Things I'm Loving

It's been a pretty busy week all round. Lots of things to do and see this week and not much time to blog about them. So here's a summary of what we've loved this week...

The All Blacks Fan Club Roadshow came to Palmy this week and we took baby along. He was too small to actually take part in the activities on the inflatables but he was quite happy bouncing gently on the edges and getting his photo taken on them :-)

Wendyl Nissen came to PaperPlus on the Square to talk about her new book "Mother's Little Helper" and sign books. I already had her previous two books and really like them (LOVE the lemon dusters recipe!) so I was always going to buy the newest one. Especially when it is offering suggestions for bringing baby up naturally. Baby was having a nap so I was running a little late and missed the demo on making your own wipes but Wendyl very kindly went through it with me at the end after she'd signed everyone's books. She also got her photo taken with my 'smiley' boy so I'm hoping to get a copy for his scrapbook!

And with all these visits to town I've noticed how lovely the Square is looking at the moment...

Palmy's had some pretty horrible things said about it (I'm looking at you John Cleese) but it's a lovely place to be for Spring and Summer. The whole town has a fabulous atmosphere at the moment with all the rugby going on and it's lovely to see everyone being so welcoming to all our visitors!

I'm also loving banana and vanilla smoothie's - so refreshing and a great filling drink for afternoon tea time to tide me over until dinner time. As well as the lovely blue and white papers straws I got from KatyDid to use in my smoothies...

What are you loving this week?
Linking up with Paisley Jade's Things I'm Loving.

My Creative Space: Baby Blanket Progress

Progress on my crochet hexagon baby blanket has been pretty slow. I ran out of the jade coloured wool and had to wait a week for it to come in at my local wool shop. It's arrived and I made up the last of the 3 round circles and have begun turning those circles into hexagons...

The plan is to use the mint coloured green to turn all of the circles into hexagons, joining them as I go but I'm not sure I have enough wool. We shall see.
I'm also a bit worried it will be too small. Once they are all joined I'll use one of my wool blankets that I love (the ones that are the perfect size for tucking baby into the capsule of round his legs in the buggy) to see how the size compares. I'm planning to add a granny border - possibly in a  few different colours so that will help make it bigger too.

If you're keen to have a go at your own hexagons I'm using Lucy's tutorial for the hexagons and for joining them together and would recommend it :-)

Joining up with Our Creative Spaces.

Quiet...

Sorry it's a little quiet here this week. I haven't had much time for craftiness lately so don't have much to share.  I have a few ideas for posts - just need to find the time to arrange the pictures and get the words written. Hope to see you all again soon :-)

Sharing on Sunday - 25th September

It's been a couple of weeks since I shared some links on a Sunday. There's been plenty of inspiration - just not much time on Sunday's for some reason! So I'm doing it earlier today so it doesn't get lost in Sunday evening madness :-)

Here goes for this week...

Anyone else already thinking about Christmas Ornament Swapping this year? I am - seen heaps of ideas and this list has lots of inspiration...

pin and original source

I'm also on the hunt for handmade Christmas present ideas and thought this could be good for the iPhone lovers out there (including hubby maybe?!)

pin and original source

Who doesn't love monster feet? I might make some for myself! And definitely for baby once he's a bit sturdier on his feet...

pin and original source 

I LOVE this free rainbow quote printable and just need to decide where to hang it before I print it off...

pin and original link

And finally - I like the idea of printing on washi tape - at first I thought this is what this pin was all about but it seems you print on paper and then let the washi tape soak up the ink already printed. Might have to give this a go to see if it works and if not I might try running the washi tape covered paper through the printed to see if that works instead!

pin and original source

Hope you're having a lovely weekend :-)

Kids Rugby World Cup Swap

(photo from MouseHouse blog)

Megan over at MouseHouse is organising a Kids Rugby World Cup Swap on her blog. (It's more about country related swap items than rugby related.)
She is particularly looking for overseas swappers who are happy to send a parcel to New Zealand and get one back in return :-)
Hop over to her blog to find out more. You need to register by 30th September and send your parcel mid to late October.
I'm all signed up but with a bit of a twist :-)

My Creative Space: Baby's footprints

I'm not sure if this counts as my creative space because it was my baby boy making the paint marks on the paper and not me :-)

My mum was here this time last year and while she was here we painted baby's feet to make foot prints - a keepsake to see how small his feet were. He was 5 weeks old at the time.

I have a set framed in his room with the date they were taken (16th September 2010) and decided to set myself a reminder (on my calendar) to do them around the same time of year.

1 year on was Friday last week. I didn't quite manage it that day or on Saturday. But on Sunday afternoon as the day was coming to a close and I was going to get the washing in I took the opportunity!

