Baby Wallabies

I finally got around to restocking some appliqued t-shirts and onesies yesterday. I got two orders for appliqued baby onesies on Thursday too, which was lovely. Friday is (usually) my child free sewing day but Maddy was home from school yesterday with a cough, so she came with me to buy the onesies to applique.

This is my new favourite fabric combination for the baby elephants.

Maddy was very helpful in the shop, although we did have a little negotiation over exactly which onesies we needed. I have no idea where she gets the strong minded nature from ;o) .

This is unfortunately the last of this toadstool fabric :o(

If any of you have seen it anywhere, do let me know.

Maddy was helpful again in the car, taking all of the tags off so the onesies would be ready to do the pre-shrink wash when we get home. 

This is fabric and a design that Sarah M of Songbird Designs gave to me when she stopped making t-shirts.

We were nearly home when Maddy suddenly started asking about wallabies and when were we going to see some. It took me several minutes and lots of questioning before I clicked that she had heard me talk about the onesies and thought I had said wallabies. Very cute! Poor love was a little disappointed when I cleared that one up. I think we might have to plan a trip to Auckland zoo soon to make up for it!

Hope you are managing to keep dry on this horrible wet day. My girls are having a great game with the dolls house. I might have to go and join in in a minute!

My Creative Space

My Creative Space should be making a whole pile of flower filled fairy skirts after the lovely write up about them by Aimee on the Baby Bites website.

I've done all the cutting out, but the pile of tulle has been hijacked for fairy mountain purposes so the sewing is just going to have to wait until the fairies (and Dora) have moved on with their adventure.

For more Creative Spaces, pop over to Kootoyoo.

Playdough Fashion Design

Maddy, Eloise and I made some sparkly playdough to give as party favours a couple of weeks ago. The playdough never made it into the loot bags however because, in the end, it was just too big to fit. We didn't let it go to waste though. Eloise got it out this morning and we did a little playdough fashion design.

First she made a cardigan. She used the sleeve of her cardy and the buttons on it to make cool patterns.

(I won't tell you what sort of a state her sweater is in now though so best you use an old one if you are going to do this!!

Then she made a princess gown. We added even more glitter to the playdough for this one.

She got out some beads and cut up some doilies to use as decoration and she used an ink stamp cupcake to transfer a design to the dough.

Then some sort of explosion happened and the design process went all Vivienne Westwood.

The designer was pleased with herself and chose to sing Happy Birthday to celebrate her sucessful fashion design debut.

The party

Well needless to say, I am totally and utterly exhausted after Eloise's 4th Birthday party. She had a wonderful day. Here are a couple of photos of the day.

Our little fairy.

The food table

Gorgeous cupcakes made by Eloise's Godmother, Melanie

The paper flowers (I stuck them on balloon sticks)

Dainty fairy sandwiches made by Eloise's other Godmother, Carina.

The branches have pom poms and butterflies glued onto them.

The pink lemonade (made by mixing lemon and raspberryade).

It tasted truly revolting but the kids loved it!

The fairy Queen.

We set up a throne in the corner and every child had their photo taken on it (to be turned into thank you cards later on. We borrowed the fantastic toadstools from Eloise's ballet teacher.

 

Our other fairy Queen, Madeleine. She was such a huge help on the day!

And finally, our two gorgeous girls playing pass the parcel.

We also played Musical statues and pin the star on the fairy wand (Maddy and I painted a fairy on a big piece of paper and the kids had to stick gold stars on the picture and try to get it on top of the wand.

We also had art activities so that everytime there was a lull (or there was a queue for the pin the star game), they could go off and amuse themselves. They made butterfly wands (I used butterfly cards from the John Sands range, cut in half to make single butterflies.) The kids decorated them with stickers, pens and glitter and then glued them onto lolly sticks. We also had the fairy colouring in pages to keep them busy if they finished their butterfly. I really couldn't have managed the party without an awful lot of help from my lovely friends and of course from Richard who spent the vast majority of the afternoon washing dishes, taking video and making coffee whilst I had all the fun directing the party games.

Eloise had a wonderful day which was of course the whole point of it. Now I have to just get used to the fact that my baby is 4 years old and this time next year she will be starting school. I am so going to miss that funny bunny when she does!

It just won't wait

Some of you may remember a post a week ago when I said I was going to try not to get carried away about Eloise's Birthday party? Well, I really didn't try that hard. I got totally carried away and have loved every minute. The party is tomorrow and I've been busy all day getting ready for it. I really need to just sit down and relax now but couldn't wait to show you a sneak preview. First of all, Eloise's birthday cake.

 I am so pleased with it and Eloise loves it too. She said "Oh Mummy, it's just like the one I wanted!" You can't get better praise than that. The wire cake topper and all the butterflies, the plaque and the ribbon came from a really lovely Trade Me seller called Margaret. (Hamish329). She has just started selling on Trade Me and I can't recommend her highly enough. The set I described above only cost me NZ$22 and I can't say enough about how wonderful it is.

