Can you say “Holidays”?

Yay! School holidays started today! I picked the kids up from school today at 11am and already felt a sense of relief.

4 weeks off bliss! No homework in the afternoons, no fetching & carrying to & from school (sometimes 3 or 4 times a day!), no school projects, just some pure fun! = HAPPY MOM!

This weekend is, of course, Easter. We’re at home, a quiet long weekend for us.

Tuesday we’re off to our little place of African heaven… The bushveld.

Hopefully we will see more of these beautiful prehistoric looking creatures…. I just love how this little baby is resting on his mommy’s back!

& this won’t happen again…(feb 2012)

the new, wider floodplain after the floods this summer…

Don’t you just love these faces?

You get the picture?

We’ll be back again after about a week, then we’ll relax at home until it’s my mom-in-law’s 80th birthday.

The whole family (the birthday girl + 5 kids + each of their spouses, + all 10 grandchildren= 21 in total) will be off for 3 days down to Umhlanga in Kwazulu Natal to a beautiful old hotel which was recently revamped …

I cannot wait to take photos of the beautiful lighthouse! (and I have to admit staying in such a gorgeous spot will be sublime!)

So this school holiday, we’ll have a bit of the bush and a bit of the beach – the best of both worlds – I can’t wait!

Atc’s, Flowers, Birthdays–crafting bliss!

Hi there!

I have been making things, crocheting things, printing things, and am planning on sewing things too! I haven’t blogged for ages as I’ve been keeping myself busy with all kinds of crafty creations.

First off, I started making some ATC’s – I joined an online class with Bonnie van Esch to find out more about making them. She had some really cute vintagey printables included in the class too – some of which you can see in my “ATC’s in progress” photos below…

Once I have a few completed, I’ll post some pics on Flickr and will let you know (for anyone wishing to do some swapping).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I also joined Bonnie’s awesome new self-paced class called “A Pocket full of Posies” . We’ve made 5 flowers so far – each one different to the other. Bonnie’s videos are super easy to follow and I eagerly await each new post to see what the next flower will be.

NOTE: You can join at any time as the class is totally self-paced. So pop on over and join us! It’s $15. I think there are around 12 classes.

Here’s one of my felt roses I made from her class which I popped on top of a facecloth cupcake: So cute!

 

Take a look here for instructions for folding the facecloth

I haven’t taken photos of the other flowers yet, but will do so soon.

The rain has also started (at last). Even though we’ve not had huge storms with loads of water yet, but it’s started and we’ve had a good couple of showers. This was our first Summer rain and I caught my son standing simply watching the big drops splashing on the paving outside.

Then, he simply couldn’t stand it any longer and when I looked again he was standing outside getting drenched! LOL!

Then I have some photos to share of my brother’s 40th birthday party. I made some cute cupcake wrappers and flags and food toppers.

They farm with chickens, so my sister-in-law decided to run with a chicken theme for fun. She had bought some paper napkins, so I scanned one and used that as inspiration as well as using the actual image for the cupcake wrappers. Don’t you just love those cute chickens on the cupcakes?

 

		Birthday Party VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Then it was my dad’s 75th birthday. So I decided to host an elegant dinner party for 10 of his friends last Saturday. It was a surprise party and we managed to keep the secret so well that he didn’t even recognise his friends when he walked in the room! (He was told they were some of my husband’s colleagues from work).

Here are a few photos of the decorations. I made some cupcake labels and flags as well as treat bag toppers. The treat bags were just for fun as my dad absolutely loves liquorice – especially Liquorice Allsorts. I got the idea for the “eat me” treat bags from somewhere on the net. I can’t remember exactly where, so thank you to whoever gave me the idea!

		Dinner Party VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I then made around 10 wine-glass lampshades for the table, continuing with the black and white vintage images. (Most of which came from Karen over at The Graphics Fairy) – click on her button on the right hand column here on my blog.

Although not very masculine, I guess, I added some vintage teacups on the table with roses floating in them nonetheless. The one below is actually very special as it comes from the tea set (which I still have) which my dad “gave” his mom when he was born 75 years ago in November 1935. When I was younger I thought the design was awful – now I love it! I love the unusual art-deco style and especially the black details. It’s very sentimental to me, so I never ever use it for fear of breaking something.

I often use tea cups as vases on my dinner table settings as they add colour and just the right amount of quirkiness.

Yesterday was Shannon’s year-end singing concert with the studio. She looked so lovely all dressed up that I simply had to take a photo. The dress for the evening for the performers was semi-formal, so she had to borrow a dress from her cousins. (I was not going to buy an evening dress for her that she would wear once for a couple of hours). The only problem I have is she looks so grown up when she dresses up like this! I think I prefer her usual shorts and tees! LOL!

Well that’s my lo…nnng story for this Sunday evening. Hope you have a lovely week full of loads of craftiness!

Busy as a Bee

Yip that’s been me of late. We’ve almost come to the end of our HUGE painting job of our house. It has now been 4 weeks and they still have 3 rooms left inside to paint as well as my parent’s cottage. While they’ve been here I have felt like we’re camping in our own house and frankly living in a huge mess and it seems like forever. In fact, though, the painters have been more than professional and done an amazing job. So I am thankful for that. They have been here so long that they feel almost part of the family LOL!

Scaffolding outside my bathroom window:

Looking down onto the lounge {aka store room}which has been piled high with cushions, ornaments and paintings from other parts of the house:

 

The entrance hall, draped with cover sheets and scaffolding.

{You can see the lighter paint colour on the back wall vs the previous darker colour from before. I’m loving the brighter colour!} :

 

    Looking towards the entrance hall from the upstairs landing. The pillar still has the previous colour on it.

Shannon also started with exams this week, so I have to fetch her straight after her exam ends, which is normally between 10h30 and 11h00, so that disrupts my morning of washing curtains, clothes, and trying to move back into the completed rooms. We normally get back and after a bit of a break {read : playing SIMS}, I sit down with her {in the kitchen as her study is full of stuff from the guest bedroom} and try to help her study. I actually think I’d get an A if I had to go write her exams as I know the work better than she does!

I also have finally got Shannon in at Crawford College for next year. After much deliberating, we finally decided it would be worth the travelling and have enrolled her. After a tour of the school, an entrance exam and an interview, a deposit has now been paid and I must simply submit her forms on Monday – but she is in! At least she will now have the opportunity to take music as a subject and she could even do drama or French (amongst others), so she has a wider subject choice for High school- so pleased that’s finally done and dusted. Now I just have to sort Reece’s schooling out….decisions, decisions!!

I’m still busy getting everything done for our trip to Europe – two weeks to go !! Yay!! We still are getting our documents together for the visas – we need double of everything as we need a British and Spanish visa for each of us. {Where are the days we didn’t require visas for the UK!!?}. Today I must submit the UK visas online and also book Legoland tickets. We have promised Reece {aka Lego-boy} that we’ll spend a whole day in Legoland Windsor and I believe getting tickets online really saves time in queues.

Speaking of Reece- on top of all this, he has had flu this week and has been in bed for four days! It simply never ends.

So yesterday I decided it was time for a new digital layout and release some stored creativity. Here it is :

I enjoyed playing around with these photos and love the colours here. I think blue is now my official favourite colour!

So there’s my life in a nutshell at the moment. I love being busy, it keeps my head on straight, makes me feel complete and makes me happy. Though I have to admit I can’t wait to get the house back to some semblance of normality …