see the rest of this post (picture heavy)

Bonnets

We got back from our trip (which I'll write about soon) late this afternoon so I thought I'd do a quick post with photos of the new bonnets in action.

Quick picnic in Warrnambool

At Canunda National Park, SA

Quick snack in the car after a walk at Canunda National Park

As you can see, they worked well!

Sewing

Summer is coming down here so I've been itching to get into the sewing room to make a few more hats for Aurora. I made two bonnets for our trip to Canada and ended up giving one to a family member who has a daughter about 4 months younger than Aurora.

The pattern I'm using is great and the bonnet is simple to put together. It takes me about an hour and a half or so to do one (with picking out and ironing the fabric, cutting everything out and putzing around and checking on a sleeping baby). So if I'm lucky I can get one totally finished while Aurora naps.

I'm in the process of looking for a good pattern for a Christmas dress for Aurora. For some reason there's a distinct lack of red/white/green clothes around here. I had a heck of a time finding Aurora Christmas pjs last year (I managed to find a pair while we were in Canada a few months ago, I was so excited!). I don't necessarily want something froofy and fancy, just a cute dress I can sew fairly easily with some Christmas fabric. I need to figure it out in a few weeks so we can do some Christmas photos (crazy that we're already thinking of Christmas isn't it?!).

I'll hopefully get some action shots of Aurora in the new bonnets in the next few days, she's been kind of uncooperative the last few times she's been wearing them. Until then, here's a picture of her wearing one from our trip to Canada.

First Harvest

We've had our first mini-harvest from the garden in the form of two snowpeas and then another three today!

So far the snowpeas seem to be the only thing impervious to the pests we have in the garden (I think it's aphids and not slugs/snails like I originally thought) and don't seem to be suffering in the same way my poor pumpkin is. My pumpkin produced a beautiful flower only to have it totally obliterated by the pests. I'll be really sad if things keep getting eaten before they have a chance to grow.
I've planted a few more pumpkin, watermelon and cucumber seedlings to hopefully ensure I get at least one!

The flowers are doing well and hopefully I'll start seeing some blossoms soon!

Lions and Tigers and Bears!

I don't even know where to start with talking about our trip to Melbourne Zoo. We had such a fantastic time!
There were so many areas that Aurora could get a good look at the animals, not a lot were pram level so we did have to carry her a fair bit but it was definitely worth it for the look on her face. Our first stop was the meerkat exhibit and Aurora got the biggest kick out of them! They were running around and wrestling and they were even interested in us and would come up to the glass to check us out.
Aurora also got a great view of the gorillas, two of them were fighting over a couple of burlap sacks and were running back and forth in front of the glass (she actually seemed a bit concerned when they'd roll on the ground together).

The Gorillas and their burlap sacks.

There were some other monkeys that we got a good view of too, one came and hung on the glass right in front of us (this particular monkey seemed really interested in babies, as soon as one baby left it came right up to us). I won't however talk about the disgusting thing was doing as it was hanging on the glass in front of us (it was funny but still pretty gross!).

Getting up close and personal with a monkey.

We spent a bit of time in the butterfly house too, Aurora could see the butterflies when they flew by and then wanted to grab them when they were sitting in front of her - whoops! Luckily we were sort of expecting that to be her reaction so we held her hands when we got close.

Butterfly House

We decided not to take part in any of the meet the keeper activities on this trip since we wanted to focus on seeing as much as we could, we weren't too familiar with where everything was and didn't want to run back and forth between things.

Going to Melbourne Zoo is definitely a whole day thing (we were there about four hours where as Werribee Zoo took us only an hour and a half) and we probably won't make too many spur of the moment decisions to go but I'm hoping we can get there at least once a month (maybe alternate between Healsville - which is also a whole day sort of activity). If we pack a lunch and don't have to pay for expensive zoo food, the trip only costs us parking ($2), the tolls on the freeway and petrol to get there. I also have to resist the urge to buy all the things in the gift shop (I love gift shops!).

Knowing that we had the membership and could go back whenever we wanted seemed to make the whole trip more relaxed, if we didn't get a good view of a certain animal or if they were asleep/hiding we didn't worry too much and moved on. We were also able to hang out at the exhibits the Aurora took particular interest in without thinking "Quick! We have to see everything!".

As far as having the most things Aurora is interested in, Melbourne Zoo wins hands down. We're planning a trip to Werribee Zoo for "Toddler Tuesdays" so we'll see what sorts of things they have.

(I'm going to save my rant of people not following rules/being rude/stupid but suffice to say it makes me extremely angry when people blatantly flaunt the rules - like no flash photography or using the flashlights on their phones to see animals in purposely darkened exhibits.)

Night Out

A few weeks ago Glen and I took our first real trip out together without Aurora. I know a lot of people leave their kids with friends and family sooner (and we have while my mum was here/when we visited her for short trips to the grocery store) but for various reasons we haven't left Aurora for longer than an hour or so. The big occasion was because our favourite band Something for Kate was touring. We've seen Paul Dempsey (the lead singer) do solo shows a few times before but it was the first time I've seen them as a group. Glen turned me on to SFK while we were still friends talking online and promptly sent me all their albums and got me hooked. I think I've been waiting about 5 years to see them live.

