Matchy matchy

A new job and too many commitments have meant a lot of quietness from me on this blog over the last few months. I decided over Christmas to take a break from selling at markets for about 6 months to give me more time to focus on jobs around the house and doing the sewing projects I want to do but never have time for.

This is one of those projects. I found the tutorial for the dress here. It's for a smaller child than Miss E so I used the bodice of one of her other dresses as a template for upsizing the dress. It's looking a little wrinkled as she's worn it for 3 days this week (*insert happy mummy sigh here*). I ended up cutting off some of the skirt as I made it too long and then saw that this could be one of those happy mistakes as the offcut was exactly the right length for Miss E's doll Mandy. I used an existing doll dress to get roughly the right size for the bodice, used the offcut for the skirt as I mentioned (you only need half of the full circle of patchwork pieces for a dolly skirt) and now Miss E and Mandy can be matchy matchy.

So cute!

We were actually quite busy for a change...

Friday night is pizza night in our house. It's a great easy meal and it allows Richard and I to eat more 'grown up' food because we have our own pizza and the girls have theirs. It also lets us use up lots of wonderful garden veggies. This one has spinach, red onions, baby tomatos, basil and mozarella on it. Yum. The girls love to make their own and they take it to their Wendy house and pretend they are in a restaurant (with lots of bossing waitress Mum around!)

 We had a busier than usual weekend this weekend. It wasn't planned that way but we seemed to do an awful lot. We woke on Saturday to discover the girls (including Maisy Kitten) were 'camping' in the lounge. They had packed their suitcases and draped blankets over chairs to make their tent.

 So cute.

 I'm getting ready to teach my Sew Inspired course out at Corban Estate this coming weekend and M helped me hang out the freshly washed blank tea towels that we'll be using for part of the course.

 We also managed to take all the furniture out of Maddy's room and fit a new carpet in an attempt to make it more asthma friendly.

 It's incredible how much stuff a 7 year old can own. It almost filled our bedroom (and our room is twice as big as hers). Thank heavens for good storage!

 We managed to get the room back together again by 7pm and took the girls out to the Lantern Festival in the city. They thought they were going to a music concert and dressed 'cool'.

I don't think they were too disappointed when they realised there'd be no dancing.

 

The lanterns were incredible. I'll post more about that later in the week.

And no Saturday is complete without a something wonderful in the letterbox.

I was lucky enough to win the Tiny Eyes Valentines giveaway on Lil'Magoolie last week. Isn't she gorgeous? E was so excited to open the parcel and find her. She's sitting on my (very messy) desk at the moment and I'm loving looking up and seeing her smile. Thanks so much Dee. I love her.

Hope you had a lovely weekend too. x

The Alice in Wonderland Party

We had such a hot day for Maddy's Alice in Wonderland birthday party. We had 16 kids in total and I set up the tables under my market gazebo. 

 Having two girls means I can recycle a lot of our party decorations each birthday. The pink plastic plates have now seen 4 birthday partys and the glass bottles have been through two. You might remember the tissue paper flowers that you can just see on the fence from Eloise's Flower fairy party.

 The only new decorations were the white rabbit (didn't Richard do a great job painting it?) which was a paper mache one from Spotlight and the $3/metre cupcake print fabric that I used down the centre of the table. Richard's Mum brought us lots of beautiful posies of flowers from her garden and we filled jam jars and teapots with them for table decorations. I was amazed how many teapots we own. 6 is a little excessive isn't it?!

 I also indulged in these very gorgeous Alice in Wonderland printables from here. They were so beautiful and really added something special to the party.

 The cupcake cases came from Living and Giving. I ended up buying chocolate cupcakes (on special!) from Foodtown as I didn't have enough time to make them.

 The girls all had apple juice to drink and we had cucumber and ham sandwiches, cheerios (cocktail sausages), fruit skewers, cupcakes and chippies (crisps) for afternoon tea.

Maddy looked so sweet dressed as Alice. It was so hot that a lot of the kids ditched parts of their costumes as the day went on.

 The banner came from the same place as the printables above. I really loved it.

 We had lots of fun decorating the garden with Alice themed signs and heart balloons (and the odd white rabbit toy). The kids got really into it and a few of them mentioned the sign and the decorations.

 I loved the look of these paper lanterns hanging from the gazebo. 

The kids went all out with their costumes. I particularly loved the Cheshire Cat. She looked outstanding!

 We hung a big black sheet over the gate and the kids came through it to tea. We told them all it was the rabbit hole and they loved it.

 Eloise insisted on dressing up as Dinah, Alice's cat. She looked so cute (particularly when she changed into her togs half way through the party!)

 Maddy really enjoyed herself.

