5 years ago today

Five years ago today i was thrown onto this crazy rollar coaster called motherhood. It has been everything i thought it would be. Its been hard, but the sort of hard you cope with because of the love you feel. its been joyful, love filled, and amazing. i cant quite believe that we have watched this special girl grow and learn for five years. actually we all had to learn together how to be a family..(the special right of a first born i guess) all those baby years, learning to walk and talk, i was so excited. but that is nothing compared to watching her learn to write(something i should take a pic of..i have a moving box the kids play with, lilly has written random letters all over it, including her name which she writes on everything atm) im excited by this next phase in her life. (i have no idea what im going to do while she is at school each and everyday next year..me and emily will be so lonely) its funny the things u think will never happen have a way of coming around.

birthday treats started with a lounge room camp out, next to the heater, all of them together all night..so very cute, there was some movie watching and lots of snoring!
arh the birthday cake, it took all my strenght today to cook for her..we r all feeling pretty blar! she so wanted a butterfly cake, thankfully she was happy to help me create a marble cake..the pink marble is the colour of that icing! sprinkles and little flowers and she was happy as. i wish i had been well enough to create for her...but not so this year.
and heres my big girl this morning. i love morning birthday messy hair and blurry eye photos hehe. so cute. we were as you can imagine up early. as a 2 and 3 year old she would of been into her presents that were on the table without a care for the fact that we were not around. not this year...at 7 this morning she was jumping up and down on the bed for me to get up so she could open her presents hehe. first i have to be the first one to sing happy birthday to her..: ) she was so funny, told me it was her favourite song and said thanks...so cute. and such a grown up girl now.

i didnt take official 5 today photos, because she is as sick as i am, by about 10 she had the dark rings and red puffy eyes back and had a big sleep after lunch, but this was after much dancing on her tv dancing game mat..lol...its really quite hard, but she is better at it than me lol

lilly at five
you are caring, and considerate. stubborn and independent!
particular about the way to do things. you love to spend time with emily, and for the most part you two play together so well. you love to spend time with DADDY!
i hope you had a great birthday even thou your sick.
i love you baby
happy birthday
mumXXX

small knitted dishcloth...plus an emily update

small knitted dishcloth
you will need
4 1/2 mm needles
lion brand cotton yarn

heres the pattern..again im calling it mine but happy to face the fact it could be out there somewhere...its based on a pretty basic knitting stitch. i didnt have a pattern.

cast on 37 stitches
knit 3 rows.

knit 3 then start pattern of k1 p1 until last 3 stitches and knit to end
repeat 10 times
knit 3 rows

repeat pattern 15 times
knit 3 rows

repeat pattern 10 times
knit 3 rows
cast off
weave in ends.

pretty easy to whip up...it was a melbourne day for us and i made 2 in the car. so quick and easy.
i will put these up in the market store $4 each or 4 for $12

yep it was a melbourne day today...back to the hospital. we went last week to, but i didnt deal with last week very well and was never in the right space to blog about it...still dont know if i will get through without crying...but todays news was excellent
last week we went, we were happy with the healing of the graft after a week of us looking after it and we came home with just a tube sock type dressing and instructions to do more of the same cream etc. that was great. as part of our session we see the ot, (she is fantastic) she wasnt quite so happy and was quite scared for our girls hand and wrist. as u can imagine alarm bells ring. last week her wrist was really starting to turn out to the left and her hand was sort of stuck in a claw like position...she was still using it, but it was resting in this horrible position. basically things we knew could happen were happening...from her original hand repair we have known that the muscle that her thumb tendons where contected to wasnt as strong as we all wanted. her thumb doesnt sit in the right position because of this, and its this tendon that is meant to help her wrist stay in the correct position...it wasnt doing this, the stronger muscles where taking over hence the left going wrist. fear was sparked that she would be back in surgery sooner rather than later to have the thumb repaired (something we were hoping they would wait until jan to do) we were sent home with new resting braces and new exercises to try and shock it awake and make it start working. our appointment made with our surgeon to review this and make a plan. EEEEK....i stressed and worried all week of course
move onto this week...all that worry and now they think its responding with the new everything and it may wait until jan. im crossing my fingers for that. all our news was so much better today. her graft is starting to soften (which is good for the gliding of muscles under the skin..or what she has left there anyway) her knuckles have made a reappearence (woohoo), her hand while not corrected has responded to the brace and its staying more or less in the safe position they want it in. her thumb is still an issue, but a day brace was made for this to help keep it in the correct position 24/7 without restricting her wrist movement which is getting stronger every day and finally she is healed enough to have her pressure garment (sp) ordered. woohoo. i had no idea how long u had to wait for it all to be ready for the pressure garment.
and the thing that really tells us she is on the right road...we dont have to go back next week..woohoo...her garment will be posted to us and we will go back for our surgeon appointment the week after. a whole week with no melbourne trip...we wont know ourselves!

