Happy Sunday!

Im getting rather excited, on Wednesday me and Benny are leaving for Ayers Rock for a holiday with his parents! Ill be taking knitting, journal, paints and some little sewing projects to make for an enjoyable long drive.
While im away my little shop will be closed and I possibly wont blog depending on if we get internet anywhere along the way. (Ill miss doing my wood working, its my new favourite:)

I found a new favourite shop on etsy, im looking forward to buying some of these prints when i return to put up in my kitchen, arent they gorgeous!


And I recieved this beautiful "one Lovely Blog" award over at Foxglove Spires (thankyou!!)

Arent I just the luckiest:)

This weeks nature activities with my day care children

This week I got a package in the mail from a new etsy friend of mine, Alison of Rumpelfeltskin. I received four pieces of wool felt, a bookmark and a brooch and its all just beautiful! The Autumn leaf bookmark is my favourite, with its tiny little stitches the detail is amazing. The hand dyed felt is so nice and thick, I have about a million things I want to make with it so far, I think I'm going to have to get some more!

The first thing I decided to make was a mini version of our sunflower and bean tee pee for the kids to play with while they wait for our real one to grow.  

I made it by making a cone shape out of paper, tracing around the bottom of the cone to get a circle for the bottom. You can see the shape of my pieces in the picture below. 

I cut these shapes out of my new beautiful green felt and also a piece of  white for extra thickness to help it stand up. I then needle felted on some sunflowers, stitched on some flower stems and details.

This picture Is of it half finished, it got 'borrowed' for some play time. Its lots of fun with these gardening kids and animals that I made (I have some of these for sale in my shop also)  

We've also been reading some gardening books. Our favourite is "And The Good Brown Earth" by Kathy Henderson. Its a lovely book about a little boy called Joe and his grandma gardening throughout the seasons or the year.

We also made some cute little lady bugs with the great tutorial I found at Foxglove Spires

We added our own little touch by stuffing them with some felt scraps and stapling shut.

Here's an action shot

Oh and our nature table... today it looked like this:)

A weekend full of my favourite things

Me and Benny went to visit my wonderful Sammy sister on the weekend. We had an absolute blast checking out a new supermarket sized opp shop near her house (see her overflowing basket? We could have filled it 10x with stuff we loved!) Im fairly sure we would have spent the whole day there if hunger didnt get the better of us!

After making toasties for lunch we went to the beach in our new opp shop shorts (no it wasn't really warm enough but we had fun pretending!)

And then the next day after walking mia to the beach and back we went to markets and and had lunch infront of another pretty beach. Yep, thats my idea of a good weekend!

Nature Table Friday

Our nature table is looking quite cute. Yesterday we went for a walk to the post office to pick up a parcel and found some nice nature treasures along the way. (And little mr. M fell into the biggest patch of mud! poor little guy)

The package was some new paints! Ive been very excited about these all week. I look forward to taking these to the beach, it will be a lot easier than lugging a basket full of paint bottles. I love painting on the beach, lucky im going to an amazingly beautiful one on the weekend, I cant wait!

Heres a few things ive been working on. Since I look after five boys and only one girl I thought it was about time I made a boy doll. Soon he will be sporting messy hair and overalls. (thats not his face by the way, its just pins at the moment) 

And of course Ive been putting new paints to good use, colouring some toys for the shop.

Happy friday everyone, enjoy your weekends!!!

Children of the forest

Ive had a few comment about the children of the forest toys I made a few posts ago so I thought I'd  let you all know that I have some available In my new etsy shop. They are available plain or coloured with natural watercolour paints

Also with the option of having names burned on the bottom. (this is an example on another toy, the children are actually 3/4inch thick, a little bit daintier)
I am so excited to say that I have made 4 sales already! Im having so much fun having my own little shop!

And heres some 'behind the scenes' shots lol:) My chicks come and sit on my lap while I use noisy power tools, I kid you not! (its not going in the pic because I had to get up, carry 3 chickens while i set up self timer and then stage the pic coz i just thought it was so darn cute. Well im off to make some chicken size ear muffs!!!!

fathers day

This morning Mum and I made my Dad bacon and eggs and then the two of us went for a walk on the beach.

I have always loved going walking on the beach with my family, I do believe these walks on the beach were were my love of the ocean began. We often went for evening walks on the beach, sometimes we chatted about all that was going on in our lives, other times we quietly walked just appreciating the beauty, power of the waves, sunsets and beach tressures. It was always our happy spot to get away to. No distractions of things that needed doing, just great time together.