I masking taped 3 sheets of A4 to our driveway, whipped off baby's socks and trousers and painted his feet with blue acrylic paint.

As you can see on the top sheet on the photo above - encouraging him to walk around made a lot of mess. By the time we got to the third sheet hubby was lifting him up once he'd made a clear print :-)

The photo below has my hand for a size comparison. I'm also going to take a picture of these prints next to the ones from last year.

And I'm thinking about making a little mini-book to collect hand and foot prints across the years :-)

Linking up with Our Creative Spaces.

Scrapbooking: Document 2011: August

Firstly - apologies for the bad photos - not quite sure what happened. My Scrapbook albums are now in a baby-locked cabinet so I'm sticking with these rather than having to get past the lock, dig out the pages and re-photograph!

Here are my August pages for Document 2011...

The calendar page is very simple this month. I seem to be having less photos I want to include each month as the months roll by.

The first of the pocket pages (with some faces/names blanked out for privacy) include baby's birthday celebrations, baking, snow, better weather, things I've made and the handout from a funeral we attended for a lady I used to work with...

The second pocket pages features me and baby, baby's new table set, a summary mini-page with a couple of photos, baking class, a work football match that hubby was involved with and more photos from the baking class...

My main page for August is all about baby turning 1. I used my big square punch to get the photos all the same size and tried to get all my background colours to match.

That's another month done and dusted! You can see all of my Document 2011 pages here.

Seasons: Winter

Now that Winter is behind us here's the last of my seasons lists. 

You can see Spring here, Summer here and Autumn here. 

Looking back at my Autumn list - a lot of those things apply to winter as well but I've tried to include new things on this list as well. 

Hopefully I'll get the chance to add a couple of items to each list as the seasons roll around again.

A work-in-progress list of the things I love about Winter...

1. cosying up in front of the fire
2. slow cooker meals
3. an excuse to light candles and put the fairy lights on
4. gorgeous hand knitted jumpers for the baby
5. my Winter blocks
6. hot chocolate
7. my baby boy's birthday
8. snow! (this year at least!)
9. celebrating winter solstice
10. cosying up on the couch with my latest crochet project
11. watching the daffs and tulips emerge and waiting for Spring to see them flower
12. feeding the birds and seeing a lot more of them when there's no leaves on the trees
13. the camelia bushes flowering
14. having an excuse not to mow the lawns and not having so many weeds that need pulling!
15. brisk winter walks on cold but sunny days

Things I'm Loving :: Farmyard Edition

We went to the Country Living Expo last Sunday in Feilding. We got a flyer through the letterbox about it and thought it would be good for baby so he could see lots of animals :-)
We had fun - it was well worth the visit and I think it would be good for families with kids looking for an inside activity. We even got to eat haggis (although it wasn't quite the same as Haggis we've eaten in Scotland!) when they did a Haggis ceremony!

Anyway given that most people go 'awww' at baby animals and farm animals I thought I'd share some photos with you :-) Most were taken in the petting farm enclosure where you can go in with the animals...

 baby alpaca

 baby cow

donkey 

 very cheeky goat

heelan coo (highland cow)

little lamb

Cute huh? We also saw guinea pigs, rabbits, puppies, chicks and hens, sheep, dogs, fish and miniature horses. The baby loved it and we've looked through the photos a few times this week which he has liked - especially when I make all the animal noises!

And here was his favourite...

piggies! And the best bit was they has houses made of straw, sticks and bricks (which I totally missed until hubby pointed it out!)

Don't forget to head over to Paisley Jade to see what everyone else is loving this week :-)

My Creative Space: the start of a baby blanket

Sorry it's been quiet here at Mummy Adventures this week - my baby boy is poorly which means lots more cuddles and early nights for me (so I get sleep before having to get up in the middle of the night!) and less computer and blogging time.

I thought I'd share a couple of quick pictures of what I had been working on most evenings until my boy got sick...

It's the start of a baby crochet hexagon blanket. I'm using the same tutorial and colours as my table runner (except at this stage I'm not planning to use the navy blue). I'm planning to turn them all into hexagons with a pale mint green colour and join them as I go. I think I'll be making 27 hexagons in total so another 6 to go.
Unfortunately I have run out of the jade green yarn so need to get to the yarn shop before I can carry on.

The blanket is a going to be a gift for the 1st lady from our antenatal coffee group having a second baby. She is due in December and expecting a boy so I hope she will like the colours.
If people from coffee group have babies close together there is no way I'll be able to make them all blankets but I've got a bit of time for this first one :-)

I'm thinking of switching to crochet hats for the rest of the babies as they come so if anyone has any good patterns (and easy to understand!) for newborns please let me know :-)

Linking up with Our Creative Spaces.

