The end of an era...

2014 is going to bring some big changes for us.  Minty is starting school, Turi will be at kinder 3 days a week and I will be working and/or studying.  Honestly the new year has filled me with a sense of panic and dread.  I feel like we're all living on borrowed time and we need to make the most of these last few weeks of freedom.

Just to make it clear, I realise both the kids are going to be completely fine and will probably love their new adventures, I'm just struggling with the fact that we are all starting to go off in different directions.  Spending the last few days reading Henry Handel Richardson's 'The Getting of Wisdom', certainly didn't help me warm to the idea of Minty going to school!!  

So for the next four weeks I'm trying to pack in all the fun we can before the 'death' of entering formalised education!!!  Yesterday Mint went surfing with dad.  This morning I said to the Mr, "What meaningful life event can I pack into day 2 of our last 28 days of freedom?", his reply, a shrug "Almost 10% already gone".  He finds it amusing to alarm me.

Happy New Year!

Minty celebrated the new year by baking some cupcakes from her new cook book 'what shall we cook today? More than 70 fun and easy recipes for kids to make' (a Christmas present from her aunty and uncle).  Minty has always loved cooking with me, but now that she has her very own cook book she has taken on a greater sense of pride and ownership in the process.  Since I knew all the recipes were going to be easy to follow, I let her look through the book and choose whatever she wanted to make.  Predictably she went straight for the cakes with jelly bean decorations!  I'm looking forward to trying out some of the savoury recipes with her next (strangely she is very keen to try making pea soup!)

As promised, here is a little look at the Christmas pyjama shorts I made for the kids.  I used the oliver+s puppet show short pattern for Minty's.  They are made with some pink snowman fabric I had in my stash.  I had less than a fat quarter to work with so I've made the waistband and cuffs with a pink and white stripe, and left off the pockets, which I think makes them look a bit more pyjamery.  Turi's are also made with scraps of Christmas fabric (less than a fat quarter of each) I had in my stash.  I've used four different fabrics - christmas trees and christmas words for the front and snowflakes and blue spots on the back.  I didn't use a pattern for these - I just based them off a pair of his shorts.

Handmade gift wrap up...

Finally, here is a look at some of the handmade gifts I put together.  I realise it is way too late to inspire you for Christmas gifts this year but it's not as though we all die after boxing day right?  There's still plenty of other gifting occasions coming up: birthdays, mother's day, father's day, or even (god forbid) Christmas next year.  So I hope some of you can find a little bit of inspiration here.

Home made vanilla extract.  Split open the vanilla beans (I used two per bottle but you really can't have too many), place in a small glass bottle (I sourced mine here), and fill with vodka.  Allow the extract to brew for at least 4 weeks, shaking a few times a week.  Extraction will continue for up to 6 months - so keep shaking every so often.  A few notes: You can find vanilla beans in bulk on ebay.  If you are using larger bottles you'll need to chop the beans into smaller pieces as they have a tendency to float to the top after shaking, and although they won't look as pretty, the greater surface area will help extract more flavour from the beans.  After 6 months you can remove the beans as a precaution against spoilage.  The extract will continue to mature over time (much like wine), you can add more vanilla beans or top up with more vodka to continue to develop the flavour.

Hot chocolate packs - filled with homemade heart shaped marshmallows (recipe here), hot chocolate on a stick (recipe here) and shortbread hearts (recipe here) all in an origami box made with newspaper (in the interests of being eco friendly).  I learnt to make the boxes back when I was studying architecture, and we had an assignment to design a gallery space to display (of all things) paper boxes.  Weird right?  If you haven't had such a checkered design eduction as mine, you can find a great video tutorial for these here.  It really is a great skill to have up your sleeve since you can make them in any size, or paper you like and they are so much cheaper than buying gift boxes.  You can even make them with a little window in the top for packaging baked goods.

A soft ball made with loads of different pink fabric pentagons patches with a bell inside for my sweet little niece.  You can find a great tutorial for these here (machine stitched not hand pieced in case you're lazy like me!!)

I also made more homemade soap (see previous posts) and some special Christmas pyjamas for the kids to wear on Christmas eve.  I'll try and post some photos of the PJs tomorrow.

Here are a few photos of Christmas day with my family…

And as 2011 comes to a close I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for stopping by to read and share in our life through this blog.  I've loved all your comments and emails, even if I haven't had time to respond to them all personally.  I hope you'll all join me back here for more adventures in 2012.  Happy New Year!

In which I am assaulted and overly sentimental...

I wrote this yesterday shortly before I was hit over the back of the head with a wooden rainmaker by a certain small person who didn't want to have their eczema cream put on. As I was sitting on the couch with an ice-pack on my head ringing in the new year I was certainly neither happy nor content, so it felt a little disingenuous to post this. But after a good nights sleep and a little perspective it's feeling a little more like the truth again...

across the festive season I've been in quite a few social situations where I've been asked 'what's new with you?', 'so what are you doing with yourself now?' etc. I flounder around trying to come up with some kind of exciting and interesting synopsis of my life to try and stimulate the conversation but the truth is there isn't anything big or boldly interesting that's happened to me in 2010. I don't have a glamourous job, I haven't joined the peace corp, I haven't recently trekked around Nepal or bought a fancy apartment at Docklands. There isn't anything to write into the old collegians about or for my mum to brag about to her friends.

But my hard won wisdom for this year is that most of life happens in the inbetween moments - brushing your teeth, eating your weetbix, hanging out the washing, not in the large sweeping brush strokes we tell people we meet at parties. I can honestly say I'm happier in the 'in between' than I've ever been at any other time in my life. I'm not constantly wishing I was living somewhere else, doing something else, in a better job, dreading next week, the next day or the next hour. Sure there are things about my life I'd like to change but when the chips come down and it's me alone at the end of the night with my toothbrush I'm absolutely content. I go to bed happy with a full heart and if my life never holds anything but this, that will be enough.

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2011 is a great year.