Miss 8 has a party to go to, so this afternoon we made a card together. Like? A great way to use up strips of scraps. I also have some news in the next few days about a really lovely event that is coming up in June. Stay tuned for that one. I hope everyone is GREAT. xx

Hello!  It has been a while between posts!  And it is only a few days until the jolly man in the red suit visits us again.  Are you on the nice list?  You must be because you read my blog!  Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me and the Paperklip shop this year.  Thank you to friends and colleagues who supported my school market, it was such a success in many ways.  Not the least that our school now has an air-conditioned hall funded by the market’s profits – way to go.

Next year will be very exciting.  My son is changing schools (he will get to ride the bus to school – most huge).  My girls will move up a year and be the ‘big girls’.  Mr Viking will hopefully not spend his birthday on the school BBQ!  Probably the most exciting for me is that I will study again – I am going back to TAFE after 20 years (yikes) to study Graphic Design (have I not always been a closet Graphic Designer I wonder?).  It will mean juggling schedules, a few changes here and there – though I am looking forward to learning a lot of amazing skills and travelling along a new creative path.  Will you walk along with me?

Wishing every one a very happy festive season – take good care, slow down and have some fun.

There is a little bit of Christmas in the Shop.  Right this very minute.  And I know that it has been a while between posts lovely paper friends.  I feel like an Octopus right now.  One that could juggle.  Want to know what I have been juggling?  A house sale (for the family), nursing our cat after his surgery, a Tafe application or not, a mosaics course (so fun to be the youngest in the class), a big decision for my boy involving an OC class, an impending and important 8th birthday, our lovely school Christmas Market, and well – the usual kind of stuff.  But it is all good.  Hope you are good too.  I have missed being here.

This, my lovely readers, could have been the record of my childhood.  I visited so many of these places as a kid, did you visit some too?  Gulgong – the $10 note town, The Canberra Tower, Old Sydney Town, Blue Mountains – I even went to camp at Broken Bay – just like this person did.  But this kid was very well travelled – they went to Lindeman Island twice!  I never went there.  They went to Hawaii – I’ve never been there.  This sleeping bag is an absolute gem and a treasure of memories.  Probably my favourite vintage I think I’ve ever found.  Do they still make these patches?  We are soon going to Hill End and Parkes and I must encourage the kids to look for patches so we might build on this!   Did you see the patch with the Speedwell Fireball bike!  Maybe they had one of those – amazeballs.

I will let the pictures do the talking.  Maybe there should be a national ‘dress up as whom ever you like day’ because I loved being Laura Ingalls (sadly no picture) and the kids and teachers and parents had so much fun.  The Jabberwocky went down really well with year 2/3H too.

What have you been up to?  The past week has involved much running around to choir concerts, soccer presentations and birthday parties.  I have made Happy Birthdays and hearts to go to Pasadena in the US, a purple wedding garland to go to France and a pretty girl’s name going just down the road.

I found cute things for dress-ups in Op shops for a book parade tomorrow.  We will be Alice, The Cat in the Hat and Thor.  I made an apron for ‘Alice’ because I could not find one – out of a cloth napkin.   We stuffed a knee-high stocking for The Cat’s tail.  I am dressing up as Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Mostly because I found a $6 dress, but also because I completely loved that show as a child.  Don’t tell anyone but I used to shed a tear as she ran over that grassy hill.  I wanted to sit next to Laura in class.  I have put my hand up to read The Jabberwocky to year2/3H tomorrow, dressed as Laura.  Can’t wait.

PS.  That cheeky little guy has found his way into the Vintage Shop.

A sign from my garden that things are slowly warming up.  These Daffodil bulbs were planted in April.  They came from a Tasmanian grower that I met at the Sydney Royal Easter Show.  They are a really hearty bunch by the looks of it.  If you look closely there is a garlic pretending to be a Daffodil.  Came up in line with the others!

Yes.  Me.  Tomorrow.  Everything is good.  I am so happy living my crafty life, with 3 very nice children and a sweet husband.  Life couldn’t be better really.  I have been feeling quite out of sorts the last few weeks, we lost my favourite Aunty Wendy to dementia and eventual liver failure on 30 June.  I have so many great memories of my aunty, Wendy was an animal lover and kept a whole menagerie over the years – think chooks, greyhounds, cats, dogs all in inner city Sydney would you believe? Although Wendy and her husband had no children, their home was a haven for many nephews and nieces who came to stay a while.  It was a magical place to visit.  I am holding on tight to these memories right now, and helping my dear Mum through this hard time as they were very close sisters.

Tomorrow we are having sandwiches for lunch here at home and a delicious cake from New York patisserie in Caringbah with my family.  The kids picked a chocolate mousse cake.  It looks amazing.  We are also going to go out for dinner and trying Brazilian BBQ.  And next weekend all of my school girlfriends are coming for dinner.  Yay.  Hippy Birdy to me………

Something for me!  On the weekend my lovely Mum came over for a visit.  Master Viking was at a friend’s place, the girls were pottering and Mister Viking went to Bunnings for 2 hours, so it was the perfect time to do some crafting for me.  I covered one of those Kaisercraft mdf storage boxes and it was lots of fun.  Firstly, I glued all of the little cardboard boxes together.  Then I painted all of the wooden pieces in a brownish colour that I mixed up from acrylics that I had left over from Claudine Hellmuth’s collage technique course that I took last year.  Once dry (and it dried very quickly), I took to the pieces with some fine sandpaper and really roughed up the edges to give the framework a used, vintage feel.  Next, I slotted the pieces back together.  Simple.  Then I hit my paper collection and chose pinky/reds, teal blues and mustard yellows (probably my 3 favourite colours) and used the box front as a template to trace out a front cover.  I glued these onto the little boxes and added a brad as a little feature by punching a hole with a skewer through the cardboard.  I am really happy with the result.  It is for storing crafty bits and pieces.  It would also be good for storing girl’s things, like hair ties and pins, and school ties and lip glosses.