All Things Mum

I feel so awesome! I'm on holidays (albeit at home) so I don't need to wake up so early and deal with getting kids ready for school and all that busy-ness. Last month it was full of birthdays! Like crazy. Above are my famous Mars Bar Slice which are totally delicious. I had to give most of this huge tray away otherwise I'd be going to the gym every day. The little man turned three. I made him two cakes. So yummy. I highly recommend White Wings Irresistable Chocolate Mousse cake. Soooooo goood and easy to make. The new neighbour is constructing so half our fence is gone. He's a very nice guy and he's also gotten rid of this tree on his side which was over our garage and there is so much less tree crap on our side now. Yippeee. I've re-discovered love of my little Breville 5 bar coffee machine. It's small and it makes me a nice Vitorria coffee with frothy milk. I'm going to need the caffeine hit for these holidays. Our first adventure will ...

I think just about all mums say that they are Time Poor. I certainly don't have to explain myself here. So, on the occasion where there's lots of glass and porcelain things to be washed I like to dump it all in the dishwasher. I've tried the cheap brands and expensive brands of washing tablets and powders. Since my dishwasher is very cheap, ahem, sensitive (it's a Cona brand or something hubby picked up with his dad a long, long, time ago) it doesn't do a good job unless I use a quality dishwashing detergent. Seriously. I am not kidding. It doesn't dry my dishes and it can leave even dirty dishes (I just can't go back to the Aldi powder anymore. Sad memories). I don't even think about how much chemicals are being used to wash my dishes. Do you? That is until Woolworths had this amazing half price sale on all the Finish dishwasher tablets! Aaaahhh-le-lu- ya!!! I popped in one Finish Quantum tablet one day and everything came out sparkling and clea...

I hope you all had a lovely Easter and holiday. I got up before the kids on Easter Sunday and finished off the zipper so she could wear the dress. I am so totally against zippers! Urghh. Anyway, it worked out well and I finished the dress off with a pink ribbon which really made the dress shine. The best decision was to re-do the skirt by gathering it instead of having those pleats. This is a size 8 so she will be able to wear it for a while, at least til end of summer (Feb) over here. Next time I make up this dress I will use a lighter fabric. It's a nice pattern which also includes a plain bodice which is fully lined. If I do use a ribbon tie again it's a good idea to make those ribbon belts or sew a part of the ribbon to the dress so it doesn't ride up. It seems that during Easter the retail sector like to have sales so I popped into Lincraft and they were having a 30% off sale storewide. I hadn't planned on buying anything more than a dress zipper (f...

View B is the top right pink dress. Well, I stayed home yesterday morning (instead of going to the gym) and sewed away determined to finish the dress, or at least most of it. This is most of it done and she tried it on last night. We decided that we didn't like the raspberry flounce and I did not like those pleats. Urghh they look terrible when she wears the dress. It might have been suited to a more flowy fabric than the quilting cotton I used. It's from Spotlight when they had 30% off when you buy the whole bolt. I had done the bodice which was pretty easy. It was my first properly lined bodice in a long time and I almost gave up wondering what to do with the yoke so I winged that a little. The pictures and instructions on the New Look 6579 pattern were not great. I love the bodice though. The yoke is really cute and this is a size 8 which fits nicely on my 7.5yr old. It is a bit loose in the back though so I could have gone down to size 7 or maybe even 6. ...

Hello everybody!!! I took a quick break today to announce the winner of the Scholastic Easter Book Prize. Random generator picked #2 who is: Amber Boyce . So send me an e-mail and I will post the books out to you asap. Thankyou to the rest of you who commented. I like it when I get comments! We celebrated Palm Sunday and the girls wore their Sunday best. They behaved so well, actually all the kids behaved quite well and I consider it to be a fantastic church morning if none of them ask to go to the toilet. It is alot to ask kids to sit quietly through one hour of mass (or longer) and I didn't even bring any snacks to entertain them. Yes, I have made a start on the Easter dress. I cut out the pieces today (which I think is the most boring and yucky part). I hope to get started on some sewing tomorrow. I have a charity meeting and church again tonight so no chance of getting to sit at the sewing machine tonight. This week will go in the blink of an eye. Last week I ma...

Scholastic sent me these First Readers recently. They are A5 sized books and are very much like the home readers the Kindergartens read. I like them because they are a good size for the kids to hold and are a good start in basic reading. These ones are written by award winning Australian Author/Illustrator Kerry Argent . Here is the boy reading One Woolly Wombat which is an International Best Seller and a great Australian counting book. It presents the audience with the magic of dancing kangaroos, koalas sipping gumnut tea with lamingtons and goannas creating havoc in the kitchen and kookaburras writing with old-fashioned fountain pens. He would get a word wrong on some pages but he's a funny reader like that. He'll just add in words or make up words he thinks it would be. I'm forever telling him to read the words properly but he is a pretty good reader anyway.                                  ...

Hello everybody! I actually sewed something up for myself yesterday. This literally took me one day! Yes, I make simple sewing sound like it was a huge task but some times it is when you have four kids, plus husband, to take care of. But I digress, the other day I was at Big W and they had a clearance of these Avella brand knit shirts. They were only $3.50 so I grabbed the biggest size in this navy and white stripe knowing that one day I would make something from it. I spent yesterday afternoon cutting it out using a singlet top that I wear to work as a pattern. I basically cut and eye-balled it all. I zoomed it through the  overlocker (even being too lazy to change the white thread) and only needed to finish the binding on the neckline and back bottom hem. I kept the front hem. Good thinking 99! I kept going after the kids were home from school (disregarding the fact that I still have dinner to prepare). I didn't have enough of the knit for the binding though so I ended...