Live. Love. Create. Imagine...

Baby Two | 26 Weeks

2012-01-28T10:10:00.001+10:00

I have one question: How on Earth did I get here? This will be the last week of the second trimester of this pregnancy, and I swear that it took much longer to get to this point when I was pregnant with Mayana!

Baby Two and I are both well. Baby Two is a very busy little thing, especially when Mama is ready for bed. He always wakes me up in the mornings, and changes position almost as much as I do throughout the night. I’m feeling more cumbersome this week, but I think that is not helped by the terrible sciatica/lower back/hip pain I have been experiencing. The good news is that the hospital physio rang to say they have mailed me an appointment time, so hopefully that is not too far in the future and they can help alleviate some of that discomfort for me.

I’m back into the swing of work now. I’m not loving sitting in a chair all day long. We were quite active over our holidays and being sedentary for the better part of my day is definitely contributing to my pain. Work is super incredibly busy and exhausting, but the upside of that is that the days go quickly. Nine more weeks and I’ll be on maternity leave. Fourteen more weeks and I’ll have a baby in my arms! I’m trying not to think too hard about all that is to be done before then!

At some point I’m going to have to start buying some boy things for this baby, or he is going to be wearing an awful lot of pink when he comes home!

Mayana gets more excited every day I think. She talks to Baby Two a lot, and tries to share with him – which usually means that I get a lot of random food shoved at my belly, like I need help getting my bump grubby! She uses her doctor kit to do Baby Two check-ups, and tells me that he is singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ inside my tummy. We have been talking about names with Mayana, and she gets quite upset because as far as she is concerned Baby Two is his name. We told her that when she was inside my tummy we used to call her Raspberry, but we didn’t keep calling her that when she came out. That really confused her. She told me that she will call him Twinkle Twinkle. I think we’ll save that battle for later.

So overall, everything is well here. I’m enjoying being pregnant – loving this time of always having my little one with me. I love feeling him move, and sharing that with Peter.

Before I go, here is a comparison of 26 weeks in both pregnancies. I feel so much bigger this time, but going by this picture I’d say it’s actually pretty similar! What do you think?

26 Weeks with Baby Two

26 Weeks with Mayana

Living Up To Her Name

2012-01-23T22:10:00.000+10:00

Mayana Joy – who just gives so much joy wherever she goes.

It’s been rainy here, and Mayana loves to jump in muddy puddles. As long as they’re not too muddy. She also prefers them if they have no icky grass that sticks to her feet and legs. The huge puddle of water that accumulates in the corner of our driveway is just perfect. It sure gave her a lot of joy!
(Before we get to photos I just have to quickly share the part where she really wanted to wear her goggles and floaties to go ‘muddy-puddle-jumping’. We settled on just her togs, instead.)

And to warm up after a spot of muddy-puddle-jumping, there’s nothing like a bit of a chillax in a nice hot bath, and this time we let her take her floaty boat. Bliss.

Party Like You’re Three!

2012-01-23T21:44:00.001+10:00

We had a fabulous pancake party on Saturday, with wonderful friends and family, delectable pancakes and other goodies, delightful decorations, and most importantly, a very happy birthday girl!

We spent the morning preparing food and setting up the party zone: our beautiful front veranda. It was the perfect place to have a party.

We ate watermelon stars, frozen grapes, kettle corn, honeycomb, oreo lollipops, and shortbread. And of course, pancakes, with a great range of toppings: raspberry and strawberry syrups from The Berry Farm (one of our favourite places in Margaret River), maple and golden syrup, jam, butter, lemon and pink sugar, berries, ice-cream and whipped cream. What a banquet!

My Pop

We were very blessed to have some or our extended family travel for the party, and Mayana loved having her very special ‘best friends’ come too. This is the first birthday party she has had with other children in attendance!

Mayana requested lots of dancing, especially to ‘Party Rock Anthem’ which she calls ‘Shuffling’, and ‘Twinkle Twinkle’. I love her eclectic taste in music. I also love the way she dances to ‘Shuffling’. She found a packet of sidewalk chalk while shopping, and asked to do that with her friends at her party, so we did.

She ate and played and danced and opened presents, and had a completely joy-filled afternoon.

Then it was time for cake.

I loved making this cake. It was quite a process, I can tell you. And I’m not going to lie, I’m still super impressed with myself for pulling it off.

My rainbow layer cake, with passionfruit icing. Mayana told me that everyone would love it, and she was right! It certainly had the wow factor!

It also tasted very delicious!
Mayana definitely had a very happy third birthday party, and has been talking pretty well non-stop about it ever since. I loved being able to create a special afternoon for her, and am so grateful for all the people who took the time to come and share it with her – especially those who had to travel! Mayana loved that she got to have three nights of sleepovers- first with Kami, Opa & Oom J, then a night with her Godparents, Daniel & Katherine, and finally a night with Nana Joy & Poppy Goose. It’s been so lovely to have everyone around, and make some awesome memories with our girl.

Now all the festivities are over, and we’re settling into this new era of three-dom. Such an exciting time!

I'm playing along for Point + Shoot with Louise. You should too!

A Peek At My Week

2012-01-23T20:02:00.001+10:00

This week has, of course, been all about a certain cheeky little princess celebrating her third birthday! In between my getting ready to start a new year back at school, we prepared for her awesome birthday party, bought and wrapped presents and had the most wonderful few days celebrating with family and friends.

If you would like to give me a Peek at Your Week (because I’m a sticky-beak and I’d love to, you know), leave me a link in a comment! You can make a cool collage in Picasa (free download) and use your pictures from Instagram or whichever other way you capture your memories. And if you want to follow me on Instagram, look for @zoeyjoyful. See you there!

Beautiful Baby Two

2012-01-23T19:55:00.001+10:00

On Mayana’s birthday afternoon, we had a very special appointment to go and see Baby Two on the ‘Hospital TV’ (as Mayana calls it). It was a follow up appointment because the radiologist who reviewed our 20 week scan was unhappy with the quality of the heart picutres, because Baby Two was such a wiggly worm that pictures were hard to get!

This time, Baby Two was much less wriggly, but in a strange position: feet practically in mouth and very scrunched up! Eventually the sonographer was able to manipulate things until she got pictures she was happy with. The good news is things are looking great!

I would like to share with you some pictures of our beautiful SON!

He was laying with his back to the sonographer, curled up into the foetal position, funnily enough! I love the clarity of this photo. So precious!

Precious little face..

Profile shot. You can see in this one how he has his feet practically in his mouth!

Oh I am so in love with this little being! I can see a sure resemblance in the profile shots to his big sister’s scans. What do you think?

This baby is also looking to be quite a bit bigger than Mayana was born. Apparently at the moment he is sitting on the 75th percentile for size. Mayana was born on the third, and dropped off the bottom of the charts before she was 3 months old! So it will be interesting to see how accurate this is when he is born. And it will be something a bit different if we do have a baby who has actual rolls – Mayana hasn’t had a one in her life!!

I’m so excited about this beautiful boy, and I can’t wait to meet him. Less than 15 weeks to go!

Birthday Interview {three}

2012-01-19T22:04:00.001+10:00

Hello Three

2012-01-18T21:07:00.001+10:00

Our beautiful girl turned three today.

She awoke to a phonecall from Kami & Opa, who along with their dog, Jack, serenaded her with ‘Happy Birthday’.

Then it was time to climb into Mama & Papa’s bed for presents!

I’m so glad I captured her facial expressions as she discovered each new gift.

A backpack for kindy (which she starts next Friday).

A fairy dress (which she wore for the rest of the day!)

A pair of sunnies…

Which made her very happy!

Charlie & Lola! Enough said.

And the infamous doctor kit. Which she found when we were unpacking our bags the other day. And got really upset over when we told her it wasn’t hers, and she insisted it was her Christmas present, which it certainly was not. As soon as she felt the package, she says, “Oh, this must be it – my doctor present.”

And she was right. She loves it!

I had time to squeeze in a quick facepaint before I headed off to work. For breakfast, she requested a yummy (boiled) egg, like she had at Camp Buma.

And we had her requested spaghetti bolognaise for dinner, followed by chocolate ice-cream, with candles in it. We’ll do the cake thing at her party on Saturday.

Other birthday highlights today included a visit to the library (one of her favourite places ever), coffee at Milosc (our favourite local cafe), watching her new Charlie & Lola DVD, and going to see Baby Two on the ‘hospital TV’.

We have also filmed a very cute little interview for her third birthday, a tradition that we hope to keep for each of her birthdays. I’ll share it once we’ve put it together properly.

Happy birthday my beautiful princess, I love you so much. Thank you for being your awesome self!

The Eve of Three

2012-01-17T20:43:00.001+10:00

Today was Mayana’s last day of being two. Tomorrow, my beautiful 5lbs 2oz baby girl is turning three!

I feel like I should be saying, “Oh she’s growing up too fast!”, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I am absolutely loving watching her grow up. I’ve said it before, but I can still honestly say that I have enjoyed every stage of her life so far. And this transition time between toddler and pre-schooler is fabulous.

I feel like I’m really getting to know my daughter. She has an amazing vocabulary and I love that she can communicate everything to me. She has strong likes and dislikes (she does, after all, have Dutch blood flowing through her veins!) and a wonderful sense of humour. I can never get over her capacity to love her family friends and family so fully – they are her world!

She’s not much one for toys, unless they are very open-ended and lend themselves to great imaginations. Because Mayana is most certainly in possession of one of those! I’ve even caught her involved in a very complex play session at a cafe wherein two sachets of sugar were having an elaborate conversation! Blocks and books are both firm favourites, as is her play kitchen that her Papa made her. She has recently started a lot of role-play, particularly to do with being a Mama to her baby dolls, and anything to do with princesses or fairies.

Mayana is incredibly inquisitive, and loves all things to do with numbers and letters. She often will sit up in front of the computer and ask to ‘work on her numbers’. She likes us to open up a word processor, and will sit and type letters and numbers. She can consistently locate the letters M, P, O, B, K, L, N, J & C (most of which she associates with people’s names). She can also write the letters M, P, O, B and almost pulls off a K. Her newest skill is counting, she is getting very clever with her one-to-one correspondence, and is starting to recognise numerals. It’s sometimes hard work to keep up with her!

Of course, Mayana’s greatest love is ‘making things’. She likes to paint, draw, glue… and loves scissors at the moment. She likes to draw a line of any shape on a piece of paper and will very carefully and neatly cut perfectly along it.

I am excited that this is the eve of her third birthday. I think this year will see a lot of changes in my little girl, and I can’t wait to see what she discovers next. I’m especially excited to see her grow into her role as Big Sister.

I can’t believe that come tomorrow morning I’ll be the mother of a three year old!

Let Us Make

2012-01-17T15:47:00.001+10:00

One thing I really wanted to get done while I was on holidays was to properly unpack and set up my craft room (which Peter is still optimistically referring to as the ‘office’, but he’ll come around). Well I’ve cut it fine, but today, on my last day of holidays, it is finally done.

Before

After

Most excited about this new development is Mayana (who by the way is celebrating her last day of being two today!), because this means that she FINALLY has a making space again. We (and others) gave Mayana loads of ‘making stuff’ for Christmas, and she has been very keen to get creative with it all.

Mayana’s Making Space 1: easel & making drawers

Mayana’s Making Space 2: The making table (first things she tried out today was her brand new watercolours).

It’s good to have all of her things organised again. We have evolved into two drawers of ‘making stuff’, and she was most excited when she opened one that is entirely full of various kinds of paints (watercolours, finger paints, acrylics etc). I’ve also started a basket of recycled materials for ‘box craft’, which is something she loves to do.

As for me, I’m pretty happy with shelves for my scrapbooking and sewing materials, drawers for my yarn and patterns and fabrics- and to have it all organised and accessible is fabulous!

Now I just have to wait for maternity leave so that I have time to get into it all!!

A Peek At My Week

2012-01-15T20:14:00.001+10:00

Hello from the weary traveller. We are finally back in Queensland, finally back at home, and looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight!

Here is this week’s offering of A Peek At My Week!

This was our last week of our wonderful WA holiday, and saw us taking in a few more wineries at the beautiful Margaret River and making special memories with our very awesome WA family. Peter and I also went on our first date in a very long time (San Churros for dinner, YUM!). We had a road trip to Geraldton – the furthest North we have travelled in WA thus far – and lapped up the hospitality of the Geraldton Bumas.

Finally, yesterday, it was time to say goodbye to all of our Perth family, and our Perth holiday. I definitely was fighting back tears as I kissed my Oma one last time, and as we waved at the assortment of cousins and aunties and uncles who accompanied us to the airport.

We had such a wonderful holiday, I only wish we could have had just a few more days to spend with the family.

If you use Instagram (or even if you don’t!) I would love it if you would join in with this little meme, and share a peek at your week too! You can use the free software from Picasa to create a collage really easily, and just add the link for your post to the linky below!

23 (and a bit) Weeks

2012-01-11T20:14:00.001+10:00

This pregnancy is absolutely flying by. I'm sure the first 23 weeks of my pregnancy with Mayana took a lot longer than this! I had forgotten how much I love being pregnant... Watching my bump grow, feeling those first flutters, then feeling them turn into little thumps, then bigger thumps and spins and summersaults. I have again been very blessed with no morning sickness, and on the whole this pregnancy is very similar to my last. I have popped out a lot quicker this time, with my separated tummy muscles, and I guess as well from being pre-stretched from last time. This has caused me a fair amount of discomfort, with pelvic, hip and sciatic pain, and I'm very much looking forward to an appointment with a physio when we get home from holidays!We will also be having another scan soon after we get home, because Baby Two was being very wiggly during our last scan, and they weren't able to get good enough pictures of the heart. The doctors said they are not necessarily concerned, but I suppose it is within their duty of care to be sure. I am excited to be having another scan. We had only two with Mayana, at 7 & 19 weeks, and will have had four with this one (at 7, 16, 19 & 24ish weeks). Being pregnant on holidays has made these last few weeks go much quicker pregnancy-wise, and I have had fun showing off my bump and letting people feel Baby Two kicking as we've visited family. It was, however, a bit disappointing during the Margaret River leg of our trip, I do like me a spot of wine tasting. My wonderful husband has bought me a nice sampling from some of our favourite wineries to have my own private tastings after the baby is born. So all-in-all, at 23 weeks this pregnancy is rolling along very happily. I really do love being pregnant, feeling my darling move, and hearing Pete talk to and feel his unborn child. I'm looking forward to setting up the nursery and washing all the baby clothes and smelling that sweet baby smell and watching Mayana be a big sister... I'm so excited about being a Mama for the second time around.

A Peek At My Week (yes, already!)

2012-01-06T21:59:00.001+10:00

I know, it feels like this is all I’ve been posting lately, but it is meant to be a Friday thing, and I have kept all my photos separated into weeks.

So here we go, my Peek at My Week contribution for the 31st of December to the 6th of January... the first week of our brand new year.

We have certainly started the new year with a bang. We’re about halfway through our Perth holiday, and having a fabulous time catching up with family and playing tourist. New year’s eve was in the middle of our biennial family reunion, Camp Buma. This year’s camp was held at a school, which sounds like a strange location but actually worked really well. The school had some really cool facilities, including a 30m abseil tower, and camp this year was filled with lots of adventuring and thrill-seeking.

In that first row of photos you can see some of our camp moments: the abseiling, a bunch of third generation Buma’s (Mayana and my cousin Jess’s kids) playing together, the lovely Louise and I hanging out with our gorgeous daughters, the very auspicious 24-man-spoon, (which even Oma was in on!) to bring in the 2012 (by far beating our 2010 and 2011 records!), and a selection of our amazing Dutch foods from Dutch Day.