Another family beach memory that is incredibly special to me was one summer in which all four of us used to get up super early every day and go for a swim at the beach before our school/work days began. It felt like such complete freedom to be diving into the water while everyone else would be sleeping or getting ready for school 

I havent been to this beach for a long time and I was so incredibly over excited to find sea glass. I have wanted to find sea glass ever since Mum used to read us The Mermaid Princess (by Shirley Barber) in which Sandy the seashore pixie (my fav character) Decorates his sand castle home with sea glass.

It was a wonderful morning at the beach together!

I made the tree waterbottle cover for Dad to say thanks for being the greatest dad! Its for his stainless steel earthlust drink bottle that i got him for christmas. Its about time i made it, hes been using a sock as a cover for the past 8months! I also made Mum the mushroom cover for hers a while back

Felting, Spring crafts with the kidlets and the start of my day care going green

Yesterday me and the kids did some felting together again. As you can see they were willing to get their hands soapy and wet with me this time, yay:) (they loved pat, pat patting it)

This is what we were making the felt for, a pretty spring banner to celebrate all the flowers and tree blossoms outside.

We also made sunflower sun catchers (with grated crayon and ironed it between two pieces of baking paper, like I've seen around in blogland) I am very excited that the older kids are now almost 3 and starting to get excited about what they make! The babies (18 months) seem to feed off the excitement and just love sitting with the big kids around the table and having a go. Ive missed having 'big' kids to craft with

We've begun decorating a seasonal tree with spring flowers. I don't have room for a nature table so I'm going to have a little spot on our table to put pretty nature finds etc.

Here's the beach felt play mat I tried to make way back here . Now that Ive got the hang of felting I was able to fix it by needle felting the blue and yellow together better and just felting it longer. At the time I thought I'd done something seriously wrong but really I just hadn't felted it for long enough! Now I'm pleased with it and glad it didn't get thrown out when I moved house like I thought I did. I also added a few bits of white 'sea foam' waves. I was asked for fishes and 'boat' so I dug a wooden boat i made ages ago out of the toy box and cut out some felt fishes (which I will sew together and stuff with wool when I get the chance) It seems that life is quite easy with natural toys!

I thought it would be hard and expensive to go natural but look what we already have!

Tractor was bought at our new local craft co-opp (I walked down last week to have a first look and its great! Many talented crafters in Port Wakefield it seems:)

Colourful puzzle from Kadina craft co-opp a few years ago, dolls are the ones I made  here. They need some TLC but their still cute.

The green 'snakes' at the front were made by two little boys yesterday, I just forgot to send them home with them so thought id include them in the pic.

Basket of wooden toys I've made recently and play silks i made here, strawberries from this super easy tutorial, wooden puzzle was around a dollar at a garage sale a few years ago (and has been a favourite ever since, a dollar well spent!)

The beautiful dolls cot is my favourite toy out of the lot, my dad and I built it together when I was little. Lucky for me it visited here for many years and got played with by 3 of my cousins, otherwise it would have almost definitely got opp shopped before I got old enough to want to keep it for my own one day children. Levin offered it back to me when I started doing daycare and I gladly welcomed it along with memories of my special dolls, back.  

Lastly a few nice nature based books, most of which we already had. Ive been thinking a lot about the books I read to the children daily, ever since buying  Louise hay's children's book 'I think, I am!' It oozes positivity and uplifts me when I read it. I want to be reading more books like that to the kids, much of what I had really lacked meaning and soul so I've simplified our book collection and will spend a good chunk of the grant money on books when I get it. (I actually gave the first copy I bought to my friend Lindsay for his son Callum. Has he got it yet Kaia? If so i hope you guys love it as much as i do!)

Anyway, so I've been pleasantly surprised how much I have been able to do with little or no money. Really far too many toys had accumulated over time, only what was on the top of the toy boxes was being used and some beautiful handmade toys were forgotten about down the bottom. Most of the old toys and books are in garbage bags ready for the opp shop if no one asks for them and no one has so far! (yay team ban the plastics :) The kids love the new toys so I think very soon we will be an all natural day care. I feel so good about this, I'm so glad I finally decided to make this change

These are my favourite craft I've done with the kids, they were a gift for their parents last Christmas (i made extras and kept the cracked ones to display) Just wanted to share them because their so cute:)

One more random pic just because its pretty, I love strawberries and blue berries wrapped in lettuce from my garden, yum!

My little shoppe!

Ive opened an Etsy shop

I decided to try my luck at selling some handmades (toys for now but who knows what else in the future!:) wish me luck (and go check it out!!)  Isnt my hand model cute with his chubby little hands? He really loved these and didnt want me to put them away after the pics were taken. I think i'd better make us some too!