Welcoming 2011

2011 .....

Well I have never written my news years resolution down on paper before.  Sure I have always had the usual...

Lose weight / eat more healthy

Have more patience with my kids

Excercise

But when you just make these promises to yourself in your head, it is so much easier to bend or break them, don't you think?

This year hopefully will be a big year, afterall Mike and I plan to make the move up north this year.  So we will both have to be very disciplined if we are to make our plans to come to fruition.

So I am documenting it this time, my record....

1. Back on to a budget, which includes baking more for the kids lunches and not falling short the night before and having to send Mike out down to the very expensive Four Square.
2. Cleaning the Kitchen after dinner, instead of leaving it to the next morning.  If I do it at night I can rope Mike in to help, and then I avoid feeling bitter about doing it by myself the following morning
3. Sticking to my house schedule.  Last time it was written up, we lasted about two weeks... this time it is even more important, since Little J starts school this year and there will be three lots of homework!
4. Start reading books at night to the kids again! Most important... we always did this, but we found it hard to keep up, again because of the homework.
5. Of course, I have to mention.... excercise more! no excuses this time with all the boys at school this year and only Lil Miss and I at home.
6. Stop procrastinating on the business accounts, remember it only makes you feel worse when you leave it to pile up!!!
7. More Mike and me time.  Mum gave Mike and I a night off last time we visited her and it was wonderful!

Now I could make many more new year resolutions, such as fold the laundry and put away immediately.

But I can't have too many or I will never be able to honour them all, so I'm keeping it simple and lets see how I go..............

While I write this, I am reminded by the giggles of my kids in the background ( movie night ) of why I wrote these personal vows, because afterall happy me makes for a happy family.

 Fishing with the boys at Russell, our first family holiday.... hopefully more fun times like this to come.

Christmas Dress and Lil Misses Doll House

The Christmas break has been very busy travelling to my Mums and back then to Mikes Mum and Dads for Christmas.

During this time we had one day at home before setting of for the next destination, so I was determined to make Lil Miss her first Christmas Dress in this time. 

Here she is actually trying to climb into the doll house her grandfather built her

I didn't quite finish it before setting off for the grandparents, so I took my sewing machine along and finished the last ruffle there.

The pattern is Feliz by Farbenmix, although the pattern went together well, I would only suggest this pattern for a experienced sewer, as the explanations for the construction are not step by step.  Not sure if  anyone else thought this.  But as you can see it is definately worth sewing. I am really happy with the dress

 

Lil Miss loves Grandmas dog! Follows it everywhere much to its horror!

As for the dolls house, wow its huge..... Mikes Dad has done a wonderful job, and as you can see Lil Miss had a great time playing with it, including her big brothers!

It also opens up at the back and has a gazebo that attaches at the end of the front porch

Even Mike had fun....

 (although he was just taking a movie )

I can't wait to make some bedding, curtains and many other furnishings for this house.  

 So I guess everyone will get alot of enjoyment out of this house.

I will be linking this up to Tea Rose Home Wednesdays Link Party

 

One Year in the Making

Well technically over a year...

Lil Misses Cot Quilt is finally finished.... yay!!!!

I did finish the quilt top in the last week before Lil Miss arrived. 

 But I was heavily pregnant and my mum had to help me prepare it ready for quilting ( thanks Mum ) even while sewing the border together, it actually brought on contractions..... so its been a long time before I picked it up again to finish.

I really enjoyed the hand sewing of the centre block, especially the birds.

As for the quilting, that took the longest, because as usual I decided to makes things more elaborate, than it really needed to be, but I'm happy with it anyway....

I got the pattern from Australian Homespun, and though I searched everywhere for it, I can't say who designed this... sorry.

I will be linking this to Tea Rose Home Wednesdays Link Party



Start them young I say!

My nearly five year old, Little J suddenly out of the blue, decided he wanted to wash the dishes. 
(Yes we do have a dishwasher).......I thought about my childhood and how I used to stand at the sink and enjoy playing in the bubbles more than washing the dishes, so why not?

While I was taking a few pics for this post, we had a little conversation as follows:

Little J: Do you know why I am a good disher?
Me: Why?
Little J: Because you make the dirty dishes, and I say ( he said this in his special big man voice )" mom do you need the dirty dishes clean?" and you say " yes " I say okay!
Me: oh! ( walks away and chuckles )



Who knew it would end up being a lesson in proper dishwashing etiquette
( I know sounds snooty eh! )
But I found that when Mike and I shacked up together there was definately a difference in what we both thought was the right way to washing our dishes.
Naturally I passed on my version; eg

• dishwashing soap ( vs sunlight soap bar ),
•  washing and then rinsing with fresh water ( vs not )
• and then stacking the dishes to leave to dry ( vs second person drying and never leaving dishes out to dry )

I thought, as I was writing, yes it is a boring, but this is a life skill, afterall I actually remember being taught in home economics at school, what order to wash your dishes in.....
so now when he's flatting or living in domestic bliss he will know the proper way to wash the dishes.....when the dishwasher is on the blink that is! :)

Finally his last question : "Mum, do I get money for doing this?"   hmmmmn

Dont worry he got some money on his chart I just had to add this photo!

