This is my favourite Christmas present this year. I received this family necklace as my present from Evie. (She's not quite up to online shopping so she may have had some help from Mummy and Daddy). I think it's sweet without being overly cheesy.

It was bought from Eclectic Wendy Designs on Etsy. I was impressed with her service as Evie ordered it after the cut off date for Christmas and it still arrived in time.

Eliana turned six in July. Happy Birthday Eliana!

Way back in 2006, when the twins turned four, I gifted them pencil rolls and personalised pencils and textas. I figured since Eliana started Kindy this year that it was about time she got her own set of personalised pencils and textas. To put these in I whipped up a personalised pencil case as well. Eliana has an uncommon name so it's difficult to find things such as name plates with her full name. I thought she'd appreciate her personalised gifts.

Truthfully, I didn't just whip up the pencil case. I kind of left it to the last minute to make her gift. At the moment I'm not really at my best at the end of the day, so when I finished sewing Eliana's name I had a little mishap with the scissors. This mishap left a hole in the pencil case I then had to patch up. The little star above Eliana's name covers this accident. It almost looks like it's there on purpose. By the time I repaired my stuff up it was really late at night and I was exhausted. My very talented husband offered to finish the pencil case for me before I managed to ruin anything else. So this year's gift was a combined effort.

Along with the pencil case, pencils and textas, we also gave her a couple of how to draw books - I Can Draw People and Ed Emberly's Drawing Book of Animals.

The last part of the present was this super cool tshirt from Threadless. It lists fun rhyming ways to say goodbye. I can't decide whether my favourite farewell is "Peace out, river trout" or "Best wishes, little fishes".

Peace out, river trout.

More photos (slideshow) on Flickr.

Andrew celebrated his first Father's Day on the weekend. It was a bit exciting. Andrew got to sleep in and then I cooked him pancakes for breakfast. Well, I tried to cook him pancakes for breakfast but after a busy Friday and Saturday I was bit sleep deprived. Andrew had to step in and help out a bit.

Lunch was at NannyJ and TD's house with the Bells. In the morning we went for a walk in Pirrama park and enjoyed the glorious Spring sunshine. After our walk we had a delicious lunch; prawns and oysters for starters, slow-cooked lamb for mains and trifle for dessert. Yum!

For Father's Day gifts, I organised for Andrew (on behalf of Evie) a stubby holder with photos of Evie on it. It combines two of Andrew's loves - beer and Evie. A great idea from one of the ladies at Mothers' Group.

I also bought some nautical themed prints from Etsy for Andrew and TD as they both love sailing. The prints are of the International Maritime Signal Flags. There are 26 flags and each flag represents a letter of the alphabet and also has an assigned message. For Andrew, I bought prints of the A, J and E flags. For Dad, I bought the prints of the T and D flags.

It's surprising how apt some of the messages associated with our initials are. For example, the message associated with J is "I am on fire and have dangerous cargo on board: keep well clear of me." I need a flagpole sticking out of my head so I can hoist the J flag when I'm having one of those days. The flag for D is "Keep clear of me; I am maneuvering with difficulty" which is not only appropriate for TD but suitable for most of the men in the Daley family.

I hope all the fathers out there had just as an enjoyable Father's Day.

More photos (slideshow) on Flickr.

Stubby Cooler is from Snapfish and the International Maritime Signal Flags prints are from Bexpert on Etsy.

The Wilson family visited with the Veitch family on the weekend. Sarah and Hannah recently marked their 9th birthday so I decided to make celebratory cupcakes (any excuse for caaaaaake.) I went all out girly and decorated the cupcakes with pink icing, love hearts and ballerinas.

My theme ended up being particularly pertinent as Hannah and Sarah had completed a ballet exam the day before. For the exam the twins had to have their hair up, plaited into a bun. The twins liked it so much that they had kept it in and were planning to wear it to school to show it off. I can understand why; it looked very elegant.

We also gave the twins a birthday present. I usually try to hand make something but unfortunately I'm a little time poor at the moment. So instead we gave them a t-shirt, a book, some earrings and a little coin purse. I solved my no wrapping paper conundrum by turning the t-shirt into wrapping paper. It actually worked quite well so I'll be reusing that idea in the future.



More photos (slideshow) on Flickr.

It's all about hand made presents at the moment. I figure that you have to get in early and give them hand made gifts while they are still young. At the moment kids still like my presents. I'm sure that by the time they are teenagers they will be thinking "I wish she had just bought me an iTunes voucher." Even now it's pretty hard to compete with Zhu Zhu Pets!

Leo started kindergarten this year. I noticed that his library bag was just a plastic bag, so I decided that this would be a good birthday gift for him. Not very exciting for him but it solved my whole gift-wrapping conundrum. (Although, when we gave Leo the present he asked "Why aren't my presents wrapped?". Apparently 5 year old boys aren't environmentally conscientious.)

I used Ali Foster's Flea Market Tote Sewing Pattern to make the library bag. I'm still a bit of novice when it comes to sewing from patterns, so I was happy just to be able to follow this pattern. Then I took it a step further and made adjustments to the pattern. Actually I just left a few steps out. The pattern is for a shopping bag so it includes a few pockets inside. I figured that a library bag doesn't really need pockets so I didn't do those. It also includes interfacing which makes the bag a little more rigid. I decided that since the bag was going to be scrunched up in Leo's school bag that it would be better without interfacing. Look at me! Getting all over-confident in my sewing abilities. This is usually when something goes wrong to bring me back to earth. (In this case, I sewed over a pin, broke my machine needle and was nearly blinded by flying debris.)

I figured that the library bag was going to be the handmade part of Leo's gift and I'd just put the usual stuff - toy, book, t-shirt - in it. Then I saw a tutorial for a dinosaur hoodie on Pinterest. It looked so cool and the tutorial looked pretty easy so I decided to give that a whirl too.

Now Leo can be Leo-saurus. No action shots yet as it was quite late when we gave Leo his present.