I’m not known for my cleaning prowess, in fact when the email arrived asking if I could share some of my cleaning wisdom I actually had a go at my husband for trying to wind me up. But, as much as I don’t love it, with five of us now living in our dinky little house, unfortunately, sometimes I need to suck it up and clean! And I’m sure you can imagine, between looking after the boys, blogging here and running both The Bib Chick and Aisling Milis, any free time I do have, I’m not so keen on spending cleaning, so I’ve developed a few techniques to speed up the process and get the maximum result for a minimum amount of effort!

About The Great Cleaning Debate
The debate was inspired from complaints, comments, stories and suggestions posted by our loyal Facebook fans. As the majority of our fans are women, it was no surprise that for many, their share of housework was more than their partners. They took to venting about how they have to do it all. However, we soon discovered that sometimes, they prefer to do the work themselves, because it means that they’ll get it done right. Upon further investigation we found that these women have particular ways of doing the chores. Some say bowls MUST go on the top of the dishwasher tray and others simply MUST keep bowls down the bottom. Some admit they are useless at the ironing but others say they are meticulous about how their iron. The Great Chux Cleaning Debate looks at how people clean – why are they the chore champion of their household. What way do they clean, that means it’s cleaned right!

This video on the Chux Channel struck a definite cord with me! Whilst my mum was staying with us in the first few weeks after Ronan was born she took over a lot of the cleaning duties so that I had one less thing on my plate, including the stacking of the dishwasher. On unloading it one day I mentioned to her that she’d stacked it incorrectly, with the plates angles upwards instead of downwards, she insisted upwards was correct, I said otherwise, and so our own cleaning debate  was born! We would sneak in to the kitchen to “correct” each other’s loaded plates, we googled “correct dishwasher loading” and even referred to the manual, and still couldn’t find a way to settle the debate… and even if we did, I don’t think either of us would have conceded defeat and changed our habits!

So come and join me tomorrow morning to share some of my cleaning “wisdom”, we can chat aboout cleaning habits, parenting, and maybe someone could settle the dishwasher debate for my mum and me!

Click here to visit Chux’s Facebook page, join in The Great Cleaning Debate and have a chance to win $500!

And stay tuned over the next week or so to win an awesome hamper of Chux cleaning goodies!

Before you stop and ask yourself, why are there so many posts about rainbows? I thought I’d explain!

I’m playing around with a monthly theme idea on CB, not promises whether it’s here to stay or not, but I’m hoping it will give me a bit more focus when it comes to creating tutorials and coming up with new ideas for round ups.

This month I’ll be focusing on Roy. G. Biv, rainbows, and crafts based around the spectrum.

It’s so official I even made a graphic for it:

No backing out now.

So stay tuned, for some pretty sweet tutorials, lots of colour and CB’s first ever quilt along.

Sneak peek of the quilt…

He looks so calm and relaxed here, but the bags under my eyes tell a totally different story.

I’m welcoming in 2012 with a face lift for CraftBlog, so if you’re normally an RSS reader, pop on over and take a look around at my awesome new look, it’s pink and black, and I’m more than a little excited that it co-ordinates so well with my hair.

Over the next few weeks I’m hoping to iron out any problems with the new design, launch the CB newsletter and start accepting regular advertisers and sponsorship.

2012 is shaping up to be an exciting year of positive changes and exciting opportunities for me, and I hope you all come along for the ride, crafting implements firmly in hand.

Thank you for reading!

Well I wish I had the exact tutorial, but everyone has their own methods, mine apparently involves several months of tears, 33 weeks of baking time, and eventually 21 hours of labour, but after all that I would like to officially introduce the newest member of my family to the CraftBlog readers. Ronan Clay Treacy was born safely into the world on the 22nd of November, just a little bit undercooked at 2.36kg (just over 5lbs) but otherwise perfect in every way.

We’re spending time in hospital while Ronan grows, learns to eat from something other than a tube and begins to keep his temperature stable. Meaning I have plenty of free time to dream up new projects for me to complete when we get home, work on some new ideas for Project Nursery, and try and work out exactly how I’m going to get all of this done once I’m home with three boys to run around after!

If you’d like to keep up to date on Ronan’s progress I’ll be writing about him on my personal blog, in the meantime, CB will return to your scheduled crafty goodness.

• A visit from my globetrotting mum… with three days notice.
• Custom quilts, custom slings, custom everything and me spending far too long bent over my sewing machine.
• Preparation for my first ever market.
• Disappointment on the lack of attendees to my first ever market.
• My youngest (FINALLY!) learning to walk.

