More little girl dresses from the woman with 4 boys!

Well, I thought I was so organised this year.  I'd done all my Christmas shopping before November and even bought everything I needed for the many handmade gifts I was giving.  I had a total of 10 handmade gifts I planned on making and having bought all the supplies I made a start back in October.   By the end of November I was half way done.  By mid December I was still only half way done.  Four days until Christmas and I still had four to do, three of which I hadn't even started.  Needless to say, I have had a few marathon nights at the sewing machine and I am exhausted!  

Surviving on four hours of sleep a night when you have four boys to deal with in the day, a house to clean and food to prepare for the 28 people coming for dinner on Christmas Eve makes for a rather grumpy Mamma!  But, I am happy to say I have finally finished.  YAY!!!!  This morning I started and finished my final gift and everything is now wrapped - All with one day to spare! 

I can't share eight of the gifts with you yet as I don't want to spoil the surprise for the recipients but I can show you the matching little dresses I did for a good friend's two gorgeous girls.  A pretty ruffle dress for her 5 year old and a pillowcase dress for her 8 month old.  I finished the ruffle dress at 1am this morning and, although incredibly tired, I found it hard to fall asleep as I was so excited by how it turned out.  

Here are the shot's I took in my sleepy haze at 1am.

And here are some more shot's on my helpful little models taken at the more respectable time of 1 pm. 

You can see that Master 15 months does not feel the same as Master 5 when it comes to modelling girls dresses but doesn't he look so cute!!!  (It's a little small on him as it is made for someone almost half his age but it goes to show the versatility of a pillowcase dress.  Once the dress is too short she can easily wear it as a tunic and then a top.  It should do her for quite a few years.)

In hind sight I do think I over-extended myself this year, perhaps I should have started in June instead or maybe just not have left so much to the last minute.  I am very happy with all my end results though and I do hope the little kiddies all love their gifts as much time and love has gone into them.  

I am looking forward to sharing the rest of the pressies with you all next week but for now it is back to cleaning the house after a much needed computer and cuppa break!  Merry Christmas to everyone, keep safe and enjoy this special time of year with your friends or family!  Best Wishes to All!!!

My first pillowcase dress!

This week Master 5 has been invited to the 5th birthday party of a little girl in his Kindy class.  Not relishing the idea of braving the shops with 4 boys in toe just a week out from Christmas and not having time to wait for an online delivery, I decided to raid my fabric stash and create the girl an original Son-Shine and Lollypops dress.  

I have only ever made one dress before and that was a few weeks ago (I will have to wait to share that one in a few weeks for reason's that can not yet be revealed).  So, with very little experience under my belt, I set out to make a dress that would not only fit a 5 year old but would look beautiful and reasonably professional.  Did I mention that I do not have any dress patterns?  Buying a pattern would require venturing out into the world with 4 boys, something I try to avoid where possible.  I thought about buying a pattern online that gets sent via PDF to your inbox but when I took the time to find a dress I liked I discovered an electronic world of sewing tutorials and they give you easy to follow instructions for free.  Yes, FREE!!! I love that word.  

In the end I settled on a pillowcase dress - it looked like the easiest one at the time.  Despite its name, it's not actually made out of a pillowcase, although you could if you really wanted to.  I asked Master 5 to stand up straight for me and measured him up to get a general idea of sizing and how long to make the dress and wear the armholes should begin and then I got to ironing hems and sewing, ironing hems and sewing.  This routine continued until I finally had a nice, rectangular, pillowcase shaped dress.  All that was left to do was cut two lengths of ribbon, thread them through the top of the dress and sew in place.  I have to admit that my favourite part was sealing the ends of the ribbon with a lighter (or in my case the gas stove top) to stop them from fraying.  What can I say!  I like to play with fire!

Finally, with the dress finished, all I had to do was to get Master 5 to model it for me.  I don't know whether to be worried or not but he had no objections to wearing a dress at all.  He even posed nicely for me and when I showed him the photo's he was rather put out that I had only taken photo's of the dress, cropping out his face.  So I had to take another photo of him showing his face!  

Awwwww!  My beautiful Princess Prince!

So what do you think of my first ever pillowcase dress?  Do you think it's an acceptable present for a 5 year old girl?  I hope she likes it because she ain't getting anything else from us.  

Wet and wild!

This week I took Master 3 out shopping with me to Spotlight.  Whilst I was looking through the piles of fabric I told him he could go and choose one of the toys they have for party loot bags.  Of all the toys he had to choose from he finally decided on a packet of balloons.  "Look Mummy, baby balloons" he said.  "They are water balloons, you fill them with water and have water fights" I responded.  His face lit up!  If there is something that my boys love the most, it is having water fights (generally in their best clothes without my permission).  Now, I don't like to encourage my boys to fight, even to play fight as someone inevitably gets hurt, but boys will be boys and I'd rather they fight with water than with their fists.  At least with water fights they are interacting with each other, they are outside getting fresh air and exercise and they are learning and having fun at the same time.

Today being the first day of the summer school holidays we painstakingly filled those 20 water balloons and they went to town.  It lasted less than 5 minutes and Master 3 came running inside resembling a drowned rat, dripping all over my floor, to tell me they wanted more.  Since I didn't have any more I told them they could spend another 5 minutes with the hose (something I very rarely allow due to the water shortage but the garden was looking a little wilted so I thought the extra watering wouldn't hurt).  I came out to take photos of the boys just to find Master 3 now completely naked due to his clothes being drenched (I later found his dripping clothes making a nice wet patch on my dining room carpet) and Master's 8 and 5 almost completely dry.  That soon changed when the garden hose came out. 