Next... the vacumning.

Lil Misschief!

My camera is definately getting a workout at the moment.

 This is the result of introducing Lil Miss to the blackboard in the boys room, and the chalk!  Also a piece of chalk made its way into the kitchen yesterday, and being the weekend, (translation: I'm lazy)  I didn't clear up, so with this latest piece of artwork, I only have myself to blame..... and I know I should have stopped her straight away, so she gets the idea that you don't draw on the floor (walls furniture etc ) but it happened admist the chaos of our school rush. 
Plus the boys had their fair share of these incidents and when asked I can only remember a handful 
 ( eg: Little J throwing all the eggs to the back of the pantry incident ) and sometimes its hard to remember which one did what, so I guess with Lil Miss I have the blog now to document all that she's getting up too... also the tiles kinda look like a giant blackboard don't they?!

Sibling Fun in the Sun!

Last week when Little J was at home, we took a wander out the front of the house, where Little J showed Lil Miss the joys of picking the roses.........

Normally I would put a end to this quick smart, but the sun must be putting me in a good mood  ( all that Vitamin D I guess, plus the rose bush has fallen over ) so I grabbed the camera and documented the fun.......

Little J showing me one of his new/old fav toys, and yes he is sporting his own look, tshirt backwards and quite often his trousers/shorts aswell! lol oh and the shoes on the wrong feet too! musn't forget that.

Below is a  rare moment, he always wants to give Lil Miss hugs but more than often she screams, as if to say ' your'e crowding me!'

I'm so happy I got this picture.

This is just after he tried again! You can almost see she wasn't impressed...... poor Little J, he has so much love to give :)



Our view tonight!

Tonight as I said goodnight to the kids, I went to close the curtains,

out the window was this amazing view........

Although I had to drive down the road to get a unobstructive view....

 Pretty cool though eh?!.

The locals wondered what I was up to........

Cookies

Little J and I had a great time today making sugar cookies!

A while ago we got a dog cookie cutter in return for donating to the

Guide dog society, but its the first time we have used it.

Little J had great fun creating and tasting the samples.

We left some dough for the older boys when they got home so that they didn't miss out..... smiles on everyones faces, including mine.

It was a great afternoon, but not for long.......

After cleaning up I went to look for Lil Miss.

She was enjoying a splash in the toilet...... YUK!!!!

( her favourite pass time at the moment )

So the chaos began, I rushed her to the shower.... washed her down, in the my panic I forgot the towel, rushed out for one of those, while passing the back window I saw a chook out in my garden, I went in for a closer inspection and found all of the chooks out enjoying my lush green veges..... ahhhhh panic! Back to Lil Miss, draped her in a towel, gave her some keys, grabbed some bread and rushed outside to herd to chickens back into the coop!..... back inside to lil miss where I found her thouroughly happy to be prancing around in her birthday suit!!!

Classic!

I have linked up to Buttons by lou lou - at my house



Pirates Party

Middle B had a pre birthday party last weekend, although his birthday is not until later, it is in the school holidays. But all his mates are on holiday at that time... so he had a pirate themed birthday ...... complete with the requested pinata!

the invite said bring along your togs, so everyone had great fun

 including lil miss who enjoyed the great outdoors

It was a nice and simple party.... he was allowed to invite 5 friends, but he choose just three..... in the end only two kids could make it, so it was a nice relaxed party...... although I was still exhausted by the end of the day.



Were Building!

A Week ago we took a trip up to North to our land.

It had been a while, and we needed to check how long the grass was, ( luckily the farmer had put his cows on) and put some new batteries in the tracavator, so that Mike could turn the engine over.  We also wanted to look at some relocatables nearby, to see whether it was worth it...... turns out it was just what we needed to make our decision to build!

Walking through the relocatables on the lot, was depressing.... especially for Mike.... we couldn't help but think about and dread renovating again. We found one house that could have worked but for 95,000 + gst, plus add the plumbing, connections and renovating, it would have meant we may have had a nice house, but it would have not been what we are working towards.  If we had taken this option we probably would just end up moving on to another property.

Over the years we have moved houses a number of times, and this time we just want to settle.

So the decision is made, we are building yay!!!!!

We plan to do it in stages, building plans and building pad first, then frame, walls and then the trimmings.

We want to do a strawbale house, however we may have to consider adobe, because there is no building standard specifically for strawbale in NZ, so many councils make it difficult to complete this type of build, one problem being because of the plastering method on the walls.  We will have to talk to our council and find out how they feel about these type of builds, so there is alot ground work to do....

In the meanwhile I will dream about this view.....

Big Boys and there Toys!!!