Acorn Collective

Life and death: it's all related.

This is what I have been busy making recently.
I can show you all now as they have arrived in the UK safely.

Hopefully the new baby will love them, or at least show a mild interest.

I have also started a quilt for my brother to celebrate his 30th birthday (okay okay, his birthday was in May - yes it is late, I am a terrible sister, but better late than never right? Right!), I love that blue background.

And, um, hello, that skipping boy print is so gorgeous I just want to wrap myself up in it.
Which I might have done if I wasn't so tight and only bought a teeny tiny strip of it.
I had to force myself to cut into it and start using it.
I swear if I don't start using my fabric it will still be neatly folded up in my cupboard until I lay cold and still.

Hmmmm.
That's got me thinking.
Maybe I should start a nice patchwork throw for my kids to arrange over my coffin at my funeral.
Of course they would have to remove it before they cremate me (yep, I am SO gonna burn baby burn) cos I wouldn't want my precious bits and pieces of lovely fabric to go up in flames.

Then how would I decide who got to keep the coffin warmer?
And would they want to keep it?
Or should I leave instructions for it to be put up for auction on ebay - I know there are some freaks out there who might pay LOTS and LOTS of money for some cute death related quilting.
Maybe that is my way into my own business.
"Quilts for your Coffin - keeping you warm for Eternity"
Geez, that's catchy.
I may have something there.

Poorly me.

This week I got sick for the first time in a long time.
'Take it easy'
'Get lots of rest'
'Have a lie down'

These were the words of advice offered to me by all and sundry.
Unfortunately I have three small children, a husband, a dog, a cat, a houseful of laundry, meals to make, and cleaning to be done.

Don't get me wrong. Believe me, there is nothing I want more than to hop into bed all day lamenting how terrible I feel, how my bones are aching and how my throat feels as if someone has ripped off the first few layers of skin to a sympathetic audience, but seriously, how do I do that?
That's for the hubbies to do. Us stoic women just put up and shut up until we fall apart and can handle it no more.

o-kay.

I have just come back to this post to finish it off.....I think you get from the above that I was not feeling well when I started typing!

Grumpy lady.

I am feeling better - yippee! So much better that I am actually going to exercise again tonight - I am so looking forward to it. I will push up and sit up and squat until the last of my cold is sweated out of me!

Last week in the midst of feeling only slightly better than death, I thought it might be fun to do some foot painting with the kids. It wasn't too cold and I had an hour to kill.

This was the result.

It started off beautifully with the kids daintily placing their feet into the paint then walking on tippy-toes, then heels, then the sides of their feet, then very rapidly descended into elbow painting, arm painting, bottom painting etc.
It was a whole body painting experience.
I drew the line when they said they want to do cha-cha and doodle painting (I will assume you all know what a cha-cha and a doodle are.)
That is something no-one need ever see.

Did it take forever to get the paint off?
Did it take two loads of washing to recover?
Did it mean hosing off the paving with the high pressure cleaner?

Yes, yes and yes, but gosh sometimes it is just SO worth it!

Changing the subject, my dear friend Madeleine moved house recently so I set about making her a housewarming gift.
I knew basically what I wanted to make but have never done pieced quilting before so there was a bit of a learning curve:

Matilda made the card to go with the gift. Look how happy Mads is at having a new house!

What I really want to embroider was 'home is where the heart is'  but my hand sewing was so atrocious I unpicked it all. Maybe that is something I should work on, you know, along with, learning another language, becoming a domestic goddess, understanding men, running a marathon and crocheting.
Hmm.
Not too much more to learn then. Ha!

I was walking through Target last week and spied these stripy stockings for Matilda.

I am so in love with them - I have a serious case of stocking envy.
What I want to know is why don't they do grown up sizes?
I would SO wear them if they did.

In exciting news Miss Tilly has gone ahead and had her baby boy and he is a cutie!
And my sister is only a week or so away from having her baby - my fingers are sore from all the sewing I have been doing (I am such a tease!)
Babies, babies everywhere. I am glad they belong to other people and not me - my babymaking days are over. Kind of sad, but also kind of yippeewhoohoohighfiveohyeah!

 

Busy busy me

I got out the drill this weekend and got busy doing a few of those odd jobs that have been on my list for a bit.
Actually, when I say "I" you all know I mean "Mike" right?

(I am sure I have said this before, but think of me as the Project Manager - or as the brains behind the operation. I formulate where and when I need something done, and Mike (mostly) complies.)