That first photo in the second row if my little precious Mayana who was absolutely devastated to see the end of camp and say goodbye to her friends. I think there were a lot of us that felt fairly much the same. It was a fabulous time, and we had quite a few extras who weren’t able to come to our last camp – including some cousins from Canada who I had never met before this!

Most of the rest of this week’s photos are highlights from our time so far in the Margaret River region. Tonight will be our third and final night here, and we’ve had a lovely time. We’re staying somewhere much nicer than the kind of manky Backpacker’s Hostel that we stayed at last time we were here. I’ll post more on all of this when we’re home, I don’t want to use up too much of my holiday time in front of a computer!!

I hope you’re having a very happy New Year also!!

Please, if you feel so inclined, join in with my lil ole meme by adding your post to the linky at the bottom. I took my photos on Instagram (follow @zoeyjoyful) and I made my collage with Picasa!

A Peek At My Week

2012-01-04T20:52:00.001+10:00

I'm running a little late with ~~this~~ last week's Peek At My Week because I've been too busy holidaying, and for that I do not apologize :)

I am sharing some of my favourite Instagram memories from Christmas and the first few days of our holidays, I hope you enjoy them!

I made my collage using Google's free software Picasa, and if you want to follow me on Instagram, look for @zoeyjoyful.

Most importantly, if you'd like to join me in playing A Peak At My Week, please share the link to your blog post in the linky below :)

A Peek At My Week

2011-12-23T12:14:00.001+10:00

Since finally procuring an iPhone, I have become slightly addicted to the wonderful app that is Instagram (which is available free from iTunes!). So I have decided to make use of this new addiction by starting a new segment on my blog: A Peek At My Week. In these posts, I’m going to share a selection of my favourite Instagram memories of the week. I have made my collage using Google’s free photo-editing software Picasa.

So here you have it, my very first ‘Peek At My Week’ post.

If you would like to join in (and I would LOVE you to), please do, and create a link to your post using the linky tool below.

If you would like to follow me on Instagram, I go by the name zoeyjoyful.

The Things She Says

2011-12-22T16:36:00.001+10:00

1. I was going for a shower, and Mayana was in the bathroom, watching me, as she does (apparently the right to privacy goes out when Motherhood comes in). I was shaving my legs and Mayana asked, “What are you doing Mama?”
Me: Shaving my legs Maysi
Her: Why?
Me: Because they’re too hairy.

Mayana went away, then came back with her stool. I saw her get some toilet paper and climb to wet it in the sink. She then wiped the wet toilet paper over her legs. I asked, “What are you doing Mayana?” To which she replied, “I’m just wiping off my hairy beasts, like you Mama.” Touché.

2. Yesterday morning Mayana came screaming into our room very upset. After we eventually calmed her down, she managed to get out that she was upset because she left her lollies at Santa’s house, which left us scratching our heads. After a while we got the full story out of her. She had visited Santa’s house (in a dream, though it was obviously very real to her), and he had given her some ‘fruit salad lollies’. When she woke up, she didn’t have them anymore, meaning she had clearly left them at his house. Panic and tears ensued. Funny chook. The dream was obviously really vivid to her, she was able to tell me a lot of detail about Santa’s house (which was red) and all the little children who lived there. She had a little sleep on a jumpy castle bed that was ‘big and huge like yours Mama – but I was allowed to jump on it’.

3. We went to the waterpark today. Mayana chose which togs she wanted to wear – the ones with the in-built floaties, in spite of the fact that you are never actually submerged in water at the waterpark. But she wanted to wear them anyway, because they are her Turtle Togs, and she loves them. Apparently the in-built floaties remind her of a turtle’s shell.

4. She has been totally melting my heart daily lately. She will walk up to me and hold my face and kiss me and say, “I love you Mummy”. Today she even called me Mummy Princess. She’s so affectionate and I’m lapping it up.

I need to start writing more of these down. She is talking so much now it just blows me away, and she is so often (usually unintentionally) incredibly funny, and always cute. Too cute not to share.

The House The Friends Built

2011-12-20T18:39:00.001+10:00

Yesterday, after reading Talia’s blogpost, I had a hit of inspiration to build a Gingerbread House. From scratch.

It was SO. MUCH. FUN.

I made the gingerbread dough last night using the recipe that Talia referred to, from The Red Deer. It’s super easy. I actually refrigerated it overnight, as I ran out of steam and didn’t feel like baking after dinner. It was okay, but needed a good hard working to soften it back up this morning.

I cut the template pieces out of baking paper, which meant I could stick them straight on my rolled –out dough and easily cut around it. Once my pieces were cut and baked, I brushed on the glaze and gave them plenty of time to cool.

The icing is also super easy, my only tip is that when it says, “Beat until very stiff peaks form” it means VERY. The icing works so much better as cement/glue when it’s really stiff. I didn’t include the lemon juice in the icing, because I didn’t have any.

We first put together the walls. I wanted to decorate them before I put the roof on, so that I could get to all of it easily.

We were probably more gung-ho with the icing than we really needed to be, but better to be safe and sorry! We let the walls set for a while we did some chores and had lunch. Once the icing was well and truly hard, we felt safe enough to start with the decorating.

I found it easiest to squeeze the glue straight onto the lollies then stick it on the house. I made a make-shift piping bag using a snap-lock bag with a small corner cut out. Worked like a charm.

We used coloured musk sticks, M&Ms, sour straps, liquorice and freckles.

Once we had the walls how we wanted them, it was time to add the roof.

Again, we probably used more icing than we needed to, but it’s certainly very stable as a result.

Pete and I had so much fun doing this together. Mayana was a little bit involved, but she was putting more lollies into her mouth than onto the house, so we distracted her with ABC2 after a while!

So without any further ado, here is our very beautiful Gingerbread House, of which we are suitably proud – especially considering this is the first time that either of us have done any kind of Gingerbread House building/decorating, and we did it all from scratch! I think we may have added another tradition to our little family Christmas list.

Now everybody pray with me that it survives it's 2.5 hour trip out to Christmas day with Nana & Pop!!

Point + Shoot : Brisvegas Baby

2011-12-20T18:07:00.001+10:00

This weekend consisted of a LOT of driving, and a LOT of fun.

It started on Friday, when we made our way down to Brisbane to finish off some of our Christmas shopping. We chose a Westfield Shopping Centre, and landed in Shop-Til-You-Drop Heaven. There are really not very many shops in our town, so to find ourselves in a centre that had David Jones, Myer, Target, K-mart, Big W and about 30,000 other little stores (including favourites such as T-2, Kiki-K, Typo, Bed Bath & Table, and STARBUCKS) was a very wonderful thing indeed. I fell a little bit more in love with my new (/second-hand) iPhone, which has a Westfield App that allowed me to find the stores I wanted to go to, and even showed me how to get to them! Love technology!

After we had had our fill of Westfield, and crossed most things of our list, we hot-footed it over to Ikea for a few more bits and bobs. How is it that I can never seem to step out of that place without spending an inordinate amount of money? Then it was dinner with Aunty Janeen before we went back to the northern side of Brisbane for the real reason for our trip: a visit with our wonderful friends (and Mayana’s wonderful Godparents) Daniel & Katherine.

They have just bought a very cute little home, and we enjoyed seeing it and spending time with them. It’s been a while, but they’re the kind of friends that it doesn’t matter how long it’s been, we always just pick up where we left off. Love it.

On Saturday afternoon, we went along to a Christmas event that Dan & Kat’s church runs at a local school oval. It was great fun, with lots of free stuff for kids (face-painting, animal farm, pony-rides, jumping castles, Christmas craft etc) and entertainment (JC Epidemic, music, clowns & Christmas Carols). It was a great community event, and had a really good time… especially Mayana!

In the Christmas Spirit and ready to have some fun!!

Face painted! (One of Mayana’s favourite things to have done, and about the only time I’ve ever seen her sit still).

Visiting the Animal Farm with Kathrine. She kissed every single animal in there. Including the pig. On the butt. The duckling made a much nicer picture.

She also brushed every single animal in there. Including the turkey.

Mayana rode a pony called Macky. She was a little disappointed that she didn’t get to hold the reigns, but had a lot of fun.

The two Maysies

We also happened to bump into my mum’s cousin and his wife and kids, who were also there soaking in the family atmosphere. It’s been a while since we’ve seen them, and their gorgeous little boy Eddie (who was only a few months old when we last saw him) is now over one, and such a cutie. Their daughter Maya is a couple of weeks younger than Mayana, and they had a lovely time together, punctuated by many cuddles and kisses.

On Sunday, we took Mayana to Southbank to have a swim at the ‘beach’. It was quite cool, so she was the only one brave enough to get in, and it didn’t last for long – as much as she insisted she wasn’t cold the blue quivering lips kind of gave her away.

A lovely picnic in the sun soon warmed her back up again.

As did playing on Daniel, The Human Slippery-Slide.

Then it was time for a stroll through the markets, before our final stop in Brisvegas: Max Brenner. Oh my.

Mayana was most impressed with her Baby-Cino, which came not only with TWO marshmallows, but a plate COVERED in chocolate.

Which she proceeded to get pretty much all over herself.

But it was worth it for the beautiful smile!

Then we waved goodbye to Daniel & Katherine, to scoot back to the Coast for Christmas with Grandma Suki & Grandpa Ron!

We sang some songs, because that’s just what we do when my family is together. I love this photo, and the look us sisters are giving our baby brother who clearly just played a dud chord.

Grandpa cooked us a delicious BBQ dinner..

While we soaked up the views.

We exchanged gifts and ate delicious dessert and just enjoyed each other’s company.

It was certainly a very full weekend, but full of awesomeness and happy memories.

I’m playing along with Lou for Point + Shoot. You should too!

Me in A-Z

2011-12-18T21:29:00.001+10:00

Age: 24
Bed size: Queen
Chore you most hate: washing up
Dogs: None
Essential start to your day: Being woken up by Baby Two kicks and having cuddles with my hubby and daughter.
Favourite colour: loving shades of teal and turquoise at the moment.
Gold or Silver: Silver
Height: 153cm
Instrument you play: Keyboard, flute and a bit of guitar.
Job title: Distance Education Teacher
Kids: 1 and a half
Live: Qld
Mothers name: Tambrey
Nicknames: Zoz, Zozo, Zozzy, Zo
Overnight hospital stays: One night when I had Mayana.
Pet peeves: I'm pregnant and hormonal at the moment, I seem to have a lot of pet peeves.
Quote from a movie: 'Whatever I feel like I want to do, gosh!'
Right or left handed: Right
Siblings: Two sisters and a brother
Time you wake up: somewhere between 6:30-7am, sometimes earlier depending on Mayana.
Underwear: Cotton.
Vegetable you hate: Wouldn't say I hate it but I'm not a huge fan of silverbeet.
What makes you run late: My daughter and her habit of needing the toilet at the most inconvenient times.
X-Rays you've had: Ankle, knee, wrist.
Yummy food that you make: Fresh homemade pasta with creamy mushroom and white wine sauce.
Zoo animal: Elephants.

Camping… Mayana Style

2011-12-13T22:19:00.001+10:00

Last week, Mayana asked her Papa if she could go camping. I’m not sure how she figured out what camping is, but she knew it had something to do with sleeping in a tent. Her Papa promised her they would put the tent up later in the week, but it rained, and rained, and rained. The yard was far too soggy.

So her clever Papa came up with a brilliant idea: Mayana could camp in her bedroom!

My camping-King husband took his smallest tent (a 4-man), cleared a space in her bedroom (have I mentioned how much I love living in a Queenslander with massive bedrooms?) and up went the tent (sans waterproof fly). In went her Ikea city-map mat, her old cot-mattress, her camping chair (of course!) and her fold out couch. She added her entire collection of stuffed toys, and I gave the whole setup a bit of class, by hanging a paper lantern stuffed with fairy lights from the tent’s ceiling. The whole effect was quite magical really, and Mayana was and is delighted.

She has slept in her ‘tent-bedroom’ every night since, and has spent a lot of time playing and imagining in it in the daytime soon. I wonder when or if the novelty will wear off.

In the meantime, I’m totally considering a sleep-over with my daughter…

Point + Shoot: whirlwind weekends

2011-12-13T21:51:00.001+10:00

Being on holidays makes the days all blend together. I love waking up in the morning and thinking I have no idea what day it is today, and I don’t even care!

But once I sort out the days in my head, I find that this weekend was quite a busy one:

- Had friends over for dinner on Friday night which meant quite a late night for a certain over-excited little Miss, who fell asleep in the middle of saying prayers and…
- that she slept in till 8am on Saturday morning! Score!
- Practiced a song with a sister and a friend for a Christmas item at sister’s church on Sunday.
- Lazy afternoon in which the only thing I did was take photos to make 3rd birthday invitations for my little big girl!

- Sang said song at sister’s church, then rushed over to my church so that I could see our church family before Christmas and the New Year.
- Home to do some housework before heading down to Noosa to have afternoon tea and a Christmas-gift-exchange with the in-laws.
- Watched my awesome sister, brother and dad in their church’s fabulous dinner-theatre-style Christmas show, ‘Mary’s Story’.

- Spent time after the show catching up with wonderful friends and family

- Finally went to sleep well after 11pm… which is super-late for me these days!

Yep, big weekend, but our weeks have been just as big. Holidays are so not relaxing. But they are awesome!!

I’m playing along with Lou for Point + Shoot… you should too!

Handmade Goodies

2011-12-09T20:00:00.001+10:00

I’m sure many of you remember my little foray into the handmade-business-world during my final year or so of uni. ‘Particularly Zoey’ kept me very busy, and gave me enough pocket money to feed my craft addictions without poor Pete pulling his hair out.

Unfortunately I’ve slowed things right off this year, working full time and trying to spend as many minutes with my lovely little family as possible when I’m not working has meant that something had to give.

However I’m on holidays now, and I have a small collection of little goodies for sale just in time for Christmas. I have big plans once maternity leave time arrives to revive my little business for real, and I can’t wait!

So please, if you have a few spare minutes stop by my facebook page and have a look. You can contact me here, or leave a comment on the item you would like if you wish to buy anything. I accept payments via PayPal or direct deposit.

Thank you for indulging me in my own little self-plug here!

Here’s a preview of a few of my goodies!

Beautiful Baby Two

2011-12-09T19:23:00.001+10:00

The time is flying by, and I can’t believe that I’m nearly half way through this pregnancy!

For the most part things have gone very smoothly. Morning sickness was minimal – it was the same as with Mayana where I mostly felt the quease around dinner time, and Peter became our full-time cook for a few weeks there. But that seems to have passed, and most days I have an appetite again. Tiredness is the one thing sticking around, and this night owl is struggling with going to bed at 8.30pm!

However, I am loving being pregnant – just like I did with Mayana. I think my body likes being pregnant, and I can’t help but feel that I was made to do this.

My tummy is growing very quickly – much faster than last time, apparently normal for a second pregnancy, but exacerbated by the fact that I had quite a bad tummy muscle separation with Mayana.

14 weeks

17 Weeks

19 weeks tomorrow

The only true panic we have been through was when I had a doctor’s appointment at 16 weeks with a suspected UTI. The doctor (a new GP who I had never seen before) tried to find the baby’s heartbeat with the doppler, and wasn’t able to. She told me that it wasn’t a very good doppler and not to worry (yeh right!) but gave me a referral for a scan, which I couldn’t get in to until late the following afternoon. I think it was the most stressful 24 hours of my life. Even though I had been feeling the baby’s movements for a couple of weeks, I spent the day convincing myself that I must have imagined them. After having lost a baby earlier this year, I think I was preparing myself for the worst.

