A Long Awaited Ta-Dah

My Rainbow Ripple blanket is finished! Yay! I was determined to have it finished today. Fortunately I had been sewing ends in a bit as I went so it wasn't quite so daunting when I finished the last 3 stripes this morning. I am quite pleased with it though probably more sick of looking at it for now. I told BJ yesterday it would be finished today & he said he didn't need it. But once I put it on his bed today to take a picture he decided he wanted it after all & had to hope in bed to say Cheese.

It's been done in Panda Magnum acrylics, 7 colours randomly striped, except when I got to the end I decided how many more rows I would do & then did about the last 6 stripes in the same colours as the beginning so it is the same at either end. That way I won't obsess about which end I started on & finished on & won't sit there hopefully picking out which colours shouldn't have gone where or something. It's a good size with enough hang on the sides & ends of a single bed. I'm too lazy right now to go & measure it though!

I have a couple of other things I should be able to post in the next day or 2, just need to keep pictures taken which is the tricky bit at times. I have one day of work left & I miss it already even though I know I am ready to stop for now. So hopefully I will get a bit of time in to finish off a couple of other things before baby arrives too, though I don't mind in the least if baby comes any time from now & interrupts this plan. lol

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Birthday Party on a Budget

With BJ's birthday the other day, I never really set out to do it on a budget or anything. It was more in my head a case of "what can I make myself" as that it just the way I think I guess. I have seen really nice party sets of cups & plates & party bags etc that have construction things on them. I had in mind I would find something like that. But I never really got around to it as I hadn't really had the cash on me at any stage recently to go & buy them if I was. But being crafty minded I still had in my mind to do some of my own things.

So it started off a few months ago at any one's birthday we went to, he was expecting to see a cake with a digger on it. I told him he could have a digger cake. But for a toddler the concept of time is nothing still so 3 months ago that wasn't really helpful! lol Anyway, with that in mind for his cake & the idea that I wasn't going to try to make a cake that was a shape of a digger, it went to a cake with a digger on top that he can play with. Cool. Part one... so next the clip art... find some free clip art of construction things that will work. I had in mind some cupcake toppers so printed a few pictures up for something like that. Then I blew some up a bit bigger thinking I could put the kids names on them for party bags too. So I printed up a bunch. Brown paper bags are pretty easy to get hold of I guess. I picked up 7 at work. I was quite pleased with these party bags in the end.

The party bags didn't contain the usual balloons, lollies or anything else like that. We found some construction vehicle sticker books for the boys plus a vehicle to actually play with that went in for the boys. We had 2 girls at the party of different ages so I did age appropriate girl things in their bags that were girlie.

As the day got nearer I decided not to do cupcakes as well as a birthday cake so I used a couple of pages of my printed clip art as confetti pictures just on the table. I didn't have a table cover with diggers or anything on it, so a bunch of clip art pics did the trick.

Then the digger juice. I had a few pages of pics that I cut the strips of pictures from. They fit perfectly around a pop top juice bottle. Each bottle had 3 pics around the middle - diggers or bulldozers. They were a hit I think. Digger juice is in vogue for sure! bwahahahahaha....

For kids this age, one thing I learnt recently at another party is that the kids are more interested in playing with the different toys at the house they are at rather than go to eat party food. So we kept the food to a few basics - potato chips, little hot dogs, mini sausage rolls, a small bowl of lollies, some cookies I had done in the shape of dozers & cranes, watermelon slices & some marshmallows. All that topped off with birthday cake covered in icing & lollies was more than enough of a sugar hit for the kids! lol Kids only eat the lollies off the cake & lick some of the icing. They don't really eat cake much! So that was good to know in advance. As a result, we had a really great day with minor expense & minor effort I think. I think the kids had a good time too. It's always fun going to play at other peoples houses, & even more fun when it's a party but it sure doesn't need to be the event of the century. Well I can't manage that & as I hear more & more, there are plenty that can't. I hadn't really thought about it much before but there are simple ways to make a party memorable without blowing the budget.

Friends & family are the first thing though. Remember that. They are the important ones in the lives of a kid growing up. We are lucky enough to already be good friends with other kids BJ's age that he will go to school with in a few years time so it is lovely for all the boys that they know each other from such an early time in their lives. I have one friend myself that I can say I have known since ummm... forever... we never didn't know each other. It will be lovely in a number of years to hear these boys all be able to say something like that when they are adults.