There are only great things I can say about SFK & Paul. They put on an awesome show and sound incredible live. It was one of the first times that a concert has flown by and I wasn't standing around thinking about how sore my feet and knees were. I was actually sad we didn't have tickets for the other two shows on the following days. I was also glad of one of Glen's funny concert quirks. As soon as he buys tickets for a concert he starts non-stop playing that artist's albums. SFK's newest album came out a week or so before the concert and due to Glen's album pumping I knew the words to most of their new songs. It definitely made the concert more enjoyable knowing all the songs.

I'm so glad they're a local band (local to Melbourne even!) because that means I'll hopefully get a chance to see them more now that they have a new album out.

Going to the zoo, zoo, zoo, you can come too, too, too!

We've decided to make a bit of an investment as a family in the form of a zoo membership. Aurora is the perfect age to start introducing her to this sort of activity. She's very aware of her surroundings and loves animals. When we were home in June/July she loved watching my mum's cats and she loved it when we spent some time at a friend's ranch (she especially loved the horses). We've been wanting to go to the zoo for months and for one reason or another we haven't had a chance.
We decided for Aurora's birthday we were going to spend the money on a membership and then make the effort through the year to get to the zoo. We are really lucky that there are three zoos/animal sanctuaries close by. The Melbourne Zoo is about half an hour away, Healsville Sanctuary is about an hour away and Werribee Open Range Zoo is only about 15 minutes away (just a few minutes away from Glen's work). With a zoo membership you get free/unlimited access to all three zoos (plus a few interstate) and we worked out that we'd have to visit the zoo as a family only 4 times in the next year for the membership to be worth it. In the 20 days that we've had the membership we've already been twice and have at least 2 more visits planned.
With Werribee Zoo just around the corner it's a good place to go for lunch or a little bit of a walk if the weather's nice and we have some spare time. With the membership we don't have to worry about making a day of it, we can just pop over and see our favourite animals (or go on the included safari bus tour) and come home again.
As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of the membership (I'm in no way paid/sponsored by them, I can just see so many benefits for our family!)!

When we got to Werribee Zoo we had about 40 minutes to kill before the safari bus tour so we went and looked at the Australian animal section. In this section the animals are free range and you're in their enclosure. There were tonnes of emus wandering around but not much else. It was a fairly warm day so we think a lot of the kangaroos were being lazy in the shade. After we wandered around there we made our way and boarded the safari bus. Our tour guide was awesome, very knowledgeable, personable and she didn't make it sound like she was reading from a script. We got to see all sorts of animals and they were all fairly close to the bus which was great for Aurora.

On the safari bus, excited to get going!

After that we made our way around the rest of the zoo. A lot of the animals in the regular enclosures were a little too hard for Aurora to see (not that they were too far away so much as hiding under/in things).

Giraffes on the safari tour (all males).

The zoo has an African theme and all sorts of great signs around, this is one of my favourite:

Best sign ever. Had me laughing all day.

I'm hoping to be able to go back to Werribee Zoo with the girls from MG in the next few weeks (quite a few of them have memberships too) and I'm hoping we'll get to Melbourne Zoo this week on Glen's days off. We tried to go at the beginning of the month but it was school holidays and a total madhouse (we couldn't find a spot to park!) so we gave up and drove out to Healsville. I'll write a post about our trip out there (we went on Aurora's birthday) in the next few days.

Starting Again

I sort of felt like I painted myself into a corner with my last blog, both with the title (I've been in Australia for three years now and definitely feel settled) and with my serious lack of posting. It's not that I don't have time to update or don't get a chance to sit at the computer, I felt like I didn't have a whole lot to talk about and didn't want all my updates to be baby updates. I haven't had a whole lot of time to knit or do other crafts (though I seem to be able to find some time here and there to get some sewing done) and started to feel like if I didn't have crafty things to talk about that no one would be interested.
I really struggled to come up with a new name that would offer flexibility for the future, I didn't want anything that talked specifically of being crafty or of only having one kid (we plan on having more) or even specifically our location (we do plan to stay in Oz but y'never know!). I was having some serious thinkers block when it came to picking something (and of course a lot of good names were taken!).

Anyway, so what have we been up to? In January we moved from our tiny cold flat to a beautiful, double-story townhouse with a yard and small garden. It's so much closer to Glen's work which is awesome for having him home at a decent time every day and it's close enough that I can drive him to work and use the car for the day if I need to. So, that also means I've been doing a lot of driving. I can still only drive to the same half a dozen places but Aurora and I get out a few times a week and do stuff. We drive out to where we used to live to go to mothers group (known here on out at MG) once a week, we sometimes drive out to Glen's sister's for the afternoon and we're a short walk from the shops and library so we're there a few times a week too.
We took a trip back home in June and July to see (almost) everyone and have Aurora meet (most of) her Canadian family and as many friends as we could fit in to the trip. We did A LOT of driving (over 5,000km) and only saw part of two provinces. Aurora was a superstar on the plane and while it's not something I'd like to do often, it wasn't torture like a lot of people said it would be (I flew there by myself and Glen joined us and flew home with us).
We've been sick on and off since we got back from holidays (that's what we get for missing all the winter bugs by being overseas!) but still managed to have Aurora's birthday party a few weeks ago. Can you believe she's one already?!

Aurora painting at my mum's in July

And that's kind of where we're at right now.  We got up to some exciting things last week but I'm going to blog about that separately.

Sorry for my ridiculously long absence! I hope to start blogging again on a regular basis!

Lake Eildon National Park - Wombat!