Happy Wedding Anniversary

Happy 7th wedding anniversary to my dear hubby. This time in 2001 we were celebrating at our wedding reception and counting the hours until our touch-down at the Banyan Tree in Phuket. One day we will go back!

Here's to 7 years down and 50+ years to go.

A warm Monkey and Princess

Testing out our new beanies today.. looking pretty warm! Both actually stayed on for our whole outing. Lucky because boy was the wind cold today!

Fleece Hats

I have to admit I am a horder. It appears all of us Camerons are. While putting some leftover fabric away tonight I came across some beige fleece. These little fleece hats were using a pattern on Martha Stewart's website and took me less than half an hour each. Nothing like a quick sewing fix!

The Princess on our way to see her Aunty Sarah who I made the bag for last night.

Liam's Christening & Birthday Bag

Here are some of the photos from the Monkey's Christening last weekend...

Liam's party bunting. It's a bit hard to see in this photograph but it is made from fabric in circles with alternating green, yellow and red letters and says "Liam Adam Bradley". One day when he has his own bedroom we will put it up on his wall.

Liam in his outfit. Don't you love when the daddy's take the "outfit" shots. us mum's would have thought to have taken out the dummy and take the bib off. Oh well, at least you can see it fitted nicely!

Isabella in her dress.

The family shot with Liam's Godparents and our priest.

Liam's Godmother Sarah also celebrated her birthday on the same day as his Christening. Today we are off to a BBQ at their house and for Isabella to play with their little boy Sam who is 3. So for her birthday I finished off the Hobo bag from JCarolinecreative website. It was my first attempt at "o" rings and magnet close. I loved it! Another one I wish I could keep. Maybe I'll make one for me one day. Now to decide what to make for Mum for Mother's Day.... any suggestions?

PJ Bags

On my to-do list for a while has been a bag for the Monkey and the Princess' PJs and all the accessories we seem to need for bedtime. I picked up the purple and blue fabric from Ikea a few weeks back. The pink gingham goes with Isabella's bedding and the organic dots fabric by Kaffe Fassett came from my very first order of material from Repro Depot that I have been holding on to for something special for Liam. The "plan" is to use the dots fabric to make some bedding for Liam at some time, but I need to re-order more when it comes back into stock.

PS I finally figured out why my photos sometimes enlarge when clicked on in my blog and sometimes don't which has been driving me nuts. Apparently it is a bug that if you upload the photo usng the "Add Image" in the Compose window and then move the photo in the Compose window it looses some coding it needs. So I need to move any photos in the Edit HTML window. Just in case anyone else has the issue and is stumped. So now to go back and re-upload all my photos that don't work... bugger.

WIP and Dress

This is my WIP, a book for the Monkey. So far three pages have been done, a monkey, giraffe and some fish. The reeds in the fishy page haven't been sewen down completely and there is a little fishy hiding behind them that Liam can find. I am making it with felt sheets and it is all hand sewen which is surprisingly relaxing to do. Slow but relaxing. We have chosen some of the animals from our favourite books and I have a couple more almost done.

Sunday was the Monkey's christening. It was a lovely day with all our close family and friends. Liam wore his white overalls and kimono style jacket and looked very dashing and Isabella had her dress with a lovely black jacket. I made myself a dress on Friday night to wear. What posseses me to start these projects at 9.30 at night when I have so many other things I SHOULD be doing is beyond me. I also seem completely inable to leave things overnight to be finished if I know it can be done that night. Anyway, the dress came out lovely and was very nice to wear. It doesn't photograph well though because it is dead straight, but hopefully I will have some photos from the Christening later this week from my dad's camera as he was taking all the photos on the day. The pattern was from New Look.

Isabella's Dress

All week I have been thinking I *should* have made Isabella a dress for Liam's Christening this Sunday. But with the christening on Sunday and only Friday left to be able to get the material from Spotlight AND make the dress plus the other hundreds of things I seem to put off until Fridays when I only have 50% of the kids, I didn't want to loose the whole day so sadly gave up on the idea.