It will be nice to have the travel break (seeing as we all have colds), in the mean time the hospital r trying to find us the right person so we can travel to ballarat for intensive rehab instead of going to melbourne. but it has to be the right person.

i think thats it for me..: )
but one last thing
pst we have had spring sunshine for two days...its so lovely!

Felt food Tutorial - strawberries

You will need

red and green felt
a sewing machine
needle with green and black thread.
small amount of hobby fill

1. cut a 2 1/2 inch x 2 1/2 inch square. (a smaller or bigger square will give a smaller or bigger strawberry)

fold in half diagonally, and stitch one edge.

2 Turn the strawberry in so the seam is on the inside. Use a pencil to help turn the tip.




3 cut off the point at the unstitched end.

4 stuff with a small amount of hobby fill

5 squeeze together the middle of the top and stitch 4 stitches.

6. Squeeze together the opposite ends and stitch completely closed

7 from a small amount of green felt cut a circle. then cut small triangles out of it to create the top leaves of the strawberry

8 stitch to top of strawberry. I just stitched down the ends.

to finish off add some black stitches as the seeds on the outside of the strawberries done!

I have some felt strawberries for sale at 50cents each..see the market store

Bought a HOUSE!!!!

here it is
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=105091604&f=0&p=10&t=res&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=18683607&s=vic&snf=rbs&tm=1219733081

i hope the link works
we will be doing the moving thing in about 60 days
the grand total of about 800 metres down the road i kid u not!!!

and i cant wait!
modern kitchen, bathroom
nice painting
nice rooms
fires
heated floors in kitchen/bathroom
nice outside spaces
sounds like music to my ears!

10000 visits celebrations - large dish cloth pattern

I decided that i would really do the share thing this week, as in share patterns and put up step by steps for some felt food ive been working on and then end the week on friday with a felt food rak and also a knited cotton dishcloth give away.

I made old nappy dishclothes months ago, they work a treat even getting a rave review from the other cleaner in the house that must have this and that to do the job...thats a huge tick for me believe me!...husbands can be very fussy about the way they clean and what with...i go with as long as u do it i dont care....so a huge tick for me.

we have 6 of those and i wash them daily (which i just love being able to do) and sometimes they just dont last the day, if im real good with the washing the 6 do well, if im slack with the washing or we have days where i feel the need to follow my less dryer using pledge, then sometimes the clothes get backed up and i run out....so more were required.

my sewing machine lives in our stuido/dining room area. great during the day if i can get at it, not so great at night when its oh so cold in that room and the fire is a room away and so inviting...i end up not wanting to sit at the machine and go off in search of some other creative project i have on the go!...in my daily blog reading i came across the green blogs i often read and a cotton knited dishcloth pattern. so i was off to spotlight last week after emilys appointment in search of lion brand cotton. Ive made three...a straight knit one which is ok, and then a pattern i found off one of the green living blogs...i loved it and then a pattern of my own.


i thought i would kick off this week by sharing the kniting pattern.


now its just what ive done, as far as i know i havent seen it anywhere, but lets face it it could be out there somewhere! so while im calling it my pattern, im totally open to the fact that it could belong to someone else. I didnt have a pattern to use for it. I like this one because the cotton ends up with bobbles (yes tech term i know lol) and is good for cleaning up messes because of those! (im working on a smaller dishcloth pattern this week)





so here it is

MY LARGE DISHCLOTH PATTERN

i used lion brand cotton yarn (spotlight) - was on special this week too, im going to try get more on thursday

size 4 1/2 needles.

cast on 61 stitches
knit 3 rows

then start K1, P1 repreat until end of row.
repeat that row 10 times
knit 3 rows

repeat the pattern 4 times

cast off.

