Welcome

To the 2 newest members of our family
Banana Monkey and Tigress

Via Creating Paper Dreams I found Lizzie Made who had a small tutorial on how to make sock monkeys. Next thing I know I have brought some socks and was starting to make one, however he got adopted twice in the space of 5 mins so when finished I had to quickly make a 2nd. Not bad for 1 afternoons creations. Although I do now have socks to make cousins and friends so watch this space for more additions....!

Family Fun

Back at the beginning of 2006, after I had returned to work after having Alex, I came across a website called Family Fun. It is a site and organisation that is run in part by Disney.

It is a website dedicated to everything to do with fun in the family.

• crafts
• recipes
• activities
• parenting ideas
• party ideas
• family evening activites
• printables - colouring pages, quiz, puzzles

There is always something that you know will work with your family.
They even have a magazine that is produced 10 times per year. They only produce 1 edition over July and August (summer holiday time) and again in December and January (Christmas holiday time).
It is happily delivered to New Zealand and is usually only about a week or 2 out. (I just received October's the other day) Although there are not many competitions that you can enter because sadly you do need to be an citizen of US to enter, but that is no worry. Also if there was a specially celebration holiday at the beginning of the month, you may find they had a great idea for an activity that sadly gets to you too late, but by checking out the website often you can see it on there first before receiving the magazine!

From reading that last section you have by now worked out that this is in fact an American publication. I haven't found anything I can't adapt yet and yes sadly the magazine for summer activities does arrive slap bang in the middle of our winter but I see that as giving me plenty of planning time for the summer months ahead.

Go check them out here and see if you can't find something that will work for your family.

A couple of months ago they celebrated 20 years of Family Fun by giving you a chart to collect the monthly Badges of Fun on.

Chart can be printed from website

These badges are available 1 per month and gives you 10 activites to complete throughout the year.
In June the badge was Backyard Fun where you had to do something outside with the family.

In July the badge was Preserve Family Memories where you had to find a way to remember

In August the badge was Hit The Road where you had to take a family trip together, whether to Grandmas or the supermarket!

In September the badge was Learn Something New where you had to do something as a family that was new to you all.

Now in October the badge is Family Night Fun where you have to do something fun with the family at night. Play outside, games night etc.

Without realising it we have managed to complete all of these and I haven't even told the family that we are doing it!
Maybe it is time to sit them down and let them know what we have achieved so far and make plans for how to achieve the others as they come up each month.

I love receiving my magazine and seeing what fun activities are suggested. There are awesome art creations as well but I have never ventured there but if you were a school teacher, kindy teacher or daycare person you may find some wonderful ideas on things to make with the kids etc.

In another post sometime I will write about what we have done to achieve each badge, if you start completing the badges, then let me know. Would love to see what you did.

Crafts

I am a crafty person, love sewing and making etc although I am not an artist! I can not draw or paint to save my life but give me squared paper to design on and I am away but give me plain paper to create on and I get stumped!

My mum is also very crafty but she can also draw and paint, so I know where I get my enthusiasm for all things crafty from, have done since I was about 7 yrs old.

Now Ben can not draw! End of story, we know it, the teachers know it and I think he does too. He is not one to be content to sit with pencils and scrap paper and produce a master piece etc. It may come with age and you never know when he is a little bigger it may suddenly emerge, but we are not too worried if he does not become a budding artist.

Alex, I am not sure on with the drawing part yet but give him some craft stuff and he is flying. He is in his element, so of course he has great fun at Daycare creating anything and everything.

Their theme for the last little while has been puppets and he has happily created every imaginable type.

He created a Santa sat on a sleigh with a big sack of presents being pulled by a reindeer.

Daycare were so impressed with this they put it on the shelf by the register for everyone to see.

The Santa and sleigh are on the shelf and then the reindeer is attached to the wall to make it look like he is pulling the sleigh.

The reindeer is fluffy and has orange wings to help him fly.

He also has a big red nose, so no guessing as to which reindeer we have here?

It is amazing and he is very proud of it, as we are too. He just has this wonderful imagination that is shining through big time.

Well done Alex you are so clever little man.

Paper Craft

I like crafts. I happily, when given the time, will sew, crossstitch and quilt.
I have given paper crafts ago before but have never delved into the depths of that world.
And I am not going to now either.

