My eldest has a name that is rarely heard in Australia, we could go to Ireland and find ourselves overwhelmed with “Declan” merchandise, but we’re pretty much out of luck here. He treasures the facewasher and keyring that we’ve managed to pick up with his name on, but still scours gift shops and gets a little disappointed when his name isn’t there, it’s about ten times worse when he can find his brother’s name right off the bat. Growing up [...]

With spring on the way the RSPCA is starting to become overwhelmed with baby possums that have lost their mothers, these orphans still need a place to sleep and chill out, and so they’re calling for volunteers to knit or crochet “Possum Pouches” to keep them warm, stimulate them and offer some home comforts. The pattern (posted below) is easy enough for a beginner. One thing to remember is to use natural fibres rather than acrylic to make these up, [...]

(I know there’s a few people hanging out for it, and promise the party hat tute is coming either tomorrow or Friday – this week has been all over the place as my boys’ preschool flooded and was closed on the days that they attend, so I’m pretty much behind in everything!) _________________________ Confession time. I spent eighteen years of my life not eating cheese. Not that I didn’t like it, I didn’t have a clue whether or not I [...]

Last time I updated you guys on Project Nursery things had stalled a little as I realised that we had a slight problem – the citron in Michael Miller’s Citron Gray colour story was far more green than I’d anticipated, and so matching it up with anything bought locally or any of the fabrics currently in my stash was going to be near impossible. This meant that the fabric stack I ended up with (the one just to the right [...]

Christmas is now just 90 days away and already the Christmas creep is showing up in stores, mentions of Xmas laybys, a few decorations here and there, and in no time flat we’re all going to be living in a land of tinsel and fairy lights! With Hercules due to arrive any time in December I’m not making as many hand made gifts as I normally would, but one of the things on my to do list is making some [...]

I only just spotted this, otherwise I would have been all over it for the return of Glee on Channel 10, but hey, any day is a good day for cupcakes, right? Even better if they look just like McKinley High’s famous Big Quench slushies. Tamara, of Cupcakes By Tamara created these awesome cupcakes using sanding sugar (don’t waste your money buying it, make your own!) and plastic cups – although it’s the red cups that really make these look [...]

My four year old has recently developed a love of writing, it’s been awesome watching his little scribbles slowly turn themselves into recognisable words (along with constant requests of “How do you spell….?”) and he’s absolutely enamoured with the idea of writing letter and emails to everyone he knows. We printed out this letter writing kit from Kate at Picklebums this morning and have had a lovely time writing letters to everyone we know, even my 3 year old got [...]

Last week I posted about natural options for creating a rainbow layered cake, and mentioned that you can now get a small range of natural food dyes from your local supermarket, manufactured by Queen, who, based on my research, are the big kahuna of food dyes here in Australia. Then twitter went just a little bit nuts asking for further information on the natural colours, and a guinea pig to give them a proper run for their money. So I [...]

I absolutely adore the rainbow cakes that have populated the blogsphere over the last few years, but, as a Mum who tries everything to avoid artificial flavours and colours, they’ve always made me wince just a little to think of the amount of chemicals and toxins going into little bodies. They are just so awesome to look at, but I don’t think I could bring myself to eat one, let alone feed one to my kids, particularly the hypersensitive four [...]

I first spotted this pattern over at Living With Punks, Susan made an awesome version in Michael Miller’s groovy guitar fabric and I fell in love. Of course, I wasn’t so in love that I bought it straight away, instead I fussed about for six months, staring at it on Etsy about once a fortnight and daring myself to give it a go. I know I’ve said it before, but I’m not a clothes seamstress. I can make a quilt [...]