I'll definately be going back and back to her. All the bits and pieces (aside from the ribbon and wire) are edible. The green base is a cake board that I covered in green icing. The cake is a Donna Hay rainbow cake. Here's one I made earlier (always wanted to say that! This is the cake I made for Eloise for her real birthday)

The recipe is in the latest Donna Hay children's annual.

I've made some pink chocolate butterfly lollipops. The mold came from another Trade Me seller (Kirinlockie). If you want to colour chocolate, get some food colouring paste as the liquid just ruins the chocolate. The paste is awesome. I had never used it before this week and now I am totally hooked. It's really reasonable considering how far a little bit goes. I got mine from the cake decorating shop on Hurstmere Road in Takapuna (a couple of shops down from Cotton On Kids).

And I finally, here are the cutest little personalised stickers that I bought from another Trade Me seller (charliehorse_nz) And yes I know, I went a little mad with these bits and pieces, but everything else I used for the party came for what I had at home so I think I can justify it! The little stickers are just gorgeous and are a great and totally inexpensive way to add gorgeous little personalised details. Here they are on little lollipops.

I took the plastic wrapper that they came in off them and used glad wrap secured with a little tape. The old wrappers stuck out at the side and just didn't look pretty. And here the stickers are on the little bags of fairy dust I made up for the loot bags.

So cute but I am going to have to remember to warn the Mum's that this glitter fest is in the loot bags before they go home otherwise I am NOT going to be popular. I can just imagine lolly-fuelled kids let loose with fairy dust inside. Hmm. Not the best idea maybe but fairy parties NEED fairy dust.

I am soooo excited about tomorrow. I'll post pics when I've recovered.

My Creative Space - Party Preparations.

I'm sneaking my Creative Space in a day early this week because I'm going to be crazily busy tomorrow and won't manage to do it otherwise.

My Creative Space this week is all about my soon to be 4 year old and her upcoming Flower Fairy Birthday Party. I am having SO much fun with the preparations for her party and so is she. She has been my little helper all day today. We've made some paper flowers from napkins.

And we made some fairy bunting using an op shopped flower fairy book that Eloise spotted (makes me so proud!). Just cut the book pages into triangles and zig zag stitch onto ribbon. So quick, so cute!

(try to ignore how badly our windows need painting. It's on the to do list!)

And these are my favourite.

Party loot bags made from another old childrens' book. There is a tutorial for making gift bags here which is roughly what I did, without all the reinforcing. I can give you measurements and instructions for  my version next week if any of you are interested? They are super simple to make. If you can wrap a present, you can make these.

A few more bits and pieces to do before the weekend's party and then it's all decorating and party fun. Can't wait!

For more Creative Spaces, pop over to our lovely host Kirsty's blog, Kootoyoo.

Just a word of warning.

Just so you know; if you happen to pop around to my house this week, you will be required to drink at least one bottle of fizzy fruit juice. This is so I can use the empty bottle for the soon to be four year old's birthday party.

This won't be too much of a hardship I assure you. It's quite tasty fizzy stuff. Not quite the standard of the fizzy stuff with the exploding cork of course, but I'm happy to add a dash of  vodka should you need it. Come to think of it, should the Birthday Girl receive any more birthday cards that sing Happy Birthday over and over and over and over again ....... I might add a dash of vodka myself.

And some of you (yes I know you are out there because one of you is Mr Cotton Kiwi), may question my sanity over emptying soda bottles for the sake of filling them up again. But, I'm a crafter so it is in the job description to do things in a very convoluted and slightly crazy way in order to get them exactly how I want them. And besides, they will look pretty.  I saw something similar to these in the latest Kids issue of the Donna Hay magazine and thought it was just the thing for a flower fairy party.

(The before and after shot, in case you were wondering which soda I used)

So if you are, like me, imagining how gorgeous these are going to look on the party table, I shall tell you what to do. Simply grab a packet of pipecleaners and a Hawaiian Lei flower garland (makes about 10). Cut your pipecleaners so they fit loosely around the top of your bottle neck. Dismantle the lei and make the holes in the centre of the flowers slightly larger  (I stacked about 6 flowers together and folded them in quarters and then cut the pointy bit off). Thread about 10 of them onto your pipecleaner, including a leaf and then close the ends by twisting them. Cut off any sharp bits, spread the flowers out and drape artistically over your bottle. I shall be filling my bottles with pink lemonade (raspberry cordial and lemonade) and pink straws. And I shall have a large cloth handy to mop up the numerous spills that will inevitably occur. Ok then. I will agree that I am probably quite mad having drinks like these at a 4 year old's party. But they are going to look so pretty!!!