Handmade Goodies

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

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!

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

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

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!