However, praise God, we had an awesome experience when we went for the scan that afternoon. We saw a beautiful healthy baby, with a perfect heartbeat, fully formed with healthy organs and well developing bones and body. It was amazing.

Baby from the top view. Head to the left, with arms up near the face (just like Mayana in her scan), and you can see a little foot down there on the right of the photo.

Strong, reassuring heartbeat. What peace that sound brought!

My cutie baby’s profile. Head on the left, you can see the curve of the spine/back, and little feet kicking around in front of the face.

I have no real plans to go back to that GP! It was a very terrible experience. I think especially after having such a great relationship with the GP I saw through Mayana’s pregnancy.

The baby’s movements are getting stronger all the time, and on Wednesday night, Peter got to feel it for the first time while he lay with his head on my tummy talking to bubby like he does every day. It is much earlier than he felt it with Mayana, and was a very lovely moment.

This week I had my first midwife appointment at the hospital (the booking in appointment). I was told that I should be able to have the rest of my antenatal appointments through midwives at the clinic, which will be fantastic, and much more suited to what I want for this pregnancy. There is also a good chance of me being able to go home within 24 hours if all is well (minimum of 6!) meaning that I won’t have to spend a night in hospital again.

The midwife we saw for this appointment was just lovely, and with only 7 midwives on the team in this area, chances are I will get to see her quite consistently throughout my pregnancy.

We got to hear that beautiful heartbeat again, as well as the thumping of a couple of kicks to the doppler. Mayana was with us at the appointment, and it was a very special moment for us when she began to dance to the sound of Baby Two’s heart beating. She melts my heart that girl!

We have another appointment at the hospital next week, for a routine 20 week check-up. I also have a referral to book my big morphology scan, and am planning to do that the week before Christmas.

So we’re rolling along, and the weeks are flying by – so much more quickly then I remember them doing with Miss Maysi!

Can’t wait to meet our beautiful Baby Two…

Wonderful Wiggles!

2011-12-09T17:55:00.001+10:00

Some time ago, we took Mayana on a wonderful adventure.

We took her to the WIGGLES CONCERT!!

Mayana adores The Wiggles, and she counted down the days, and talked about all of the songs they might sing, and whether Dorothy and Wags and Henry would be there…

I have to say, The Wiggles were absolutely fantastic, and well-worth every single cent of what the tickets cost. It was worthy paying for them just to see this face when we walked into the foyer and got presented with a Wiggles crown:

And this face, when we walked up onto the balcony towards our theatre door:

And this face when the lights started to dim and the music started (ugh, don’t look at my face though!):

The Wiggles arrived on stage in their fancy big red car, joined by Wiggly Dancers and the Ring Master. They were so much fun!

Mayana’s months of practicing finally paid off when The Wiggles sang ‘Rock-a-bye Your Bear’ and Jeff inevitably fell asleep. Mayana put her hands to her mouth and yelled at the top of her lungs (which when all’s said and done isn’t really that loud), “WAKE UP JEFF!!!”

The highlight of the show for her was when Dorothy came out with three beautiful ballerinas. Mayana stood up on her chair and began to twirl. She still hasn’t stopped talking about Dorothy Ballerina.

She was entirely captivated, for pretty much the entire show.

We had to do a quick duck-out to the toilet at one stage, and found ourselves face-to-face with Murray at the end of our aisle. He said hello and shook Mayana’s hand. She was very star-struck.

Speaking of Murray, what do you think of this rockstar shot!!

I’m so glad we got the opportunity to take our girl to the Wiggles show, and was definitely a highlight day of our year, and a memory that will be treasured by all of us for a very long time.

Food + Art

2011-11-28T20:55:00.001+10:00

Who said you shouldn’t play with your food anyway?

I came across this fabulous idea on Pinterest a little while ago, and finally got a chance to try it out. Peter and Mayana have their last Mainly Music for the year tomorrow, and have been asked to bring a plate of food to share.

Last week Peter whipped up an epic batch of biscuits (easiest recipe ever: 500g butter, 1 tin sweetened condensed milk, 1 cup sugar, 5 cups self-raising flour). He froze it into about 5 lots and has been baking it in batches. So he used some of that biscuit dough to make some Christmas tree shaped biscuits. Then I made a simple icing of about 1.5 cups of icing sugar and the juice of 3/4 of a lemon. I spread it onto the biscuits and let it harden.

After dinner, the fun began.

I set out three dishes with red, green and yellow food dye, and a handful of cotton-buds.

And we decorated!!

Mayana thought it was awesome!

Two of her favourite things, ‘making art’, and biscuits!

And before we knew it we had a beautiful, colourful and creative batch of Christmas biscuits ready to take to Music tomorrow!

It was so lovely, the three of us doing something special all together, making memories. We’d quite like to make this an annual family tradition.

Super-easy, lots of fun, and kept Mayana fully focussed for nearly half an hour. The perfect toddler activity. You should give it a try!!

Point + Shoot: Fun in the Sun

2011-11-28T20:40:00.001+10:00

And when I say sun, I mean stinking hot and humid Queensland summer sun. It was quite a warm weekend to say the least, but we still managed to have a lovely time together…

We enjoyed a lazy breakfast at the local French bakery (yum!!!).

Then we came home and took photos of my ever-growing baby bump (17 weeks on Saturday!!)

And of course Mayana wanted a photo of her baby too…

I had a table of handmade goodies to sell at a church women’s event in the afternoon, which was lots of fun.When I got home, we meandered down to the ‘Duck Park’ to feed Mayana’s little friends. There are also a whole bunch of turtles who live in here, and the poke their little heads up so they don’t miss out on a good feed too! Mayana LOVES it.

Some of the duckies got a bit brave and came quite close to Mayana, until she tried to cuddle them. That kind of freaked them out.

Once the bread was all gone it was time to hit the playground.

Mayana loves the Duck Park!

We also enjoyed a visit from my parents and Aunty Joce who came to check out our new digs, and the community Christmas Carols on Sunday evening. Clearly I was having too much fun to take photos though.

Back to work today… and only four more days before HOLIDAYS!!! (can you tell I’m excited?)

I’m playing along with Louise for Point + Shoot… you should too!

The One Where I Show You Some Photos Of Our New House

2011-11-21T18:10:00.001+10:00

We have been in for over a week now, and are mostly unpacked. I have to say, I LOVE our new home. I thought I loved our old home, but this one is so much better in so many ways. I really love living here.

So here are some photos of our beautiful home.. we are so blessed!

This is our dining/computer/living area, looking into our lounge room. Technically this big open area should be the lounge room, and what we’re using for a lounge should be the dining room, but we wanted to keep it all as open as possible. Plus I’m taking this photo from the kitchen doorway, and to me it makes more sense to have the dining room next to the kitchen.

We spoiled our table with a pretty new table cloth and runner. And I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t made it Christmassy!

The opposite wall of the living room. I love how this house has the beams all around the walls, they make fabulous picture rails!

This is from the living area looking back into the entry hallway & front door. On the right is our bedroom, and on the left is what will be Baby Two’s bedroom, but neither of them are ready for the public eye just yet! I’m kind of in love with the fact that all the feature glass panels in this house are pink and green, and the only feature wall in the house is pretty much my favourite shade of green.

Through the front door is our very impressive front verandah. We’ve eaten almost every meal since we moved here out there, and we are planning on investing in a nice outdoor setting, because the verandah most certainly justifies it!

Our lounge room. The blinding light behind the couch is a set of french doors onto a narrow landing outside. When they’re opened we get a delightful breeze through the house. (See the delicious green wall!)

This is the view from the doorway back through the living area. You can see the kitchen door at the end. If you walk through the door where I’m standing, you will find a sunroom (which will soon become my craft room) on the right, a bathroom on the left, and a funny little hallway which leads to Mayana’s bedroom. I just went to take a photo of Mayana’s bedroom but it seems she’s been doing some pretty hardcore playing in there today so I’ll wait for a day when it’s a tad tidier I think!

I will, however show you the bathroom. Super cute huh? I love the claw-footed bathtub!

Back through to the other end of the house, to the kitchen! It’s smaller than our last kitchen, but I think probably more functional. Plus it has a pretty awesome stove! The table in the middle there is to be used for bench-space, because there’s not much else to speak of in the rest of the kitchen.

Doesn't my beautiful cupboard look great in here!?

Oh, and the Pièce de résistance, our walk-in pantry. It’s like a little bit of heaven for us… we’ve lived in two places with no pantry at all, and one with the most ridiculous and impractical pantry every invented. So this feels verrrry flash!

So there you have it! Our lovely new home… God sure turned this situation into something pretty awesome, huh?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

2011-11-21T17:34:00.001+10:00

I love Christmas. I love everything about it. I love the lead-up, the decorations, the carols, the shopping, the food… I just love it. And I love decorating my house.

And yes, I am one of those people who has already put up their Christmas tree. I just couldn’t help myself. I’m the luckiest girl in the world that I have a husband who is willing to indulge my crazy Christmas lovin’.

We decorated our tree last Thursday night, and Mayana was absolutely beside herself with excitement. She really was a good helper, from matching all the different colours of the branches to help Papa put the tree together, and helping with putting baubles on the tree, to having the great honour of placing the star on top. I loved watching her enjoy it so much!

“This is the yellow pile, and the white ones go over there, okay Papa?”

Such a good helper!

Our beautiful tree and our beautiful girl!!

It really is the most wonderful time of the year!

Point + Shoot–yay for weekends!

2011-11-21T17:16:00.001+10:00

We had a rather delicious weekend this week… I so love lazy weekends with my two loves.

We introduced Mayana to the ‘Toad in a Hole’ for breakfast.

She was in turn horrified, (We DON’T eat toads Mama!), then delighted…

“I LOVE toads in holes Mama! They De-Lish-Us!!!”

We enjoyed the beautiful pink frangipanis that are growing right at verandah height. They smell so lovely!

We took Mayana to play at the local water park, which is one of Mayana’s favourite places in the world. After some manic running around, and about 6 goes on the ‘big waterslide’ (where she was sneaking between the legs of all the big kids who were patiently lining up.. cheeky thing!), she got a bit cold so we wrapped her in a towel and sat her in the sun and she savoured a delicious nectarine. How I love summer fruits!

We all enjoyed the beautiful beach scenes.

After Maysi woke up from a 2.5 hour sleep (I’m telling you, taking her to Wetside is always a good thing!) we made a cake together.

We ate dinner on the verandah, and I was blown away by how absolutely gorgeous my daughter is.

She takes my breath away!

Then it was time to enjoy the fruits of our labour…

A rainbow cake!!!

We all had a very happy weekend! Did you? Play along with Lou here!

The Month of Hairy Men

2011-11-14T20:48:00.001+10:00

It’s that time of year again, where the men about town are slightly hairier than usual, and husbands are slightly more prickly to kiss. Well, mine is. Because last week, he announced to me that he was going to take part in Movember.

Yikes! I told him that he would be forgoing kisses for a month. If only he weren’t such a great kisser… he’s up keeping his end of the bargain far more successfully than I am.

He started off with an incredibly creepy mo-design, but has thankfully tamed it back to a more standard-type moustache. I’m no fan, there are moments when he kind of looks like Kip to me and that more than freaks me out.

Freaky right?

Right now, he hasn’t shaved for a few days, so his ‘mo’ is kind of blended in to the rest of his facial hair. He’s threatening to tidy it up,so we’ll see how that turns out. Once it’s fully grown I’ll take a photo for you all to enjoy.

This year, Movember is supporting charities such as the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Beyond Blue, which are both worthy causes. So if you have a spare minute and a spare dollar, pop by my husband’s Mo Bro profile and sponsor his ~~creepy facial caterpillar~~ heroic efforts to make a difference and raise some awareness for these great charities.

And spare a thought for me… I’ll just be sitting here, waiting for December, when I can have my smooth-skinned and far-more-kissable husband back!

On the Move

2011-11-05T08:15:00.001+10:00

I can't believe that after only nine months our belongings are all being boxed up for another move.

A few weeks ago, the house we are currently renting was sold. Technically, our lease gives us the right to stay here until July next year. And after a seriously embarrassing, pregnancy-hormone-induced breakdown I had when the agent called me at work to tell me about the sale which is on a 30 day contract, i was just about ready to tell them where to stick it! However, when our landlord offered to pay for a good portion of our moving costs, and we did the math and imagined how awful it would be to have to move with an 8ish week old baby, we decided to play along- as long as the Real Estate helped us to find a wonderful house to move into. We definitely wouldn't be moving for anything less than wonderful.

Thankfully, they came to the party. Next week, we'll be moving into another delightful Queenslander... In fact I'd probably go so far as to say that it is even more delightful than the one we live in now! It has polished timber floors, a beautifully done up kitchen with an actual walk-in pantry (as opposed to no pantry at all). Two lovely bathrooms, one of which houses a claw-footed bath (swoon). An absolutely beautiful front verandah. A swing set and cubby house in the yard (which is what sold Mayana). Wardrobes in every room - even a walk-in one in the master bedroom. An actual laundry room (as opposed to taps for your washing machine in a corner under the house). And stacks of storage space and playing space under the house too. Plus, there is a real dining room upstairs, as well as a sunroom, and even Baby Two will be able to have his/her own room. Well, at least until he/she is sleeping through the night, because with the sheer size of Mayana's room it would be a crime to not have them share at some point.
All this and we'll only be paying $10 more a week than what we pay now! God is indeed good to us.

I actually can't wait to be living there. I only wish this while process of the packing and moving and unpacking could be done with a simple click of the fingers. As it is, we get the keys on Tuesday, the truck is booked for Wednesday, Peter has a day's teaching work on Thursday and will spend Friday doing a bond clean before we hand the keys back in. I'm not sure yet how I feel about all of this happening while I'm at work. Hopefully my boss will see fit to give me a few early marks this week! I think he will, considering he and his wife have offered to have Maysi all Wednesday afternoon, feed, bath and ready her for bed so we can get the important things like beds organized at the new house. In fact we've been blown away by all the offers of help for moving and cleaning and looking after Mayana. We have definitely landed ourselves in a lovely community.

Peter has been wonderful (isn't he always?). He's done pretty much all of the packing with the 'help' of a certain nearly-three-year-old (who is generally happy as long as there is any empty box in which to play), and all of the phone calls to organize for utilities to be changed over, arranged all the money side of things with paying bond etc, booked the removalist, and still managed to keep on top of the washing, and cook dinner most nights when the smell and thought of food still makes me want to barf. Oh, and organize himself to apply for a good handful of jobs for next year, as well as arranging the literal pile of things he needs to apply for Education Queensland. He's truly awesome, and I'm truly blessed.

I hope you have a great weekend. I'll be busy hanging out with my family who are coming up to see my sister's dance concert, and trying to mentally prepare myself for the whirlwind week ahead. Wish us luck!

Point + Shoot: Good Clean Fun

2011-10-31T20:43:00.001+10:00

I love weekends with my two favourites, and having the time to play with my growing-up-way-too-fast toddler. This weekend we discovered that a few drops of food colouring + a small bowl of shaving cream = hours of fun… or at least until the bath water gets cold!!

We started off with paintbrushes, but soon discovered that once you had enough up there, it was a brilliant consistency for finger painting. Best of all, it cleaned off with just one easy wipe of the washcloth – and then we had the fun and excitement of sitting in a blue bath! No bathroom walls were damaged in the making of this blog post – in fact, that is now probably the cleanest patch on my entire bathroom wall!

In other weekend news, we also enjoyed a lovely Sunday afternoon (and totally gourmet) picnic in the park with my sister and brother in law.

Yes, my daughter is queen of the awkward photo face. Luckily the remaining 99% of the time she’s utterly adorable and more than makes up for it.

