The Easter Hat - a fairytale

Once upon a time, a four and a half year old girl brought a note home from Kindy advising her parents that she would need an Easter hat to wear in the parade a couple of weeks later.

The mummy was always under the impression that the Easter hat was to be constructed during class time, so was happily surprised that she would have the opportunity to take part in the creation of said Easter hat.

The Kindy teachers meanwhile, were unaware of the monster they had unleashed in the mummy, whose main purpose in having children was to enable her to do school twice over again, having enjoyed it so much the first time around.

The mummy happened to be in possession of a vast array of crafting equipment and she immediately set about thinking up a prototype, a design which was to be brought to life by pastel coloured felt and an interactive element too...

With the design finalised, the children set to work cutting out felt egg shapes, happy to be included in the grand vision of the Easter hat.

Being well versed in the operation of the equipment required, and having seen the mummy use it in almost every crafting creation since its acquisition a year ago, the girls worked quickly and efficiently to create an assortment of different coloured and sized felt "eggs".

 

At the time of the commencement of the construction phase, the big girl was at school, and the small girl - aside from allowing the mummy to measure her head for size - was more interested in her Polly Pocket and Barbie collection, leaving the mummy to complete her vision virtually unassisted.

The mummy worked happily, cutting and sticking, assembling and building with (sporadic interested assistance from the small girl) until the final product was ready to be tried on.

 

The small girl was delighted with her hat, in particular the little bunny that bounced when she walked as a result of being attached by clear plastic strips to a band spanning the crown section...

With a whole week to go until the Easter hat parade (and being one of the few times in her life the mummy was organised for something so far in advance) the hat itself had to be put away safely so that the small girl didn't subject it to numerous exuberant trying on sessions and ultimately trash it in the lead up to the parade.

When the day dawned, the small girl was excited to finally put on her hat. She and the big girl also had little baskets of Easter treats each to hand out to their friends.

Once at school the mummy stood misty-eyed with the other mummies and daddies as the precious array of Kindy kids marched past proudly wearing their various creations.

And now they're all on school holidays after a really long and tiring school term and are heading off for a long weekend on the south coast of WA where they will chill out blissfully and hope that the Easter Bunny knows where to find them.

The End.

Dabbling in digi...

Ever since I discovered Photoshop a good many years ago now, I have been on a constant, occasionally frustrating but mostly enjoyable learning curve.

Having never completed any formal courses on how to use it, I have muddled my way through, likely taking the long way 'round in many cases and figuring out how to do thing as I've needed to.  It's safe to say my Google search bar has seen more than its fair share of "Photoshop x/y/z tutorial" searches in its time...

If I could turn back the clock, I would very possibly pursue something along the lines of graphic design and with less than a year until both my poppets are at school full time, I may still head down that path, but for now I am content to faff about in front of my computer with my outdated, e-bay acquired version of Photoshop and create things like my blog banner up there ^ and a couple of other bits and pieces that I'm going to show you now...

My delightful and delicious five month old nephew Maxwell was baptised a couple of weeks back and on the same day his sister - my sweet and spirited niece Ivy - celebrated with a party for her third birthday which had been a couple of days prior.  My sis-in-law Janny asked if I wouldn't mind putting together some invitations that she could quickly send out, so always up for a challenge and an excuse to play in Photoshop, I readily agreed!

Being rather a fan of my Canon 500D digital SLR and taking every opportunity to bust it out,  I also took the photo on Max's invitation, his adorable expression  being helped along by uncle Tim getting right in his face and being a doofus.  He loves his uncle Tim :-)

In addition to being my source of tutorials, Google is also my friend when searching for various brushes and patterns to use, but by far one of the best discoveries has been Lettering Delights, which is where I got the cute red decorative elements on Ivy's invitation.

It's also where I happen to get a good many other bits and pieces in the way of graphics and fonts, especially since they're so adorably cute and a mere few dollars at most, or even less when there's a sale :-)

Better still, you can get a bunch of freebies just by creating a free member account, which also gives you the option of signing up for the Lettering Delights newsletter so that you're among the first to know when there are new things available or stuff is on sale.

Click the banner below to head there now and sign yourself up!

Just be warned that cuteness abounds, so if you're anything like me, you'll spend ages putting search terms in trying to find an excuse to purchase and use the hundreds of delightful graphics and fonts that you'll find...

Just so you know...

Out of the mouths of babes #1

If you're a parent, I'm guessing that you could just about write a book on this topic the same as I could.  Kids can say the funniest things and my small one has me in stitches frequently with her four-year-old observations and mispronunciations, so I thought it would be fun to dedicate a whole category to it, thereby keeping a record for my own enjoyment and their mortification in years to come.

THE SCENE:  Saturday morning at home, with the promise of a swim at Mama and Bunts' (my in-laws) house with their cousins later in the afternoon, I advised the girls that they might want to have a look at the bomb site they'd created in the toy room and start work on cleaning it up if they planned on togging up later that afternoon.