THEN I had my mother's group yesterday. How happy was I to turn up and my good friend Belinda had a bag full of leftover material from her gorgeous sewing for me. Now I love her even more :-). Inside was this dark stretch denim material, exactly what I had been wanting to use. I used my Burda Easy pattern again that is such a lovely plain dress.

Isabella LOVED it and when she tried it on for me this afternoon she danced in it for an hour refusing to take it off. Apparently it is like a "ballet dress mummy". But then all dresses are ballet dresses to her!

Christening Outfit

I finished Liam's christening outfit, well besides the press studs which I'm still figuring where best to put them on the top. I used the same Burda Easy pattern for another pair of overalls I made him, but these are much better fitting in the leg. They also have a couple of extra pockets on the thighs. The top is a Simplicity New Look pattern I picked up a few weeks ago. Originally I was going to make this in a satin. I even bought the material. Then decided I was deluding myself that it wouldn't be hard enough trying to make a whole outfit that was presentable for public let alone in a fabric I had never used before!. Now it just needs a nice iron and those press studs.

Fried Egg Pants

Poor Dean has to listen to the sewing machine humming away most nights. If it's not the sewing machine, I'm off in a trance working on my laptop. So far he has seem me make lots of things, but nothing for him. It's hard to find things blokes will like!

So when I was at Spotlight last week I picked up a Simplicity pattern for "pajama" pants. I couldn't find any material I liked so just figured I would pop the patten away for later, but today while going through the ever-growing stash I found my groovy fried eggs material which I thought would be perfect! These are my first attempt at "adult" clothes and boy they take a lot longer to cut out than little 6 month old and 2 year old "little people" clothes!. They were dead simple to make though. I didn't use the twill tape in the pattern but black bias tape I had left over and just stitched it open. The material doesn't photograph very well, the material kind of looks like flowers! They look like proper fried eggs IRL though.

I also finished off a decoration for Liam's christening and also 99% finished his outfit which I'm pretty happy with. Only a couple more seams to go.

Amy Butler Sweet Greetings Portfolio and another Apron

Our friend/neighbour Sarah heads back to work on Monday for the first time since their second daughter Bonnie was born 5 months ago. So I made her a notebook cover as a "good luck" from the free Amy Butler Sweet Greetings Portfolios pattern (using the small portfolio). My notebook was an A5 so I needed to added a few inches to the original pattern. This was such a quick and easy gift to make, I think I will have to make up more!

Sarah is also my local "apron dealer". She has one for her daughter Lacie with cupcakes, one for a 3rd birthday this weekend and she asked for another for a 2nd birthday next weekend. Here is the 2 year olds all folded ready to go.

Villa Onje Work

No more finished sewing projects this week, one of my new clients website's went live, http://www.villaonjebali.com A couple more are also verrry near going live which will be a relief.

I do have a couple of projects almost done for Liam's Christening next week. Hopefully all finished off this weekend and I can share.

On the kiddy front, it's official... Liam is on the move! He commando crawled a couple of moves the other night but yesterday got his act together and was dragging himself all over the place. Worringly he seems to have a thing for shoes and even cornered Isabella tonight and tried gnawing on her shoes... while they were still on. He's like a possessed man, sees a pair of shoes and scoots right over to play with them. His Nanny works in a shoe shop and she will be pleased. At least he'll share his love of shoes with his sister who has more than most whole families combined!.

Memories

When I was in Year 1 at primary school, a new family moved into the neighbourhood and to my school all the way from England. They had two boys, Russell who was in my grade and a younger son Adam. All of their family remained in the UK, just as all of my mum's family are in New Zealand besides one sister who lives in Brisbane. So our two families hit it off straight away. All of our holidays were spent with them, we seemed to spend most weekends at one another's houses and every Xmas since then has been our two families combined. The parents soon became my "Aunt" and "Uncle" and the boys were like brothers. Today marks the 10th anniversary of when we lost Adam in an accident at the very young age of just 17.

10 years on he is still horribly missed. At Xmas we still use the napkin holders he made at primary school, his photos surround us all around and even our little Monkey has the middle name Adam in his memory. Dean lost his only sibling, his brother, 5 short years ago who Liam also bears the name of, Bradley. Russell has taken up all "Uncle" duties and both Isabella and Liam love him to death.

