This little bunny likes a lie in

We bought this toddler sleep clock to try and get Beth to stop waking before 5am every morning… At night the sleeping bunny is lit up, and in the morning, the walking bunny comes on.

and it’s going really well, we’ve had it a week and she’s gone from waking at 4.45, to this morning 6.05 :) only problem is the blinkin’ bunny seems to like a lie in, there’s something funny going on with the clock and the bunny seems to wake up about 5 minutes later each day, which is great, but I’d like to know when the bunny is going to get up… ahahha, I think it will have to go back to the shop but I don’t want to send it away because it seems to be helping (fingers crossed).

The Dolls in the Doll House

Enter the dolls,

I bought these little guys from Mothercare last weekend for Beth and it was decided that they needed somewhere to live.
So she and daddy built this:

one bedroomone bathroom (complete with bath, toilet and sink)cupboard under the stairs kitchen cabinetsand a kitchen table and chairs decorated with scrapbooking paper (Nic you might recognise some of the bundle you sent me in there) and furnished from our craft supplies this beauty was made entirely from things we already had, well, unless you count the pram that the conveniently doll house sized box came wrapped around. I think we’ll leave this one to develop over the next month or two.

Play Space Revised

Beth’s (and not Hannah’s) toys have been overflowing their boxes for a while now. She has so many and to be truthful, many have been stuck at the bottom of the box for quite some time now, so I had a tidy up…
Inspired by a blog post that I now can’t find, sorry, we (well mainly me, but she did help a bit) sorted her books. Don’t they look pretty, but really, I think we need more purple books.

Chose just a small number of toys (soft toys in the basket, always her favourite things, balls, dolls, beanbags and an assortment of shakers) and EVERYTHING ELSE except the street scene on the table and the dolls house (coming later) has gone downstairs. I’ve also moved the table and chairs away from in front of the TV, where we keep using it as a coffee table and dinner table, back into her play area. (Art supplies are of course still around, I couldn’t send them away…just looking for a new way to store them at the moment).
So I’m looking forward to seeing how this affects how we play over the next week or so and then we will switch for some other toys instead.

We Play – Childhood 101

I’ve been wanting some playsilks, but wanted a wide range of colours, so decided to opt for the non-silk variety for cost reasons. 1 metre of red, yellow, pink, green, orange, purple, blue and brown in different weights (chiffon, silk effect chiffon, satin backed crepe, satin etc. ), a quick rolled hem on the overlocker. The blue has been particularly useful as a swimming pool, sky, sea, pond etc., I think I’ll go and get a few more shades of blue.

Anyway, yesterday we did the ‘sing a rainbow’ song while stepping on each colour, great fun!

Childhood 101 we play link up :)

Half Square Triangles are Finished

Well, here it is at last. It’s so soft and snuggly, more Anna Maria Horner, this time her Folksy Flannels (I'm after the Voiles next). Quilted in straight lines 1/4 inch either side of each diagonal, I wouldn’t do it this way again as it was impossible to keep the line straight where all the points meet, especially with the flannel being so much thicker than quilters cotton. It let to a certain degree of wonkiness, most of which came out in the wash luckily… Anyway, it’s keeping us all snuggly and warm on the sofa in the mornings.
Here it is in action. Sorry the colour is so yellow, there was something funny going on with my camera but I’ve fixed it now (user error as always). And yes, the big one is often to be found sitting ON the little one…

EB Round Robin Quilt Completed

Ta da!
My feature fabrics are all from the Good Folks range by Anna Maria Horner, paired with Homespun solids from Spotlight
Blocks by:
Kirsty
Kayscha
Car
Ruth
Becky
Louise
Rose
Khris
Alissa
Anna
Dani
Me
From the EB Newbie Quilters Group
   Backing is more Anna Maria Horner Good Folks paired with a mustardy yellow homespun (as suggested by the good ladies of the Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild). And the binding is pieced from a little piece of each fabric from every block I made, plus a little piece of all the fabrics in my quilt.
Quilted all over in random flowers, my first attempt at this kind of quilting, I reckon the more random the better, that way you can just pretend it’s meant to be that way :).

Rights of the Reader

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs about reading to children and teaching children to read in the last few weeks. And it has made me think of this.