(PS just look at that sunsine..its worth mentioning being its such a fleeting thing here at the moment...it feels like spring is on the way today..but i wish it was warm to go with it)

ok im no expert knitter, but i worked on it during yesterday on and off between other jobs and the kids, and then once dan was home i knitted until it was done. so it didnt take very long. i would say im an average speed knitter! so a project just perfect for an afternoon of quick knitting.

i have decided to open another blog, a little market store blog...see the side bar...im still thinking of going with etsy, but cant decide quite yet. but for the moment on my market store im going to list a few of my homemade things that people have suggested i might be able to sell. basically i decided a no pressure thing, sometimes i might have things in stock and sometimes i might make to order...:)

Jacqui's Market Store

Dish clothes r the first thing im adding to the shop. My large dishcloth is $8 small dishcloth $4

i will also add some felt food, aprons, hotwater bottle bags (popular in this house!), cards, card folders basically whatever i come up with u will find over in the my market store.


i hope u all enjoy my week of celebrations...its all just for some fun...i love sharing how i make my things.
tomorrow i will share some felt food making tutorials.
strawberries
jam drops (requested)
and if i get it finished a bunch of grapes.

making pasta

today i travelled a little bit more through my quest to rid our home of preservatives in our food, plus the age on alot of the food we eat.

we made pasta!

so easy!

the dough

550g plain flour

6 egg yolks

4 eggs

extra virgin olive oil until comes together...about 50mls maybe more

bring together...we mixed ours in the kitchen aid

knead until smooth dough

wrap in glad wrap and leave in fridge for about an hour.

we borrowed the pasta machine, i didnt want to buy one in case i thought the making to hard...we will be getting one for home but.

it has to be rolled flat a few times before u get it to this stage. it was rolled down to 5 on the pasta machine before this step.lilly enjoyed having a go too...she rolled out the angel hair.
emily enjoyed the eating lol (its heart warming to see her using her injured hand and arm even if it is just pasta....its more than she would of done a week ago...it builds hope in my heart)

and here it all is...we made two doughs and two different pasta cuts.

we hope to get 4 meals out of the angel hair and maybe 3 from the fatter one. it will dry on the rack (our washing rack) for about a day and a half and i will store it in big tupperware containers until its gone... :)

we r currently eating the angel hair with bol sauce and its YUM!...

making pasta is always going to be more expensive than buying the dried packet. but its the cheaper way to make the ones stored in the fridge section of the supermarket. the latina ones. which is the ones we like to eat mostly, or the gourmet packets

each dough cost me about $4.50 maybe a little more, we used savings brand flour, and regular free range eggs.

so if we get 4 meals out of the angel hair it cost me $1.20 (we r a family of 2 adults and 2 kids)

not bad i say

if u eat organic it will of course cost a little more.

and out of all the eggs whites we have left over...dan is going to turn them into a desert.. :)

we hope to keep making pasta now, in big batches so we only have to do it once every other month..:)

ps my bread making is getting better the changes i made to the dough in the below post worked a treat...its getting pretty light and fluffy...im off in search of a slightly bigger loaf tin now

a blog award

ooer thanks sue smith

The rules for the award are - (1) The winner can put the logo on their blog. (2) Link the person you received your award from. (3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs. (4) Put links of those on yours. (5) Leave a message on the blogs of the girls or boys you’ve nominated

