Yeah I'm slack

Hmmm so yeah I know I'm slack.
It's been a couple of months since my last post.
A whole pile of thinsg are going on at present. Unfortunately I can't really talk about any of them here so we'll have to make do with a bright fluffy post about a mermaid :).

So a couple of weeks ago now, I had some inspiration to make Miss Midget a mermaid. Had thought about going and seeing from designs were out there and for some reason I decided against this and decided to make my own (Yeah crazy lady here).

So below is what I have ended up with :)

My drawing to start making pattern

All cut out ready to sew

Getting there

Her face

All sewn up but something doesn't look right.
Her arms also could of been a bit wider :).

She needed a necklace.

So again if anyone stumbles upon this blog post and you want my pattern just feel free to email me :).

Now that I have made this one though, I'm thinking I might actually see what free patterns are out there.
I'm waiting to find something easy that won't take me to long that I could perhaps sell to make a bit of extra money to go to Australia with.

So far I've found these - 

Source: bitofwhimsydolls.com via Donna on Pinterest

Source: thecraftingfiend.blogspot.com via Donna on Pinterest

Problem with these ones is I'm picking I'm going to have to get a bit better on the sewing machine for them. I'll see what I can come up with. Will let you know if I end up making them or if I get to the point I can sell them :).

Tis the season to get crazy busy

Ok so lets see, what have I been up to since last I wrote.

I know I was meant to come back with what was happening with my voice - Yeah it was lost from Wednesday through to Saturday morning. Took ages to find the bloody thing :).

All has returned back to normal.

Work is going good at the moment. Extremely busy with content entering and training and helping clients which is good. I'm starting to make a bit of progress with things so it's all going well.

Miss Midget is still going through the toilet training process. Little witch decided she didn't want to go grow up the other day and wanted to be a baby. So we have been reinforcing she's such a helpful big girl. It seems to be working.
We've had a few battles with her stubborness but we appear to be winning. We are so close it's not funny. Obviously have our good days and our bad days with it. Due to the warmer weather it's a bit hard to keep clothes on her at home. She's turned into a nudist. This is also helping with getting her to use the toilet :).
She shouldn't be to far away from being all good and just in night nappies. We'll see how we go.

We're all geared up for Christmas. The tree is up. We've had our visit to Santa and presents have been brought. We're actually pretty organised this year. Just a couple of small things to get and then we're good to go. Also have to work on my christmas craft. Have a few things that I need to do on the sewing machine but have lost motivation. Must finish off Missy's fairies, haven't forgotten about the pirate hat and patch I'm meant to make either. I just need to find some energy. Can tell it's the end of the year as everyone is hanging out for a holiday and energy levels are low.

Christmas plans this year, Well we have a couple of Miss Midgets friends having Birthdays so we'll be going to those. We also will be going down the line to Mr E's Mum's house and going and seeing his grandparents.

Might even try and fit our honeymoon in there somewhere :).

Oh I also have been busy setting up the Choose Life facebook page which I volunteered to help run.
If you haven't checked it out yet, please do. It's such a worthy cause that I feel everyone needs to get behind :).

www.2chooselife.org.nz

 www.facebook.com/2chooselife

Anyway must get going. Got a few things to do with Miss Midget before dinner :).

Will make sure I update before Christmas :).


Putting ornaments on the tree.

 

 



Peter Pan

Ok so it's old news that I made a Peter Pan out of felt.
I am slowly putting some of my little crafty adventures on to Pinterest so I thought it would be a good idea to include Mr Pan to add to my little brag board that I have called "Mine"

So here he is :).

As I used my own imagination for this little man I can't link you to the pattern. It's currently in my sewing box. I can if anyone is interested figure out how to scan it and turn it into a PDF. Feel free to leave a comment and we'll go from there. No point in going to the effort if no one is interested though :).

What happens if you know them?

Pinterest has been a interesting topic in my household as of late.
I had thought about not posting about this but thought about what if I'm offending other people and thought I'd open the floor for discussion and get how everyone feels about it as I don't want to step on toes

Basically a week or so ago it was pointed out to me in a rather not nice email that I'd stolen Miss Midgets birthday cake idea off someone who I had considered a friend. They had obviously taken offence to it and told me so.

Now it wasn't as if I'd gone out of my to deliberately upset this person. I had thought everyone is sharing ideas on Pinterest then the ideas were for lack of better terminology fair game for anyone to try in the DIY section. Had I realised it was going to cause this much drama I probably would of thought twice about using it. To me it was a cool cake I'd found on Pinterest via a friends board and since I'm not a expert baker or anything and it looked simple enough I thought "well even I could do something like that".

