A give away!

Ive decided to have my first little give away, just to say thankyou for visiting my blog.

The winner will recieve-

*Your choice of two of the wooden flower/mushroom people that i made on the weekend (the mushroom house and mini mushroom gnome count as a toy each)

*A little pot of honey and bees wax toy pollish to keep them looking (and smelling!) great

*And one of the following dream catchers also made by me 

I am happy to send them anywhere in the world so long as customs in your country allows wood to enter your country.

Rules-

Everyone may enter once

If you are (or become) a folower on my blog you may enter a second time!

If you write about my giveaway on your blog, linking to this post let me know and you will recieve 3 extra entries!

Please comment with your name, country and email

Winner will be announced next Tuesday

Oh, and my good friend Kaia has started a great blog called Purple Dreams And Country Life, head on over and say hi!

a making weekend

Saturday morning Benny got up and went outside to finish a new fire bucket hes been working on in his spare time at work.

(Look at the pretty sparklies the angle grinder makes:)

While I sat and watched i worked on  a few dream catchers ive been making

Heres the finished fire bucket. Its a shame that the paint will soon burn off, it looks pretty with its sunshine yellow.

On sunday i had a go at making some wooden toys similar to some i'd seen on etsy. Dad leant me some vicious looking tools and i managed to use them without cutting off any fingers (although i scun my fingers a few times on the belt sander!ouch) Here they are 'naked'

And here they are painted. Painting them was realy fun, call me crazy but i like doing fidly little details

And the cute little backs.

Hope you had a great weekend

dreamy

After seeing this post The other day i decided to build a cubby house with the kidlets I look after. It was so much fun reading them stories in our dreamy little tent, the blue satin sheet made the perfect 'sky', letting in pleny of purple glowing light. After they'd gone home i decided it was the perfect little spot to lay and read my book. I realy wish it could stay in my garden forever (i think im going have to grow a giant one of these!((it doesnt show with that link but the pic is from Mulbery spot))

Quietly camomile tea and muffins were the perfect 'backyard camping' food i must say. 

We loved cloud gazing through the little sky light

Look Anneke, swirly (the care bare) that you gave me had fun too

Art changes people, people change the world

Just a few more art journal pages, and many more to come. I like the thought of them being safe here on my little blog in case of fire or whatever because they realy are very special to me. Some of them are easier read by clicking on them              

Love this little water colour garden plan from when i lived with mum still that i never quite finished. The colours arent so hypo in real life, my scanner just made them look brighter than they are. For the record i only finished about half of that to do list before i moved house!

The character 'Summer' in this little story was me, except i never had the combi. One day perhaps. (Yep I hate showering, I can always think of things id rather be doing with those few minutes every day!)

Ah my benny babe, i wrote this soon after we met and im happy to say its all still true

Theres just something about this page, it takes me back to that day at the beach with my toes in the water. The toe ring was a present that my cousin lil got me at markets i do believe. I still have it somewhere.

beautiful blogger award (yay:)!

The lovely Kat at For the love of my oceans was kind enough to gift me this pretty award, Thank you very much Kat!

So instead of getting ready for work, i am passing it on to some more beautiful bloggers (much more fun don't you think?!)

The rules for receiving this award are...


*Add a link and note of thanks to the blogger presenting the award to you

*Share this with 10 other Beautiful Bloggers
 
So i pass it on to...
 
I Wannabe Crafty
Dineke's Diary
Rainbow Love Farm
Cake and cup
My love is
Earth mama
Aura joon
Giggles down under
A girl named astrid
Believe it and be satisfied
 
I love being inspired by the beauty on these blogs, and that's some thing to celebrate!!!
 
Another thing to be celebrated, I just found out i will be receiving a $350 grant for buying educational toys and equipment for my Family Day Care business, what a wonderful surprise! (yay free toys!) 

Finishing some knitting (hopefully!)

Ok, so i started knitting this cardi/coat way back here when i had a bit of a knitting obsession all of a sudden.

 Then ordered some new wool for another cardi and began a second large project (I made the excuse to myself that I didnt have dpns for the sleves, but id get back to it as soon as i bought them...)

 So for a while both projects got put in the too hard basket at their various tricky bits but now i have new motivation.

I realy want to make a red beanie and scarf, but i wont let myself buy the wool until these two are finished (of course dont hold me to that!) Oh and i was never going to get around to buying the right dpns but luckily my aunty Levin saved the day by lending me some! Im realy enjoying knitting again now that ive got back into it 

Im loving my 'new headband.' Realy its just an off cut of fabric, not hemmed or anything. Pip gave me the great idea to make something special out of my wonderful pants mentioned in this post, so i am. Progress on that to come in the near future. Its gonna be good (i hope!)

our crazy camping trip

On the weekend me and Benny went camping with my family.