ok 7 blogs...i love and visit sometimes daily

Mel goodsell

emily falconbridge

Soule mama

Kirsty Piper

Lusi austin

Kate mason

Bety

I heart this!!!
I bought it for daniel a few years ago. I use it all the time!
i have been mucking around with my bread recipe. trying to make it less heavy, im getting there
here r some of the changes i have made
500gm plain flour or so (i havent changed that part from the original)
2 tsp yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup lukewarm water - think a babies bath
3/4 milk

mix flour, salt and yeast together
add wet ingredients

now heres why i HEART my kitchenaid (hehe ok dans kitchenaid)
leave it on mix for 20 minutes!
spray a bowl with oil, place dough in, turn the dough to cover in oil
cover with plastic wrap leave in warm place for 1 hour

punch down, turn out on board, knead for a few minutes
shape into 2 balls and place in a tin beside each other.
spray with oil, leave for 30 minutes.

heat oven to 200c
cook for 30 minutes.

ok dan helped me with the changes including getting out his baker tafe book lol...i had no idea of the science involved in bread making. its all about the heat

he has also suggested adding some butter to the mix...im yet to try that but.

chefs r great husbands, they have heaps of knowledge
we cleaned our wooden chopping boards tonight (as in dissenfected)...so easy i had no idea it was that easy. it will get done more often
use table salt(cheap salt), shake a few tablespoons over your board. Cut a lemon in half and start scrubbing.
the salt acts as a scruber and the lemon has the acid to kill. pretty cool i thought...nothing grows in salt they tell me...and better yet all natural too.. :)

we r trying the homemade dishwashing liquid right now. thanks mel for putting it on your blog.
i quite like it, the no bubbles thing isnt so bad as we have bore water we lose the bubbles quickly anyway. i love the lemon smell and it seems to clean well and leaves things nice and shiny. thanks mel.

movie day

Since we moved here we have had a little saturday afternoon movie date. Me and the kids. We make popcorn and sit together under a blanket right at the moment and watch the disney playhouse movie. lilly loves making the popcorn, and pushing the buttons on the microwave to melt a little bit of butter. and we sit up with two bowls of popcorn and watch. yesterday they enjoyed and i suffered through cinderella 3! but its more about the act of doing something together that we all enjoy.

we also made more bread yesterday. heres the link to the recipe i use http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/10857/basic+white+bread
ive been talking to my dh about baking...he is a chef and he told me to knead the dough longer than the recipe says. so tomorrow when we need more bread im going to do that see if that changes the loaf. it does already make a good loaf, im just interested and trying different ways.
the felt food has been back on the creative table the last few days too
some jam drops (the real ones a very popular in this house)
and some fillings for our sandwiches too.

my ticker is shortly going to hit 10000...which sort of blows me away. Anyway im going to make up a bag of felt food to RAK once we hit the 10000 mark to celebrate and as a way to say thanks for coming to read my dribble.... :)

scrap jack

heres my scrapjack for this month...its all on canvas...im not sure im 100% happy with it...something about the white squares...i wish i washed them yellow....but two late now. the photo is a fav even thou it was taken in low light so the quality is a bit yuck...therefore the missing eyes...but sometimes u just have to scrap the yuck pics. cause they r really not yuck. some of the stuffon this page came from last months lime tart kit.
this came out while we were in hospital...the one today card is mine...made with the inspiration of emilys first birthday last year.

and finally
on thursday emilys hospital visit went well...no drugs at all and the only thing she cried about was the tape that was on her skin..not bad really....no tape really used this week. there is still one mucky part at the top that wasnt grafted and was just left to heal...its not responding as quickly as they would like...so im not sure what that means...its wait and see that bit...i guess it could be another graft if it doesnt improve over the next 2 weeks. other than that the large graft itself is good...we now have to take the dressing down each day and rub cream into it to keep it moist which is good and bad...good that its at that point because its healing...bad that i have to deal with it in a totally visual way every day now...it takes all my guts to see it every week, but i think its partly because im wishing it to be so much better and not infected and all that...anyway i hope it gets easier to see on a daily basis. she is also allowed big breaks in wearing her plastic brace to play and use her arm and hand as well as she can...we also have exercises to do with her to get it freely moving which it isnt...but only on the second day of those and it seemed eaiser for her to do today. we r working on doing 3 exercises 10 times 5 times a day...we got it done 3 times yesterday...going for 4 times today and then 5 tomorrow!

