She Scraps

I've been scrapping some of Blake's Birthday Photos from mid January. I had a lot of fun with water colour paints and some stamps.

 I even managed to get some polka dot stamps on there. There is also quite a bit of machine stitching on this one too. I love that nothing is perfect on this page!

 Love this little dude, he's such a crazy one! The candles on his cake were the kind that keep relighting and he thought they were magic at first. I don't think he even knew that candles like that even existed.

 Anyway, on the opposite page in my album is a project life page with other photos from the day.

Oh they are growing up way too fast and I am a little behind still on this years album.
I will get there :-) !

180 Ornament Progress

I just finished up my March ornaments and I'm feeling kinda happy about it!

 The last few stitched up really easily over chatting and tea, which is of course always lovely.

I'm undecided about what ornament I am making for March, decisions decisions!

 Here is all 36 ornaments, I'm really happy with where this is heading but I'm still debating weather to add in another colour or not and if so I have no idea what colour to add in....aqua, a light limey green or grey are all contenders.

So I guess I have two questions for you, do you think I should add in a different colour? what colour? and What ornament should I make for March? ( can you believe we are already marching into March!!??)

On My Table

At the moment I am enjoying some roses from my garden on my table.

I hope your week is as pretty as these flowers.

 Not perfect but still so pretty.

In My Craft Bag

During the school term my eldest boy and I have quite a long wait in the car in the mornings its about 40 minutes and in the afternoons about the same. We have started walking in the mornings to fill in the time most days, Blake sometimes wants a break or whatever but that still leaves the afternoon. 

 Often (more often than I would like!) I end up perusing social media. Its so much more productive when I am organised and have simple things to do.Over the last few weeks I have been a little more organised and have been keeping a selection of happy things to do/make  in my little craft bag that one of my lovely friends made for me.

 I have found that if I take ten minutes on a Sunday evening to sort out what I am doing for the week then I am much more ready to do things in these pockets of waiting time. 

 This week in my craft bag: some cotton and crotchet hook to make some more dishcloths, some pre-cut hearts to finish off my ornaments for the month and some embroidery thread, scissors and needles.

  I tend to like keeping everything separate and organised with some sandwich size snap-lock bags because you can see exactly what is in there. All these things get packed into there bags and popped into my little craft bag with of course this little tea bag pouch too!

 The craft bag can just go with my in my bag or in the car with me or even at night watching tellie, I have something crafty there to do that I don't even have to think about! So Simple and so worth taking the time to do.

Weekend Sailing

My lovely boys love to spend time outdoors and now I believe that many of our future weekends will be spent in nature doing lots of fun things. 

So here are a few photos of our weekend spent out on the boat.

 I swam off the boat to take a few photos.

 So much blue summer sky and sunshine.

 Some fishing gear for my little boys, just in case.

 Getting some speed up.

Oh and thats me! Swimming off the boat,you can see straight to the bottom.

Mamie Made: Dish Cloths

I have been in desperate need of  a few new dishcloths, I only have one at the moment and refuse to buy them, but have been using it far too long. I love handmade ones much better they seem to clean better and don't get stinky. I had been wanting to get my hands on some sugar n cream cotton but it seem to keep falling to the bottom of the list (and I'm supposed to be spending less lol)

                                    

Well two things happened at the same time, I found myself wandering the isles of spotlight and there they had yarn on sale, that was it! I bought yellow and pink! Then I saw on One crafty Mummas blog this post, about making a dish cloth a week and trying out some new patterns and I am defiantly one to get myself into a crotchet rut because I am hopeless at reading patterns (and recipes for that matter!) I am a much more visual person.

Anyway I went straight to my pinterest boards and dug up this pattern from One Dog Woof that I had been wanting to make. It is for a coaster so I simply kept crocheting to make the circle bigger and... hip hip hooray I now have two simple and colourful dish cloths and another on my hook. I will be getting myself some lovely yarn very soon but until I am happy with these!