Hope you had a happy weekend too! Play along with Louise and tell us all about it!

Getting My Art On

2011-10-31T20:27:00.001+10:00

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be sent by my school to a very awesome Oxlades art Professional Development day. My sister got to come too, so basically, I got to hang out with my sister, and paint, and learn sweet new art skills all day long. It was brilliant.

We mostly worked with water colours, which is probably my favourite type of paint and technique, so I was a happy girl!

Here are the beautiful pieces of art that I got to create.

The turtle was done with Micador water colours

For the owl I used a Micador tempera painting station

For the lizard we cracked open our Koh-I-Noor brilliant water colour discs (this was by far my favourite variety of watercolour).

And for the fish and the bird I used a mix of the paints.. but mostly the brilliant water colours because I was so in love with the palette.

My favourite is definitely the fish. But we had so much fun creating all of them! Once we were done with our animals, we got to try out a few different techniques using water-soluble graphite, charcoal, various shades of graphite pencil with vegetable oil, oil pastels and water-soluble oil pastels. It was very cool, and made us feel very artsy. I think my favourite of these is the water-soluble graphite, which is in the top left.

It was an awesome day, and best of all we walked away with a huge goody bag filled with all of the different types of paints and other art materials we had tried out that day!

Yahoo for awesome PD courses

Colin Buchanan

2011-10-16T20:42:00.001+10:00

A few weeks ago, we took Mayana to her second Colin Buchanan concert. At the first, she was about 8 months old, and mesmerised by the music and the lights. This time, she got entirely overwhelmed for the first two songs, and sat snuggle into my neck, while sneaking peaks of the stage every now and again.

It wasn’t long though before Mayana started to notice that Colin is funny, and that she recognised some of his songs. By the end, she was down the front with all the kids, trying to climb onto the stage and get in on all the action. It was a lot of fun to watch her, and a lot of fun to watch Colin. If you ever get the chance to go to one of his children’s concerts, do it. He’s a great entertainer, for the adults as well as the kids!

Mayana asked us if we could line up and meat Colin, and so we did. For a very. long. time. In fact, we were the second last people in line. It was a little ridiculous. But kinda worth it in the end, when Colin wrote a special message in the book we’d bought her, and gave her a big cuddle and posed for a photo. She’s still talking about it, and loves looking at the picture of the flower and bee that he drew in her book.

It was a great day out, and I think Colin may have scored himself a brand new fan :)

Once upon a weekend…

2011-10-16T20:26:00.001+10:00

I don’t think I ever told you about the lovely weekend my darlingest husband and I had away for our sixth wedding anniversary. We left our very excited daughter with her grandparents and aunty and uncle for a sleepover, and headed to Brisvegas.

We love weekend city trips… we would NEVER live there, but it’s always fun for a weekend. It was a good weekend to head to the city, because it was Brisbane Festival and there were all kinds of fun things happening.

We walked back and forwards between the city and Southbank, strolled through the markets, and ate soooo much delicious food.

If you haven’t visited the Turkish Restaurant at Little Stanley Street, you gotta. Word to the wise though, don’t make eye-contact with the belly dancer!

We even got to enjoy a very cool laser-light show over the river that was part of the festival. Best of all though, we just got to be together, just the two of us, which doesn’t happen so much these days.

The sky-writer wasn’t just letting us know the name of the day, it ended up spelling out ‘Sunday Mail’, a major sponsor of the Bridge to Brisbane charity event that was happening that weekend.

Eating at Max Brenner for breakfast is something that everyone should do at least once in their lifetime. We went for the banana praline crepes. Oh my.

They also do these amazing ‘choctails’, Peter had a coffee-type one, and I had this incredibly evil and wonderful concoction that tasted like liquid chocolate and peanut butter.

Anniversary weekends are the BEST!!!

Spilling the beans...

2011-10-11T20:02:00.001+10:00

The Incredible Imagination of Mayana {or} Things I Don't Want to Forget

2011-10-08T09:31:00.001+10:00

Seriously, this kid is just blowing me away and cracking me up so much lately.

She has discovered her imagination.

Imaginary friends, imaginary toys, imaginary phone calls, iPads, cameras... You name it, she's imagining it. And it's the cutest thing ever.

For example:
The other day we were grocery shopping at Aldi, and Mayana was taking photos with her imaginary camera. Then she started crying. I asked her why, and she said she had dropped her camera, and it smashed! Papa had to find the pieces and fix it and give it back to her.

A few days later, we were shopping again and went to the bathroom. I hung my handbag on the hook behind the door. Mayana, who has been bringing a handbag with her everywhere she goes lately, had forgotten hers that day. Still, she asked me to hang hers up too. She told me that her handbag was like the one Opa got her from China, but it was orange, not blue.
After we had used the toilet, and taken our handbags off the hook, we went to wash our hands. She put her handbag on the bench, and we were halfway out the door before she remembered that she hadn't picked it up. We had to go back, and I had to lift her up so she could get her imaginary handbag off the bench.

One afternoon, I was using the iPad, and her Papa told her to come and get it off me because he wanted it. I told her no, I was still using it. So she walked back over to her Papa and said, 'Mama's using it, but here, you can have my little one,' and handed him an imaginary iPad (haha Papa).

Friends-wise, her newest best friends are mostly characters from Monster's Inc (her new favourite movie). She is always hanging out with Boo, Sully and sometimes Mike Wazowski. She even takes Boo to the toilet, to help her be a big girl. She also has a friend called Lucas, who is a girl. We're not sure where she got that name from. Her friends come most places with us, and she'll often hold their hands or make us hold their hands.

She has imaginary phone conversations with people every day. Usually Opa, Kami or Lala. Full on conversations, with pauses while she 'listens' to them, and jokes that make her laugh. It's hilarious.

I love that she has an imagination, I hope she can hold on to it.

While I'm sharing Mayana funnies, here's another one I want to write down before I forget it.

The other day we were having lunch with Boo & Lock Lock, and Mayana was having a great time playing outside with their puppy Dusty. We could hear her telling him off... 'no Dusty, stop it! Stop it! I'm going to go and tell your Mummy!'

She ran inside to Bethanie and said, 'Boo! Dusty is eating a stick and he won't stop it!'

I just love the way her mind works.

I also love that she loves reading, and that the other night the reason she was crying when she was supposed to be going to sleep was because, 'I haven't read enough books today!'

I love that she listens and comprehends well enough to link what happens in stories to her own life, and to what happens in other books... I have students who are 6 or 7 years old who can't do that!

And while I'm busy boasting, can you believe my two year old has such good fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination that she can use scissors to cut perfectly along a straight or slightly curved line? Again, I have prep students that can't do that!

Being with this girl is an awesome adventure, a constant surprise. She makes me smile and burst with pride every single day.

I am so beyond blessed to be her Mama.

Time flies....

2011-09-09T16:52:00.001+10:00

It's hard to believe that this day six years ago was the eve of my wedding day! We spent the day decorating the reception venue, re-making the chocolate spoons (we gave our guests engraved chocolate-dipped spoons, and I had made them a week or so before only to find that the chocolate had gone white and weird the day before... Stress!)
We took our very lovely little flower girls (who are now very grown-up teenagers) out for haircuts and lunch. We met up with family at the Big Pineapple for parfaits. We had a wedding rehearsal that made us teary (none on the big day though!), and a fun kebab-a-que at the in-laws that gave our extended families the chance to get to know each other.

I remember when we were out that day, having to stop myself blabbing to random strangers that tomorrow was our wedding!
Peter and I spent the entire day grinning goofily at each other and saying, "we're getting married tomorrow!!"

Now here we are, on the eve of our 6th wedding anniversary. How much we have been through together in those six years! We've moved to two new towns, completed university degrees, and become parents to the most awesome kid around! We've had ups and downs, sure... But they only make us closer, because we have learned to lean on each other (and on God!) and somehow the hard times always make us stronger in the end.

I love being Peter's wife (how I hope those words never stop giving me a thrill!) and I LOVE that I get to do life with him.

Happy anniversary babe... Love you millions!

Wordless Wednesdays {afternoon tea on the deck}

2011-09-07T18:56:00.001+10:00

Playing along {here}

the playroom

2011-09-04T21:23:00.001+10:00

One of the things we love in this house is Mayana’s little playroom nook. We have been honing it and refining it since we moved in, and we think we finally have it how we want it.

It was important to me to have a space for imaginative play for Maysi. My sister got her a small plastic play kitchen for her birthday, and that brought her a lot of fun times, but she was quickly outgrowing it, as were her collection of kitchen utensils and toy food. So Peter got onto the job, and has built her the cutest play wooden play kitchen ever. I’m seriously impressed by the fantastic job he’s done, and we’ve already got friends wanting to put their orders in!

The other thing we wanted to incorporate into Mayana’ play space was somewhere to make things. Mayana is obsessed with the show Mr Maker at the moment, and is constantly going off to, “make ‘tuff!”, whether it’s drawing, painting, gluing, snipping… any chance she gets she’s creating (can’t imagine where she gets that from, can you?). So rather than having piles of cardboard boxes and tubes and glitter and pens and glue and paper and pipe-cleaners and googly eyes all over our house, we thought we would assign a specific Making Spot.

So… without any further ado… here it is: The Playroom.

To the right is Mayana’s awesome kitchen, the Making Spot is at the back of the room where she is playing, and her book shelf is on the left. The town map mat is from Ikea, and is lots of fun. We also strung up some lines to hang Mayana’s many art works.

A closer shot of Mayana’s making spot. The easel and her table and stool are from Ikea (love that place!!). The filing cabinet (otherwise known as The Making Drawers) is a seconds product from my dad’s work. Thank you to whoever dented the back of it! My favourite thing about it is that it’s lockable, so Mayana doesn’t have easy access to the things that make major mess (like paint). Mayana’s rice (which she still loves)lives under her easel, and makes a great step which allows her to reach every square inch of the paper on her easel.

We’ve been brave enough to let Mayana draw with marker pens lately. She finds them so much more satisfying, because she doesn’t have to press hard to get a bright colour, and there is something about using them that really thrills her (although there are hazards… like the time she decided to paint her face with them. You can read about that here, on Pete’s blog Thank the Lord for washable markers is all I can say). We made this special pot for her pens. I bought some plaster of paris from Bunnings, and Mayana and I made it up together. We poured it into this pot, and when it started to set, we poked the pens (lid-side-down) into the pot. This way we don’t lose any lids.. Mayana pokes the pens back into her pots as soon as she’s done drawing with them. Plus, the pens will last longer because they’re standing nib-side-down.

The jars on Mayana’s making drawers are full of collage materials.. shells which she has collected from the beach, coloured matchsticks, stickers, pompoms, googly eyes and mini pegs. She also has a love affair with sticky tape at the moment, so I’ve given her her own roll so she leaves ours alone (or that’s the plan anyway!). Inside the drawers are pencils, more crayons, paper, paints, and of course her collection of cardboard boxes and tubes and whatever recyclables she deems needed for making ‘tuff.

And now The Kitchen (Boy I’m proud of my hubby for making this!):

Mayana’s kitchen consists of a sink and a stove. Pete calculated that we spent about $80 on materials (mostly from Bunnings, and some stuff we picked up from opp-shops). My contribution to the making of it was painting the cabinets and sewing the curtain (with super-cute fabric from Ikea).

I crocheted a little handtowel for Maysi’s kitchen, and an old hot-chocolate tin screwed to the side of the sink unit holds all of her cutlery.

The glass for the stove door is the glass out of a photo frame we bought from a discount store. My Pop gave us an old faucet to use for the tap. Mayana’s toy food is a mix of plastic and felt foods… the felt food are fruit and veg from Ikea and are super cute.

The sink itself is a silver mixing bowl from a discount store, and most of the utensils, and the cute mini-saucepan are from an opp-shop. Also from the opp shop is the ‘dish-rack’, which in a former life was a toast caddy. For the hotplates on the kitchen, we painted four cork drink coasters.

So there you have it! Mayana’s super-awesome playroom. Doesn’t it make you want to be a kid again!?

Lovely Weekend...

2011-08-28T22:05:00.001+10:00

We had a very lovely weekend. I'm always happy when weekends roll around, but after having had Mayana cry to me twice this week not wanting me to go to work, I was especially looking forward to this one.

This weekend had such a lovely, fun, weekendy vibe to it. A whole two days stretching us with no big plans, no traveling... Just the three of us and anything we wanted to do... After being away for the last three weekends in a row, that felt awesome.

Our one downer of the weekend was going out to let the chooks out on Saturday morning and finding that our poor Nana Joy chook had passed away during the night. Nana Joy was the boss of the two, and poor old Aunty Judy seemed to be very withdrawn and lost without her. We called the local feed barn, expecting to have to go on the wait list for some point-of-lay pullets, but they just happened to have some in, so we went out and got two new friends for Aunty Judy. After much deliberation, Mayana finally landed on two very cool names for her new girls: Olivia, who is white, and Hoot, who is red.

Aunty Judy was a little wary to begin with, but certainly hasn't been backwards in coming forwards about establishing the pecking order. I never knew she could be so vocal! While we are all extremely sad to have farewelled Nana Joy Chookie, we are happy to have our two new girls join the family... One of them has even laid an egg already!

The rest of the day I just relished my time with my lovely husband and daughter. Mayana and I played play dough, made drawings, watched Tangled (a new favourite), painted our nails, and played in her new kitchen. We also went to a birthday party and watched our brother in law's hockey final.

I learned something important this weekend; you know that scripture in Proverbs, the one that says a harsh word stirs up anger, but a gentle answer turns away wrath? In all my quality one-on-one time with Mayana this weekend, I learned how much those words ring true in my interactions with her. The moment any harshness enters my tone, she is crushed, and tears quickly ensue. But if I work to make my tone kind, and to explain things to her, she responds beautifully. I enjoyed every minute of my time with her this weekend, my daughter truly is a delight.

We had a great church service today, too.. Where I led worship for the first time. It's so great to really feel involved and a part of a church again. I think it's helping us to feel settled here, more quickly than what we did in Toowoomba. We lunched with my sister and her hubby, then came home and crashed for a while, before my parents rang and announced they were coming over for dinner! Which being that they live an hour and a half away was a very lovely surprise, and a great way to finish off what has been a fabulous weekend.

Hope yours was great too!

I'm a little teapot

2011-08-23T22:14:00.001+10:00

Who now has a deliciously cute tea cosy to keep my tea lovely and warm until the very last cup...

Aah I love creating pretty things!

Me... In A-Z

2011-08-19T22:00:00.001+10:00

I haven't done a blog meme for a while, and I'm feeling too shattered from my crazy busy week at work to be creative enough to come up with my own blog post ideas.... So, as stolen from my lovely cousin Louise's blog:

All about me; in A-Z

Age: 24. And I just had to really think about that... Freaked me right out..

Bed size: Queen. I need enough space to be not touching my husband at night... He's super hot (as in warm-blooded... And in the other way too)

Chore that I hate: Washing up. The rule in our house is that whoever cooked doesn't have to wash up.... I cook a lot.

Dogs: I'm super dog clucky at the moment. My sister just got one and it's really cute. We would eventually like to rescue a dog from the RSPCA.

Essential start to my day: A snuggle with my two favourite people. Mays comes into bed with us in the mornings and tells us about her dreams and what she wants to do that day. I love it.

Favourite colour: pink and green, and purple, and certain shades of blue.. I love lots of colours and combinations of colours.

Gold or silver: I mostly wear silver, though my wedding rings are gold.

Height: Short. 160ish centimeters or so.

Instruments I play: The flute, keyboards, and drips and drabs of the guitar.