So all this drama has got me thinking, how does everyone else feel about ideas and how they are shared and when is it good form to ask if it's ok to use the idea and when is it fair game?

To me and I've said this before Pinterest is a place for all your virtual cork boards where you can find these awesome ideas and share them with your friends and also with strangers.
How do you guys feel about someone you know using ideas that you found first?

For me if your following me on Pinterest and you like one of my ideas sweet then go for it. Use it and tell me how it turned out so when I eventually give it a go then I can either follow your example or learn from your mistakes.

To me if the ideas means a lot to me, I won't post it until after I have made it whether it be here, Facebook or on Pinterest.

On Pinterest's Etiquette page - http://pinterest.com/about/etiquette/

It mentions nothing about maybe asking people before using their ideas and at this stage you can't make boards for your use only and or block people from seeing your ideas. It's public or nothing at all. To me though why bother with a social networking site that is all about sharing ideas with people (hence the reason you can follow people and people can follow you) if your going to get upset if someone uses a idea? I don't understand but I have a feeling Social Network and Privacy are for another post.

Basically with this post I just want to gage everyones feelings on the subject to avoid making the same mistake twice.

I value my friendships and want to make sure I'm on the same page as the rest of my friends.

Miss Midgets Birthday Cake

New look?!

So have been having a fiddle round with the blog today.
Feeling it was just a bit busy so have simplified things and given it a plainish header.
Widened everything up and yeah.
We'll see how it goes. I'll most probably get bored with it and play around with the header again and colour but for now simple is good :).
What do you think?

Well the Starship appointment went well. Doc said the lump is not getting any bigger so thats cool. He said he wasn't keen to operate at present and said he would see us in a year to monitor it. So yay no operation for us.

Things on the crafty side are a bit slow at the moment. Really should finish the other 2 Fairies that I've cut out for Miss Midget. They are currently sitting in my sewing box waiting for me.

Have a few other ideas in the planning process. Just have to find the time and the motivation to do them :). So watch this space and we'll go from there lol.

Have fun everyone :)

One Fairy (Rosetta) waiting for me to find motivation :)

Have had ideas in my head and issues getting them out.

So as you can see it's been awhile again between posts.
Between Work, Miss Midget and doing stuff around the house plus now finding this creative outlet it's not left me a lot of time to sort this out.
Have a few ideas with regards to this blog so bare with me. Unfortunately it appears to one of many ideas thats sort of in limbo at the moment.

I have all these ideas which at the moment seem like brilliant ones. My issues appear to be finding a away to get them out of my head and make them reality and also finding the time to do so.

So not a lot has been happening lately. I've been playing with my sewing machine. I'd like to think I'm getting better at sewing in a straight line with the amount of practice I have been doing lol.

Miss Midget has a appointment at Starship for her Lump on Monday. This will be interesting. We pointed out to the doctor that She's starting to complain when it's up that it's hurting so we'll see what comes of the ultra sound. They are in no hurry to operate which is good and bad. They are taking there time at finding the right approach. Because of where the lump is they have to becareful due to there being a nerve close by that if they accidently damage it then the side of her face could drop. The doctor did assure us he'd done the op many times before and has never had it happened but still needed to point out the risks to us. Made me a bit nervous. I know if she did need the op she would be in good hands. I just don't want missy to be the first it happen to if you know what I mean.
If they can't see anything with the ultra sound she'll need to be knocked out again for another MRI which will be another all day event.
Poor Kids been poked and prodded by doctors so many times in her short little life. I do feel sorry for her. She does us proud though and is always super good for the doctor and super brave.
I can't remember if I ever posted what the lump officially is so just incase I didn't it's called a Vascular Malformation (Link takes you to the Wiki Page if you wanna know more about it)

Well I'll leave ya with a few photos from the past month :)



Missy's 3rd Birthday Cake
Click here to see where I pinched it from :)

Tinker Bell accumulated a few friends

Missy's Mail Bag
Click here to see where I pinched it from

Crafty shite and a few other things

So we made it to the end of August and now into September.
I still don't know what happened to August. It went by in a blur.
It was a busy month. We had a family friend come stay for 2wks.
We had 4 family birthdays (Mums, Dads and Mine and Miss Midget).
We had a trip to Starship for Missys lump and yeah.

So Missys birthday went really well. All projects that we had set out to do as presents for her were completed and she was thrilled.