Are you planning any crafting for the weekend?

A peek into my bedroom

I thought today I would give you a little look in to my bedroom mostly because I am a little nosy myself and I love to see other bloggers spaces especially craft spaces and bedrooms they have to be my favorite!I know I have a lot of pink in our bedroom and I have to say,Yes I do have the loveliest husband who just wants me to be happy and that means some pink!

 So I just bought this Ikea spotty quilt cover because my old one was starting to fall apart and I had been searching for some time for a polka dot quilt cover this one ended up satisfying most of my wants. You know you have to add polka dots to the pink, so happy!

 I have some cute little pink lights hanging in our bedroom and the dream catcher I made, I love having it hanging here in our bay window it just makes me so happy

 In the bay window I have a small desk with my laptop on and also a few other pretty things. My planner usually lives here too.

 On the opposite wall to the bed right now I have a bunch of flowers and a candle, these are the spaces that I love to change up frequently and try to keep it fresh.

So there you have it a little peek into my bedroom. 

Do you like to change things up in your bedroom, do you ever have fresh flowers?

On My Table

I've got so much to do today ahhhh! Some of it is get organised for tomorrow- Valentines Day! Since its on a Saturday my little boys are expecting me to decorate and create a Valentines Breakfast. Yup its my own fault for creating traditions, as soon as I told them it was valentines day they were expecting me to create some magic!

 Well I'm not there yet, in all reality I didn't have anything much planned and most of what I do will be last minute, tonight when they are in bed. But in general the things they are expecting aren't too hard to do. Set the table for a lovely breakfast, my lovely in-laws gave me a heart shaped pancake fry pan for Christmas so hubby can cook up some pancakes and of course my boys love balloons so I always have some on hand for days like this. Simple. I really want to stress that setting the table with a little more thought than normal is really all it takes and it makes everything feel special, it is so nice when you can just use what you have to make something a little more magical.

 I am hoping to add some cupcakes to the mix, if I don't run out of time today and I have half made a valentines mobile, I've misplaced my staples so if i find them today I might just be able to finish that off too. We are super lucky this year that timing has worked out with our baby sitter and so we wont have the boys overnight, this means that we are doing breakfast with them rather than a dinner.

Anyway I did end up hanging the ornaments on my stick tree and that was a lovely way to make things start to feel a bit lovey around here. So that's whats on my hall table today! 

Mamie Made: a Valentines Wreath

 Have you ever thought about adding a valentines wreath to your front door at this time of year? I know here down under you don't generally see this type of thing. In my small town I must be known as the crafty freak who decorates her door because NOBODY decorates for anything here, well if it brings someone a smile them I am happy to do it!

 So I began with a pizza sized box, the kind of box that you get happy scrapbooking mail in and drew a large heart on it, then a smaller heart inside. I cut it out simply with a box cutter.

 Then adhered fabric to the heart, you could do this with lots of different types of adhesive, I ended up securing it with some hot glue and a staple here and there, I was originally going to do some stitching on the heart that's why I used the double sided tape, I changed my mind and so just finished it off with a little hot glue.

 I added simple hand made flowers that are some cute patty pans(cupcake liners) cut them down a little and stapled them on to some card and cut out a flower shape then stapled a few pieces of circle shaped tissue paper  and fluffed them up. Also I added a few green patty pans folded in half to make a leaf shape to give the wreath a little more pop.

 The flowers were adhered to the front with some more hot glue, oh I love hot glue it makes making so easy! I attached some wool to the back with some more staples (I'm also in love with my tiny attacher lol!) and then tied it onto my front door. I'm a loving a pop of polka dot on my front door it always makes me smile when I get home.

Now to go add some valentines happiness to the rest of my house!