some creative - ness!

we seem to be back to our creative stations in this house and its the best thing that could of happened.!
ive had a few people ask me for the secrets of finding to time to do so much of my own crafting, scraping and general creative stuff we do
i dont know about the secrets....but heres what we do
our dining room on any given day looks more like an art studio, or sewing room. we have a large square table i cover in a plastic cover and we all create together. some days on together things others on different things. but we r all together talking, learning and spending the time doing quality things.
today i did some sewing and the girls wanted to paint. its all too easy with water colour paints! yes the powdered discs that come in a tray. it takes no time at all to teach kids to use them, they r cheap and the powdered discs last longer, and we find the colours to be pretty bright. the most important part of this type of painting...ITS EASY TO CLEAN UP! it all just wipes clean with a damp cloth. they will sit and paint for AGES!
mix it up is my other thing. we painted today, so tomorrow we might (make soap if our things arrive) or draw with oil crayons or something different, i do have a salt dough recipe thanks to mel goodsell for giving me the idea. cooking too is a big hit in our house.
and i think my other secret is to search for inspiration....mine usually comes from mel goodsell or soulemoma...u would also be surprised what you can goggle or blog hop too.

yesterday i made the kids a loaf of felt bread. they have no requested things to make sandwiches. luckily i found a flickr group with lots of sandwich ideas to help me on my way.

ever since we moved in here i have been searching for something to put on the girls walls that covers the horrible paint in their rooms. (they need painting badly and seeing as we dont own here and wont be staying here forever i cant be bothered to winge about it to the landlord.) anyway

i joined janelle winds block of the month quilt little bluebirds in a start to putting things up in emilys room to make her walls nicer. our first block (which im nearly finsihed) came with this journal cover to make.

I have so many people i really want to send a thankyou card too after everything we have gone through, and i finally got started on them tonight.

i went searching for sketches first

these r older sketches on the cardvaarks blog. all the papers from my lime tart kit and the dictionary pages from an old one i picked up at the op shop for like 20c...i have gone for pages that had words relating to being thankful.

these cards use sketches from the hero arts blog that chris millar shared with us today...thanks so much chris it got me started creating today.

and finally....ive decided to turn my journal cover into a place to keep a few cards at hand...im going to add a pen and some stamps and use it as a gratitude folder, thanks soulemoma for the idea.
we r back off into melbourne tomorrow for another visit to the hospital

TWO YEARS OLD

today was filled with birthday wishes, kitchen playing and general being togetherness. I had a few teary moments, im having trouble shaking the fact that today could of been so different. I know how close we came...that has however helped me enjoy the day, i feel blessed and lucky to have this special little girl in our lives. she is such a joy. of course the above photo was as good as it got for a 2 year old and her official photo for the birthday...but thats ok...there was to much to do and see i think, and we were all laughing.
first thing this morning emily got to open a present. she was quite chuffed with it...dora...dora was all we heard...emily loves dora....and i always welcomed something different to watch and hear in hospital!Much of the day looked like this. they both loved the kitchen which was lovely. dan and i have had many a cup of tea and lots of soup today hehe.i wish they were as happy to wash up when it was for real!hehe emilys new fav trick!

and its not a birthday without one of these. just a flower. I wanted more than that but time was an issue. it tasted great and emily said wow..so cant ask for more than that..: )
i read a heap about taking candle pics, but in the end this was as good as it got....gee u have to be quick! the candles were out in seconds and emily was picking off the marshmellows hehehe

emily was very spoilt...lots of clothes and a few new toys, a pram for her baby we hope will last better than the first two (we went for a totally new style this time) and a couple of books. it all seemed to go so fast!

