Apologies for the lack of posts recently, I am working on an exciting crafty project which I hope to share with you all very soon! Stay tuned 
In the meantime, enjoy this snippet of wisdom from Littlepixie on the subject of bras…
Mama wears bra over boo-boos in case boo-boos float off into the sky like a balloon, then mama have to fly up and catch them then I (LP) have to stick them back on with a plaster.
Back soon, oh and there will be a giveaway here soon too!
Posted in Children, Family, Mothering, Parenting, SAHM, crafts | 7 Comments »
A big “thank you” to a certain ShinyHappyGirl who noticed that a certain HPP had set her blog to “private” yesterday That’s what I get for playing with the settings while Littlepixie is wandering nearby
Posted in General Musings | Leave a Comment »
Two posts in one evening!
Another thing I plan to make with my newly acquired industrial skills are some dolls’ clothes. Littlepixie has many teddies and animals who are all sporting various crazy looking outfits I have made for them over the last few months. It is time consuming to sew little doll outfits, so most of them were just cut out and not hemmed, naughty me!
Along with all the teddies and lovely fabric dolls, LP also has two of the type of dolls we all hope our daughters won’t fall in love with, but somehow they do… A Sleeping Beauty doll which was a gift from my parents and a crazy looking falling-apart doll whom LP named “Giant Pretty” for some reason. Giant Pretty’s legs fell off and she now wears a 24-7 girdle made of sticky plasters and sellotape which not only keeps her legs on, but also allows her to sit and stand (see, my engineering degree wasn’t wasted after all), LP loves her and won’t part with her! Giant Pretty also spends a lot of her days in her nudies (well as nudie as one can be in a massive plaster-girdle), so I shall make her some new clothes (she is smaller than a Barbie doll so she only has one raggy dress that she arrived in).
Sleeping Beauty has a good few pieces of clothing as my mum gave LP a treasure trove of Barbie-sized clothes she made for us when we were young. They are excellent, all crazy polka-dot 80’s fabric and puffball sleeves!! LP loves them and it is amazing seeing her dressing her dolls in the outfits I can remember playing with so, so many years ago!
In my pre-industrial days (a few weeks ago) I made a beach outfit for Sleeping Beauty and then got bored of the tediousness of hand stitching hems on doll clothes, but now I shall make more, hurrah! I also made her a fleece cloak to cover her princess dress as LP was concerned that she would get cold while playing on the swings outside, such a thoughtful child! Here is her beach outfit, oops I notice that she is wearing her netting underskirt, that’s not part of the beach outfit!
And yes, I know, Barbie-esque dolls are just not really what I had envisioned for LP, but at least Sleeping Beauty and Giant Pretty will have clothes that don’t make them look like hookers, no thigh-high mini skirts for these ladies (thigh high mini skirts wouldn’t fit over Giant Pretty’s giant girdle anyway!).
Posted in Children, Family, Mothering, Parenting, SAHM, Toddler | Tagged dolls, dolls-clothes, sewing | 3 Comments »
Yes, I got a sewing machine! Woo hoo
No sooner was it unpacked than Littlepixie ran into the room with a pile of her mermaid fabric demanding a bag, so I made one, and it only took 10 minutes, unlike the hand-sewn ones which took me 1.5 hours! And so fast to make the handle tubes, ah bliss! I think I shall make up a few more crayon rolls next to practice my straight lines, they are pretty cool gifts, so I’m sure I will find someone to give them to.
I also whipped up a splendid black out cover for our bedroom window. I cut the blackout fabric to size then sewed velcro on all 4 sides, then stuck velcro onto the window frame et voila, instant custom easily removable blackout blind! And I hemmed some pyjama bottoms too, very industrious indeed.
I find this machine very easy to use, it’s a Toyota SPA15, I was so confused googling all the options, but then I read U-handbag’s review and I was instantly sold. It is very easy to use, and has little diagrams all over to help you if you get lost. There is also a handy flip book on the front of the machine in case you get stuck and the manual is so easy to follow. It’s also good at thicker stuff, the velcro was sticky backed so I was a little worried that it would be too much for the needle but it was fab.
Here’s a peek at the machine midway through the sewing the mermaid bag, yes, I was using the red thread that came with the machine as I was too lazy to thread a new bobbin!
I suppose I have a little advantage over other sewing machine newbies in that I had been extensively tutored in the art of sewing by my mum when I was a wee lass, only I had forgotten most of my sewing machine knowledge and had become very reliant on hand stitching. However, I did find that once I sat down at the machine, the hand moments and stuff-placing just came quite naturally, I suppose because I spent years watching mum doing it and “helping” out. I showed the machine to her and she thought it was great and shared fond memories of almost sewing my finger onto a dress she was making many years ago! I must keep LP away from it while I work!
I bought this with money that my parents had given me for my birthday (months ago) and with the remainder of my birthday cashola I ordered lots of fat quarters of fabric and lots more felt to increase my fabric stash. I think next on my list of things to make will be a patchwork skirt for LP, and perhaps one for me too. Also a few funky tote bags for my good self too would be fun. I’m off to look up more ideas now!
