TropicalSoup

Wild Hairs and Early Morning Conversations...

Last night I got a wild hair and started a new quilt. Am enjoying just playing around (the layout was for size guidelines rather than actual layout, and clearly I haven't trimmed down all my blocks yet!)

And unrelated (but I thought worth mentioning), sometimes one of the hardest things about being a parent (glossing over, for the moment, those times when you truly believe it would be easier to parent Damien than convince your 4 year old to put on pants...) is not laughing when something utterly wonderful and unexpected comes out of your youngster's mouth. Take this morning for instance:

Immy is an utter early bird, living in a house of night owls, and is almost always the first awake. She tends to come in for a snuggle - kindly giving me a few minutes to wrap my head around no longer being asleep - before we get up. Of course it's never a quiet snuggle - poor girl couldn't stop talking to save herself (where does she get that from?) and she's chit-chattering away like normal, when she drops this beauty: "mama, you smell lovely. And a little bit stinky." This set D off into paroxysms of giggling which meant his jig of pretending to be asleep was well and truly up, so I left them to hang out together whilst I had a shower. A thorough one!

Then we're at the dining table eating breakfast and Cole and I are chatting about why it's so important that he gets some food into his tummy as soon as he wakes and what his tummy tells his brain when his tummy is empty (basically Cole is one of those kids who needs food in the instant he wakes, if he's hungry he ceases to function and some rather spectacular meltdowns occur over anything and everything. Repeatedly. See note about Damien, above. You can actually see the personality change during the course of devouring a banana or granola bar as he reverts to his happy self - I leave something beside his bed each night for him to grab in the morning, because 10 minutes is too long to wait for breakfast sometimes!) So there we are, chatting away happily, and he concurs: "yeah mum, because this morning I woke up in a hissy fit!" The really funny bit is we don't really use the word hissyfit around here, so that came completely out of left field!

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There's a giveaway just below - now with actual pictures!

Pater familia

Imogen likes to start the weekend off right...by making sure Daddy is comfortable and has everything he needs..

But of course soft furnishings are a natural gift option for a 50 year old man...

 

I'm really grateful D appreciates effort and creativity, and the thought that can go into making something for someone else. I'm also really glad he's not sort of bloke (He's a good egg, that one!) who would be in turns horrified, disdainful and dismissive if a gift for a man celebrating a milestone birthday happened to be a throw quilt and a couple of cushions (...though remind me to tell you the story of the handknitted face cloths one day!lol)

Since I was fortunate to be reunited with Queenie on Saturday afternoon (a tiny broken spring was responsible for all my sewing machine woes!) I managed to race through and get this far before Sunday morning. Yes, D got a quilt with pins in...and I'll show you more of that once I've had a chance to progress the quilting. The cushions were just ad hoc bits of pretty finished with a simple envelope back closure (I prefer zips but didn't have any that weren't at least 6 inches too short, oops)

The funky colours of the Echino combined with the geckos and spiderwebs seemed ideal for D - something funky in the drumroom, and reminiscent of our time on the islands, where geckos and spiders reigned supreme! 

And yes, the booger stayed!

Half century speed

The initial plan for D's birthday weekend had been for us to all go away - to rent a little bach (holiday cottage) on the beach somewhere suitably out of the way and idyllic, and to make the most of a three day weekend lying about, beachcombing, swimming enjoying all that there is to savour of late Summer in Godzone. It soon became apparent that this brilliant wee scheme of ours was going to derail when several factors collided to thwart our plans, not least of which being D absolutely slammed at work. (Heaps of work is good, very very good. Just a little inconvenient in terms of timing.)

After last week where D saw in several midnights at the office, he spent all day Saturday *and* 6 hours on Sunday in there too. Finally, at 5pm the kids and I got the go ahead to pick him up, and whisk him off for a little celebration. in the form of racing downhill on steroid-induced plastic trays. It was awesome. We're all a little fond of the luge track (and the accompanying gondola and chairlift rides) and it is always great fun...and terribly illuminating on just how competitive we are, even when we're trying not to be!

On the ride up in the gondola, Imogen was explaining just how much of the world we could see:

That much world looks like this:

When we got to the luge area, we were overcome by the desire to do a happy dance...

 

And in between rides, everyone wanted to sit with the birthday boy on the chairlifts!

Happy birthday darling!

Crash is 50! (or 12 1/2, depending)

Happy pretend Birthday this non-leap year, D! Glad your physical went well...those are tough medicos!

I love D's expression as the diagnosis is handed out...I think it was something like no coffee for three days!

A really hairy frog with a booger

That's the title l'artiste gave this piece when she enthusiastically finished it last week. I love it!!! And I'm planning on embroidering it onto a cushion for D as one of his birthday gifts - it will work well on the couch in the music room/spare room (the *magic couch* is a sofabed...hard to fit a full bed in with a drumkit!) and give D something to grin at whilst banging away. I'm thinking I'll just reproduce the main frog in the picture, though the little one-legged dude is pretty cute too...maybe he needs to make an appearance somewhere...The big question though - do I add the booger (the purple booger is coming out of the frog's red nose. Not sure what the brown thing is...hairy mole?) or eradicate all nasal mucus from the embroidery?

(I can't decide if I'm delighted or concerned that embroidering snot is an issue in my life!)

Grrr

Funny how things have a way of packing up on you when you're working to a not-too-distant deadline. I have spent the morning working on D's birthday* present - after finally making a decision about it last night - only to come to a very rude halt a little while ago when Queenie the sewing machine just had a fit. I think something's become stuck in behind where the feed dogs are connected to the rest of the under carriage thingummy (oooh, impressed by my astounding grasp of technical jargon?) because although they keep going up and down as they should through the cycle of a stitch, there's no back and forth motion that feeds the fabric through. And no amount of cleaning it out or playing Macgyver has helped. So now I'm off to the Bernina centre with my fingers crossed that it's something so ridiculously easy they can do it on the spot. Because otherwise the mechanic isn't there until Thursday. And then the deadline is starting to get ridiculous. Eek.

*D is a leap year baby, so we'll be celebrating his *pretend* birthday on Sunday. It's a significant one though, of the half-century flavour. My old old man! ;)

Making our own Ikea

Give me a couple of kitset cube bookshelves, a door, some more el cheapo kitset wardrobe pieces (the drawers and end cubes on the right), a handful of hardware and a very understanding and extremely handy hubby and voila...look what we can do in an evening!

The table is going to be covered (I'm thinking oilcloth? Easily wipe-down-able for art etc) but otherwise it's done - fits 2 stools perfectly with plenty of elbow room and even room for me to join in. I'm hoping a dedicated space for art - in the studio no less - will make it much easier to do all those fun art projects that we put off because the dining table isn't always ideal, or available.

Yay! And now I can unpack the room, and get down to the serious business of crafting again! D, you rock the drill like nobody I know!

Cultivating the ego

Imogen: Daddy, your hair is really fluffy.

D (a bit pleased): yes, it is. Nice and fluffy.

Imogen (petting him): you are just like a little fluffy bunny.