Job title: Mama, wife, teacher.

Kids: Mayana - 2.5 years old and a bundle of total awesomeness.

Lives: in a little town, in Queensland.

Mum's name: Tambrey

Nicknames: Zoz, Zozzie, Wifey

Overnight hospital stays: One night, the night Mayana was born. Next time I'm hoping to not stay overnight... I hated it!

Pet peeves: My sister always beating me on Words With Friends. Grrr. And autocorrect on my iPad not understanding what I'm trying to write.

Quote from a movie: "I like your sleeves... They're real big" I'm a sucker for Napoleon Dynamite.

Right or left handed: Right.

Siblings: Two sisters and one brother, all younger than me.

Time I wake up: 6.30. And then we press snooze once or twice.

Underwear: Whatever is clean on the day...

Vegetable I hate: raw carrot. Though I'm not sure if my feelings about carrot are strong enough to be classed as 'hate'.

What makes me run late: life. I hate running late but we tend to run late a lot. It shames me. Often it's because Mayana chooses incredibly inopportune times to do ploppies. As does her father.

X-rays I've had: teeth, ankles (multiple times), foot (the only thing that was actually broken), wrist, knee.

Yummy food that I make: I make a pretty special homemade fettucine with creamy mushroom and white wine sauce.

Zoo animal: I love elephants. They are beautiful and so fun to watch. I even bought elephant earrings from the Perth Zoo, I was that much of a fan!

Now, why don't you copy and paste all of that and play along too!

...
You might also like:
this week...
point + shoot: in real life.
meet gerda.
at least two reasons to stay home from cricket.
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{Point + Shoot} Generations

2011-08-09T20:28:00.001+10:00

We spent the weekend on a long overdue visit with my Nanna and Pop, who are affectionately known to Mayana as Nana Joy and Poppy Goose.

Mayana spent lots of time shadowing Pop, just like I used to when I was her age. He told her a story about her catching a great big fish... The third generation he's told that story to! Using her name in the story had her mesmerized, and she spent the rest of the afternoon telling Nana and I about her big fish- it was that real to her!

Mayana and Nana always enjoy every minute of each other, and lots of cuddles are always shared. Mayana was intrigued by Nana's piano accordion, and enjoyed dancing and 'helping' Nana play.

Mayana was sad to leave Nana and Pop at the end of the weekend, but excited and full of anticipation at the promise of a holiday at the Beach with Nana and Pop in their house with wheels.

I get so much joy from watching Mayana loving the people who I love so dearly.

I'm playing along with Louise for Point+Shoot.. You should too!

Love you, Maysi-Moo

2011-08-07T21:57:00.001+10:00

Precious daughter, do you know how much I love you? You're growing up so fast these days, and your Papa and I are loving every minute.

You're such a toddler now, and no terrible twos for you! You're a delight to us, and to everyone who encounters you.

Yesterday, we went with Nana to the church service at a hospital nursing home, where you solemnly walked around the room, giving each person there one of your princess stickers. You made sure you cuddled everyone before we could leave, as if you knew how it would make their day.

For the first time in your life, people are starting to say, "wow! Hasn't she grown!?" ... And it's true. You've left your baby days behind you, and we're seeing glimpses of the big girl you're growing to be.

You talk all the time these days, and your sense of humour is developing beautifully. Every night, we climb into your bed and read a book together (your most requested is the story of Noah). When we're finished, you call in Papa to pray with you. You've started a little tradition where you call out a different animal for him to be every night. Tonight, he was Papa Turtle, and other days this week he has been a bear, a tiger, a cat and an elephant! He's such an awesome papa, and he always plays along, much to your great delight. Each night you pray for every single person in our family, and pick a few of your many best friends to pray for, too. You love to tell God about the things you've done, and whatever else happens to be on your mind at the time.

Every day with you is an adventure, and you make the most mundane things fun. I love it when we go shopping, and you continuously exclaim, 'Ooh! I like that one!'
When something especially tickles your fancy, you peer up at me and say, 'We get this one for Maysi-Moo-Moo??'
It makes me giggle every time.

I love the way your imagination is developing. You cook us elaborate meals in your kitchen, constantly talk to various family members on your hand phone, and are such a mother hen to your babies.

You love animals, and at the moment you ask us daily when we're going to get a doggie, who you tell us will be called Humpty Dumpty.

You love music... Singing it, dancing to it, making it! The highlight of your week is Mainly Music, and I love how you show mw the songs and dances you've done. You always want music on in the house, and can't go yo sleep without it. You sing songs all day long... Nursery rhymes, Wiggles and your most requested song is the Glee version of the Beatles song 'Hello Goodbye".

I love starting my days off with your, 'Good morning, Mama!' and the feeling of those two little arms clasped around my neck, and nothing makes my day more than that face-splitting grin when I walk towards the car when you pick me up from work each day.

I love you, Mayana Joy Shanae, you are the sunshine of my life. Don't ever stop being you, my darling girl.

Love Mama

Fancy Feet

2011-08-07T18:24:00.001+10:00

After having finally finished my very long-term crochet project (my very first granny square/hexagon rug!) I am soooooooo ready to move onto something new! I'm very proud of my beautiful blanket, but crocheting 98 hexagons became somewhat monotonous after a while. I'll post pictures of my rug once I've finished the terminally boring and annoying task of weaving in the ends... Lesson learned to do that as I finish each piece instead of having 300 odd tails (literally) to sew in when I just want to celebrate finishing!

I've done a few different winter hat projects in-between hexagons... Including owls and even a cow! I have grand plans of creating a bright and wonderful cardigan for my girl. And just for something different I'm wanting to have a go at making a couple of things for myself! To start off with, I decided to have a go at some very cute granny square slippers, which I found on pinterest (which by the way, have you joined yet? If you need an invite let me know. It's a truly wonderful place, if a little addictive...) We've had a few hours in the car this weekend - about 9 all up - so I was able to get a good start, and finished them off last night while enjoying spending time with my lovely Nana and Pop.

I am in love! They were so easy, and such a satisfying project, I'm already thinking of people who might appreciate them as gifts for Christmas or birthdays.

I miss sewing, and miss being able to work on my little business, but between working full time and trying to squeeze every spare second into being a wife and a mama, there just aren't enough hours in the day. Plus I kind of don't have a working sewing machine at the moment. I think that's why I'm enjoying crochet so much at the moment, because it's easy to pick up when I'm watching tv in the evenings, or if we're driving around the countryside (obviously not while I'm driving!). Another plus is that there's no cleaning up to be done when I'm finished for the night. Either way, whatever craft it is that I'm doing at the time, I think my favorite thing is that awesome feeling out of having made something out of what was practically nothing. One day it's a couple of balls of left over yarn, the next I'm wearing a pair of gorgeous slippers!

So keep an eye out, because you just never know... Maybe my little Facebook and Madeit shops will be restocked yet, and maybe you'll be able to have some of these super cute slippers too!

Alive...

2011-08-01T21:49:00.001+10:00

Just so you know.... I am alive. I have heaps to tell you. Eleventy-billion photos and stories of our very first family holiday to beautiful Melbourne...
Building projects... Crafts I've been working on... I've been a busy girl!!

My problem is that I have the kind of job where I sit in front of a computer pretty much all day long, and when I get home I struggle to find the motivation to get back in front of one again.

The good news is, we have this fabulous new toy... A little thing called an iPad (yay!!!!!) with this nifty little app called blogpress, and it's super handy for sitting on the couch, watching my favorite tv show (Chuck, in case you were wondering) and blogging... Which is exactly what I am doing right now! So with any luck, you might see a little bit more of me!

And I'll get to working on that Melbourne post, before I forget all my stories.

For now, I'll leave you with this photo of my gorgeous girl, who is getting cleverer and more beautiful by the minute... And boy, you should hear her talk! Enjoy!

Point + Shoot: the dream...

2011-07-31T17:28:00.002+10:00

My family has the most beautiful block of land, out in the countryside. One day, in a few years or so, we all plan to build out there (and I really can't wait!)

For now though, it's still mostly bush... And the males in the family spent the weekend clearing a little spot big enough for camping, and sitting and dreaming of the future. They built a little hut, and dug a brilliant fire pit. one day soon, when the weather is warmer, I might even be enticed to spend a night...

This weekend, though, us girls enjoyed the comfort of our surrogate grandparent's home next door, with cups of tea and TimTams and warm beds with flannelette sheets.

I love dreaming this dream, and I'm looking forward to the day when it becomes a reality!

Have Money: Must Spend

2011-07-13T11:38:00.000+10:00

Well.. not really. But... after spending five years as a 'uni bum' I am very much enjoying reaping the rewards of my labour. It's nice to have more than $5 left over after paying rent, bills, fuel and food. That I can throw out the jeans I've been wearing for the last 4 years and buy myself a new pair... That my very awesome husband and I can afford to go out on dinner dates!

And it's nice that when our old faithful commodore was on its last 'legs' (so to speak), we could actually consider applying for a loan to buy an {almost brand} new car without having to worry about the loan person flat-out laughing in our face as he kicked us out the door.

So when it came to be that our car needed new tires, new rego, and something that would stop it from not starting at the most inconvenient of times, we did something that we have never done before: we went car shopping!

We test drove a number of cars, talked to the Powers That Be about our budget, convinced them to trade in our car... and ended up with a very lovely dark metallic grey 2010 Kia Rondo. I know, I'd never heard of it before either. But I have to say, I'm definitely a very big fan. 2010 means that it is close enough to brand new but didn't depreciate as soon as we drove it out of the lot; that it still has 4.5 years of warranty and most importantly, it still has that brand-new car smell. It's also a model that was some kind of demo given to the executives to drive very minimally, and so only had about 8000k on the clock!

{image}

{this isn't ours, but it looks exactly the same}

Mayana calls it 'Our Flash Car' (literally, every time she sits in it that's what she says), and I must say, Peter and I both agree with her. We indeed do feel very flash.

Love it!

masterchefing

2011-06-20T19:27:00.001+10:00

Yesterday, we had an absolutely marvellous afternoon with some of our very dear friends, Steve and Tanya. We are all a tad addicted to Masterchef, and all enjoy dabbling in the kitchen.

As such, we decided that the after-church-lunch we had planned should be turned into a cooking and eating extravaganza.

We carefully chose our five (!!!!) courses… and don’t worry, we didn’t eat them all at once. Our cooking and culinary adventure lasted about nine hours or more.

We did our shopping, and organised our groceries by dish.

First on the menu was a delicious cheese and spinach cob dip, made by Tanya. It was so yummy and we were clearly so hungry after church that it was the one dish that didn’t get any photos. Sorry! But rest assured, it was delicious, and we polished off the entire thing.

Peter got the rice ready for the sushi, and it cooled while we ate our cob.

After Tanya cleaned up from round one, we got started on the sushi.

Our sushi was filled with chicken schnitzel, capsicum, carrot, avocado, mayo and pickled ginger.

Peter was our sushi expert, and he trained us all in the art of sushi-rolling. We all got to have a go.

Once the sushi was rolled and resting, Steve and Tanya got started on their famous chicken tandoori pizza.

Steve was in charge of the dough, and Tanya worked on the toppings.

The chicken was marinated in a mix of tandoori paste and natural yoghurt. Instead of tomato paste spread on the base, it was a mixture of mango chutney and natural yoghurt. Divine.

The pizza is topped with the chicken, zucchini, capsicum and ladyfinger bananas. The banana was such a great compliment to all the flavours, and helped to take a bit of the bite out of the spicy tandoori.

While the pizza was cooking, we cleaned up, chatted, and played some songs on the piano.

Mayana amused herself by watching ABC Kids and playing with Bono.. who is a border collie x great dane. Mayana loves him, even though he is taller than her!

Once the pizza was done, it was time for round two…

We ate the pizza and sushi together, with a side of Jamie Oliver salad.

At that point, we were very full, and came to the realisation that we probably should have been eating miniature portions. Oops.

Tanya, Peter, Mayana and I took Bono for a walk, while Steve got started on stage three: Maggie Beer’s roast chicken, as featured on Masterclass a few weeks ago.

Dinner was delicious. Steve did a fantastic job on the chicken. It was perfectly seasoned and mouth-wateringly moist. He served it with parsnip mash and roasted garlic. Yum!

You’d think by this time we would have been stuffed to the brim. Well, we kind of were, but we’d been talking about and looking forward to dessert all day long. So we let our food settle for an hour or so, then I got started on dessert.

I came up with a very fabulous concoction which I named, “S’more French Toast”. Which basically is a french toast sandwich, with chopped cadbury chocolate and marshmallows inside of it. I served it with a very yummy orange syrup.

It was very delicious (even if I do say so myself).

After that, we sat very still for a very long time. Then, when we could move again, we hugged Steve and Tanya and thanked them for such a wonderful afternoon/evening, and rolled ourselves home.

Steve and Tanya are just about to take off on a 6-month travelling adventure, but when they come home, I can’t wait to do it again!

Impromptu Crafting

2011-06-20T18:11:00.001+10:00

We had the most lovely afternoon of impromptu crafting last week.

Mayana brought her basket downstairs and we filled it with flowers and leaves and other pretties from the garden.

We took our goodies upstairs and organised all of our pieces.

Next, we rolled out some contact, sticky side out. Then we went to work sticking down our pretty flowers and leaves.

Mayana had such a good time. She kept exclaiming, “We making stuff together! We all playing together!” Something about the three of us all sitting down together working on a project really made her happy.

Then we carefully picked up our artwork, and stuck it onto our front window.

It looks so beautiful with the sun shining through the colourful leaves and flowers.

It looks so beautiful, and I wonder how long it will be before the colours start to fade. I don’t really mind though, because then we can just do it all again!

{quality time}

2011-06-20T17:54:00.001+10:00

{image}

Sometimes being a working mother is really hard. I get so jealous of my husband being able to spend all of his time with our girl. She is at the most wonderful age, where she is so inquisitive and clever and discovering new things all of the time. I’m totally blown away watching her learn and she amazes me every day. She’s talking oodles now, and I love our time in the afternoon when she tells me about her day, and we go outside and chase the chooks together or play games or rice or whatever else she wants to do.

But boy, do I miss her. I’m so glad it’s holidays soon, because my heart has just about had enough of being away from her so much.

I’m trying to make sure that our time together… after school and on weekends… really counts. I make a point of trying to make memories with her, and of her because this is all just going way too fast. The biggest part of who I am is a Mama, and I’m struggling so much with the fact that that part of me is being so neglected. Thank the lord I’m a teacher and I get to have a couple of weeks of full time doses of Mayana every couple of months, or I think I’d drown.

Life is good, my work is good… but sometimes, my heart aches just a little too much.

Visitors

2011-06-20T17:39:00.001+10:00

Firstly, apologies for being so absent. Work has been hectic, crazy, busy, insane and exhausting. And blogging has been one of the first things to be neglected. It was that or Mayana, and I’m not really wanting to be in the running for worst parent of the year award…

Last weekend, it was the drizzling and cold and miserable… weather-wise at least. In my house it was fun and loud and laughing and music and friends. We had visitors! So many that they had to be spread out across my house and my sister’s house – for sleeping purposes anyway.

It was so much fun.

We had coffee at a new coffee shop.

We talked and enjoyed each other’s company.

Mayana sipped her *FREE* babycino. Not many places do them for free anymore!

Took ridiculous photos as only our family can.

And the boys attempted planking.

We walked the streets and poked around the very cool 2nd hand shops here, we ate lots of awesome food, including a lasagne that my dad and my husband made completely from scratch that stood about 25cm high. Man it was good. We walked the 1km pier at our nearby beach town.

Oh. And we applied for a loan for a new car. Must remember to write more about that later.