I fell in love with the idea of an inspiration wire after seeing one in Amanda Blake Soule's (aka Soulemama) book The Creative Family a while back. Then just last week I came across this which revved me all up again. So voila!

Gotta love Ikea.
Matilda is such a prolific artist that it is lovely to have her work up and on display rather than shoved down the back of the many drawers in our house - or worse, used as compost.

I have also been getting frustrated lately at my workspace being so full of paper, pens, crayons and paper - it totally cramps my creativity when everything is cluttered, so after seeing this (scroll down the post) I knew what I had to do.

Sorted.
Although......Henry likes to cut the feathers up into teeny tiny pieces which get wafted all over the house. Not so good for the old OCD mama, I'm afraid, but it does mean my desk is now free......

This was how I found Henry on his first 'you don't have to have a sleep during the day anymore, you can just play in your room for a bit' day.

I opened the door to find him passed out behind it. I had to literally use the door to push him out the way. I think it is the first time he has ever slept anywhere other than his bed (apart from when he was tiny and had a few sleeps in the portacot.)
He was out like a light. Eliza strolled in and lay down on top of him to give him a cuddle and he didn't move a muscle.
It reminded me of the time when my sister and I stayed up until midnight for a midnight feast. We went in to wake up our brother but he would not stir. Sarah resorted to hitting him over the head with He-Man (the Master of the Universe) and when that wouldn't work picked up Skeletor to give him a go. I stopped her at that point because even then I was wise enough to recognise that you just can't go around willy-nilly whacking kids over the head with the most evil creature in all of the Universe.
Sheesh.
Check out Henry's beaver. Yep you heard me. His very special toy beaver goes everywhere with him.
Mike is often heard saying 'every boy needs a beaver of his own'.
Ahem.

Quickly changing the topic, I am still in a bit of a cooking mood and so I made some bread yesterday.
Gosh, is there anything more mouthwatering than the smell of baking bread. It just makes you feel so homey and housewifey and so damn proud of yourself.

We ate the whole loaf for afternoon tea!
Yum.

Okay. I have a tidy desk. Organised and neatly stacked fabrics. Tea cooked. A tidy house and the kids are in their rooms.
Should I:

    a: get creative
    b: finish off one of the many UFP I found whilst tidying up
    c: make a cup of tea, cut a slice of dairy free chocolate cake and watch an episode of 30 Rock.

What the what?
There is no contest people, none at all.

M.I.A

Yep, it has been a while since I wrote a post.
I am a crappy blogger.

No commitment.

Sheesh.

Firstly and fore-mostly the lovely Dorthe gave birth to a beautiful bouncing girl, named Leah.
Congratulations!!
I visited last Saturday to pass on all the gorgeous gifts our group made (see the June photo album) and both mother and baby are doing well.

Dorthe looks fantastic - I swear she that whatever extra baby weight she may have been carrying has melted away leaving a slim and fit looking body.

What the what?
Why could that not have been me?
Now that 17 months later I am finally shifting the last of the baby flab, my body is ruined.
What was it Patsy said about having kids on Ab Fab? Something about being left with an accordion for a stomach and tits down past your knees?

(That's me. Except not the tits part. Breastfeeding three kids has quite literally sucked all the perkiness out of these precious little petals.)

Little bubs are just so damn cute.
Especially when they belong to someone else and you can hand them back.
And you don't have to worry about your let down reflex kicking in if you happen to make it to the shops by yourself only to hear the cry of someone else's newborn infant and end up finding the front of your ever so nice 'post-baby-treat top' full of milk.

Hmmmm.

In other baby news, my sister is only about five weeks away from giving birth to her first child - my very first niece or nephew.
Because of this I may or may not (depending who is reading this.....Sarah) be sewing up a storm over here.
If I were terribly busy doing lots of sewing I couldn't possibly put up any pictures of anything until that baby pops out and the pressies are well on their way to Old Blighty.
Sigh.
So whilst you may think that what with all the running and whatnot I have abandoned my crafty ways, you would be wrong.

Mostly.

Would this be the time to go into a long and detailed account of the colonic irrigation I had a fortnight ago?

Maybe not.
I mean who needs to hear about that.
Seriously.
Unless you want me to go on?

How about some pictures instead. (Not pictures of the colonic cos that would be wrong, just wrong)

I went to Ikea with Laila last week (all hail mighty mighty IKEA) and walked out with miniature tumblers, wine glasses and cutlery for the kids.

Teeny tiny stuff just melts my heart.
Henry asked for some wine, or as he likes to say 'why-an'.
I said 'no-oo'.

