Friday, March 30, 2012

Just because...

I am in love with this photo

Photography: Cinarto Photography
Tutu: Whimsy Pie
Cake: lovingly made by me!
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Thursday, March 29, 2012

Eliza Wears


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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Eliza - 9 Months

It's been a while since I did this, I kinda forgot for a few months. Opps, bad mummy!


Weight: 8.4kg
Height: 71.5cm

Feeding: Everyone we meet is amazed at your eating. You eat like a champion. Even Nanny Jan was shocked when she saw you eat a roast dinner like it was nothing unusual - I think she was even impressed! 

Your favourite foods are chicken, avocado, zucchini, banana and pear. You weren't too keen on yoghurt for a few weeks, but have gone back to liking it. You eat three meals a day at the dinner table with Mummy and Daddy, and have a morning and afternoon snack of a biscuit now.

You discovered a fun game of dropping food over the edge of the highchair, but Daddy came up with an invention to stop it - he cut out cardboard boxes to make a shield. You quickly learnt and stopped dropping food, and are now back to being able to look around.

Sleeping: Since going to sleep school you have continued to improve. You still have a bad night every now and then, particularly if you aren't in your own cot, however most nights you only wake once at 10.30 for a bottle. Your day sleeps have become pretty consistent now, and you generally sleep for an hour and a half twice a day.

Personality: You continue to be cat like in your temperament. You can be happily playing by yourself in the lounge and then burst into tears, or you can be giving a cuddle and then pushing us away. You are generally a happy little girl though, who is willing to be cared for by anyone. 

Looks: You have finally started to have a growth spurt, and your 00 clothes are starting to fit properly. We are finding that many of your pants are getting short, but still fit in the waist, so you wear a lot of dresses currently. Your hair has lightened up, and is now a golden brown colour. It has grown so much, and is no longer a babies hairdo, but a toddlers.

Surprisingly, you have kept your blue eyes, we thought they would have changed colour to green like mummy and daddies, however they haven't. 

Activities: You have continued to enjoy Occasional Care on a Wednesday, though you do seem to be sooking when I pick you up each time. The girls promise me it only starts just as I walk though the gate. They say you like the musical toys and crawl around touching everything.

We started swimming lessons this month, and although you weren't keen at the start you seem to be enjoying it now. You are the youngest in the class by a few months, and although the other kids are more advanced, you do try. You have been in the pool with both Mummy and Daddy, and love to show off your skills in the bath.

You continue to crawl on your stomach, though you aren't far away from walking. You now pull yourself up onto anything that looks like it will stand still long enough, including the highchair, and will walk along the couch, counters, garden beds. You are getting braver and tend to only hang on with one or two fingers now.


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Friday, March 23, 2012

Decals


I love these decals from Elly Nelly and wish I had someone that would suit them in our house. They are elegant and quirky all at the same time.
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Thursday, March 22, 2012

Eliza Wears


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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Spotlight on a Mac: TV Shows 2



From Mac Update: TVShows is a Mac OS X application that automatically downloads torrents of your favourite shows. You no longer need to manually download torrent files, or find a working RSS feed for each show you wish to subscribe to. TVShows does that for you. 
Simply select your subscriptions and set your preferences from within the TVShows application and we'll take care of the rest. TVShows uses a lightweight background process which automatically launches at a regular interval (chosen by you) to check for new episodes. 
Download it at TV Shows App.


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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Photo Wall

So I mentioned that Eliza has a photo wall in her room last week, part of which is made up of her name poster. Today I will share the rest of it, though it isn't quite finished.





The alphabet and 'Keep Clean' posters were from Salt and Paper, the mouse/racoon/rabbit pictures were from The Fox and The Teacup. I'm not happy with the quote (which I made myself) however it will do for now.

I still need to get the final two frames from Ikea. Will do that eventually. But it beats having a plain boring wall in her room!
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Monday, March 19, 2012

Garden Beds

Whilst on leave the husband and I recently made some garden beds for the front of the house.
We chose to do a simple design that followed the line of the concrete. I figured it might give a nice formal feel to the house. Probably not, but anyway...

It was a simple cut list, I measured the back of the beds (the veranda), and the sides of the step, and then worked out how wide I wanted the beds to be (30cm) and went from there. We used 50mm treated sleepers, so factoring in that width I had a cut list. It worked out that if I thought about what bits to cut from what lengths, I could get away with only using 2.5 sleepers per bed.

They sat empty like this for a couple of months until we could be bothered getting dirt to fill in the beds. Given the house is in a general state of disrepair, ugly garden beds weren't overly concerning to the look of our house.


