Passing on bloggy award

Oh I'm such a slack blogger sometimes! I have not yet passed on the blog award from CT or started doing the other one she gave me or the one from Miss Prudence.

So.....here goes.....I'm passing this one, the Circle of Friends award to the following:

Le at Third on the Right who is a true pal - stalwart in times of trouble, has a sensible head on her shoulders, can tackle any job or situation unfazed, and loving mother and spouse to boot, not to forget fellow chocolate addict and always up for a giggle about the funny side of marriage.

Miss Prudence....my newest bloggy mate who brightened my day by answering my emails and having a good chat about life. NEW PARAGRAPH HERE - WHAT IS WRONG WITH BLOGGER TODAY? IT WON'T LET ME LEAVE SPACES!

Feel free not to join in if it's not your thing! I totally understand.

If you don't want to play - say five things you love to do and pass it along. My five favourite things were a couple of posts back if you want to see them. Mostly to do with chocolate and sleep from memory.

CT - you lovely girl - thank you for the "Over The Top" award. Is it ok if I skive off answering the questions and passing this one on? I can't find the energy for such intensive blogging homework today.....

Miss Prudence - I'm still working on the award you gave me. Thanks for your patience!

My beloved digital camera has obviously been played with and dropped once too many times by my girls and no longer wants to focus. So....my posts will be bereft of illustrations (new ones that is - I may have to trawl through my archives and bore you all with old ones) until I get organised and buy a new camera.

"Our " creative space

Oops! I just popped over to Beck's Dandelion blog and realised I missed "My Creative Space" yesterday after only joining in for the first time last week.

Usually, my girls love being involved when I sew something and particularly like playing with the fabric and pushing the sewing machine pedal thingy. But I thought my big girl was big enough now to actually try and sew something herself. One morning when she woke up early (as usual!) I suggested sewing instead of computer/tv and she was very keen. So she chose some strips of fabric and sewed some straight seams and made her first patchwork square (well...it will be square when I trim it). It was a beautiful sight seeing her concentrating at my machine in the morning sunlight. She wants to make some more squares and then sew them together to make a pillow case (not that I know how to make a pillow case but I'm sure I'll find a tutorial).
Here she is with her first sewing and her beautiful gappy smile.

Love you, Poss Poss xxxxxxx

Circle of Friends thingy

Thanks to my lovely friend and "psychic twin" CT for this little award and her thoughtful words. She was the first person I didn't know that found my newly born blog (apart from a sleazy Portugese guy who I think was attracted to a sole reference to breastfeeding) and became a friend. CT's warmth and love of life truly leap off her blogs and her comments.

So.....all I need to do now is say five things I love to do and then award this to five other friends, which I may leave until the next post. (I'm having a trying day and it ain't over yet!). A note to Miss Prudence, if you are watching - I tried right clicking on this blog award thingy and saving it as a picture and then I cut and pasted it into my post. I'll try that with your award and see if it works).

5 Things I love

1. Eating chocolate - Lindt if possible but usually Cadbury would do - especially their nice fat eggs full of caramel. (This particular joy was dimmed briefly by a disastrous year of seeing my dentist much more than I would have liked to - a year which culminated in a root canal procedure which saw a tiny piece of instrument break off and lodge in my root canal where it still resides despite a traumatic session with a dental specialist. However, I am now back to my usual chocolate scoffing habit especially when feeling PTSDish over the continuing root canal saga).

2. Looking at my children, especially when they are asleep and not expecting me to be their slave.

3. Seeing the thinnest of thin crescent moons shining in the night sky - always give me a surge of witchy magic and makes everything seem ok.

4. A good chat (and some chocolate) with my female friends and a good belly laugh over men, sex and other funny things.

5. Sleeping - alone in a very big bed with lots of room, and lots of peace and quiet. It could be a whole 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night or a blissful afternoon nap with the afternoon sun shining in the window - I'm not choosy.

(PS I love my tall handome boy, too)

When I have another spare 5 minutes, I'll pass this on to some worthy blogging girls (although I am partial to Quilt Dad - I doubt he knows who I am.)

Christopher Bubba' s quilt (and my first attempt in joining the My Creative Space thing)

I tried to get this quilt done for the birth of Christopher, my special new nephew, but needed a few extra days to finish the embroidered label on the back. Here it is on the washing line - another rainbow baby quilt as I just love working with all the colours. One day, I'll move on to triangles but for now, I like squares and rectangles - minimal stress for a newbie quilter.

