All Things Mum

Happy Belated Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you all had a wonderful time with your family and had special times. My family is relaxing right now. The kids had a ball but we were so exhausted after the first bbq lunch. Then we had to go to my mums afterwards for dinner. Next year we have decided to do dinner a bit earlier. Perhaps Christmas Eve. We had lots of rain this year again. I remember last year the rain had stopped so we could have dinner but this year we ferried to the garage (where dinner was set up) and the main house with umbrellas. I made this wreath cake. It was a mud cake and I couldn't find any bundt cake tins (can you believe it?). So I just cut out the middle. There was much fun to be had and lots of quoting from My Big Fat Greek Wedding :"What is it?" "It's a bundt" "A bont, a bobt, ... Oh it's a cake..... with a hole in it!" I finished the ganache in the morning (never doing that again) and it came out lumpy...

Sorry for the delayed post but I finally made some time to remember to draw the book winner which is:   Material Girl  said... Would love to read these books to my granddaughter,thanks for the chance. You are very generous! I've sent you an e-mail so I hope to get your parcel out to you tomorrow. In other events, there's been some Christmas skirt sewing. I looked into the stash and found this very pretty floral light cotton. I decided to make some skirts for the girls using the basic but lovely Lazy Days Skirt instructions from Oliver & S. This one is the size 7 and a bit longish. I had made a smaller one for the youngest girl but it turned out a teeny bit too short so I will be fixing it by adding an extra layer under the hemline to lengthen it. Speaking of trims, I ordered this pretty lace trim from this Etsy seller: Natural Balcony . It did take a few weeks as it's from Korea but the shipping is very reasonable. She also added some extra samples ...

** Giveaway closed ** EDIT: I've linked this up to the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day !! Giveaway ends Friday December 13th! When I recieve this box from Scholastic it IS like Christmas Day over and over again! I get so much enjoyment knowing that I'll be recieving quality books that will change my life and my children's lives. I truly believe in their motto: Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life. So true. That's why I've decided to have a book giveaway because they have sent me quite a few and I have to, need to, share the book love. Above is My Merry Christmas by Rosie Smith and Bruce Whatley (sorry if it's blurry). It has lovely illustrations inside and tells a story about what the animals are getting up to during Christmas time.  Here is the book Blossum Possum and the Christmas Quacker by Gina Newton and beautifully illustrated by Christina Booth. Blossum and her friends are desperately trying to wake up Koala Claus and it's a lovely jour...

  Thankyou everyone for your kind words of support and comments. You will be happy to know that after a few talks with hubby I am on the mend; mentally, emotionally, physically. I know it won't happen over night but with a few adjustments here and there I'll be ok soon enough. To start off the past few weeks have been full of positive things. Lots of birthdays. LOTS. Wow.  My sister made these beautiful and delicious red velvet rose cream cupcakes for her daughter's birthday. They tasted really nice and fluffy. Although there were red crumbs everywhere when we went bowling. She said to make the two-toned cream you stuff the wall of the piping bag with one colour and then fill the rest with another colour and you have to use a 1" nozzle of some sort which she got from the cake store. Whatever, they tasted lovely.  We've got a bit of self-love happening around here. Found this great top from TEMT. It was only $10 so a bit of a bargain if I say so myse...

(Image sourced from : http://amazingasset.com/2012/08/13/my-experience-with-depression/) I've been umming and arrhing about this post for a while but decided it's better to get it out in the open and face reality with you, ... the rest of reality. I wrote this post because I know I'm not the only one who feels like this. So here goes: It began last week when I took all the kids by myself to the shopping centre. All was well and we even had a free Santa photo and a few hours later I should have just gone home. Instead, I decided to take a quick duck into Aldi and that's when the stares happened. My eldest son (5.5yrs) started to whinge and cry. He was loud(ish) and people started to look. This nice lady carrying a load of blown up balloons from Jetts thought it might be nice if they all got to carry a balloon so each got one. If only it worked. People stared at him. At me. One of them even swore. Out Loud no less. She cursed our Lord. I wanted to te...

Well, we've been continuing our book journey together. Thanks to Scholastic the kids enjoy the books over and over again. They pretty much love the ones they can sing to or do fun activities. The boys really like 10 Hooting Owls by Simon Williams. They sing every page and they like to find the number on each page. It's good learning for the younger ones and the Owls are cute. We have another one: Where's Santa - Around the World by Louis Shea (below). Even Daddy got involved with them it was so much fun (below). Here they are looking at We Wish You A Ripper Christmas by Colin Buchanan and Illustrations by Roland Harvey. This one came with a cd and the guy sings the words. It might be a tad bit too 'Outback' for us. I might like to see something that isn't too stereotype about Australia. I mean, for most of us, we're not surrounded by Koalas, Kangaroos and Emu's. But it's a nice one as Christmas is just around the corner. We still pre...

It's Spring down here in Australia but it feels like summer. The weather can be quite hot one day, cooler at night, and mild the next day. You just can't tell. I think I can put away the winter jackets though. Normally with a change in the seasons I pack away clothes that will not be worn often and are just taking up valuable space in the cupboards. I also discover  what is missing for the kids. It turns out that my eldest girl has hardly any shorts or skirts for the warm weather. I decided to buy a few shorts but for me the pricing of $20 is rather insane. I decided to buy the Kid Shorts pattern by Dana of MADE . It was a measly $6 which I should have bought ages ago. It's terrific because the sizing starts from 12months to 10 years!!! WOW. I knew I had to do make something nice with this sage coloured polka dot fabric I bought from the local fabric store. I cut out the size 8 as my daughter needs a bit more room (and I don't have any problems with her ea...

This is my youngest daughter Jacquie. Jacquie is 3, turning 4 very soon and goes to day care once a week. She also has speech therapy once a week and bad mummy packs her food in plastic bags and old lunch boxes and scribbles her name on paper labels.  Jacquie is very happy today because she's sporting a brand new lunch box which has her name imprinted on it and it was made by Hippo Blue . Jacquie is in dire need of special name labels and that is where Hippo Blue saved my day and made everything look pretty. Hippo Blue made up a batch of their Vinyl Label Variety pack and I could not be more pleased. I've had other labels before and these ones are quite impressive. Why? well because there's a lot more variety. I like how there are different sizes so I can plaster her name on all her pieces she needs for day care and school. Did you see those cute footprint stickers? They're shoe stickers. How cool! We also recieved round dots and new square ones which I...

Every Father's Day weekend we also celebrate my eldest's child's birthday. In the morning their dad got his gifts from the school's fathers day stall. He was also doing the bbq at his parents for the big get together we always have. The europeans sure love to have a big feast but it makes for lots of fun and smiles. I digress, Mia turned 7 and I decided to make that cake (from the previous post). She also helped. Most of it came together really nicely except the rocky road filling. We followed the instructions but I didn't think that the warm melted chocolate would also melt the marshmallows. So we ended up with gooey sticky chocolate with pistachio bits. Still we went with it. I had baked two packets of White Wings Rich Chocolate cake because sometimes speedy is my middle name. Which turned out just as well since we also went to church for a bit in the evening. We came home a bit tired but she still wanted to stay up and help me with her cake. She said ...