Ok, now I am really carrying on so I will leave it here for now. The long weekend is nearly over & the cake decorator is even going back to work tomorrow after about 2 months off work. I don't know who will miss him more - BJ or I? Certainly has been handy having him home at times. Seeya later....

My Boy is 3!

I know everyone says it, but I must too now... Where does the time go? BJ turned 3 on Friday, though we kept Friday a non-event & made it an all day event on Saturday due to work & care on Friday. Saturday was a great day if a day late.

Friday night we were doing our baking & decorating. I can't take credit for this cake though -Stuart made the cake. The cake, the icing & the decorating was left to him. Actually it worked out well I think. Two opinions in jobs like this often result in stresses. Since he was home baking the cakes on Friday I asked him to do a drawing of how the construction site should look, based on the lollies & stuff I had picked up a week ago. (That was my contribution - finding fun things to use for decos & the vehicles! lol) Stu did a good floor plan of the ground & well, I left him to it. It's cool. BJ loved looking at it. The kids that came for the little party in the afternoon loved it - to look at more so than anything as I don't think kids really eat cake much. The chocolate rocks on the piles & around the edges were a huge hit though & the kids soon polished off the lollies that they got on their piece of cake & left the cake. No problem there, they were too busy playing & that's much better for them.

BJ was a fiend while Stu was trying to light the candles. Finally got a sort of picture of him with candles still lit! He was blowing out the matches before Stu got a chance to light any!

So Stuart was resorting to drastic action in the end to try to keep candles lit long enough to sing the song & stuff! Didn't happen, but we tried! lol He was a very excited little boy about the candle bit I think. They end up seeing so many other kids having a turn it is extreme fun for it to be all yours to do!

Here he is in the morning with one of his presents. It's one of those V-tech computers. I had no intention of getting any such thing until I saw this in Kmart last week for such a bargain price I couldn't leave it behind. In fact, I should have got the other one as well for someone else to give their kid. Oh well, I didn't at the time, but it is pretty cute & boy he looks like a pro navigating his way around that thing. Computers & the handling of a mouse seems second nature to these little ones already.

Oh you can see the Thomas Tank engine buildings in the front of the picture. He got those as well. Good fun to drive trains through all sorts of buildings & things it seems.

After a rough start to the week with most of us here being sick we finally had the excitement of the birthday without having to have postponed it after all so that was a nice end to the week. Now I can have a bit of relax as the place is quite tidy & clean still. So I might get a bit of knitting done today & we'll see what else. I think it will be just lots more play with the orange computer, listening to very loud firetrucks that dance all over the floor, drawing, playing Thomas tank engine, painting & blowing bubbles the size of a balloon! Honestly, they were as big as balloons. I have never seen anything like it. So no doubt more giant bubbles will be on the agenda this afternoon! Probably more of the same tomorrow since we have a long weekend! Yay!

Stay tuned for tomorrow hopefully & I will show you some more pictures of some of the things I did for the party. My decorating for a party on a budget! lol It turned out pretty good I think!

A Quilt a Month

This is fast turning into a quilt a month postings isn't it? Hmmm... It's not like I haven't been working on anything else though. But for now here is a quilt that I did this week. The panel came into work on Tuesday & I decided I needed to make it up for a Baby shower for today. So Wednesday afternoon I did the quilting & sewing & then on Thursday I hand stitched the binding on. Voila. Done. Woohoo! I really like this one. I hope I like it long enough to do these next couple I have lined up to do though. I will try to get one done for work this weekend still. We'll see how we go since I seem to have a miserable child full of cold. Might be a snuggling weekend instead. Baby shower this lunch time was very nice & lots of nice things eaten & seen & shared.

More on the quilt panel for those who want to know. It's called Aldo to Zippy by Jenn Ski/Lilla Rogers Studios for P&B Textiles. I backed it & binded it with the limey yellowing stuff as my friend who received it today likes green. She doesn't know what her baby is yet so that's cool. It will be nice for a girl or boy I think. I hope so anyway as I have another or maybe 2 more to make for people who don't know what their baby is yet. Cool! Don't you love the surprise factor?

I have been doing a lot of knitting & crochet in between everything else going on in life right now. It is keeping me grounded & rested a bit so that is nice. I try to do some every day, even just a little. But my day ends quite early these days so I don't get as much done as I would like before I need to conk out in bed. Only 7 weeks till our baby is due so I am trying to finish up the few projects I have on the go right now as I don't expect much will ever happen for a while after baby makes an appearance.

I will try to get more posts in this month than last month. That won't be hard. One more & I have doubled it. Ooops...