happy birthday my special girl...we cant believe u are two years old, your such a joy to have in our lives, you always find the best way to deal with things and nearly always with a smile. You have taught me so much (mostly in the last month or so)...keep being you.

i love you

mumXXXXX

more kitchen maddness

and two posts for the day...thats a first!

felt donuts i made, with the apples....i will get a basket for all the felt food to live in when im next in a cheap shop...and i have alot more felt food to make, i wanted to do it tonight, but its very cold in the sewing machine room right at the moment so i thinks it can wait!

also made a felt milk bottle. the toaster we got at the toy shop...its so cute!

the oven with knobs now, and we know not circles had to made do with square the bit we needed for the drill we couldnt get hold of today...first time i have missed bunnings seeing as it would of been open!...also the towel set i made earlier.

and finally this is what she will see in the morning.

the present has a tea set in it from her sister.. : )

sorry for all the kitchen pics but i know a certain grandpa that will be very interested seeing as he help build the kitchen

kitchen progress

its nearly finished

lots of late nights this week for us both to get it to this point
i will take more pics when we dress it up and add the oven knobs tonight after emily is in bed
i cant wait to share it with her tomorrow

dont look to closely at the paint...its not a pro job thats for sure...but the kids wont care...i would say all up....extra bits, and the paint , and the toy bits we got for her it cost us about $200....its still twice the size that we could buy for that sort of money and its solid as and HEAVY, believe me i had to help carry it outside for the spray clear coating it had to have!

all up im pretty chuffed that we made it for her.. :)

i have some felt food and the towel set i made earlier to go with it too

FRIDAY

saw us go back into melbourne for emily to visit with the hospital. everythiing is healing nicely and it looks a little better and not as swollen and all in all everyone was happy with it. this week we dont have to go back until thursday. just to plastic's clinic this time, no drugs required after she spat them out at the nurses and went through the dressing change with little to no drugs helping her with it. actually good news for her and us. Our other big news is that she is trying to use her arm. working out that her arm, hand and fingers can still pick up small things. she cant hold onto them very long but thats big progress, even waving at her doctors with it during her dressing change on friday hehe

i will be back with a birthday post tomorrow.. :)

felt food

finally got to start on the felt food for emilys birthday present last night and today

so far

we have eggs and apple wedges

next a donut or two...bread...pizza...more fruit and some meat i think

im going to be here well into next year i think lol

everyday life

its so nice to have it back.



i spent the morning getting the house back undercontrol, and while im not finished after lunch i wanted to be with my kids, so the rest of the house can wait.



we were going to art, but they wanted to build towers from blocks and cook. So thats what we did.

first the tower building. all sorts of mixed up blocks and nice just to sit together.

and then some cooking



we made bread...i have wanted to make my own bread for the longest time, since starting to read soulemomma's blog. well after a 30 minute search of the house to find my book with the recipe in it i wanted, we made some flat bread to go with dinner tonight. it was fun. we used the kitchen aid to bring it all together and then the girls did some needing (sp?) of the dough which is currently doubling in size and is nearly ready to cook and become part of our evening meal.
i love the look on emilys face as they discuss the sharing of the dough hehe..so cute


i often get lost in the maze of things we as mothers have to do in a day and forget to enjoy. today i enjoyed being with my kids, providing our meal and generally just being mum. I want to enjoy it everyday its such a gift. take the time to enjoy just one thing with your kids tonight after work and homework and all the other things u have to do...its so worth the effort.

oooer look at this
its emilys kitchen...

how cool is it looking....it still got a door and range hood to go, as well as a hole for the sink then some painting and the tape ware....its just so cute, i cant wait to paint it this week. doing some sanding tonight so that i can start painting it the next night.

during june i started working on my masters entry, but as it was this year i never finished it. i was 3 parts done. Im going to submit my layouts i think...but i thought i would share with you all what i had made as my gift. Its a cushion of sorts a large monogram with the photos all printed on printable fabric and stitched in place.

not the best pics of it, but i have let lilly have it, as she was so patient while it sat up waiting to be submitted for masters. oh well on to next years comp...: )