It's a beautiful sunny winter's day here in Sydney. Just thought I'd share a photo from this morning's activities.
Taken from the headland between Curl Curl and Freshwater beaches. Looking towards Manly beach.
We walked between the two beaches this morning, then had morning tea/coffee at the cafe at the South Curl Curl Beach SLSC. Gorgeous location right on the beach.
Hope you're having a great day.
Cheers
Fiona x
Phoebe, my baby, turned 10 last weekend.
She had a good weekend. A visit to the Beanie Cave to add to the collection, a visit to the hairdressers for a side fringe, a visit to the Lindt Cafe at Cockle Bay for afternoon tea, presents from her birthday wish list, pasta dinner at Galletta Bar in Leichhardt, several candle blowing ceremonies as we visited family and friends, a sleep over with a friend.... I think that's about all.
It was a fun {long} weekend.
Then 36 cupcakes were sent to school yesterday just so the celebrations could be extended an extra day (and I thought there were only 29 in her class?)
Thanks for visiting, hope you have a great week.
Fiona x
We've all been a bit under the weather around our house over the last week. We're feeling better this week, thankfully.
Some non-crafting news: A friend of ours has started embracing life in the slow lane and has started a blog to reflect on his finds. Take a look at the Slow Lane blog.
And there's just a few things to share from me from the past week.
Made this little fabric bookmark as part of a present for Phoebe's friend last weekend. It is inspired by a a m s' work over on flickr, here are some of her bookmarks. My bookmark is more "rustic", shall we say, and could be a good one for the kids to make - hand stitch the felt monogram to the fabric and straight machine stitching around the edge.
A quick card I made last week....
I've been back at school this morning playing working with Phoebe. It is Education Day. My tasks were to paint the sun and make a find-a-word. Loved sitting with the kids painting and chatting.
That's about all, short and sweet today.
Thanks for visiting.
Cheers
Fiona x
I haven't shared the new love in my life. I never thought I'd be so smitten with a kitchen appliance, but I am. I love this machine. My gorgeous family bought me a KitchenAid for Christmas. The hard thing was choosing a colour. If you know about KitchenAids, you'll know their appliances are available in a fantastic range of colours.
When I went to the store to order my machine, I still hadn't decided on a colour. I had narrowed it down to either white or pink. The Gemini twins in me were having a huge tug of war in my head. The practical twin was saying get the WHITE, it'll go with everything. The other completely non-practical twin was whispering get the PINK, you really want the pink, who cares if it doesn't go with the blue kitchen! The shop assistant was on the phone ready to order the machine, asking me which colour. PINK came out of my mouth in reply, and so a pink KitchenAid was ordered.
It certainly looks best with pink icing...
Phoebe's basketball team is called the Hotcakes. We had the team BBQ a couple of weeks ago and Phoebe and I made pink Hotcakes cupcakes to take. I iced the cakes this time with a piping bag and really loved the effect.
We added a little pink surprise in the cakes before cooking them. With the cake mixture in the patty pans (with pink cupcake papers), a small amount of pink food colouring was swirled through each cake. We did this with a tooth pick dipped in the food colouring.
Make sure you swirl the tooth pick deep into the cake, and not just on the surface.
Here are the cakes cooked with their pretty pink swirls.
Once cooked, cooled and the cakes are iced, the pink swirl will only be revealed once you bite into the cake. This is a bit of a cheats way of making marble cupcakes.
Last week, the Hotcakes won their basketball gala day. Another trophy for the trophy cabinet! Another pink moment...
Hope you're all having a great week. Thanks for visiting.
Fiona
x
This is for the bunny lovers who read my blog, a bit of Monday silliness.
Yesterday the girls decided it was a good idea to give the bunnies a bath. During the week we'd found bunny shampoo in the pet store which, of course, we just HAD to have. Bunnies are extremely clean little creatures and our bunnies have never been given a bath in the 4 1/2 years that they have lived with us (they are brushed several times a week, though).
Butterscotch, as you can see below, quite enjoyed the experience relaxing in the tub with warm soapy water....
Bubbles wasn't as relaxed about the whole experience...
But she did enjoy the blow dry afterwards...
Bubbles and Butterscotch are now very fluffy ready for their Easter photo shoot.
{please note: no bunny was harmed during this activity}
Enjoy your Monday.
Cheers
Fiona
x
Thought I'd better get a second post up before the end of January.
The girls are back at school, all's quiet around the house. Emily has started at her new high school, is happy and excited about everything going on there. Phoebe has her new class already, and is pretty happy with that too.
Holidays were lovely and relaxing... I do love school holidays.
Here's a few photos and ramblings from the things that we did during the holidays.