Throw all this in with running around like a madwoman after a three year old and a 20month year old who’s suddenly discovered his legs, dealing with psych visits, hospital visits, attempting (hah!) to keep my house clean and having two years worth of gossip to catch up with from my mum, and CraftBlog has once again been pushed to the back burner.

(sorry CB, please forgive me!)

Now things have calmed down a bit and I am getting back into the swing of things, with the aid of my handy dandy new daily routine, that goes something like: Wake up, make the kids breakfast, check emails, WRITE ON CRAFTBLOG BEFORE I ARRANGE FOR SOMEONE TO BREAK YOU KNEECAPS, make the kids lunch…. and so on. I’m hoping this tactic should work!

So what have you all been up to during my month long unplanned sabbatical?

Unfortunately, that wasn’t meant to be. At exactly 36 weeks gestation my baby’s heart stopped beating in the early hours of the morning. I was induced and delivered a baby girl on Friday the 19th at 3:15 in the afternoon, weighing 6lbs, 13oz and measuring 50cm long. She shares a birthday with her big brother.

We named her Robyn Jade Treacy.

As of yet we have no answers as to what happened, I had a relatively complication free pregnancy, there were no cord issues and the placenta was healthy. I’m hoping that the autopsy results will give us some idea as to what happened.

The next week is pretty full on as we lead up to the funeral. I’m still in a state of shock, and I’m hoping the funeral will at least begin to give me, and my husband, the start of the closure we need.

As for CraftBlog, it’s certainly not going anywhere, crafting is my therapy, my escape, and I need it more than ever right now. Right at this moment though I know I need to focus on my family, my husband and our two beautiful sons, so the posts may be sporadic as I make my way through the healing process, but CB is my love, and I need it, and the wonderful people that read, comment and send emails, more than ever.

Thank you for your patience over the coming weeks and months.

If you are interested in helping the research and awareness of still birth, please look into donating to the Stillbirth Foundation.

With love and thanks,

Fern Treacy

This is the first time the design has gone live to this level of traffic, and on a brand new spanking server, so if you see any bugs or errors, I would love it if you could drop me a note and just let me know. I am ironing out kinks as I discover them, so just bear with me for the first couple of days!

You’ll also notice the advertising in the sidebar, after two years of being asked I have finally opened CraftBlog up to advertising. I will be offering both the leaderboard and the 125×125 squares available for advertising for your craft related business, blogs, directories and handmade stores. I already have a waiting list of people who have contacted me previously about advertising, but if you’re interested in promoting yourself or your business via CraftBlog, once again, please contact me (or DM me on twitter) and I will email you a .PDF covering the statistics and advertising rates.

Any advertising sign ups during the month of January will be offered at half price, so get in there quick if you’re interested.

I think that’s about everything covered. I have some awesome plans for the site in the coming year, there’s a lot to be excited about. I know I said it in yesterday’s post, but thank you very much for all the support, links and comments over the last two years, and I’m hoping we can have a superb 2010 together.

I’ll be migrating servers, upgrading software and bringing in a new site design tonight (what better way to ring in the new year!?) so just a heads-up that there may be a brief period of downtime whilst everything shifts over and CraftBlog settles in at its new home.

So Happy New Year, here’s hoping that 2010 brings us all everything we wish for!

Septembers most popular posts have been…

• Fantabulous Pincushion Tutorial
• Caterpillar Softie Tutorial
• Trick Or Treat Tote Tutorial
• Notebook Cover Tutorial

Most popular links this months have (again!) been tutorials; Lolly Chops’ Owl Pattern, Olly The Owl on Cut Out And Keep, and Everyday Mom’s Self Binding Blanket Tutorial.

And thank you to our top three referrers of TipNut, Free Quilt Patterns and Make For Baby for telling people about my little blog.

October promises to be awesome, I’ve finally got access to the CB twitter account again so expect more daily digests of links to tutorials and sales I’ve found online, we’re also a little more settled into our new home so I’m going to try and roll out some fresh tutorials – although I’m still drawing a blank on anything Halloween themed, hopefully inspiration will strike sometime before the last week of the month!

I’ve also been making the finishing touches on a new layout which will finally include advertising slots, more details of these will be coming in the next week or so, so if there’s any shop owners out there, keep your eyes peeled.

Hope everyone in Australia is enjoying the start of spring and is as excited as I am about the pools opening and not being able to go one weekend without seeing a sign for a Sausage Sizzle.