Back in August I got invited by a friend to join her at a stamping party she was attending. Never been to one before and thought why not.
Now if I wanted a new craft then why not this one. There are loads of little gadgets etc and loads of wonderful bright coloured paper. But they are also very expensive.
Now I like to send cards to people all the time, but I could never justify spending all that money to make this personalised card for someone knowing that they probably wouldn't keep it anyway and then just throw it out!

So for now I am sticking to my current hobbies.

However one of the Committees I am part of had a get together afternoon and we had the lady from the Stamping party come and do a party with us. It had a Christmas theme and was lots of fun, and very easy.
We made a little Christmas Box and also a voucher holder.

You place a voucher in the little inside pocket

I had a lot of fun making them and it was good to catch up with people I know. Now I just have to decide what to do with these lovely items?

Sewing

When I was a little girl, I picked up the sewing bug from my mum.

She had always been sewing and embroidering for as long as I could remember. She even did an evening class in sewing at one point and got a little certificate etc, can't actually remember what the course was, I was only 6 when she did it! But I do remember her going to college and I even remember going to the college to see her there.

Anyway, when I was about 8 or 9, I finally got the privilege of having my own sewing box.

I got it for Christmas. It was an old style Mothercare Baby Box, just like the one in the picture on the right. It was a big plastic box that was originally used for keeping baby products for nappy changing time in, but mum, being as creative as she was, turned this one into a sewing box for me.

It came with a nice amount of blue aida, needles and some DMC threads, just enough basic colours for me to do something with. There was also a little pattern book in there. Now everything was geared towards cross stitch, so that is where my sewing history begins....Cross Stitch.

I still have most of the first projects I worked on, even still have the book, oh and the threads.

Below are a few pictures of some of my first projects.....

I also did a lovely cross stitch of an Easter Bunny pulling a cart of presents. It is so cute. When I find it I will take a picture and post it sometime.
Over the years I have worked on many projects, I was always making things for people to celebrate weddings, birthdays and babies being born.

My brother also drew a picture of a car on graph paper one time, and for Christmas, I made the design up in cross stitch and then framed both the picture and the cross stitch picture together and gave it as his present. Hopefully he still has it somewhere at his house so will try and get a picture of that as well.

This also means that I have a very special box of my own now.

Mum and Dad brought it for my Christmas Present in 1996. It was brought from a little sewing shop in Lincoln, Great Britain whilst Mum and I were there shopping at the Christmas Evening Festival they held.

And when you open the lid

It is filled with all my DMC Threads that I have purchased over the years, and yes they are all on their own little card and yes they are all numbered and in order! (The box came empty by the way, I have filled it since getting it)

I also still have my first DMC Thread Colour Chart that you could tick to show what you had at home and what you still needed to buy if you were ever lucky enough to have a few coins left over to buy new threads with whilst a student. I obviously did ok!

As you can see, I have most of the threads, well this was the list from about 1990!

DMC have since brought out many new ranges of threads and colours, so now I have realised that I have a few more to collect! So I will have to get another box for all the treads I still don't have.

So even though I am now dabbling in quilting, Cross Stitch will always be my first love.

Stamping

My good friend Wendy, asked me the other day if I wanted to go to a stamping party with her? I love crafts so why not.

Had an enjoyable afternoon actually.

Not about to rush out and start stamping as a craft, but interesting to see what other people are so hooked on.

We had the wonderful pleasure of making 2 little projects at the party.

A little cover for a wee notebook and a card.

As the lady hosting said, 'even though we are being directed in what to do, it is amazing that everyone has put their own little twist on things, so everything looks a little different!'

Here are pictures of my efforts for the afternoon.....

A little summer card

New Blog

Over the time I have created a list of blogs that I like to follow.
Ok I follow some more religiously that others.
In my favourites list on my computer I have a file called 'Blogs'. These are ones that I don't check out every day, just when I have some time to browse.
As always, these are blogs that I have come across whilst reading another blog, and have decided that I like what they are blogging about and decide to check back on them every now and then.

One such blog is Grace Violet
A wonderful blog about a crafty person, who manages to explain how she did all her crafts at the same time as showing you.
The inspiration that people seem to comment they have received from reading her posts and viewing the pictures is wonderful.
I always wanted to decoupage, I know what it is, I know sorta how to do it, but was never actually sure, yet here she has several posts all on the same thing showing you step by step what she did and how. Check out here, here, here and here for examples of how well she details things.

Perfect, my own reference manual for the future when I have that little thing called TIME to do something.