180 ornaments - hearts

I finally managed to get a start on my 18 ornaments for February, it seems that February is flying past me at the speed of light so I better get a jump on these ornaments. I was hoping to get some more done with my lovely friend Emma ( Hello Emma) but alas there was far too much tea drinking and chatter to get any crafting done ;-)

 I figured that since its Valentines day soon hearts would be just the ornament to make this month, an obvious choice I know but hearts would have made it into the mix at some point so why not now!

 I started off with this one above and have since progressed to add an extra colour of felt sometimes that's how it works, to just dive right into it. Unlike the little houses which began after a few drawings and then evolved (still I want to make some larger ones!) they may even evolve again.

 As you can see the hearts are a little bigger than the houses, it will be nice to have a variety of sizes when I am all done. I'm thinking that they would be cute hung on my stick tree during valentines day too, its always good when things have a double use. Do you put up any valentines decorations? Any chance for me to celebrate love and I'm sure gonna do it, what is better than  a huge sprinkling of love?!

This years Christmas tree sure is going to have a lot of different shades of pink, I really cant wait to see it, it will be fab! 

I will be back tomorrow with some valentines day craft! See you then.

Mamie Made: Laundry Liquid

This morning I whipped up a batch of homemade laundry liquid. Ahhh I love this kind of making its so good for the soul to make something that will be used every day, it makes you feel so productive without actually having to do much at all!

The lovely recipe is from Rhonda at the Down to Earth Blog

 and you can find the recipe and instructions here

 What I love most about this liquid as apposed to making a powdered form is that you can add an essential oil to make it smell lovely. This time I used English Lavender which you can find here. Also I just want to let you know that we have grey water here so I leave the borax out (this also makes it even cheaper to use) and we have had no problems with it at all.

 If you love the idea of making your own laundry liquid this is such a simple recipe, it took me about 20 minutes from beginning to end. I now love this liquid although sometimes store bought powder does make its way into our home, my husband has super sensitive skin and there are very few products that don't make him come out in a rash. This laundry liquid never does!

 I have some glass containers that live in the laundry that I like to use especially for this laundry liquid  and use a store bought scoop to transfer it into the washing machine, it has a kind of jelly constancy when its bottled and set so having a scoop nearby is handy unless you put it into bottles then you can just pour some out.

Its such a lovely start to a Monday morning, hope you had a fabulous weekend!

Snail Mail

I recently sent some snail mail and I had been thinking for quite a while that it would be nice to make some  bookmarks to send since they would fit into a snail mail package really easily.

 I began by just colouring a few sheets of white card stock with gelatos and then painted and blended the colours together. Then cut the paper into about 6 inches x 2 inches to crate the bookmarks.

 On some separate paper I drew some cute little things and glued them on to the bookmarks then laminated them and added ribbon.I drew some of the same images on the snail mail letter and painted them with watercolours.

 Snail Mail is such a lovely fun thing to do, I'm so glad that I have an amazing pen pal. I've been thinking lately that I would love to send some snail mail to some other people I know just because it is so nice to get something happy in the mail.

 I wrapped up some choccies and some tea and coffee to go with the bookmarks and letter with some blue tissue paper and a project life card tucked in there and posted it all off.

She Scraps!

I have been having a lovely time playing with watercolor paints lately and I think there will be a lot more of this in the future because I love it. I love mixing colours and I love how vibrant the colours can be.

 I have a few things that I want to achieve this year with my scrapbooking, one is to scrap more with white card stock it just feels so much simpler to me and lets me play much more and two to scrap more my style and not worry so much.Its sometimes hard to remember to keep things simple and I have to keep reminding myself!

 The butterflies on this page are silhouette cut files that I cut with white card-stock then painted with watercolours then added the polka dots with some colour shine mist and a Heidi Swapp mask. 

 I also managed to pop some patty pans in there, ahh polka dots and patty pans I love you. SO much fun scrapping in bright happy colours :)

Of course I always love scrapping a selfie, such fun! Well I should be back later today with a snail mail share. Hope your having a lovey weekend!