2011 :: a year in blog posts

Inspired by Simone over at Great Fun 4 Kids I am sharing a favourite post from each month of 2011.
It's tough picking just one post from each month. Some months I shared heaps of good stuff :-) It's also been fun reading over my blog archives...

In January 2011 I discovered Pinterest and shared my love of it here on the blog. Wow, really? - it's nearly a year since I've been crazily pinning and soaking up heaps of inspiration?

February saw my baby boy turning half a year old and I have loved re-reading this A WHOLE half a year post.

In March Mum came to visit and we had fun with the self-timer function on her camera :-)

In April I ta-dah'd my rainbow granny square blanket. This blanket took over a year for me to complete and this post is the most visited one here on the blog.

In May as winter approached I shared my tips for dealing with the changing seasons.

In June I showed off my Seasonal blocks and their Winter decoration.

In July I took part in the Week in the Life project and blogged some photos and notes from each day. Looking back I really like the Thursday post and all the snapshots of our day.

On the 10th August my baby turned 1 and I shared 10 things about the first year.

When Spring sprung in September I posted some lovely Spring-y photos.

I turned 30 in October and came up with my 30@30 list to keep me busy for a while :-)

In November came the story of an old Father Christmas decoration that travelled halfway across the world to come live with us here in New Zealand.

And in December I documented the festive season and shared some ideas on how to keep a super simple Christmas journal.

Spending this time going through my archives has shown that I have been rather busy this year. I loved reading my own words on the screen...in some cases words I'd forgotten I'd written (I blame the sleepless nights!). I love the spontaneous posts, the ones where I manage to write from the heart. This exercise has reminded me that I started this blog for ME. I love getting comments and visitors and hope that I can continue to draw people to read my words but it's not just about that. It's about getting the words and pictures down of life right now so I can look back and remember what being me was like at this point in my life.

I love this time of the year and being able to look back on the year that's been and look forward to what might be next year.

This isn't the last of my review posts - I'll be sharing my 2011 ta da list very soon :-)

JYC Update 4

Here are my latest lot of Christmas Journal pages. 

I did an update on the 23rd of all my pages to that date but didn't get the chance to show the images here yet. I then did Christmas Eve and Christmas Day earlier this week.

I'm still writing notes each day and taking photos plus working out what else I want to include. The plan is to take this journal up to at least the New Year but I'll see how it goes.

G's Mum arrives for a visit tomorrow so hopefully with her here we will have lots of exciting things to include in the journal :-)

On the 16th we wrapped pressies and G built baby's trike to check it was all there :-)...

On the 17th I took this cute photo of the boy wearing antlers so that had to go in!...

The 18th was the day we made reindeer shortbread (see this post for more details)...

The next 2 pages feature the Kiwi Christmas Ornament Swap and what I made and what I received...

The baby's Porse book was updated with photos on the 20th so I took a photo of one of the festive ones...

Not much happened on the 21st so I included the photo about the Christmas Wrapping paper instead...

On the 22nd it was Summer Solstice and it seemed fitting to harvest some of our home-grown strawberries...

On the 23rd we met some friends at the park for a play plus G had a half day so I snuck off to the movies as an early present to myself :-)...

And onto Christmas Eve featuring a family shot, the dog wearing antlers, and the presents once Santa had "delivered" them...

Christmas Day features another 3 photos - the present reveal, opening presents in the tent and our visit down to the river...

So that's where I am up to so far. Sorry some of the photos are the wrong way round. I normally amend them if they upload wrong but it took a while to get this far so I'll leave them as they are for now :-)

Christmas 2011...

Hope you all had a great Christmas. Here's a snapshot of what Christmas looked like for us...

Christmas Eve was all about : :

Doggies wearing antlers for photo op's...

and getting all the presents ready to go once baby had gone to bed...

Christmas Day started at a reasonable time around quarter to 7. Santa left a few wrapped gifts in baby's room so we started by opening those...

Puppy got his usual rawhide Christmas cracker to chew on while we opened our pressies...

Once the pop-up tent was opened and up some present opening took place in there...

the trike was a huge success and is most definitely a favourite....