Rights of the Reader

From Daniel Pennac’s essay Comme un Roman. This version is illustrated by Quentin Blake who illustrated all the Roald Dahl books so his style will be easily recognisable to many.

I’m going to print this up and put it up above the girls book shelves.

The original is in French, and as is usual with translations, the original reads better, so if you read French then here is the annotated version on Wikipedia.

2010 list update

Just a superquick update on the 2010 list.

STILL IN PROGRESS
- Hungry Caterpillar for Beth - UNPICKING QUILTING - EEK
- Rainbow Quilts x 2
- Baby Dear Jane
- Trousers for me
- 3 Quilts for Gifts (one pattern purchased, nothing else so far) PATTERNS SELECTED, 1 lot of fabrics almost cut out.

- Quilt for Hannah - couple of fabric options - thinking yellows, blues and pinks.
ADDED TO THE LIST
- 2x Elephants for Christmas (Ricrac)
- Charm Square Quilt
- MMQG Block Swap Quilt
- Christmas Table Runner for Nana

COMPLETED
- Picnic Quilt (Vintage FQ swap fabrics) DONE
- Aunt Bec's Nine Patch for Beth's Bed (Pinks and Greens) DONE
- Purple Quilt (Possible Hand Quilting Project) - DONE
- Flannel Quilts for winter snuggling on the sofa x 2 (Anna Maria Horner Fabrics) DONE
- EB Newbie Quilters Round Robin to piece and complete (Fabrics all ready to go) DONE
- MIP Uptown Girl jacket for Beth DONE
- New walls for the cubby house DONE
ALSO COMPLETED
- Dortje Trousers for Beth DONE
- 2x Ice Cream Dresses for Christmas DONE
- 1 Turtle - collaborative project with toddler (still to blog)

We Play – Childhood 101

I recently discovered the childhood 101 blog, full of fun ideas and activities and serious thoughts on bringing up children put together in such a fun and accessible way. Today I’m joining in with their ‘we play’ section for the first time.

Christie talks about invitations to play, that is setting up enough of an activity for your child(ren) to inspire a play activity. Here was my ‘invitation’ for yesterday.
I find this is something I do frequently, but I am always wondering how much direction to give, and how much to leave to Beth who is 27 months, she is really starting to enjoy imaginative play, but still seems to need a little prompting. My littlest however, is happy as long as she can chew on the odd cow, or car, or whatever she can reach.
I got one of the cars and one of the people out which prompted Beth to head off and find more. Then the cars had to be joined together to parade down the road, and grandpa had to go for a swim in the pond.
You can also see in the corner a small collection of pebbles, seed pods and leaves which we collected a couple of days ago and I added to the scene. She was very excited about the ‘stones’.
The basis for this play was a small play mat I put together, I’ve been wanting one of those big rugs with roads and rivers and houses on in, but not wanting to bring anything else into a space that is already overloaded with toys and ‘things’ decided to make a table sized one. A large piece of grey/silver cardboard, some green felt and some sparkly blue for water, a pair of scissors and a bit of spray glue and here it is. I hope it will offer the basis for some good play activity over the next few weeks and if so I will work on making it more permanent. It fits into a large Ikea storage box so can be stored away with all the creatures in tact.

To see how others are playing this week visit childhood 101.

Ice Cream Social

I decided to take part in the 'ice cream social’ to make two of the Oliver + S Ice Cream dresses for my girls to wear for Christmas this year.

First up there was a giveaway involved and I was lucky enough to win these beautiful fabrics from one of the organisers, Kate of One Flew Over, a pretty floral Liberty fabric and some grey on white Kei dots. Thanks so much Kate for a gorgeous giveaway. I am contemplating an Insa skirt from my new favourite book Sewing Clothes Kids Love

 

And here is what I made, two ice cream dresses, one in 12-18months and one in size 3T which should hopefully fit the girls by the time Christmas comes around.

I loved the pattern, easy to follow, and easy to adapt to your own methods as well, and the help and tips from all the sewists involved in the flickr group made it so much easier and more fun. It took me a little longer than the allocated two weeks but not much. Thanks for the motivation! It’s already inspired some further garment making, next off the production line, Dortje Pants (from the book mentioned above).