We took Phoebe out to the Athletics Stadium out at Homebush to participate in the Little Diva Dash organised by Athletics NSW. She got to meet Jana Rawlinson and run a 400m 'fun-run' around the athletics track. In true diva-style, Phoebe adorned her hair with Ribbons Galore ribbons!
We went kayaking last weekend on Pittwater. We hired a couple of kayaks form Paddlecraft at Bayview, and paddled our way around to Church Point, enjoyed our coffees/milkshakes and bacon and egg rolls from the cafe there, then paddled back to Bayview. It was a beautiful morning and lots of fun.
We gave Emily a new bead for her bracelet the night before she started back to school. A little drum for the drummer girl of our family. It is very cute, the drum is silver with little gold drum sticks on the top. This one is a Pandora bead, but it still fits on her Bacio bracelet.
I took Phoebe to the Sydney Wildlife World at Darling Harbour one day. It's a great centre, the displays and exhibitions are informative and it is different from the zoo, so you do get a different experience. At the end of the centre you have the opportunity to walk through the butterfly display, which Phoebe loved. We stood for a long time as the butterflies fluttered around us. They loved her headband, as they were always landing on it. (We also discovered a Lindt Cafe at Cockle Bay Wharf, so guess where we went for afternoon tea).
One of Paul's friends has been making a guitar... from scratch... and he doesn't even play the guitar. He brought it over for Paul to "inspect". It was so beautifully made, with such lovely detail. You just had to admire it and all the work that went into making it.
And lastly, this is to show Mel, my very clever friend who also loves sewing and Japanese craft books. Phoebe and I had a day out in the city, and one of our stops was a huge Japanese book shop, Kinokuniya, in Galeries Victoria. I picked up the latest Cotton Time which was great as previously I had navigated my way through the Japanese Amazon site to purchase my Japanese books. Phoebe and I also picked out a couple other cute books. The good news is they get the magazines in about a week after the release date in Japan, so I can send Paul off in his lunchtime to pick up my books. And there are a couple of other magazines I like (all in Japanese) and I can just give them the codes from the magazines and they can get them in for me too. Now I just have to finish off my CHA projects so I can start work on some of these very cute things.
That's about all, back to a little more scrapping.
Thanks for visiting. I'll be back to more regular blog updates from now.
Cheers
Fiona
x
Happy New Year!!
We're in the middle of summer holidays here. A couple of days after Christmas we headed up the coast to Hawks Nest. We stayed until after new years, which was very different for us. I usually love being in Sydney for the Sydney fireworks, but this year we decided to have a very quite, relaxing break away. It was just so nice.
Bennetts Beach was closed for a day or so during out stay due to the rough seas along the NSW coast. Here's Phoebe with her newest Beanie Kid, Ky the surf life saving bear, checking out the surf conditions.
Little Bubbles and Butterscotch enjoyed their holiday too, they loved hopping around the garden up at Hawks. They travel well in their little pet travel case, and we keep a travel hutch up at Hawks for them to stay in while we are there.
Back in Sydney, and the girls and I have seen a few movies. Enchanted was good (especially as a Greys Anatomy fan) and we've seen the Water Horse which was a beautiful story and and movie. There's been many plays with friends, shopping, etc, etc.
I love school holidays.
Not much to report otherwise. I'm being kept busy with some projects for Maya Road with CHA coming up in February.
I've been enjoying my sewing a lot lately. I made Hootie the other night. He's already flown from our nest to another, but we enjoyed having him around the house for a few days before he joined another family.
The pattern is by Melly and Me (MO23). There are two versions included in the pattern, Hooty and Tweet (with longer legs). I found the fabric for my Hootie up at Tea Gardens. There's a shop called Black Possum Gallery which I discovered and made several secret trips to purchase some lovely fabrics. The fabrics used for my Hootie are gorgeous coordinating soft flanelette quilting fabrics (unfortunately I don't know the brand). Just perfect for a little baby!
That's about all for now.
Thanks for visiting.
Cheers
Fiona x
So school's out and we are finally on school holidays. Lots of end of school stuff went on last week, but it all seems a long time ago now, and we are finally getting into the Christmas spirit.
Today I was at the fish and fruit markets at 7.30am buying the salmon and prawns and salads and fruit for tomorrow. With that all finished by 8.30am, it left a pretty long day ahead of us. So the girls and I caught up with friends, jumped on a bus into the city with the main aim of visiting the David Jones Christmas display windows.
It became a fun festive adventure, wandering through the busy city. Here are some photos from our day.
Martin Place Christmas tree:
Martin Place is looking very festive with the stars and banners:
Pitt Street Mall had these groovy Christmas trees:
Bush firemen:
The bush fire service Santa was also found in Pitt Street Mall:
Free Hugs man.... (if you don't know about him, see HERE):
We did make it to David Jones. The window story this year was The Nutcracker:
Beer Bottle Busker (see him HERE, but today he was playing Christmas songs outside St James Station):
Lindt Cafe (a trip to the city is not complete without a stop here):
The girls decided to try their luck at busking in York Street while waiting for the bus home. They sang the same Christmas song over and over and collected $2.15 between them.