The noise was deafening yet also hysterical.  For a bunch of boys there was a lot of high pitched, girly screams attacking my ear drums.  There was laughing, there was crying (the cold water pounding on Master 3's bare bottom was a little too much for him to take - the sobbing was interspersed with shivers) but overall their water sensory play was well enjoyed and it was hard to get them to put that hose away and come inside to dry off.  

Even, with the hose no longer in use they continued running around the backyard naked until their bare, little bodies were shrivelled and prune like.  I lost my temper with them a few times (mostly due to them hosing me down whilst I had my camera in hand) but despite the wet clothes, carpets and floor boards, the look on their faces was definitely worth the mopping and extra load of washing.  

Look at that face!

 Master 3 with strategic use of the cropping function!

Master 5 was the loudest of them all and most prepared.  He put his swimming clothes on!

Master 8 just loving the power of the hose!  I think he actually sprayed himself more than his brothers.

Sitting back looking at the photo's now I get a sense of accomplishment in their afternoon activity that I missed at the time.  Whilst they played I was consumed with thoughts of the mess they would make and how their loud screams would affect the neighbours and I completely missed the excitement of it all.  So, this being just the start of the school break I will set myself a challenge to let go of my anxieties and these feelings of unnecessary agitation and will try to relax more, go with the flow and hopefully learn to live in the moment as my boys do and enjoy just being with them.  Then maybe, just maybe I will survive the next 6 weeks before school goes back!

DIY Christmas Decorations

This year I made the decision to not put our Christmas tree up.  It was a hard decision!  I love my Christmas tree and have always enjoyed setting it up and decorating it but I just couldn't take one more year of vigilantly watching the children for a whole month and constantly screaming 'Stay away from the tree'and 'Don't pull on the decorations'.  

The last few years I have tried to find alternative places to put our tree.  One year we had it set up in our master bedroom.  This worked for the better part of the day as the kids would only be in there with us in the early morning and at bath time in the evening.  Unfortunately, it left the rest of the house looking rather Scrooge like and visitors would automatically assume that we didn't have a tree at all.  So the following year I decided to set it up in our lounge room.  We have a corner in there that can be contained by placing a coffee table on it's side (sort of in the form of a child safety gate) between the sofa and TV unit to stop the kids from getting past it and within reach of the tree.  Needless to say, an upturned coffee table in the middle of your lounge certainly does detract from the beauty of the decorated tree.  Not to mention that once the kids hit a certain age they can just climb over the table anyway!  

So this year I decided to forego our traditional tree and instead to do something a little different.  I was on a budget though, having spent enough on the tree we weren't going to use, I didn't want to be spending any more money on decorations that are only up for one month a year.  So I decided to make my own tree out of twigs and branches and place it on top of the TV cabinet where little fingers couldn't reach.  You may ask why I didn't just put our traditional Christmas tree on the TV cabinet and the answer is that it's just too tall and the ceiling gets in the way.

What to put it in was my first dilemma.  I searched my house for a bucket, urn, pot, vessel of any kind that was not only big enough but also heavy enough to hold some large branches without toppling over.  Whilst searching in my storage cupboard I came across a large vase that a good friend bought me for my birthday a few years back which would be perfect.  It is a duck egg blue that has an iridescent shine to it rather like mother of pearl.  The picture of it below really doesn't do it justice.  

 I love this vase, it is stunning, but the colours just never went in my house. So I decided to sand it down and spray paint it Ivory much to my Mother's horror. 

Mrs Negative said to me "You can't do that! It won't work".

So, just like any normal child I set out to prove my mother wrong and I succeeded beautifully.  (Love you Mum - I am sure you only say these things to push us to do our best!)

Next up to collect some branches, so I took the kids for a walk down to a local park that has a bit of bushland and sent them out to collect twigs whilst I sat on the park bench and shouted out to them "Yes, that's a good one"or "No, that's too small." Once we had a big enough pile I collected them up in a bundle and carried them home (I felt rather like the little pig building his house out of sticks) whilst Master 8 pushed

Master 1 on his Smart Trike and Master's 3 & 5 held on to either end of the bundle of sticks as I had no hands free.  I'm sure we looked a very curious sight as we walked home (and of course the park was down hill from our house so it was an uphill battle getting that bundle home).

Once home we assembled in the newly painted vase and added a few balls, icicles, birds, Swedish crowns and reindeer (from Ikea of course) with a string of lights draped across the vase and we had our tree!

 `

And here it is at night with the lights on.  

I was sitting back admiring my work when it occurred to me that it was not possible to place the presents under the tree this year ( a thought that had evaded me until after all the hard work) but I was actually not too bothered about it.  It meant the kids couldn't rummage through them ahead of time and nothing would get damaged requiring re-wrapping.

All happy with my DIY tree I decided to continue my DIY decorations through out the house starting with my front door.  I have never had Christmas wreaths up on our door ever but have always wanted them,.  My problem is that we have double front doors so we would need two wreaths and decent ones can be pricey enough for one let alone two.  I wanted them to be simple without looking home made so I got my thinking cap on and looked around the house for any items I had on hand that I could use.  I took an old cardboard box and cut two equal sized circles from them and then cut another circle in the middle.  Master 8 and I sat down with our roll of Ikea drawing paper and cut varying lengths of paper which we then looped and stapled.  Once we had enough we glued them on to the cardboard wreaths and added some red bows that I picked up for $3 at Red Dot.  Bargain!

Here's a close up.  What do you think?

Being that there is still 16 days left until Christmas I am thinking I can still get a few more DIY Christmas decorations up so watch this space!  And I hope you all enjoy making your own decorations as much as we did.  It is so much more enjoyable to sit back and admire the decorations knowing that we created them ourselves.  Merry Christmas!!!