We did so many other fun things, but I was so caught up in the fun that I didn’t manage to take too many photos.

I love long weekends. And I love having visitors to spend them with.

The Cupboard of my Dreams

2011-06-06T20:34:00.001+10:00

So you might remember a while ago that I was trying to convince my husband that we desperately needed the delightful 1940’s style retro pantry cupboard from a local second hand store.

A few weeks ago, the day before payday, I finally got him onside. I went to work, and he went to purchase the cupboard of my dreams.

That afternoon, he picked me up from work with a sad, dejected look on his face.

“It was gone, wasn’t it.” I said.

“I’m sorry, someone had already bought it,” he replied.

“Oh”

I tried not to dwell on it but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t incredibly disappointed. I REALLY wanted that cupboard. But it obviously wasn’t meant to be.

The next day, my darling picked me up from work, and was in more of a hurry to get me inside than usual.

I walked up the stairs, through the door, and there, before my eyes was this:

My beautiful, dream cupboard. Yup. My husband had lied to me. What a lovely, lovely lie! I think this is probably the second-best surprise he has every pulled off for me (the first being his proposal).

From there, we spend a week or two with paint chips blue tacked to the cupboards, trying to decide which colour to paint it.

Eventually, we chose our favourite shade, and the perfect new handles, and one evening we finally got to work with the sanding and the painting. Even Mayana helped out!

The doors came off and we went to work!

I was so excited the whole time we were painting. Pete couldn’t stop laughing at me.

After 3 coats, we were happy.

And here it is. My very beautiful, retro kitchen cabinet.

My dream cupboard:

Isn’t it wonderful!!

My husband ROCKS!

Point + Shoot: I {heart} our back yard!

2011-06-06T19:30:00.001+10:00

We had a lazy weekend… well apart from the 4ish hours I spent supervising the SAT exam, which ~~may or may not have been~~ was the absolute most boring four hours of my life! At least I got paid for it!

Anyway… the afternoon was lovely. We got fish and chips from our local take out and whiled away the glorious afternoon picnicking and enjoying our beautiful backyard.

Taking self-family portraits in the afternoon sunshine…

Practicing our sweet flying skills…

Working on my new scarf…

And quietly giggling at Mayana’s futile attempts to cuddle Nanna Joy and Aunty Judy (the poor loves)…

How was your weekend? Why not head on over and play along at Sunny + Scout?

New Feature

2011-06-06T18:31:00.000+10:00

Hello!
I hope you have had a lovely weekend. I sure did. More on that later.

I just wanted to let you know that I have created a new feature on Live. Love. Create. Imagine...
If you have a little look up the top there, just below my header, you will see that I have a new page link, "Free Printables". Thanks to the wonderful Talia who directed me to a free hosting service, I have made available the toilet training charts I have been using with Mayana. I would love for you to be able to use them too! I've doctored them a bit, so they don't have Maysi's name on them anymore, and I have options for girls and for boys, as well as two stages of toilet training. So go on and have a look... I'm pretty proud of myself!

And stay tuned, because I've been getting a bit creative on the old computer lately, making some fun educational -type things to do with my girl, so you never know what else will pop up under that page!!

Let me know how you go with it.

Zoey x

scarfing!

2011-05-30T19:38:00.001+10:00

Recently, Kim from petit pas did a guest post on my friend Talia’s blog. It was a tutorial on how to make your own t-shirt scarf, and I was inspired.

So today, I hit the op-shops and came across the perfect shirt, a very large jersey cotton men’s shirt with no side seams for $4.50, in red. Wonderful!

The project only took me about 10 minutes. I had to make a few changes to Kim’s tutorial though, because I have no sewing machine at the moment (the beautiful Husqvarna I’ve been baby-sitting for the past 4ish years has gone home to its Mama *sad*).

Whereas Kim cut the strips completely off, I left them all attached. So I cut to about half an inch off the edge. Then I cut a little strip off the left-over piece of t-shirt and tied and knotted it round and round the piece that was joining all of the strips:

I’m happy with the finish, and no sewing! Easy peasy

Here’s my brand new $4.50 cotton jersey scarf:

I quite like it…

What do you think?

point + shoot: Visitors

2011-05-30T18:59:00.001+10:00

We were very lucky this weekend to have our very good friends (and Mayana’s Godparents) Daniel & Katherine visit. We love to spend time with them, especially since they spent the first 2 years of Mayana’s life living in the UK. Mayana loves them and is pleased to now have a real-life relationship with them (as opposed to a skype-based one).

Mayana, of course, had to take them to see the sights in Hervey Bay. So we picked up shells and ate fish and chips and talked and laughed and had an absolute blast.

It was an excellent weekend, and I hope they’ll come again soon!!

You can join in for point+shoot over at Sunny + Scout!

yum yum yum! {Pea & Ham Soup}

2011-05-30T18:51:00.001+10:00

I’m not a huge soup fan. I think it’s the texture and the sameness of every mouthful – but I seem to always get half way through a bowl and then my stomach turns and I can’t handle the thought of another mouthful.

I do have a few exceptions though… number one being soup of the pea & ham variety – and most especially when my Oma cooks it.

Unfortunately I don’t have her recipe (yet) but I did try my hand at pea and ham soup tonight. And I’m pleased to say, it turned out to be most delicious (though not quite so delicious as Oma’s of course).

It was super easy – I did it in my slow cooker but I’m sure it would be just as good in a saucepan on the stove. This is what I did:

Rinse a packet of dried split peas.
Chop up 2 carrots, 2-3 sticks of celery + 2 mediumish onions.
Put the vegies in the slow cooker, and sit a smoked ham hock on top.
Pour in 2 litres of liquid. I used 1 litre of salt-reduced vegetable stock and 1 litre of water.
Put on the lid and cook all day.
About a 30 minutes to an hour before you eat, remove the ham hock and cut the meat into smallish chunks.
Use a stick blender to puree the soup, then put the pieces of ham back into the soup.
Cook a little longer with the lid off to help it thicken a little.
Serve with garlic bread!

If you have trouble eating it with a spoon, a straw is always a good option!

A Day at the Show

2011-05-27T17:13:00.001+10:00

I LOVE going to town shows. And I had heard that the one in our new town was actually quite good. So we decided to make good use of the show holiday and actually… erm… go to the show!

When we had been telling Kami (my mum) about this on her spontaneous visit last Sunday afternoon, she told Mayana that she would give her some money – to have a game on the clowns and buy a show bag. We didn’t think Maysi was listening because she didn’t respond. But the next morning when Mayana woke up, she said: “Kami buy Na-na some money for show. Gonna play clowns and buy bag”. She’s full of surprises that kid!

She’s been excited about it all week… not only about the clowns and the bag, but the fact that there were going to be animals there too, and best of all… other kids!

Today was the day, Mayana was elated. I’m pleased to say that the show more than lived up to her expectations. She. Loved. It.

She had her game with the clowns (and won a bright orange stuffed whale)

She bought a packet of white chocolate frogs. I hope she forgets about them. They’re really yummy.

She bought the Wiggles Showbag she’s been dreaming about all week (thanks Kami & Opa!)It’s a pretty cool showbag.. lots of cool educational-type bits and pieces that aren’t crappy in quality, plus a lunchbox and drink-bottle and NO LOLLIES!

She got to pat a really big cow. The animals at the show made her very happy. For some reason, she had in her head that she was going to see pigs at the show. Only problem is they don’t show pigs at this show. And she was kind of insistent. By a stroke of pure fate, at the moment when she started to crack the sads because Mummy had said there were no pigs, we walked past a small arena where a PIG RACE was about to begin! That totally made her day.

And then we found the animal nursery. And she pretty much thought she had died and gone to heaven. This goat was eating straight out of Mayana’s hand, which she thought was absolutely hilarious.

Nanna-Joy and Aunty Judy don’t let Mayana cuddle them (which is unsurprising really, Mayana kind of kills with kindness, if you know what I mean), so this was a pretty special moment for her. Oh, and that absolutely dripping-with-cuteness crown was what she got from a lucky dip.

Yes, Mayana was a HUGE fan of the show.

And she was asleep before we even got out of the carpark…

Ps. One of the most exciting things about the show for me was realising that we were walking right beside Governor General Quentin Bryce and her entourage (which by the way included a guy who was wearing two fairly hefty guns under his jacket and one of those spy earpieces with the curly cord that goes down the back of your neck).

Pete may or may not have semi-stalked her to take a sneaky picture ~~for me~~.

Cool huh!

Checking in on the big girl.

2011-05-27T16:43:00.001+10:00

It’s nearly been two weeks since that auspicious day when Mayana gave up her beloved dummy and became a big girl.

I am SO proud of her! She cried for her dummy at the afternoon sleep time of that Monday, and has only asked for it once since then. I just pretended like I didn’t know what she was talking about, and she just shrugged and cuddled Stella instead. I honestly cannot believe how EASY it was for her to get rid of the dummy (she seemed so dependent on it), and I’m so glad we made the decision to go cold-turkey with it.

Maysi got to go shopping for some big girl presents when she threw her dummies away (that was the deal). This is what she chose:

A big girl Tinkerbelle cup; a Wiggles toothbrush, and a big girl book about going to the toilet (are you sensing a theme here?).

Our next step in this journey to Big Girl is to get past this toilet training hurdle. Mayana has been partly toilet trained for some time now, but she just hasn’t clicked over to no more nappies. Admittedly we may not have been committed enough to it, but we’re really trying to get more on top of it. When you do put her in “Nudey-bums” (her self-concocted word for undies), she is usually quite good, but you do have to be reminding and asking her a lot (which I know is completely normal). I think having Easter away and slacking off a bit and just using nappies because it was easier has taken us a few steps backward. But we’re ready to jump right forward… so we’re trying this:

This chart is blu-tacked to the bathroom wall, and every time she goes to the toilet she gets a star (two for number twos!). When she lands on a balloon, she gets a lucky-dip prize. The prizes include stickers, a colouring book, a reading book, a pair of slippers and a matchbox car – only she doesn’t know what’s in Mummy’s Special Present Bag of course.

So far, it has been quite a motivating tool. We are up to seven stars, and I think once she’s been able to pick out that first present her motivation will probably increase quite significantly. I am very much looking forward to not buying anymore nappies, and to not changing anymore of her increasingly stinky nappies. So cross your fingers for us that something clicks soon! (And that Pete can stay committed to putting her on the toilet every half hour through the day while I’m at work…)

Also, I would love to put my potty prize chart up as a free printable (minus the Mayana of course), if anyone could give me any hints on where I can host the PDF file?

I’d love to hear some of your toilet training stories and tricks!!

Country Girl

2011-05-25T21:47:00.002+10:00

Country Girl by pezoma featuring leather boots

Although I'm a long time stalker of Danimezza's Polyvore challenge, I've never participated before. But tonight, I decided to join in for a couple of reasons:

1) as a super sneaky procrastination technique... I really should be doing some work right now.

2) Because it's more interesting than watching The Origin right now (ahem.. go Queensland.. or whatever)

3) as a die-hard McLeod's Daughters fan, this week's them inspired me.

So here it is, my very first attempt at a Polyvore challenge.

my {very} beautiful family

2011-05-23T21:07:00.001+10:00

After Tjalara’s gorgeous wedding, my family decided to take advantage of the wonderful afternoon sun and the lovely countryside and take some impromptu family portraits…

Here are some of my favourites:

Methinks I need to buy some more photo frames…

Point + Shoot: Getting My Craft On

2011-05-23T18:58:00.002+10:00

I unearthed my crafting mojo this weekend. I whipped up two very cute handmade items, of which I am very proud:

This very cute cowgirl skirt for Mayana, complete with lace trim, very cute belt loops and the most gorgeous cowboy print panel.

And this awesome pin cushion, which I love. I got a set of six of these very lovely brown cups and saucers for $2.00 at the Salvos. Cute idea, no?

Play along with Point + Shoot over at Sunny + Scout It’s easy!

Make your own Mayo… (Seriously, do it now!)

2011-05-21T19:52:00.001+10:00

I’ve posted before about how since we’ve had our own chooks laying our very own delicious fresh eggs, I’ve been experimenting with some egg based cooking… pasta, mayo etc…

And today, I’d like to show you how darn easy it is to make your own delicious Mayonnaise! It’s SO yummy and only takes about 5 minutes!

For the basis of your mayo, you will need one egg and one cup of oil.Some recipes say to just use the egg yolk, but I actually find it yummier with the whole egg (plus who can be bothered separating the egg, and I never know what to do with the leftover white!).

Ooh look at that amazingly yellow fresh home-laid free range egg yolk! Have I mentioned how much I love having laying hens?

Make sure you use a really light tasting oil. The first time I made it, I used extra virgin olive oil and it was super overpowering. Now I use extra olive oil and it’s perfect. You can also use something like canola or sunflower or vegetable oil. Whatever floats your boat.

These are the other ingredients you will need for your mayo:

From left:

* Red wine vinegar. I’m pretty sure you could use other types – maybe not plain old white or brown though I could be wrong. Next time I plan to experiment with balsamic.

* Salt. Let’s face it, salt makes everything taste better.

* Lime or lemon juice. I usually use lemon but this time I went for something a little different. You really need something acidic like it though to cut through the oil, and it makes it taste a whole lot better.

* Garlic. This probably isn’t necessary, but in this family we love garlic so much that we go through a jar of minced garlic probably fortnightly.

* Dijon mustard. This is a pretty important ingredient. When I made my first batch, I really didn’t want to put it in because I don’t like the stuff. At all. BUT I had to concede that it just doesn’t taste like mayo without it. And it doesn’t make the mayo taste mustardy at all. So please put it in.

The first thing you need to do (after you crack your egg) is to put a little slosh of red wine vinegar in with the egg, and a couple of twists of the salt grinder. I don’t actually measure anything (except for the oil) when I’m making the mayo, but I reckon I put a bit less than a tablespoon of vinegar.

Beat up your egg. I use a stick-blender, but I have done it by hand with a whisk before and it doesn’t take too long.

Then you need to add your oil. I have heard that when you’re doing it with a stick blender you can add it all at once. I wouldn’t recommend it because the one time I tried that my mayo didn’t thicken at all and I had to tip it down the sink. Epic fail.

My advice is to add it a little bit at a time. Maybe like a 5th of a cup at a time? Then beat it until it’s combined before you add the next bit.

By the time you’ve added about half of your oil, you’ll find that your mayo has started to thicken and look really mayo-ish.

Once it starts to look thick, you can add your oil more quickly.

The next thing I do is take it out of stick blender jug and put it into a bowl… it’s time to make it taste good!

I use my wonderful flessenlikker (which is Dutch for jar-licker and is a seriously awesome invention.. every kitchen should have one!) to help me scrape every last bit from the jug.

Next, you add your flavoursome ingredients. I usually start off with a squirt of lemon (I know very scientific measurements there), a couple twists of salt, a teaspoon of garlic and a teaspoon of Dijon. I usually end up adding more of everything – especially the Dijon. I think I end up with about 3 teaspoons of that.

You really just need to keep tasting it once you get to this bit. Add something, stir it in, taste it… you’ll know what you need more of and your taste will probably be different to mine anyway.

And that’s it! All done!

I promise you, it’s super easy and once you’ve made it and tasted the real thing you’ll never go back to the bought variety!

Mayana agrees, and won’t let even the smallest amount to go to waste..

According to various sources, homemade mayo should be stored in the fridge and consumed within about a week (though we’ve been known to eat it within a fortnight).

Enjoy!!

point + shoot: newlyweds

2011-05-17T19:07:00.001+10:00

On the weekend, my very lovely friend Tjalara married her prince charming, Kevin.