Then this weekend I went to Subicao markets and loaded up my bags with all manner of delicious fruits and vegetables for a fraction of the price of the local supermarket.
Why do I not go every week?
I bought beetroot - which I have never cooked before - and roasted it the way my mum told me to.

Turns out that if you eat a bowl of roasted beetroot, your poo turns pink.
Who'da thunk it?

I also bought a whole load of dried navy (haricot) beans on a whim, suddenly deciding to cook my own baked beans.
I googled 'vegetarian baked beans' and still managed to come up with recipes containing bacon* asterisked saying 'remove for vegetarian option'.
Hmmmmmmmm.

Anyhoot, I soaked those suckers overnight, chopped up my garlic, celery, carrot and onion and whacked it all in the oven for a speedy five hour bake.

Not quite as convenient as a can of Heinz.

But...........I have to say, they tasted good.
Really good.
I had some pork mince in the freezer which I defrosted and made into meatballs for Mike and the kids. I have never bought pork mince before either.
This must be my Year of New Things.

This was what my family had for tea.

I removed a third of the beans for me then chucked the browned off meatballs into the big cast iron pot to let the porky flavour seep through.

Five empty plates.
Yum.

Don't know how I'm gonna feel in the morning when all them beans starting working their way through our systems.
Let's just say that we will be sleeping with the windows open tonight.

I have a ton of stuff more to type, but am just too lazy.
I want one of those voice recognition programs that types what I say....maybe I'll just do a random stream of consciousness babble and get everything out that way.
Isn't that what James Joyce did in Finnegan's Wake.
Surprising how much sense that book makes when you have downed three bottles of wine.

until next time

(note I didn't puntuate that last sentence. Yep. That's how cool I can be.)

Mother's day fever

Mother's Day was a busy day for me.
Sheesh, I mean b-u-s-y.

I got up at the crack of dawn so I could go and run the Mother's Day Classic -a 7km circuit in support of breast cancer- with my friends Mads, Emma and Justine.
The run was great and the atmosphere was fantastic. I think there were about 15,000 people there altogether.
We all got our picture taken for the weekend paper, (you can see Justine and I here, with me looking all goofy) and had a brilliant time. But as soon as I was done I rushed home as we were due at Mike's family do, then we rushed back to put the kids down for a nap, then we rushed up to my mum's for afternoon tea.
By dinnertime I was so shagged I flaked out on the couch, moving only enough to raise my wine glass to my lips whilst Mike out the kids to bed. I drank about half a bottle of wine and then relaxed so much that some may suggest I passed out. I am SUCH a lightweight nowadays.

Matilda made me some lovely pressies at school and apparently, according to my hubby, all the kids clubbed together their non- existent pocket money to buy me a computer for my bike. Sweet!

Ooh, and on Friday my little package arrived from the girls at Umbrella Prints.

I am so excited about this fabric. Watch this space!

In other sewing news, my creative drought seems to have broken. It feels like so long since I have done anything 'just because', if you know what I mean.

While flitting through blog land the other day I came across this lovely blog by Alice Merlino aka futuregirl and saw these gorgeous owls.
I then had to immediately attempt one of my own.
Mine is not quite as lovely as Alice's but I think he turned out okay.

Those eyes just make him look so happy and squishy, don't you think. I want to make him a friend and will make the next one a bit rounder. Practice makes perfect, right.

Laila knitted this little patch of green grass and bought an Easter Bunny for the kids this Easter.
She had also given me a pattern from one of her Japanese craft books a while ago, and so I decided to make some friends for the lonely bunny.

The one in focus on the left is the one Laila bought and the other two are the ones I made.
My ones are definitely, erm......let's say.....'special'.
They both kinda look like they are on the road to recovery after suffering a nasty dose of Myxomatosis.
Mike also pointed out that my pattern enabled one rabbit to mount another....talk about a one track mind!

I did take a picture of one rabbit atop another but decided not to post it as I am not sure where you all stand on stuffed toy pornography.

Along with the rabbit pattern, Laila gave me a kitty pattern and a mouse pattern too.
And here they are, in the felt, so to speak.

In hindsight, making a black felt toy in a house with a white cat and a brown dog, you are just asking for trouble.....and I have to say the felt I used came from Spotlight (read nasty acrylic stuff) and so it picks up crap from everywhere. A bit like me really.

Anyhoot.
So yes, it seems the making stuff urge is returning. I have even cast on a scarf for Henry, which hopefully I will finish this year - or at least this decade.

I hope all you Mother's out there had a fabulous Mother's Day on Sunday.

Let's admit it, we are all pretty great.