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I'd like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy, prosperous and healthy new year.
Thank you for visiting my blog this year. I look forward to bringing you more craft and scrapbooking ideas and classes in 2008.
Enjoy the holiday season.
Until 2008
Cheers
Fiona
x
Emily's year 6 graduation dinner was held the other night. A lot of work went into the coordination of this night. There was a decorating committee, a food committee, a 'security' committee and even a cupcake committee. The school hall was transformed into a fabulous venue for the kids. The theme of the evening was 'Reach for the Stars', so we did out best to make it as starry as possible. Here's the hall when we'd finished decorating...
I made the centre pieces for the tables. They were terracotta pots painted black with silver glitter on them. The pots were filled with sand to hold the mini balloons, then black crepe paper was crumpled on the top to hide the sand.
The cupcakes looked fantastic. Fondant starry shapes were placed on top of the iced cakes.
Emily looked beautiful. She was soooo excited about the evening.
All the kids had a fantastic night. Their only complaint... their evening was too short. I think they could have kept dancing for another couple of hours!
With the graduation dinner behind us now, it's time to relax... not. Christmas shopping was officially started on Tuesday, still quite a bit to do there. And we still have to make our gingerbread houses, which I'll be starting very soon.
I made these ribbon baubles yesterday for a few friends. They are clear plastic baubles which I found in my local art store (and have also seen them at Spotlight). I've bought them in past years and filled them with lollies for kids Christmas gifts, but this year I thought they'd look pretty with ribbon in them. There's also a sneak of some new ribbons coming the Ribbons Galore very soon.
Our latest design team project for Maya Road was to create a winter project. I don't really have many snowy photos in my album (in fact I only have a few photos of snow from my Europe trip in the 1990's). So I used the Maya Road Sheer Snowflake album to create these little guys: They'll be back later in 2008 after their publication.
The backs were covered with Urban Lily Oh So Merry papers and stamped with the new Maya Road Postcard clear stamps.
I have written out the instructions to create these little guys for your personal use: ETA: the instructions have been removed as the reindeers have been accected for publication.
Download fiona carters reindeer decorations.pdf (US letter size format)
Download fiona carters reindeer decorations.pdf (A4 size format)
And lastly, I think we have enough time for a very quick RAK before Christmas. I have some of these little sets from Maya Road which I'd like to send you.
Leave a comment before Sunday telling me your favourite holiday tradition (or just leave your name in a comment), and I'll put the names in a hat and pick a few out.
That's about all for this week. Hope you're all having a great week.
Bye for now.
Fiona
x
Twelve months ago... Emily reluctantly sat on Santa's knee having the traditional Carter girls Santa photo with little sister Phoebe. After the photo session she asked how many more years did she have to have a photo taken with Santa.
I suggested that next year it might be fun to have a Santa photo with all her school friends. They would be in year 6, very close to leaving school and it would be a fun photo for them all to have.
Usually Emily has a little memory problem. She never remembers when I ask her to put her shoes away. She never remembers to help with the dishes when I ask her. She never remembers to clean the bunny hutch when asked. So imagine my surprise when two week's ago, she actually remembers my suggestion from a year ago, and starts arranging her friends for a Santa photo shoot.
So last Friday was the planned day. I volunteered to "help". After school the girls caught the bus up to Chatswood. I met them at the bus stop and escorted them to Santa.
I'm not sure if Santa was pleased or frightened at the sight of these nine 11 & 12 year old girls appearing in front of him.
They cuddled him, he asked what they all wanted for Christmas. Then they asked him what he wanted to Christmas, and he said a song. With that the girls burst into song "we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas". Their song filled Westfield, people were looking over from the food hall above to see where the beautiful singing was coming from.
Finally they were arranged around Santa. A couple of really nice photos were taken. The photographer asked if the girls should look at the photos. Why not? I thought.
What happened next I was unprepared for. Not everyone was happy with their photo. Now these girls all get along very well, they are very respectful of each other. So it was suggested another photo should be taken, because everyone should be happy with their photo.
Back to Santa they went, and another photo was taken. They checked it. Another one was taken....
....and then another....
...and another...
About 8 photos were taken. That's about six times poor Santa had to cuddled and sat upon by these girls. He remained VERY jovial through the whole experience. This Santa obviously received top grades at Santa School.
Finally a photo was acceptable. It was printed nine times, the girls waved Santa good bye, happy with their photo folder and Santa goodie bag.
It was worth the effort. A fantastic memory captured for many years to come.
Hope you're having a festive week!
Thanks for visiting.
Cheers
Fiona
x