We had to acknowlegde that Mummy and Daddy told fibs and that the "trailer shed" was really her new play house. The afternoon of her birthday was the big unveiling. Once she figured out it was for her she promptly made a little track from the house to her little house taking what ever we would let her out there. We had touble getting her in that night. She was determined she was sleeping out there lol. So 3yrs old and ready to move into her own place. I knew she was advanced for her age but that was a bit more than Mummy was going to let happen. I can't imagine it would of lasted long though given theres no power out there or even a bed for that matter :)

As for my little project I'd been working on, I managed to get that completed on the 23rd with the help of my mothers sewing machine. We ended up giving it to Missy when we went down to Auckland for the hospital trip. She seems to like it and has been playing with it a bit since then. It's a bit hard to tell if its a hit due to her having received some many other toys during the course of the week.

Have also been dying to work on a little side project that I had thought of but wanted to wait till I'd finished the house.
Tinker Bell has become a favourite in this house well at least with Miss Midget. So I found a picture online which looked pretty cool with Tinker Bell and all her fairy friends and decided I would try and make them. The last photo in the long list below will give you a indication on how I'm getting on :).

Oh also big news here. The Dummy fairy came and visited on Thursday night. I am now rather sleep deprived as it's about night 3 we're up to tonight without dummy. Miss Midget is doing well though and hasn't asked for the dummy to many times. She did say this morning she missed it though. We just gently remind her that the dummy fairy gave it to a baby that needed one as she was now a big girl and didn't need dummy. She's seems ok with this answer, I do however think she is now trying to substitute her bottle for dummy. So I guess that'll be the next to go.
We haven't been to concerned with the bottle due her food intake during the day (somedays getting her to eat anything is a mission impossible) but I'm thinking now that we will need to seriously look at the bottle as I don't particularly want to be going through this all over again in just a little while.

Anyway thats it for me. My eyes are starting to hang out of my head. I hear my bed calling my name which is a pretty good sign it's sleep time :).
Will update you all on the lump and the starship appointment another day.
 


Playing with the door of her new house

 

Playing with her awesome stove top her Nanny Jan & Popa John made.



Awesome butterflies given to Missy by Nanny Pam and Popa Les

 

Outside view of my house project

Inside view of my house project

My side project :)

 

Rare opportunity

Well talk about strange. I'm currently sitting at home all by MYSELF. Yup thats right no one is hear.
I don't have a little person saying "I'm hungry" and yeah.
I've had a wonderful long shower, hung out some washing and even sorted out my boards on Pinterest (Yeah I created a new board for toys so I needed to sort it out - I'm a bit of a computer file freak. I like my boards to be organised. Yeah I know I'm strange lol.)
So I even have a opportunity to write a blog post.
For those of you who arent friends of mine on facebook here is the progress of the Dollys and the house.

I have 24 days to complete it. So fingers crossed.

I have started in the house now, Have one window done and will hopefully finish the other and window and door tonight. That will just leave attaching the roof to both side of the house and then attaching the lining to the house and sewing it together.

Hopefully the sewing machine that I have borrowed started being nice to me and lets me sew the other side of the velcro on the lining for the beds and for keeping the house together.

Alrighty wish me luck :)

Lets see why................

So lets see why I have been to busy to blog?
Well I don't actually know why. Time seems to of run away from me.
We have been sick with nasty sinus infections and all those things. Poor Miss Midget has had a bad run with it all. Thank goodness the drugs that we have for her at the moment have kicked in and are working.

Mr D and I have also been busy preparing for Miss Midgets birthday which is next month on the 28th.
Yes I know we're running early with prep but we're making a couple of her presents and are trying to give ourselves a bit of time so we're not rushing through it.

So instead of just rambling on with what we've been doing, here are some photos.
First set is Mr D's project (It will have some paintwork done by me once it's completed.

You may remember a while ago I was going on about a toy wooden kitchen for Miss Midget. Yeah that idea evolved into what you see below :)

Miss Midgets Mushroom House (in the making)

Frame's up

Frame dry now and painted

Lining is attached now.

Walls and roof are currently being painted in the garage. Will post more photos as we make progress :). Currently Miss Midget thinks Daddy is building a "trailer shed" in the back yard. Wonder how long she's going to buy that one? lol


Ok so then comes my project.

Felt Dollys and eventually a Dolly House/Bag

Didn't do to badly with my score from spotlight. This is what $17 looks like :)

So didn't really have a pattern to go by so did a bit of drawing. Started off with the one down the bottom of the picture

All cut out and half sewn up

Love the wool I choose for the hair. It's come out great

And this is how she's sitting at the moment. All I have to do is the rest of the face and sew up the back of her dress.

