Shop update.

We've added a few more things to our madeit store.

'Run, run, run as fast as you can' coin purse

'Ahoy there' Messenger Bag

http://www.madeit.com.au/detail.asp?id=221003

'Run, run, run as fast as you can' Messenger Bag.

More to come a little later in the week.....

"lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"

It's been a little quite around these parts lately, we've been busy though, very busy. School holidays came to an end last week, that six weeks just went by so fast, I can hardly believe they're over already. The weather has been crazy, the holidays were mild, chilly some days, but as soon as school went back we sweltered through a week of record breaking high temperates reaching a peak of over 40 degrees on Saturday, with the nights so hot and the humidity sooooo high it was near impossible to get a good nights sleep. Now we're snuggling under doonas, crazy.

I love this photo! My sister took it of Molly holding the very first Strawberry of the season from their garden.

Zero has been loving her afternoon walks. I love how everyday the view can be totally different.

A crazy sea fog that enveloped our little part of the coast on Australia Day. 

What can I say. This just cracks me up :)

trying to get a better view. 

♥

This cake was so delicious  I made it three days in a row. From this book.

Charlotte just loves bugs and spiders, she is always spotting them around the house and garden and insists that we all come and see them too :)

We have also been working on setting up a little madeit.com.au store. It's a bit of a slow process, but we're going to be adding more stock whenever we can. it would probably help if I stopped treating my sister like a personal seamstress and claiming all of her beautiful clothes for my own girls. I honestly had to ask her to stop showing me things in their sizes or there will never be any stock in our store.



Here's a little peak at a couple of things that have gone in already, there will be lots more to come soon.......

'Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Messenger Bag.

The sweetest dress in a summery vintage print. 

better late than never.

Looks like we've totally missed the boat on the whole summer/new year/fresh start post. January is almost over already. I haven't made any resolutions this year, as I, like many ( i think/hopefully I'm not the only one) never stick to them and then spend the rest of the year feeling really bad about myself. Not this year.

The only thing I'm going to make a concerted effort to do differently this year is to be brave. There are so many things I haven't done because of fear. Not like Skydiving or bungee jumping or anything wild like that I mean really basic everyday things. I've already tackled one of my major fears......the ocean. Totally crazy really considering we live minutes from the most beautiful beaches. I have swum in the ocean three times already this year, I even caught some waves, with a little help from Oscar :)  Sounds pretty lame I know.

A little bit of what we've been up to so far this summer.......

Happy happy day

I find December birthdays always get lost amongst the chaos of end of school year and Christmas preparations. And despite promising ourselves we would never be as unorganised as last year, Oscars 8th birthday was less than a week away and nothing had been planned, no invites had been sent.

At the very last minute we decided to go to Luna Park. 

The odds were stacked against us, we had two days to prepare, the possibility that noone would be able to come at such short notice, an hour and a half road trip there and back and a weather forecast for rain and thunderstorms. I packed ponchos. 

Amazingly almost everyone could come, they were even all allowed to leave school early so we could avoid the worst of the peak hour traffic. We discovered Charlotte is an absolute daredevil and if she wasn't restricted by height I think she might have taken on the Wild Mouse. 

Everyone had an absolute ball, and for Oscar I think it was a birthday he won't forget for a while. 

Possibly the best party ever, or at least thats what I heard :)

And not a drop of rain fell, now what to do with all those ponchos........

around here....

We've been crazy busy this week trying to get ready for our second Olive Tree Markets in Newcastle. So excited to be going back, just hoping this rain holds off for a day or two at least.  

She never fails to fall asleep on the morning school run.

 This girl could eat her weight in plain pasta if we let her....

...but her first chocolate biscuit (snuck off her big brother while he wasn't watching) didn't live up to the excitement "no, no, I no like it!" seriously thinking she may have been swapped at birth :)

Trying to get an early start on the Christmas decorations.

It hasn't stopped raining for days.

Sweetness.

Pretty dresses for the market.

Little treasure holder.

:)

an ode to chocolate (16 days and counting.....)

Oh how I love thee........I could eat you everyday and never bore of you (in fact I do).

I love you in all of your delicious forms,

crisp and cold straight from the fridge

as a topping poured over..... well, pretty much anything really

inside a crisp candy shell

with a myriad of fillings, soft, hard, goey, crunchy

as a hot drink with 3 white fluffy marshmallows floating on top

even as a chocolate spread

though you never normally make it to the bread....

And then there's Cadbury cream egg, oh cream egg, oh cream egg, you are the most perfect, most sweetest confection ever invented. Made all the more seductive by the fact that your only available three months of the year.

Oh chocolate how I love thee.

Ok so I couldn't write a poem to save myself but I seriously do LOVE chocolate and I do eat it everyday, lots of it!! Which is exactly why I must (aaargh I almost can't type the words) but I MUST give it up.

Some very good reasons why I must give up chocolate include, but are not limited to......

• I eat it everyday and that just can't be good for you.
• I have eaten all the chocolate in the house and then in an attempt to hide this fact raced to the shops to replace the eaten chocolate, and then eaten all the replacement bars as well. 
• I have often been so desperate for chocolate that I have eaten cooking chocolate.
• The words Family block have never stopped me from consuming an entire one to myself....in less than a 24 hour period. I know, that's really bad isn't it. 
• I once watched a show about people with OCD and who are addicted to things, there was a girl who was so addicted to chocolate that she sought medical help to break the habit. When they revealed how much chocolate she ate I realised I ate more than her. 

So you can see this is truly a huge undertaking and one I don't think should be entered into alone or lightly, so I have enlisted my sister into the challenge........

30 days Chocolate and Coffee free (I have heart palpitations every time I think of it).

Starting tomorrow.................

Well we're 16 days into the 30 day challenge and there's been some surprising results.......

Firstly and most shockingly giving up chocolate has been an absolute breeze, I've barely thought about it and that's even though there has been a fairly constant supply passing through the fridge (I'm not the only one around here with a sweet tooth).

I am totally amazed by this revelation and the only thing I can put it down to is that show that I watched on the chocolate addicted girl. As part of the solution for her the Dr hypnotised her and made her imagine she  had melted down a big pot of chocolate and then she had to add all these really disgusting things into it like dirt, dog hair, maybe a little snot, toenail clippings (eeewww this gets me every time) cockroaches, worms etc. Then he asked her to eat it, in her hypnotised mind of course, just the thought of it made her heave, me too.
I don't know how it worked out for her but I do know I didn't eat chocolate for about a week after just watching it. So although I haven't gone to the extreme of being hypnotised I have been imagining a grubby disgruntled worker clipping the toenails from their fungal covered feet into the chocolate vat (which I'm sure noone would ever do :)) its working a treat so far.

Secondly the ONLY thing that will ease a caffeine withdrawal headache is a perfectly brewed, hot, steaming cup of coffee. we both lasted about 4 days with the coffee. It disturbs me a little that I couldn't give it up so I am planning on tackling it again, soon.........

Thrift bonanza

We just seemed to stumble across exactly what we needed this weekend.

The perfect chair for Bella's room.

I was a little disturbed though by the face that appeared as we painted.

A new stand for our market stall at the bargain price of $8.00. Can't beat that!

 And then Molly found this cute cupboard, perfect for all her kitchenware. A work in progress.