As my brother and his wife, Gina, have a special working relationship with boats and the sea, I tried to sneak as many boat/ocean motifs and colours in as I could. Gina came with me to choose some of the fabric which was great. There's also a blue Beatrix Potter square in there from fabric my big sister used in my surprise wedding quilt as a "baby wish" so it was lovely to hand a bit of that on to my brother's baby.

The corners and backing are a lovely print of masses of tiny boats sailing on the sea. My big brother was quite taken with the quilt and said it made him want to have a nap. I'd better make him one too!

I don't have a proper photo as yet of the Christopher Bubba on his new quilt as he was busy sleeping or drinking up his Mama's milk when we took it over, so here is a photo of my girl giving it a test drive.

But here is a photo of the beautiful boy himself just 5 days old here, I think.

I've put this post on the My Creative Space blog of Kirsty's (my first time) so if you want to see what people are creating, click here.

PS I've just realised it is supposed to be a sort of "work in progress" creative space but never mind - this one happens to be finished.

Big Day Out

Tree

It's a perfect autumn day here today so after a morning of Hi 5 on the computer (G), playing the Wii (E and G) and chores (me), I decided to take the girls to the park to get a nature fix while the Daddy did some work. We set off to our favourite inner city park. The trees were magnificent, as were the roses, but the fantastic playground was closed for upgrading so we wandered down to the river, patting dogs as we went and jumped on a City Cat for a ride. We ended up at South Bank Parkland for an icecream. We saw so many things and made so many new friends. I'll let the photos tell the rest of the story.

garden

perfume

daschund

park

bandstand

river

juggling

story bridge

sunshine

new friend

boysenberry icecream

rainforest walk

Nepalese Peace Pagoda

arbour

waiting

war memorial

Hello little Christopher!

Finally, the girls' little cousin, Christopher, has arrived. They had their first cuddles today and he is just gorgeous!

Sleep tight!

Slightly less dramatic news - Em lost both her top front teeth today! (Note gap in top photo)

This Crazy Life....

Life has overtaken blogging for me lately. I wish life would slow down a little so that I could smell the roses. The last few weeks have been a blur of school holidays, various doctor's appointments for tonsilitis and stuff, family outings, finishing baby quilts etc. This week I have caught the girls' post tonsilitis cold, been to the funeral of a dear friend's father, had deadlines to meet at work and now we are anxiously awaiting a phone call to say my brother's baby boy has been safely born. Come on little Christopher! We can't wait to meet you. Today was also my mother's birthday so I have been rushing around like a mad thing. No different to the lives of all my bloggy friends. When did things get so crazy?

I also managed to catch up with a great friend from my days as a single twenty-something....Le. She was visiting with her family from way up in remote North Queensland and we spent a lovely Saturday night sitting on a verandah looking over a park, eating a yummy homecooked dinner while the husbands looked after the children and chatting with another friend the way women do about life, men, children, work and the funny side of it all. It was so great to relax, laugh and enjoy the company of women without the sound of little voices (well those of my children anyway) constantly needing attention. If mothers could have a couple of hours like this every week, we'd all be so much more sane and enjoy the many hours we spend with our children even more. Thanks for a lovely night, Le.

I have been reading a wonderful book called "The Last Child in the Woods" by Richard Louv which has hit such a nerve with me. He argues that the majority of the current generation of children in the west are having very little contact with nature with increasing urbanisation, growing fears of traffic, strangers and even nature itself, the obsession with TV/computers/Nintendos etc and lots of other factors. He cites a great number of studies that reveal the many many benefits of contact with nature (especially in an unstructured way where children are free to dream, roam, build cubbies, chase lizards or whatever). The book has inspired me to encourage my girls to have more exposure to the natural world so we went paddling in a river after school last week as well as squeezing in an extra outing to the beach one afternoon over Easter. I'm really committed to making sure we all get a dose of the beauty of nature at least once a week and really want to take the girls into the rainforest again soon. (See post about Mount Tambourine from Dec last year). Well.....enough ranting on that topic.

No photos to liven this post this week as Scott took the camera to work and it hasn't come back yet.

Have a great week, my bloggy friends.