She made a very beautiful bride, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone glow in quite the way she did…

The wedding was absolutely beautiful, with lots of butterflies and lots of purple. The wedding gown and bridesmaid dresses were all designed and made by the bride’s very talented sister, Rhaman.

Congratulations beautiful Tjalara – I’m so happy for you and love you very much!

(Please pop past Sunny + Scout to join in!)

My very big brave girl

2011-05-16T20:44:00.001+10:00

This morning:

My very big girl threw her dummies IN THE BIN! We had been talking about it for about 10 days now.. counting down the sleeps, and today was the day. She gathered up her many, many dummies, and marched them off to the bin all by herself.

Apparently she was plagued with regret at around naptime today, and our girl did not manage a sleep today without her beloved dummy.

But tonight, with the promise of a shopping tip with Mama tomorrow afternoon for a special big girl present that she can take to bed instead of a dummy, our girl went to sleep with minimal fuss. I’m so proud of her.

winter breakfast

2011-05-16T20:40:00.001+10:00

Porridge (cooked by my marvellous husband, no less), topped with chia seeds, LSA (ground linseed, soy & almond), pepitas (pumpkin seeds), almonds, a dollop of apple puree and a dash of cream.

Oh my.

Can you imagine anything more delicious on a frosty winter’s morning?

Kindle Convert

2011-05-16T20:11:00.001+10:00

I never thought that I would be the girl with the electronic book. I’ve always loved books – the stories in them, the feel of the pages… pretty much everything about them. I never imagined I’d give up the paper variety.

But around the time of my birthday, I decided to some research into e-readers. I discovered the Kindle, and decided that I would love to give it a go. So when my very lovely parents got me one for my birthday, I was thrilled. I LOVE it!

The Kindle is easy to use and easy to read (even in direct sunlight). It isn’t backlit, so doesn’t put extra strain on your eyes. You can make the text bigger and easier to see, and it holds stacks of books. Plus, Amazon has a great range of electronic books, including a lot of the wonderful Christian fiction that I love to read. Best of all, e-books are so much cheaper!!

Currently on my Kindle I have 11 books, 3 dictionaries and the entire Anne of Green Gables series. Anne of Green Gables was the first thing I bought. The entire series for $1.99. You can’t imagine how happy that made me.

I love that I can carry it around in my handbag – it weights next to nothing – and pull out a book at any time. I also love that when I get to the end of Anne of the Island, I don’t have to get out of my warm bed to go to my book shelf to try and find Anne of Windy Willows… because it’s right there at my fingertips. I love that I don’t have to have a stack of books next to my bed anymore to suit my mood… they’re all there, filed up in my pencil-thin Kindle. I LOVE it! I think the only down side is that I’m not brave enough to take it in the bath… so paper books have to fulfil my need for long bubbly baths with books.

I also made it a very cute little home to live in, just to add to its charm..

Isn’t it he lovely?

Seriously though, if you have been considering buying a Kindle, I would very highly recommend it. I was having a play with some other brand e-readers in s store the other day (they were all more expensive than the Kindle), and in my opinion the Kindle is far superior, in look, feel and technology. The buttons are quicker to respond and the text is clearer. It’s a really great product.

And now I’ll stop going on about it.

But I just thought you should know. I love my new Kindle.

re-branding

2011-05-15T21:30:00.001+10:00

Hello lovely readers.

I have a million blog posts to catch up on – I have lists on my phone and ideas in my head. And far too little time. But in drips and drabs, I will get through them all.

You may have noticed a little change on my blog… (well, unless you’re reading this in a reader, in which case you probably haven’t). I have made a change to my name!

I started thinking about it when I went to the Blog Meet, and realised that I felt dorky saying, “I’m Zoey from Ramblings of a Wife and Mama” – partly because it took forever to say, and because I don’t want to be thought of as a rambly blogger, and also because I know that there are quite a number of blogs hanging around out there that contain the words ‘ramblings’, ‘Mama’ and ‘wife’ in the title.

Plus, I’m not *just* a wife and mama, and I try to blog about so much more. So I wanted a new name that was more me.

So, welcome to “Live. Love. Create. Imagine…”

The place where I blog about the life I live, the things and people and Lord that I love, the things I create and dream and imagine about…
Apart from the name, not much else has changed!

So if you have my blog as a link on your blog, would you pretty please be kindly enough to change my name?

Thank you darlings!

Point + Shoot: Maysi the cleaning lady

2011-05-09T21:47:00.001+10:00

I hope she’s always this eager to help with chores!

If you want to join in for Point + Shoot, pop into my lovely cousin Louise’s blog… it’s easy peasy!

Mother’s Day

2011-05-08T18:49:00.001+10:00

Happy Mother’s Day to all wonderful mothers!

I had a very lovely day with my favourite girl and boy.

This morning, I was awoken by a very lovely little voice wishing me a, “Happy Mummy’s day Mummy!”
And a tray of delicious poached eggs with bacon and a cappuccino… in bed! Oh how I love my husband! It was so delicious that it was all gone before I registered the fact that I hadn’t taken a photo! Oh well… he’ll just have to make it for me again!

Mayana had chosen me some lovely potted herbs and a great big bunch of flowers for Mothers Day, although she got a bit confused and started singing Happy Birthday to me.

Mayana also made me a beautiful card. She is fascinated by letters at the moment, and is become quite good at writing the letter ‘M’. She writes it a number of times in a row and tells us that it says, “Mayana Joy Shanae”

Our church had a fellowship service in a park just up the road from us, so we walked down to it and had a very lovely morning. Our pastor had asked me to speak about motherhood from a young mum’s perspective.

I talked about how Motherhood has taught me some amazing lessons already, about trusting in God, and about the father-heart of God. I also spoke about how Peter and I are bringing up our daughter in the ways of God, and how I see my role as a mother in relation to the parable of the talents. How I want to invest into my children’s lives, and to have God say to me, “Well done, good and faithful mother… I have entrusted these children to you and you have been faithful to me.”

Preparing for sharing my little message got me feeling very sentimental, remembering the days of my pregnancy and those early months of Mayana. What joy she has brought to us since her very conception!

After church, Mayana napped and I lost myself in the world of Kate Morton… (more on that soon!). When she woke up we went to buy some pots to plant my herbs in, and whiled away the afternoon in the back garden.

I have had a very lovely Mother’s Day, and am feeling very blessed to be the mother of my wonderful daughter and the wife of my incredible husband.

Life is good!

Garage Sale Bargains

2011-05-08T18:05:00.001+10:00

I love going to garage sales. We have learned that they’re only worth going to if you get up early. If you go after say about 8.30am, chances are there will be nothing that great left.

So this Saturday, when Miss Mayana decided to ignore the whole Saturday Is For Sleeping In rule, we decided to get up, and check out some garage sales. And I’m so glad we did!

We found some excellent bargains this weekend…

This very cute retro 1960’s-ish tunic dress was only 50c!

These books were only 10c each! One is a picture book about an Elephant who can’t find his belly button, and one is a very cool crochet pattern book from 1977.

Mayana chose these ducks. Who knows why, but they only cost her 50c for the pair, and they made her very happy.

Peter also bought a 9kg gas bottle which is about two-thirds full for $20 and a set of two handsaws for $2. He was also very happy because now he can use his barbeque, and cut up the logs in the back yard for the fire.

We also visited a second hand shop in town where I found a little gem that I can’t blog about until a certain person’s birthday has arrived, and fell in love with a very gorgeous kitchen pantry circa 1950s. I want it very much. It’s $125 and I’m pretty sure I’m going to make Peter go and buy it for me tomorrow. It will look so beautiful in my house, and will also be much more practical than the cabinet we’re currently using for a pantry. Plus I’ve always wanted a cabinet like it. It’s kind of like this one:

Except it has a different design of cupboards and drawers, and the top cupboards are glass. It’s in much better condition than the one in that photo too. Oh I want it so very much!!!

And all of this before 10am!!! What a successful Saturday morning

Do you go garage saling?

Mayana, my love

2011-05-04T20:41:00.001+10:00

My girl is such a delight to me.

I miss her so much now that I’m working full time. Our afternoons are so cherished, and our weekends are adventures. I’m so glad that at least Peter gets to be with her through the day, and it isn’t a stranger accumulating all the special memories of this special time.

She is talking so much now, and has no problems communication what she wants or how she feels. She’s got a very cheeky sense of humour, and a well developed stubborn streak (must be the Dutch in her!)

She loves to sing lately, and her nursery rhymes are of the Readers Digest variety. For example,

“Raining pouring,
old man donk head morning”

and

“All cows sleeping
Sun gone to bed
Up jump scarecrow and said
I’m a
Dingle dangle flippy floppy hat
Shake hands shake feet like that”

She loves to sing “twinkle twinkle little star” (and gets most of the words right for that one, “Yes Jesus loves me” (excpet she sings it ‘Yes Jesus loves YOU"’) and “Oh happy day washed sins away” (the Tim Hughs version, not the Sister Act one).

She joins in any song that’s playing, even if she just picks up a word or two and repeats it over and over.

Mayana is constantly ‘cooking’ in her play kitchen, and gets into our kitchen whenever she can manage it. She loves to sit on the bench and ‘help’ when we cook dinner. The other day we heard her get out of bed when we were trying to sleep in. I found her in the kitchen wearing rubber gloves, reaching up to the sink trying to wash up.

She constantly asks us, “What’s that noise?”, or “Who’s that?”. She usually knows the answer, she just likes to be told.

If Mayana sees a phone, she asks to look at photos. She can do things on my phone that I didn’t even know my phone did. Peter always puts his phone on flight mode when she plays with it now, because she is quite adept at making phone calls these days.

When we dress her in the morning, she always asks, “Mayana look beautiful?”
Of course, she always does. And she knows it! The other day when her Opa called her a Goober-Dag, she very indignantly replied, “No! I a beautiful girl!”

She’s quite happy to give compliments too, and most mornings when I dress for work she looks at me and says, “Oh Mama, you beautiful.”

How I love her!

She’s sure an amazing kid!

Point + Shoot: A very proud day!

2011-05-02T22:46:00.001+10:00

This weekend was a very special one for us.

We officially graduated from university!!!! We donned the gowns and mortar boards, and feeling like we were on the set of a Harry Potter film, received that amazing and all-important piece of paper.

My amazing husband looked so handsome in his academic garb, I told him he should do another degree just so he can wear it again! He received his degree from the Chancellor just before me, and as I watched him walk onto the stage ahead of me, I was so filled with pride I felt ready to burst and had to fight back tears. It’s been one hell of a journey for him, and he’s my absolute hero for getting here!

And then it was my turn! Here I am, being awarded with my Bachelor of Education (Primary & Middle Schooling): With DISTINCTION!!!! What a thrill!!

Very proud education graduates!

Could we smile any bigger? Pete and his proud mum.

Me with my Mama & Papa. So happy!

My lovely brother and sister came to watch us graduate.

It’s been a long road, sometimes hard but oh-so-worth it.

It was indeed, a very proud day.

Easter Adventures

2011-05-02T22:27:00.001+10:00

Apologies for being the slackest of bloggers: brace yourself for a catchup!

I hope you had a very happy and meaningful Easter this year, and were able to take some time reflecting on the real Reason for the season – the death and resurrection of our Saviour.

This year, we made our annual pilgrimage to our beloved Easterfest. It was my 12th festival, Pete’s 10th, and Mayana’s 3rd (impressive considering she’s only two years old!).

My little rocker!

Easterfest 2011 here we come!!

The lineup this year was awesome… old favourites like Paul Colman Trio and Newworldson, and huge headline acts like Switchfoot and Naturally Seven! Amazing.

The ever-amazing Paul Colman Trio

Maysi and Opa

My favourite discovery this year was Canadian band Article One. I think they came last year, but I don’t remember them (not sure how I missed them!!). This year they were on Mainstage and man were they amazing! The highlight of the band for me is their incredible violinist. I’ve never seen anything like it. Google or YouTube Article One and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.

Article One!

My favourite home-grown discovery this year was ‘Cordial Factory’. Hailing from Melbourne they feature amazing harmonies and quirky instruments like ukuleles, banjos and glockenspiels. Scrumptious.

My ‘Boo-ful Bu-fly’

It was the first festival in five years that we had to pack and organise accommodation for. We were lucky enough to do a house-swap with some Toowoomba friends, and had a lovely warm home with comfortable beds to come to every night. And let me tell you, we were especially grateful for them on Saturday night!

You may have read or seen something about the craziness that ended up being Saturday night at Easterfest. Long story short, one minute we (along with 20,000 other people) were enjoying a wonderful Peter Furler (ex Newsboys frontman) concert, looking forward to Newworldson who were coming up next.. on a beautiful, cool night, under the twinkling stars.

Peter Furler had the crowd eating out of his hand!

The next minute, humongous raindrops started to spatter us. Just a few at first, then heavier. Then the stars were gone and the heavens opened. And boy did it rain. It didn’t take long before we realised that any attempts to remain dry were futile. I passed Mayana to my sister’s friends, who were actually managing to stay mostly dry underneath a large tarp. Newworldson started playing, and we abandoned the pathetic ‘shelter’ of the picnic blanket, and embraced the rain. We love Newworldson and nothing was stopping us dancing. Suddenly, there was no part of my body that was dry. And there was inches of water running through my shoes. And I was standing on top of a hill! It was freezing and the rain felt icy. My sister’s friends took Mayana to find my sister who was hopefully somewhere drier. We stuck it out for a few more songs before we started to shiver. It was just too cold, and even though the highly anticipated Switchfoot was set to play next, we knew we had to go.

We hurriedly gathered all our things together… everything was completely soaked and it dawned on us anew how incredibly heavy this rain was. We made our way out of the mainstage, and found ourselves in ankle deep water, at the top of the amphitheatre. As we were carried with the crowd the water got deeper. We made our way down to the main pavilion, where we had to exit. Someone frantically yelled at us that we couldn’t go through… the roof of the huge structure was filling with water and about to collapse – it had been evacuated. We got told to exit through the fence, and had to walk around past another few venues. At this point, I realised that I was no longer with my husband. I was with my mum, aunty, sister and my brother’s friend. I didn’t know where Mayana was. Mum told us to go to the car, while she and my aunty looked and waited for the missing ones.

We walked through the festival grounds, and as we went the water got deeper and deeper until I found it rushing about my knees. I was terrified and freezing. We got out of the park in a slight haze of panic, and walked down the street in shin deep water until we finally made it to the place where our car was parked. We stripped off and put on drier jumpers that we had shoved in our soaking backpacks. It was so cold! I couldn’t stop shaking, though most of that was anxiety. I was so sick with worry, not knowing where my baby was. I knew that our friends would keep her safe, and that they would most likely have gotten her to my sister, but we couldn’t contact anyone, and it was still raining and there were sirens… it was nerve-wracking to say the least.

Eventually my brother appeared, and then my dad. He had left Pete in a safe and dry carpark with all of our things, but hadn’t seen anyone else. Then my mum finally go through to my phone – she had been separated from everyone else and ended up on her own… waiting near the entrance hoping to see the rest of our family as they went past. It was chaotic!

We waited, prayed, tried to get warm. We watched over the balcony, waiting for familiar faces. Eventually we saw a group of people walking towards us, and realised that it was the rest of our group. And there was my sister, holding my girl. Phew! I literally felt waves of relief rush over me, and my heart resumed its normal rhythm. I don’t think I’ve ever hugged my girl so tight. And my awesome sister had kept her absolutely dry and safe. Amazing.