Spring decoration (Seasonal blocks)

I've had this project on my desk since the start of the month and got it finished over the weekend. I wanted it done for the start of Spring but at least it's done before Spring is over :-)
You can see my Winter sides and the story of the blocks here.

For the Spring sides I used a bright blue paper to symbolise the sky as that's one of the things I always notice on nice Spring days. I then cut strips of green paper for grass and snipped and ruffled them to give them a 3D effect.
I used some glittery pink thickers for the letters as I thought the lovely pink colour is similar to the lovely flowers that start to pop up as Spring settles in.
I then embellished the blocks with some flower stickers (nestling in the grass), a sunshine, some butterflies and some washi tape bunting.

Looking at them now I wonder if they are too summery but I wanted some bright to suit the season. Plus I have a more beachy theme in mind for Summer so it shouldn't be too samey.
I'm pretty pleased with how they look brightening the fireplace in my lounge :-)

Things I'm Loving :: Signs of Spring

It's been a while since I linked up with Paisley Jade's Things I'm Loving - must be something to do with winter! Now that Spring is here I'm ready to join in again! So what better pictures to share then the first signs of Spring.

Like my beautiful double daffs flowering in my garden...

Blossom on the trees at the park...

Looking for the baby ducks at the pond (on Fathers Day)...

Seeing some baby ducks - yay!...

And some lovely snowdrops growing near the woods...

Don't you just love Spring?!

Granny Square Crochet Cushion Ta Da!

Here is my latest crochet creation. It's a granny square cushion cover.

We've had the same boring cushion covers (see the plain cream and brown poking out at the back there?) since 2005 and I am gradually making them over! The owl print cushion cover was a free gift with Your Home and Garden magazine a couple of months back. And recently I decided it was time to make-over another cushion!

I used the same purple yarn from my rainbow blanket and the light and dark blue yarn from my table runner. This started as a way to use up existing yarn but I ended up having to buy some more anyway!

On the first side I did patterns of 3 (ie. purple, dark blue, light blue) whereas I tried to make the second side more purple (so alternated purple between the 2 blues...purple, dark blue, purple, light blue, purple)

I joined the 2 sides by using Lucy's (joining granny squares as you go) method on my final round of the second side.

I stuffed my cushion inner in once I'd joined 3 sides and then I sewed buttons (with the purple yarn) on to alternate sides and alternate granny gaps (I hope that makes sense - hopefully if you have a close look at the picture above you'll see what I mean) to work as a closure. I did think about joining it all the way around but with a toddler in the house I thought it best the cover was removeable to be washed!

Joining up with Our Creative Spaces.

Being Creative: Travel

The theme for August for Julia Crossland's Being Creative project was Travel.

I did a search for some travel related quotes that I liked and settled on one by Mark Twain:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore. Dream. Discover."

And then I attempted to make my own word art using a mixture of fonts. I went with blue text and background because of the 'sailing' mention in the quote. Here's my first attempt...

Next I decided to put the text onto an image. I didn't have any suitable water photos so I used this one that I took in 2010 at Ashhurst. I'm really pleased with how it turned out and think I'll get it printed and put in a frame.

You can see all of my Being Creative projects here.

Sharing on Sunday - 4th September

Happy Fathers Day to all the Dad's out there. We've had a lovely day - I made Scotch Pancakes for breakfast and then we headed down to the park to see the ducks, go on the slide, swings and seesaw and a certain someone practiced his toddling :-)

And onto some linkies to share with you on this lovely Spring Sunday...

First up - I HAD to pin these when I saw them on Pinterest - Cream Egg cupcakes - yummy. Might have to have a go at these or something similar at Easter... 

pin and original link

Given how popular moustaches are these days I thought these were worth pinning. I just need to work out how to use them in a project. I'm thinking some manly cards :-)

pin and original link

This is something I found via Kiwi Mummy Blogs...The Golden Adventures of a Very Dark Horse is using old beach towels to make some awesome things. I especially love the first project - a jandal door mat!

original link

And yes I am still collecting Christmas ideas. I'd never seen anything like this before but think it's a great idea. Upturned ice-cream cones decorated to look like Christmas trees!

pin and original link

Have a lovely week everyone :-)

RAK Giveaway Winner

Thanks to the lovely ladies that entered the RAK day giveaway for the birdie notelets and chocolate.
I used the modern way to pick a winner this time and the winner is...

Comment number 3 was: wellreadkitty!
Congrats - I'll get them popped in the post for you this week!