Happy Summer Solstice folks
Posted in Children, Family, General Musings, SAHM, Toddler, crafts | Tagged sewing, sewing-machine, toyota-spa15 | 3 Comments »
I got a lovely little email from a bloggy buddy today just checking up to make sure I was ok, thank you bloggy buddy, it is so nice to know that faraway folk think of me
I am well and happy, my blood test results all came back good (what shockingly bad English I am now writing!), my iron, b12, thyroid, liver and cholesterol are all fine apparently! So that’s good, it seems my tiredness was just from lack of sleep, good to know! Littlepixie has developed an unerringly accurate ability to wake with the rising sun to tell the boo-boos to get up and feed her. The sun rises at 04:30 or thereabouts, ugh. But LP is sleeping from about 21:30 to that 04:30 wakeup so I really can’t complain, if I’m getting less sleep now it’s because I am a silly monkey who stays up late digiscrapping when I should be sleeping
Yes, that darn digiscrapping hobby monopolises a lot of my limited computer time, but I am loving it. Also we took a wee break in Dublin last week (and met up with some wonderful friends and their wonderful sons & daughters for the bestest funest day we’ve had in a long time!).
And I finally managed to make some time to read “The Good Earth” by Pearl S.Buck, over a year after it was recommended to me here by CanCan! It’s a good read, not enjoyable as such as it is quite a melancholic story, but lots of food for thought and well paced in that by the end you too feel as old and tired as Wang Lung. It’s one of those stories that rattles around in your brain for days after you read it and keeps you thinking.
One point though, if in your youth you broke the bones in the arch of your foot, then please don’t read the Wikipedia entry on foot binding, ever. Stupid curiousity got the better of me, and although I had already read more than I ever needed to read on foot binding after reading some other book set in China a few years ago, my little pea-brain forgot the details, so I googled it, and I swear, I can still feel a phantom pain in my old broken foot-bones after reading that Wikipedia entry… shudder.
Oh, there’s a movie of it, I shall get my hands on it, I love movies from the 30’s!
Posted in Babies, Breastfeeding, Children, Family, General Musings, Mothering, Parenting, Toddler | Tagged "the good earth", books, reading | 4 Comments »
It’s been 7 nights, some ups, some downs, but overall very positive and I am absolutely amazed to be able to write this but here it is…. Littlepixie is nightweaned!
We decided to attempt nightweaning to address some of my exhaustion issues, and (very surprisingly indeed) it has gone really well! We have had the most insanely hot sticky weather, and everyone has had a hard time sleeping because of it, I am so thankful that we started the nightweaning this week because nightlong feeds in that heat would have been very hard! Anyhoo, here is a night-by-night account for those of you who are interested. I posted my updates on one of my local forums to get feedback each morning, so I shall copy & paste the updates here (I was afraid to jinx it all if I reported on HPP too soon )
Night 1 (It begins):
It wasn’t too bad at all! I spent the day telling Littlepixie about how the boo-boos were very excited to be getting to sleep tonight and how they would be making good milk for her morning feed. Continue Reading »
Posted in Attachment Parenting, Babies, Breastfeeding, Children, Co-Sleeping, Family, Mothering, Parenting, SAHM, Toddler | Tagged breast feeding, night-weaning | 14 Comments »
Galway is in full swing this weekend for the boat race, and town is crazy busy. The weather is meltingly hot and there are a few too many bare man-nipples wandering around the streets, why people, why??
A good time for a samosa & ice-cream picnic. We acquired some samosas from the market and some new icecream from the healthfood store, Booja-Booja Pompompous Maple Pecan icecream, a bargain at 10 euro for a wee tub (eek!) but it was well worth it. We camped out by the river under a shady tree and people-watched as we scoffed our delicious picnic. Littlepixie is obsessed with samosas and she loves ice-cream so it was a good combo!
Look at that icecream, doesn’t it look decadent? I don’t think anyone would ever guess it’s vegan from looking at it and the ingredients are :
Pure water from reverse osmosis, Agave, diabetic friendly syrup from the agave cactus (contains 74% fructose with low GI. Raw), Cashew nuts, Maple Syrup 16%, pecans 3%.
So I guess we can see why it costs more than icecream made from sugar & cow’s milk, eh? It is so rich though, a very occasional treat especially for riverside shady tree samosa picnics, methinks
Posted in Children, Family, Food & Drink, Vegan, Vegetarian | Tagged booja-booja, dairy-free, dessert, icecream, vegan-icecream | 5 Comments »
The sun setting on the bay as seen over our back wall tonight, it felt almost tropical!
Posted in Nature, Photos | Tagged photography, sunset | 4 Comments »
… so why is it so cold that I have to don my my veggie docs & thermal leggings under my heavy cord skirt, eh? Although yes I admit, the docs are donned (is that the past tense of don?) most days, but today I really needed them!
Oh, I just looked back at the original post I wrote about my boots, and they are a year old now, Happy Birthday boots! They are still like new, well more comfortable than new, as is the way with docs! So to answer my question then, yes, they are worth the money
Posted in General Musings, Vegetarian | Tagged airseal-boulder-boots, summer, vegetarian-boots | 6 Comments »
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