We were all safe. We drove home, got into dry clothes, made hot drinks and compared our experiences. We were all in quite a bit of shock and couldn’t believe what had happened. We checked facebook to try and get an idea of what was happening at the park. The main pavilion had partially torn and collapsed, but the rain had stopped and the water went away quickly – as it usually does with flash flooding. We were all amazed that with over 20,000 people trying to get out of a potentially very serious emergency situation, there was no mass panic or hysteria. Somehow, there were no serious injuries, and the entire crowd came out of the festival safely that night.

We woke up the next morning to the most gorgeous day – you would never have dreamed the chaos of the night before! Facebook informed us that the festival in the park was cancelled due to the flood damage, but the amazing Easterfest team were rescheduling many of the bands to venues throughout the city.

Church service at a local Irish pub!

Despite the massive change in plans, Sunday ended up being amazing. There were many bands playing throughout the city, and a huge main event featuring Naturally Seven, Paul Colman Trio and Newworldson right in the middle of town!! It was awesome.

Our favourite jazz band, The Chris Poulsen Trio, was rescheduled to play at a local cafe.

We were also treated to a wonderful performance by the Melbourne Gospel Choir at a local church that evening.

The organisers most certainly made the very best out of pretty awful situation, and I think they should be applauded.

As always, Easterfest this year was an amazing weekend, and this year – for many more reasons than just the flood, it was a very memorable event.

I can’t WAIT for Easterfest 2012!!!

26 seconds

2011-05-02T20:11:00.001+10:00

Did you know, that every twenty-six seconds, somewhere in the world, a child is abducted… from their family, from the streets… stolen and trafficked into slavery, most often into the sex trade. Some are even sold to brothels by their own families. Little girls, as young as my own sweet and innocent daughter, taken away from everything they know to be safe, and thrust into a world where they are forced to perform unspeakable acts, and be used by dozens or hundreds of adult men. As young as two. And there are as many as 2 million children living in a world of child sex slavery right now. In fact, tonight, as I’m writing this, there are 5000 children who are facing their first night in sex slavery. 5000 children who will tonight be raped for the first time. Probably more than once.

I hope that makes you feel sick. I hope it makes you want to cry. I hope it makes you angry.

Most of all, I hope it makes you sick, sad and angry enough to do something about it.

Destiny Rescue is an amazing organisation, whose mission it is to rescue young girls from slavery, and to give them the hope of a safe future. It provides a home, education including vocational training, medical help, counselling and all daily needs. Not only that, but they go into communities and work with underprivileged families and children, running prostitution prevention programs and empowering them by providing education and training which allows them to rise above poverty and despair.

What a mission!

I really want to encourage you to support Destiny Rescue, and to be a part of helping to free these beautiful children from a lifetime of abuse and horror.

You can do this by taking part in the 26 Second challenge. There are a couple of options:

1) you can become a 26 Second partner, by giving $26 each month.

2) You can become a 26 Second member, by giving a one-off donation of $40.

Money from the 26 Second project goes directly to funding the teams who go into brothels and red-light districts to rescue children and young women from a life of sex slavery.

I urge you, please visit the 26 Second Project website, and think and pray about being a part of this cause.

You can also donate in different ways to the Rescue and Prevention programs, or sponsor a child at the Destiny Rescue website.

We can do something so simple and change lives in a big way. No child should have to live this.

Let’s get angry about this. Let’s make a difference.

Point + Shoot: Fired Up

2011-04-19T22:32:00.001+10:00

My very lovely husband has always wanted his very own fireplace, and even though we have now lived in two towns where most homes have one, we still haven’t! Until now…

Ours is more fun that a pot-belly stove or brick fireplace… ours lives outside, and we can sit around on camping chairs and roast marshmallows over it.

Ours was bought from the local recycling centre for only $5.00!!!

We spent evenings this weekend entertaining family around our fire… there’s nothing quite like sitting and talking by the glow of a fire, watching it flicker and crackle.

I can see us spending many winter evenings with friends around our new fireplace.

Yes, my husband is a very happy man this weekend… and I must say the rest of us are quite impressed, too! (Mayana thinks we should eat our dinner at the fire every night… including last night when it was raining cats and dogs!)

After the party

2011-04-19T21:34:00.001+10:00

So once the wonderful blog meet adventure had wound up, we were far to pumped to just go to sleep. We went back to our hotel room and saw this wonderful view…

Which inspired us to take a midnight walk into Southbank to take photos of the beautiful city lights over the river.

Us country bumpkins felt kind of brave wandering around the city in the middle of the night, but it was lots of fun, and we very much enjoyed taking photos and experimenting with our camera.

We walked back to our hotel room and finally went to bed at around 1am. And the really awesome part was that we got to SLEEP IN! It was after 9am when we woke up, and I honestly cannot even remember the last time we managed that. Bliss I tell you.

We strolled back over to Southbank for a beautiful breakfast. Oh how I love breakfast dates. We also treated ourselves to a ride back to the city on the Green Cabs service. It was fun, but reminded me a little of the time that Kirk tries to start a green cabs service in Stars Hollow, only he can’t ride the bike when Rory and Lorelai are in the back. Let’s just say some parts of it were a pretty slow ride!!

We dabbled in some window shopping in the city, stopped off for a favourite drink, and finished off our time in the city with a quick trip to Ikea.

I love visiting the city. I don’t love driving in the city, and I wouldn’t live there, but I do love to visit it.

And I had the most fabulous weekend with my honey!

a weekend in the big smoke

2011-04-11T22:52:00.001+10:00

I love weekends. Especially since I’ve started work. Two delicious days with my two favourite people. This weekend was even better, as it marked the first weekend of my very first real-life holidays… I have officially survived my first term as a teacher! Two and a half weeks of wonderful days to fill with love and fun and memories. And we sure started it with a bang!

We headed to Noosa on Friday after school. Mayana was beside herself at seeing her Kami and Opa. On Saturday, the real adventure began as we made our way to Brisbane. We had a kitchen tea to go to for one of our very lovely friends who is getting married in a month!

After the kitchen tea, we left Mayana to drive back to Noosa with my mum and sisters, and took off for our weekend together. It was quite an adventure. On the Pacific Motorway on the way into the city, we heard an awful noise. At first, I thought there was a heap of motorbike riders about to overtake us, but they didn’t eventuate and it didn’t take us long to realise that the the noise was coming from us!! Praise be to God, we were passing past an emergency stopping bay, which we quickly pulled into. Pete discovered that the tyre had blown! There we were, on the side of the motorway with cars whizzing by at 100+km/hr. Of course the blown tyre was on the driver’s side, so Pete was far too close to those cars for my liking! Luckily, he’s a handy kind of guy and had the tyre changed incredibly quickly – while I stood safely on the other side of the car praying for his safety.

Of course, this meant that we were running terribly late for checking in to our hotel, and to the Blog Meet that I was so looking forward to!

However, we arrived at our hotel eventually and it all turned out to be for the best. When I was checking in, the girl asked me how my evening was and I told her about our highway adventure. She took pity on me and upgraded us to a river view room on the eleventh floor for free!! It was so awesome!

We had about ten minutes to enjoy it, while we hurriedly got ourselves dressed and ready to shoot across the river to the blog meet.

The drive over should have taken less than 5 minutes, but the traffic was manic, and it took over 10 minutes to drive about 500m!! We got there eventually, with a tummy full of butterflies…

The Blog Meet was fantastic. We had the most wonderful night, meeting people, talking, taking silly photos. I barely had any voice left by the end of the night from talking soooo much!

It was lovely to meet people and just click straight away. I thoroughly enjoyed every conversation that I had. Peter and I enjoyed some ‘teacher talk’ with Naomi’s husband Matt, and congratulated Tracy and her husband on their first wedding anniversary!

I loved that my hubby came too, and even mingled! I think he might have even nabbed himself a few more blog followers! The pressure is on for him to post a bit more regularly now.

I was especially chuffed to spend some time with the delightful Amy. She was just as lovely in person as I knew she would be, and we didn’t run out of things to talk about once.

It was also great to see the lovely Talia and her husband, Luke. Talia and I went to the same school, and I thoroughly enjoyed catching up with her.

Everyone had contributed to the goodie bags, and it was so exciting unpacking it and later in the night!

We stayed and talked until nearly 11pm, and had an absolute ball!

Thanks to the lovely Danielle from Hello Owl and Danielle from Danimezza for all their organisation. It was lovely to meet you :)

**stay tuned for part two of our city weekend!

a little bit older (still working on the wiser)

2011-04-11T21:26:00.001+10:00

There’s nothing quite so cute as being woken by your two year old singing ‘Happy birthday to you Mummy’ as she helps you unwrap your presents. It was a lovely way to start my 25th year.

Mayana chose this cute clutch for me all by herself…

I had croissants and cappuccino for breakfast, and rode my brand new bike around the back yard in my nightie.

When I got to work, my lovely sister had decorated my desk with glitter and streamers, which was so awesome!

We had a work dinner on my birthday evening and my colleagues made me feel very spoilt, with cake and flowers. I feel so blessed to be working with such a wonderful team of people.

My very amazing husband, as always, gave me a wonderful birthday week, complete with a birthday banner, balloons and cheesecake. He is truly the best.

I had a very happy birthday, and am looking forward to seeing what 24 has in store for me!

last night of 23

2011-04-04T21:08:00.001+10:00

Tomorrow morning, when I wake up, I will no longer be 23… because tomorrow is my happy birthday!

So, in honour of such things, I thought tonight would be a good time to have a look at how I went on my 24 by 24 list. My initial thought is probably not too great.

But let’s have a look!

~~Finish Uni.~~ Yeah baby!! I nailed that one!
~~Graduate with/maintain my GPA of higher than 6~~. Yes indeedy, I ended up *just* under 6.5
~~Make the most of my prac experiences~~. I’m happy with everything I put into and got out of my prac experiences, and I can clearly see the ways the helped me to grow as a teacher.
~~Get myself an awesome job~~. I have a fabulous job, but I credit God, not myself. Because how that happened was an incredibly amazing God-incidence
Organise something really special for our 5th wedding anniversary. Not so great on this one. We did have a lovely anniversary, but not hugely special. We’re going to make up for it this year with a few nights away, including a trip to Melbourne in the June holidays!
~~Keep making gorgeous things to sell at my madeit shop. See how far I can grow my ‘business’.~~ My little ‘business’ certainly kept me busy last year, and especially in the months between finishing uni and getting a job. Once I feel like I’ve caught up with myself (and the office/craft room is unpacked) I really want to get back into it. I’ll have to do a few less custom orders this time round though, I don’t want to get too much on my plate!
Learn how to knit. Unfortunately I was too busy sewing and crocheting to get onto this one!
~~Make a crochet throw rug~~. I did, and it still takes pride of place on my couch in our lounge room.
Make a crochet ‘granny square’ blanket. I’m working on this one. I’ve made about 56 of 98 squares… though technically they’re hexagons, not squares.
Do swimming lessons with Mayana. FAIL.
Get fitter… lose some weight. I’m getting there… I’ve even started running! My mum had to scrape herself off the floor when I told her that.
Make more time to spend with my husband… to pray and read the Bible together more, and just have general ‘us’ time. Yes and no. I don’t think I’ll feel like we ever have enough time together, and I know we haven’t worked hard enough at deliberately making time.
~~Take time out every day to just play with my daughter~~. I definitely try hard to do this one. Especially now that I’m working full time. Tonight we talked about hearts, and spent some time listening to each other’s hearts beating. Mayana was fascinated by the ‘boom boom’, and kept lifting her shirt up to see what was making the noise!
Keep on top of Mayana’s 365 Journal (remind me to blog about that some time!). Epic. Fail.
Sew Mayana’s flower-girl dress for my sister’s wedding (yes Bethanie, I’ve decided to make it!). Another fail. I got too busy sewing other people’s Christmas presents (and loving it).
~~Read at least 5 books of the Bible.~~ I did this one, I read almost half of the books of the New Testament. Awesome stuff. Reading the Bible makes me journal a lot about the new things I’m understanding. And it makes me want to read and learn more. You should try it some time…
Learn more about photography and editing photos. No time, unfortunately. I have enjoyed playing with my camera, and taking lovely photos though!
Learn more about Blooms Taxonomy and how to apply it to my teaching. I’ve done a little of this, but not near as much as I would like.
~~Try some new and exciting recipes~~. Yes and I have big plans for even more. Can’t wait for Master Chef to start again and grow some inspiration!
Have monthly date nights with my husband – even if it’s just a picnic on the lounge-room floor. Fail! We go well for a couple of months and then not. Now that we’re living so close to my sister though, we really should start using here.. haha
~~Buy an akubra hat. Because secretly I want to look like/be a McLeod’s Daughter.~~ This I did. But I’m not totally happy with it, and am on the lookout for a more perfect one.
~~Run a giveaway on my blog~~. Yes’m I did!
~~Properly be a part of the music team at church~~. I was, for a few months when we were back in Noosa. And I have been asked to join one at our new church here! So I’m going to give myself that one.
Write another song. I’ve started a bit of one off… I have the tune and a few lines of the chorus, but it’s still a work in progress.

So there you go, 12 completely crossed off, and about 5 that are real works in progress. I guess half is a pretty good shot.

I’m pretty happy with the things that I did manage to cross off though! Especially those first few :)

big girl room

2011-04-04T18:35:00.001+10:00

After being in our new home for nearly 11 weeks (really? that long!) we have finally sorted out Mayana’s room properly.

We packed all of her baby toys into a crate and reorganised things and I’m so happy with how it all looks.

She’s actually spending time in there playing now,and loves to read books to her teddies in her cubby house.

We had planned to buy some more shelves to store Mayana’s toys, but after our big clean out we found that we don’t need to.

The ‘playroom’ also had a bit of a makeover. I think the paper lanterns are a nice touch in Mayana’s cute little nook.

more homemade

2011-04-04T18:09:00.001+10:00

What do you get if you whisk together two egg yolks, a whole lot of oil, some vinegar, lemon juice, mustard and add a bulb of roasted garlic? Delicious homemade mayonnaise!

What was good: the garlic. Even just the smell of it cooking. And I promise, not overbearing in the mayonnaise at all.

What was not so good: using extra virgin olive oil. It was just too strong, and much more overpowering than the garlic. Next time I will use a much milder olive oil, or a mix of olive and something less flavoursome.

I’m looking forward to making it again, and experimenting with the flavours. It’s so much fun making things from scratch that you usually buy in packets or jars!

Point + Shoot: Rice Rice Baby

2011-04-04T17:52:00.001+10:00

Part of my role in my job at the moment is rewriting the Prep/Kindergarten curriculum. Crazy right? One of the fun things I get to do is lots of research about Prep-related things, and last week I spent some time studying the many benefits of sensory motor activities. One of my favourites is rice play.

Mayana has had a rice tub for a couple of weeks now, but in my Prep research I found the awesome idea to make rainbow rice. Of course, in the name of research, I had to try it!

It’s very simple. All you do is put some rice in a large ziplock bag (make it about 1/3 to 1/2 full), put in two tablespoons of white vinegar (which helps to set the dye) and a capful of food colouring. Shake and shake and shake until it’s evenly coloured. Spread the rice on a tray, and put it in a very low oven (or in the sun) until it dries out.

The verdict: Huge success… rice play just got even funner!!

If you want to do this as an activity at home, we bought a shallow tub from Big W, and a 5kg bag of rice. Mayana uses the toys pots and cups from her toy kitchen, and a few bits and pieces from our kitchen. We also do fun games like burying the pieces of her peg puzzles, and she digs them out to complete her puzzle. This can keep her busy for at least an hour, and that’s a looooong time for a two year old!

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This is my first ever entry for Point + Shoot, now hosted by my gorgeous cousin Louise over at Sunny + Scout. Go join in!!