Just last night Russell was over for dinner and all day, everywhere we went Isabella let everyone know that her "Unkie Russell" was coming over and she had to get home. Poor guy became a jungle-gym the minute he walked in the door. He must have been glad to escape after dinner!

Finally today a moment (and some spare battery in the camera) to capture the princess and the monkey together. Oh and KC the cat even managed a photo. She was less than impressed we were interrupting her 23 hour sujorn on the bed as per every day.

A Couple of Days Out

Found these on my BlackBerry... forgot I took them!

On Saturday we headed out to Bondi Junction. Dean loves the Grilled Seafood Plater from DeCosti and Bella always eats all our grilled Octopus so this time she got her own serving. She ate almost all of it too! I love that she will eat anything.

This was taken a couple of weeks ago on one of our expeditions to the supermarket. I must say they are both great in the trolley, the fight is always trying to find the one damn trolley for a baby and toddler. We normally end up circling the car parks two levels stalking out people with trolleys and the numerous trolley bays. Magoo came along for the ride too. There wasn't much room left for shopping!

A present all finished

Yesterday after lunch Isabella really wanted to have a play on the beach, so Dean, Liam & I came home and she had a play with Nanny & Poppy and then they walked back to our house. On the way Isabella picked these flowers for me... my first flowers from her :-)

Sewing has been quiet this week as work has been very very busy with a new customer and 3 others all ready to finish their websites. But last night the machine came back out to complete an apron a friend asked for for a 3 year old's birthday party this weekend. It's pretty exciting, the first thing someone has asked me to make for them!

I love this apple fabric I picked up from Spotlight a couple of weeks ago. I also picked up some fabric with fried eggs all over it as an alternative.. now to decide what to do with that! Maybe I'll make myself an apron and a matching one for Isabella or maybe one for Nanny or Nanna.

I also tried out from the Bend-The-Rules book, a matching bag which I have been wanting to try. I made mine with the same sized handles though rather than one short and one long

All ready to go.

I spoke to my cousin Craig yesterday and found out that their baby is coming at the end of July and is going to be another little girl. Craig is one of 3 boys and all have now had a girl first. The other 2 boys (and us of course) have all then had a boy second, we'll see if that trend continues.

So now off to plan what I can make for their baby girl. My friend is also having a baby, not until November, and she liked the bag I made for my mother-in-law, so one is being planned for her and I am designing it with all the compartments a nappy bag needs. At least I have plenty of time to finish it and find the right fabric.

We had our last dancing lesson this morning. We are going to give next term a miss as we plan on continuing the private swimming lessons. I'm kind of looking forward to a morning off during the week, at the moment we have something on everyday except Mondays. Isabella loved her dancing, hopefully term 3 we'll be back.

And just because... My spunky little monkey this morning.

Horton Hears a Who

No sewing this week, work has been very very busy. Which is good I suppose, but I miss my sewing machine. Isabella is off at Nanny & Poppy's tonight and for most of tomorrow so Liam has enjoyed some rare time with just Mum & Dad. He tried out the highchair for the the first time at our place and seemed pretty impressed. Well until Daddy ran out of food, then there were tears.

Isabella & I visited the movies for the first time today as part of a friend's kindy fundraiser. We lasted about an hour, which wasn't bad. If they didn't have 20mins of ads before the movie we would have probably lasted the whole movie. Plus silly mummy didn't pack enough food, so when the food ran out we sort of lost interest. The movie was Horton Hears a Who and for what we saw it was pretty good.

Mother-In-Laws New Bag

Recently my lovely mother-in-law sent me two patterns for some toys that I was ordered from her local shop and of course refused to take any money for them. So I thought I would make her a thank you present. So as a combined "Thank You" and for Mother's Day I made her a lovely bag from the Bend-The-Rules book. I love this book and I love the bag. In the book is a pattern for a no-cash wallet that I'm thinking of making to go with it, and maybe a matching tissue cover.

I'm tempted to keep it for myself but then I would have to make another one. I was planning on making one for my own mum but I think I'll make a smaller bag for her.

The hand-stitched flower on the front.

WIDE awake... such an alert little man. He is into EVERYTHING!