So all up I plan to have 2 dollys and maybe a pet (haven't decided yet). They are going to have a felt bag in the shape of a house that will have some beds in it for them (I figure this make keeping them together easier and also will be good on car trips). I have thought maybe to make the beds detachable so she doesn't have to have them in the house if she's playing with her big wooden house at home.

Anyway thats the plan. It's subject to change at the moment as all of this is being hand stitched.

Also while I'm showing photos of my creations. Heres one I made yesterday.

Meet Pandy

Ok so will try and give you updates on all these projects to let you know how we're going.

Don't want to bore you

Ok so I'm not going to bore you with a "I'm a sook and I don't like winter" post. This will be my only whinge about the weather - It's been COLD!. Don't worry I knew winter was coming and it's not as if its a surprise but still don't like it  and yes I'll get over it :).


So things that have been happening? Well we're over our nasty tummy bug - YAY.
Miss Midget is pretty much back to normal with regards to eating and behavior. Still getting tired in the afternoons but thats to be expected I guess.
I haven't had a chance really to do anymore unpacking. There are some things that need to go up in the roof for storage before I can really carry on with it as some of the stuff waiting to be unpacked needs to live in the spare room which is quite full at the moment :).

So I swear there is a single bed in there......somewhere.

Other than that not a lot has been happening.
I did manage to have a nice conversation with one of the team behind Snap Guide the other day which was nice. They sent me a message just thanking me for my guides I'd and asked me if I was enjoying it.
Told them about my blog post I'd done at the start of the month and they were pretty stoked that I'd been with them pretty much since day one and had gone to a bit of effort for them :).

Have been working on a few birthday present ideas for a couple of mates. Hopefully have that sorted this week. Will post something after I've given the presents to them so as not to ruin the surprise :).


Alrighty. Will try and put The Weeklies out a little later tonight to :).


Have a good one :).

Ok so I'm getting carried away tonight

I know I've already posted a website tonight and I know I'll probably need to find another one by Friday but this site is pretty cool and appears to be my find of the weekend.
www.snapguide.com - This site I discovered on Saturday which I thought was handy as it'd give me the whole week to play with it, that is until I decided to post about it tonight :)

I was flicking through the Apple App Store featured apps yesterday on my phone and came across this, downloaded the app and then figured out it had a website from there.

It's pretty cool. Basically it's a place to find how to guides. So if you arts and crafts etc this could end up being the reference site for you. It works like this - You get your idea. Take photos step by step and then put the pictures and the steps in the website. Another simple yet pretty cool concept.

It to begin with reminded me a little of Pinterest but this doesn't take you through to the source website as all the instructions are right there. You can however link your "Guide" back to Pinterest and Twitter and Facebook which is pretty cool.

I was picking that its a pretty new site and read on just before that it only went live just over 24hrs ago so yeah as I said theres not a lot on there but this site in my opinion is going to be one to keep an eye on :).

So far I have found what looks like a really yummy recipe for cookies and cream cookies , Will keep you posted on any other gems I find :)

Oh the time that could be wasted on Pinterest

I must of spent hours and hours on this site.
Someone said it perfectly. It's the site you go to to decorate rooms you don't have and dress children that may or may not have been born yet, plan trips to places you will never go  on and to get ideas for craft stuff that you are probably not going to do but know where to find them if you ever get around to it.
As you may of guessed from a previous post I have spent a fair bit of time dreaming on that site. I have always said that I love the way the internet is expanding the way people dream. This site is brilliant for that. Finding craft ideas I didn't think possible and things that are just awesome.
If you want to to nosey through my boards click here - Pinterest.
My favourite ones at the moment are "Sayings" , "Awesome Ideas" and "Things to do with Tayla"

This site is brilliant for passing the time or for giving inspiration. It gave me the inspiration to make the present for my friend which I mentioned earlier here but also some of the sayings in here have given inspiration for life, some even got pinched and shared on facebook :).

I like the way it works. That you can trawling on the net and go "oh I love that" and instead of bookmarking the site you can pin it to one of your boards on Pinterest and you know where to find it. All the pictures pinned go back to their original site so you can then figure out where people found things or carrying looking where you left of.

It reminds me of cork boards and pinning your dreams on one of them (I used to blu tac photos and pictures to my wardrobe door :)).

This place has links to all sorts. I actually found a whole pile of cool free font the other day.
Theres also a space where you can share handy tips with people. I have found so many helpful "just in case" tips like this and this or this

Anyway I'll keep you posted as to what I try next and the result. We'll see how we go from there. Also if you check out Pinterest and my boards I take no responsibllity for the amount of time that will be spent dreaming :).

D