We brought extra soil to fill in around the garden beds and to even up our lawn. We have the plants go in them, we want to paint the front of the house and do the roof before we plant them though, so they are sitting in the outdoor area for now.
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Cheap Office Changes

My office is always a work in progress, it is never really finished, and lets be honest, it probably never will be. But in order to make it look that bit more attractive, I decided to switch a few things up.

Firstly, the cushion cover. The first cushion cover I made was never a work of art. It was wonky and poorly made. I learnt my lesson (sort of). And then made a new cushion cover.



Ok, so it's not finished, it has no zip in the back, I am still working out how to do that part. But it looks functional from 3 sides. In the words of Meatloaf, 3 out of 4 ain't bad. (PS - if you happen to know how to do the zip do let me know).

Next was the book cubes. We had paperwork coming out of our ears for new things, and our filing system wasn't cutting it. New folders were needed. More folder space meant there was less cube space though, so things got shuffled. The phone went into the modem cupboard, folders that were used regularly went up higher, and new baskets (stolen from Eliza's room) were introduced. I think I might make one basket for toys though, so need to reshuffle everything.


Next was the walls. I had some Ikea frames laying about and decided to display the photos we have had taken of Eliza at birth, 3 months and 6 months. However, 3M command hooks let me down and one frame fell off the wall so it looks a little odd right now. I might take it down and put it elsewhere.

On the other wall I wanted to do something cheap and unpersonal for when we sell the house. I found this set of 3 canvas's as a junk shop for $12 and covered them with fabric I already had. I like how it ties in with the seat cushion.



So thats how I cheaply changed up our office to make it look more attractive for sale. Fingers crossed it works!


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Friday, March 16, 2012

Scissors

I love stationery shopping, it is one of my favourite things to do when bored at work: read the stationery catalogue. I actually miss doing that now that I am off work so to get my fix I browse random websites for cute desk items.

My newest purchase is these cute bunny scissors. He is just a little bit cute with his carrot paperclip holder and flippy floppy ears.

Do you know of a good stationery store besides Typo and Kikki K? I brought this little fella from The Design Life Shop but am always on the lookout for new stores.
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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Eliza Wears



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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Name Posters

(Obviously the blanks aren't in the final printed version)

I had seen on Pinterest some different birth announcement posters and thought they were cool, however I never really found something like I had imagined in my head. I must have seen it once upon a time, but it never showed up when I was looking for it, so I decided to make my own.

It took me a few hours of fiddling in photoshop, but I got there in the end. It is by no means perfect, but it is unique, just like Eliza.

I had a coupon for Snapfish to do a poster, so I ordered it from there for the grand sum of $5. I had plans for a photo wall in Eliza's room and already had the frames from Ikea, so we were good to go.

I like it, and am happy with how it turned out. I have had a few friends comment on it, so I am guessing I am not the only one. What do you think?
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Monday, March 12, 2012

Baby Cupcakes

Somewhere along the line I recently was sent a link for Baby Cupcakes. Me, thinking they were actually cupcakes, and feeling like some cake, dashed to my iMac and googled. My tummy was disappointed (not that it should have been expecting cake, it's on a diet), but my eyes were not! Why didn't I discover this store a year ago when I had six million baby gifts to buy?





One of my sister in laws actually gave me one of these sock and singlet bouquets and I never took any attention to the store on the ribbon. I wish I had now!

Come on friends, hurry up and have another baby so I can go shopping! Who doesn't love cute little baby socks made into a bouquet of flowers? Its pretty and practical!!!
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Friday, March 9, 2012

Reward Charts

When I was a kid I had a similar chart to this one from Lime Tree Kids, as my pocket money was based on my doing each of my jobs each day. I was always the good child who did all my jobs (as compared to my imaginary brothers and sisters, as they never did their jobs ;) )

We're a little way off needing one for Eliza, but I thought it was too cute not to post for someone else with older kids.

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Thursday, March 8, 2012

Eliza Wears


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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

"Sheep. Here Sheep"


Such a good skill to teach our sheep!

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Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Parents Rooms

Parent's Rooms are like the holy grail of being a parent. A good one can make a shopping trip, a bad one can cause you to wish you never bothered.

I have seen a lot of both. The bad ones are poorly designed (a microwave in between two nappy changing stations anyone?), lacking in basic resources, or worse yet, are just a disabled toilet.

The good ones are well planned, have a designated play area for older children, good feeding facilities and are clean. Above all they must be clean.

I recently went to Melbourne Central and needed a parents room. Rather than look on the map I asked someone and they pointed me to one that wasn't on their mapping system. I felt like I was part of a secret club.

As soon as I walked in the door I was pleased. It smelt clean, was very large and catered to my every need.





If you are in Melbourne and need a change facility, I suggest the Melbourne Central one. It's on the 2nd floor, past the elevators that are near Calvin Kline The same elevators that exit at GAP on the first floor.
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