 The cake was super simple. I covered a board in green icing. I cut a square cake in half and piled the two halves on top of each other to make a tall, long table. I covered it with ready to roll icing and then Maddy helped me add the Alice characters and various icing flowers and hearts. We put some Sylvanian family cakes and cups on the table and then finally made bunting using the printables and two skewers. Definately the quickest cake I've ever made!

Here's a photo of Richard and I in our costumes at the end of the day. Shattered, but still smiling. Richard looked incredible! He got really into his role as the Mad Hatter. I had to tone down my chopping off of heads as a couple of the girls looked very worried when they turned up!

I'd really recommend this theme for a girls party. It was so much fun and you can do as little or as much as you want. Hopefully, Eloise wants an Alice party in a few years too!

Thirteen

My neice Caitlyn has been visiting us from Australia over the school holidays.

At thirteen, she seems so grown up compared to my girls. She is so much fun and takes the most wonderful photographs. I love seeing her perspective and getting a glimpse into the relationship between the cousins.

Some of her photos are highly staged.

 And others are just about the moment.

My parents and Caitlyn just left for the airport to go home. We'll miss them so much but it's been fantastic having them here for the holidays. Now I just have to figure out a way to cheer up Maddy and Eloise!

Bobble trim and Fashion girls

Maddy went to a birthday party for one of her good friends on Saturday and requested a cushion as a gift for the birthday girl.

I briefly considered putting the birthday girl's full name on the cushion but with eight letters and limited time, I went down the initial route. It definately ticked all the boxes for girliness and cuteness. Talking of girly and cute, check out what little miss fashionista chose to wear this week.

The layered look is definately in.

It's been a busy old weekend in the Cotton Kiwi household. The Mr has been building a MAMMOTH wall unit which I am extremely impressed with (even though *horror*,  he did make off with my rotary cutter to cut some aluminium for the project). I shall share photographs of his handywork once he allows me to. Maddy had her party on Saturday afternoon so I left the handyman extraordinaire with the three year old, who assured me she was going to be extremely helpful to Daddy (ha ha!) and popped downtown to the Auckland Art and Craft Fair .

Wow.

What an amazing bunch of talent they had in those two little rooms! Extraordinairy! I was thrilled to meet Melissa from Tiny Happy and indulged in a pair of her adorable reversible booties for our new(ish) great neice. I stupidly didn't take a photo of them before I handed them over today, but hopefully I'll get sent a pic of little Bella wearing them and I can share then. The weather today has been STUNNING. Just the thing to put a smile on your face in the middle of winter.

We had a wonderful family get together today. Thank you so much Grae and Frik for hosting!

How was your weekend? I hope it was full of fun. x

A personalised gift

I discovered this week that my oldest daughter has the negotiating power of a top lawyer.

Maddy received an invitation at the beginning of the week, for a Saturday birthday party. I asked her what she wanted me to make for her friend, but I failed to do what all the child rearing manuals say and manage her expectations.

She wanted me to make her friend a set of pyjamas AND a dog toy wearing matching pyjamas AND a bag to put it all in. It's not that I couldn't have done all that, but with limited time and not wanting to cause embarrasment to the parents of the child (by providing an over-generous gift), we eventually weedled the present down to a personalised book bag containing a head-band and a little paper pad.

{The back}

But not before she had done some incredible negotiating with me and had raided half my market stall stock. Next time, I will give her a choice of two options. We parents never stop learning the hard way do we?

{Albany Village playground}

Next time there's any arguing from her, I shall simply lock her in the princess tower we found today :o)

The Cat that likes to get in the way

You may have read in the little "About Me" section in the sidebar of my blog, that I live with a cat that likes to get in the way. This isn't an exaggeration. The kids have both been home sick today so I brought in the stuff from their wendy house and let them turn the living room into their own little house. They had a dining room, a nursery, even a sewing room (and yes, I got roped into making them a cardboard sewing machine before I had even managed to have a shower).

(It says 'Eloise' on the other side because mean-Mummy refused to make two!)

So what's this got to do with the cat? Well, the next few photos should show you how Kipper reacts if you aren't involving him in the game and how the girls are so used to it, they just use him as an extra accessory.

He was lying on one of their plates so they decided he could be a plate instead.

And it didn't stop there. Maddy went to bed a little while ago to read a book. Guess who decided to be helpful again?

Look closely and you will see he is lying on her book.

He did the same to me last night, lying smack bang in the middle of my knitting pattern. He was wet too so I was really pleased! Luckily, I had just finished all I was going to do on this little bunny for the night. All she needs is clothes.

Edit: My blog layout seems to be on the blink! Fingers x it resolves soon. In the meantime, apologies for the random photo positions!)