We had an 'interesting' start to the weekend, i was truly starting to wonder if we were 'meant' to go if you know what i mean. heres why-

*The day before there were warnings of severe weather. No problem... if necissary we could stay at Anneke's which was close by.

*Just before we left home, the caravan park manager told us we were supposed to be booked in by 6pm (it was 5.30 and we were 2 hours away!) No problem... he was able to come back to let us in.

*Dad and Mum left before us. 5mins after they left Dad called to say we might want to keep an eye out on the highway as his van's back door had come open! oops .No problem... nothing had fallen out.

So off we went, happily driving along for almost the whole journey and then on the express way a few minutes from our destination...

*A car three or four places in front of us suddenly rolled AROUND 10 TIMES! The two people in the car were lucky to survive! The girl had a horrible foot injury so we stayed with her until the ambulance came, and then ever so carefully drove the rest of the way feeling rather shaken.

Finaly we made it, the guys put up the tent and me and Anneke went to get pizzas for tea (because by this time it was9pm and even the thought of our cute little camping stove wasnt enough incentive for anyone to feel like cooking.)

After that our weeknd was much less 'eventfull', very relaxing and pleasant (except our tent threatning to blow away in the middle of the night with us still in it! especially the first night)

Hanging out in the van where mum and dad slept.

(This photo went a little something like this, 'oops i already pressed self timer, quick everyone, dive NOW!)

We loved the camp kitchen. Even though there were quite a few people at the caravan park no one seemed to ever be there so we took it over and made it our own (think our stuff spread over around 4 large picnic tables at any given moment)

We went for walks at the beach and wondered to opp shops

All weekend we kept super cozy with a million layers of clothing. No im not exagetating...

We walked down a windy little path that led us up a hill to a beautiful view of Annekes beach. Her doggie Mia was most happy to come along

I decided that seems id been drinking green smoothies for two weeks straight and lots of people in blog land seem to be doing month long green smoothie chalanges i might as weal bring my stick mixer along for some camping green smoothies, so i wouldnt miss two days. Dad tried one too

Heres our tenty-tent, full of beautiful life long camping memories (Ma and pop gave it to my parents when i was a baby)

 The old girl is still going strong. Because of the strong winds i woke up lots of times at night, but i was happy to just lay their feeling cozy in this big farmilliar tent, remembering sleeping in it every night during our two month long family adventures to Queensland and Darwin during primary school, and many other special trips.

I didn't mind the weather flapping the tent about, but im glad those old metal poles stood tall and refused to fall. 

I love this photo, its perfectly imperfect. I crept up behind him after hed decided 'no more photos until tomorrow' (there had been many photos!), and im glad i snuck this last one . Sorry Benny but i win:)

I hope you had as great a weekend as we did!!!

my latest favourites

just thought id share some beauty with you all:) lately ive come across some great blogs, here are some of my recent faves

for the love of my oceans  -love dropping by to see what Kat and her happy little family have been up to, im inspired by her creativity and beautiful photos

gregarious peach is a gorgeous blog- how cool is this little clip of a bus that Georgia, her husband and their daughter used to live in! I want to live there:)

aura joon keeps me inspired to make my home more beautiful and generally love life!

the noisy plume- maker of funky jewelry, keeper of adorable chickens, funny gal and great gardener 

believe it and be satisfied- beautiful pics and beautiful sewn goodies

I love healthy recipes from Mulberry spot the strawberry banana ice cream is my fav (yes even though its the middle of winter!)

hope you love them too

Yesterday i had a great day. In the morning i went to Mums and we went opp shopping, and i got some great finds! We had snitzels at the pub for lunch and went for a little wonder on a nearby beach.

In the afternoon i went to see my good friend Krystel who i hadnt seen in a long time.

It was so much fun to catch up after so long and see how much our lives have changed (houses, partners, kids etc)

Yet how much we're still exactly the same people, and still get along and laugh just like we used to all those years ago!

I loved remembering old times we had together, and telling each other 'that is just so you' when we said something that sounded just like our younger selves from back in the day:)

Yes we definately need to get together again soon. I didnt take a single photo so here are some old photos of us instead...

this sais* Me and Krystel on our favourite swings at the park.

The swings are one of my favourite places in the world because you get closer to the clouds, your hair goes everywhere and its a place that all of my friends love so it reminds me of them, even miff when she hasnt been their in years!

This is the two of us at a pond around the corner from Krystels aunties old house. We had so much fun at this place, finding tadpoles and getting nice and muddy and wet regularly with all our friends.

 Krystel has two gorgeous sons, these are photos i took of her oldest when he was little, i cant believe hes 6 now! Her other son is a cute curly haired 4 year old. Theyve grown so much since i saw them last

Oh and i mentioned to Krystel the other day that Benny and I are getting photos done at the end of the year by an amazing photographer in who is in Bute. (she does on location shoots, were getting ours done at port hughes beach, yippe!!:)
Her name is Valeska Wehr and here are links to her website and blog, check her out!