SOPHIE (all attitude with jutting hip and rolling eyes):

Indeed.

Gas mask appreciation society

Just call me madame president.  Of the above-mentioned, newly formed society that is.  Which is odd considering that the gas mask itself came to be in our house as a result of the unofficial contest that my handsome man and his brother are determined to hold on an ongoing basis, which is along the lines of see who can give the other the most ridiculous and pointless gift on record.

Let's just say that my SIL and I apologise in advance to each other on the eve of the boys' birthdays and Christmas, as we both know what's coming and that each time it will likely be more ridiculous than any past efforts.

Christmas this year (albeit late since the gift itself was shipped from Russia) was a MIG fighter helmet.  I kid you not.

Last year's birthday was a Casio calculator watch, which, whilst it might possibly send your average ten year old mathlete into raptures, looks rather nonsensical on the wrist of a 30-something man with fingers too large to operate the buttons.

I couldn't even tell you what has been given in return - I think it's a case of having blocked out the memories once the gifts themselves had left my immediate vicinity.

On this particular occasion, however, I must backtrack in my prior disdain for the aforementioned gas mask.  And I do mean double filtered, rubber-strapped, reminiscent-of-creature-out-of-Star-Wars gas mask.

Cutting a fairly long story relatively short, a couple of days ago I noticed a not so pleasant aroma emanating from somewhere near the back of our fridge.  Being that Tim claimed to have seen a mouse just a day or two prior and being familiar with the smell from an incident in my childhood where a mouse chose to take its dying breath stuck in the bowels of our family toaster at the time, I figured I knew exactly what we were dealing with.

When we failed to find any trace of anything resembling an expired rodent with a quick torch scan under the fridge, the decision was taken to move it out of its spot against the wall and see if we could uproot the source of the stench.

Half an hour, some torn lino and much exertion later, we were no closer to figuring out where it was coming from, so we cleaned the floor under the fridge (a delightful job, let me tell you) and turned our attention - and the extended vacuum cleaner nozzle - to behind the pantry, which lives right alongside.

It was evident upon hearing the hollow "thhhhummmp" followed by having warm Eu de Decomposed Mouse blown warmly at my legs from the rear end of the vacuum cleaner that we had found what we were looking for.

Needless to say, that vacuum bag had seen its last duty and was quickly marched out to the kerb-side bin.

Having just acquired a staple gun earlier in the afternoon, Tim was happy to busy himself with replacing the errant panel on the back of the pantry, which left me with the enchanting task of cleaning the scene of Mickey's demise.

Enter the gas mask.

Despite being somewhere in the vicinity of 35 (C) degrees and not being the most comfortable piece of apparatus to attach to one's face, I was so very thankful at that moment to have this thing at my disposal.

Tim was operating nearby, without even so much as a flimsy dust mask on, and at one stage when he disappeared, I thought it was to go and gasp in some fresh air, but my sympathy disappeared quickly when I turned around to see the camera lens within inches of my face...

 

So to my Brother-in-law, my apologies.  I did indeed find a reason to appreciate your somewhat left-of-centre idea of gift-giving.

Just this once....

Thelma the playdough machine!

Towards the end of last year, having coveted one for a very long time, I joined the ranks of "Owners of a Thermomix" and while I'm still learning to drive it to a certain extent, crikey I'm having fun doing it!

This morning, having found the last batch of (very purple!) playdough in the toy room all crusty and dried out with the lid left off, I thought my small girl and I would try out the Thermo version of playdough, and what a treat it was!

Super easy to do, with a Polly Pocket recess in the middle while we waited for the first part of the process to cool, a few drops of pink food colouring later, and we had a fabbo batch of the pinkest pink playdough you ever did see!

Hours of fun ensued, and provided that the lid stays on this batch for a while, I'm sure there will be many more such hours to come :-)

Call me crazy....

....but I've decided to start a new blog.  Perhaps you know of my other one. 

I thought it was about time that I separated my stamping self from my real life self, if only for the sanity of my stamping readers who, for the past almost four years have put up with my random warbling with the occasional hand made card thrown in for good measure.

I figure that at least this way they (you?!) have a choice - go there for all things ink and paper, and visit me here for frequent narratives about how delightful my children are, occasional anecdotes of the highly amusing things  they say, regular dalliances with photography and Photoshop, recurrent tales of my op-shopping adventures, sporadic insights into our little home and intermittent forays into cooking, plus pretty much everything else that goes on in this varied and lovely life that I have going on.

And while I can't promise incessant posts on this blog, I have thoroughly enjoyed re-discovering a love of writing through blogging in the past few years, so I'll be here as often as possible in amongst life's meanderings, as much as it will likely only be my mum that reads it ;-)