After present wrapping and skyping all the family we headed down to the river so the dog could have a run, baby could try out his trike and we could all get some fresh air. It was lovely :-)

After the river we headed home for some lunch and then baby had a nap. Later on we had roast lamb and veggies for dinner which was yummy.

It was a lovely day for our little family and one I hope to remember for years to come :-)

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas

Wishing you all a safe and happy Christmas :-)

Take care, have fun and "see" again soon!

Liebster Award

I am excited to have been awarded the Liebster Blog Award by Stace at Sweet Water Stories. Thank you so much Stace :-)

If you haven't visited Sweet Water Stories (formally Waireka Crafts) head over there now. It's an inspiring blog sharing lots of awesome crafts and some fabulous Christmas ideas :-)

The Liebster is awarded to spotlight up and coming bloggers who currently have less than 200 followers. 'Liebster' is a German word meaning dear, sweet, kind, nice, good, beloved, lovely, kindly, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome.


The Rules

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.

2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.

4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.

5. And most of all - have fun!


So here are 5 awesome blogs that I'd like to share with you (it was so hard to pick just 5 - there are some fabulous bloggers out there!):

1. TartanKiwi
2. Imagination Overload
3. Rewarding Memories
4. One Trick Pony
5. Creating Paper Dreams

I've purposely not given you a description of each blog so you go visit to see what they are all about instead 

:-)

Also I'm gonna cheat just a little and give an honourable mention to Kiwi Mummy Blogs as I just noticed they have less than 200 followers but I'm guessing they have heaps more visitors than this every day. It's one of my first stops every day to catch up with what other Kiwi Mum's are up to all over the globe :-)

Thanks once again to Stace for the award :-)

Festive Reindeer Biscuits

At the weekend I made a batch of reindeer shortbread. 

They are gingerbread men cut-outs turned upside down and decorated with writing icing to make noses, eyes and antlers - cute huh? (Thanks Pinterest! And Martha!) I also ordered some edible gold glitter to coat the antlers...after all, what is Christmas without a little sparkle?!

The recipe I used was for Lemon Shortbread which always goes down well in this house!

I found the recipe a while ago over at Julia Crossland's blog and have used it a few times now.

There's still a few left in the tin but I might have to make another batch on Christmas Eve too :-)

Christmas Journal Update

I'm still plugging away with my Christmas journal. You can see my first lot of pages here. And here's the latest lot...

On the 9th me and hubby headed for a night-out so here we are all dressed up...

On the 10th we watched Elf as part of our advent activities so I decided to put the advent activity list in the journal with a wee note next to the 10th saying we watched Elf...

On the 11th we headed to Feilding for the Santa Parade...

On the 12th I didn't get any decent photos so added in some paper snowflakes that we'd made instead...

On the 13th I have included a picture of our fireplace (always the most festive part of the house!) and added a list of things I still need to do...

On the 14th we dropped off food at the SPCA so it made sense to include a picture featuring our own lovely SPCA rescue cutie (the dog not the baby!)..

On the 15th we read an advent story...

And on the 16th we did our Secret Santa at work so I featured the present I bought and the one I received...

And last of all - my lovely Mum forwarded on the embroidered badge I purchased for my front cover and it arrived so I made covers for the journal. I cut out 2 lots of 8 x 5.5 inch covers and used my silver and gold washi tapes to create stripey covers (I decided to leave a little bit of cardboard showing through) and I stuck the badge on the front cover. I'm pretty pleased with how it looks...

I'm hoping to get more photos printed by the end of this week to do another update before the big day :-)

Anyone else journalling Christmas?

Kiwi Christmas Ornament Swap...ornament 7 plus all of them together

Yesterday my final ornament in the Kiwi Christmas Ornament Swap arrived in my postbox. A cute wee birdie from Vicki in Auckland - thanks Vicki :-)

And here's my collection of ornaments all together (I just realised I forgot to put my Christmas pudding decoration that I made in there but you can see those here)... 

Huge thanks to Dione at Sew Funky for organising the swap.

Kiwi Christmas Ornament Swap...ornament 6

Another day, another cute ornament arrived in the mail :-) 

Many thanks to Leonie over at Kiwi at Heart for this lovely Owl addition to our tree...

Only 1 more to come now which makes me feel a bit sad :-(