silent saturday

enjoy your weekend!

chalk n cheese winter

Much to my surprise I received an email late this afternoon saying my winter order for Chalk n Cheese is ready to be shipped next week. I have not had a chance to show you a sneak peek, so instead I will show you what is available in store now for you to pre order.

I adore this label, both my children have some pieces from the summer range and I have ordered them lovely items from the new winter range. I cannot wait to get the floral frill dress, (the top image), as this dress is very light and delicate, which means Keely can start wearing it now!

loving this!

After having Taj's first birthday and having a monster theme, I have fallen in love with monsters. I was having a look on bubba bling and found this monster theme bedroom. How much fun is the cushion....it makes the room; looks a little spikey, but I am sure it would be harmless!

I need to love monsters right now as Keely is afraid of them. Each night she now gets as many cushions, clothes and now books and places them all around her on her bed. This is only a new thing and you could imagine my surprise when I found her buried in pillows, blankets and clothes for the first time. Last night was the first night with the piles of books.

When I was looking for monster themes for Taj I stumbled on these bracelets. They are just beautiful! You not only get the bracelet, but you get the cute little crocheted lamb too! A nice gift for your little one.

I have been totally lost in all the lovely decor and items for my children on bubba bling, there is something for everyone. I cannot wait to make up their room once we have put them in together and built their bunks. I am also looking forward to sharing their bunk idea we have. We have been inspired a lot from different magazines and online finds. All I can tell you for now is that their bunks will be made from plywood. I am hoping this is a project we will be doing the second half of this year!

artist taj

Yesterday I was out buying my new lovely notebook for something I am doing at the moment and I had my little side kick with me. Of course I was at my favourite shop, Pulp to make this purchase!

In the shop they have an area especially for your little people. They can hang out, play with the toys and draw while we go off and spend all of our money on lovely stationery! As Taj is a little too young to leave on his own I had to make my purchases before we could venture over into his little area. (I will share my purchase in another post, as I am sure you have had enough marathon reads).

With no encouragement, Taj toddled over and instantly grabbed a piece of paper, the bowl of crayons and started drawing. He would place the crayon back in the bowl when he was finished and pull out the next colour. It was something I really enjoyed watching and an image I had to capture. Out came my iphone (I know, sorry, but no special SLR on me), and I snapped away!

They also have a lion chalk decal on the wall and I handed him the only piece of chalk and he started to colour the lion's foot in. It was not all perfect, he did manage to grab a crayon and draw on the floor, and attempt to put some crayon on the wall, but I was too quick for him! Lucky they have a concrete surface, and the crayon wiped straight off.

The delight on his face, the utter concentration and the fun he had was priceless. I am glad I captured this moment, his moment of using his right side of his brain. Looks like we have a whole family of creative heads!

Taj has had his first fridge moment and proudly his first ever drawing goes up next Keely's Fairy Diamond Crystal!

the fairy party!

I know a little late to be showing you Keely's fairy party, but trust me it is worth the wait! This post will be image overload, I did try to minimise the images and only have a few, but what can I say I am a proud mum!

Keely always wanted a fairy party and would continually pull out the Women's Weekly children's birthday cake book. She was not shy to tell me for almost a year now that she has wanted the barbie fairy cake. So this year I knew I had to make this cake for her and we picked a fairy theme to match the cake. I had so much fun going to spotlight to find all of the fabric, party supplies and all the trimmings to decorate the cake. It took a few nights of cutting and gluing to get her dress and wings right. I made her top out of felt and stuck the diamonte number 4 onto the top to make it look a bit more special. When I made the cake I also made a small cake to hold the candles as I am not sure how our fairy was going to handle 4 candles while holding her wand.

The party was fabulous, if I can say that as the host. It was the first party that I had ever hired help. This was not just any help, our fairy lives in the same apartment block as us and Keely just adores her, so we had to have her come and be Keely's fairy for the morning.

Fairy Skye was all dressed up in one of her most special fairy outfits and she had matching wings for Keely to wear. Although Keely gave her wings to one of her friends as she had forgotten hers and Keely was wearing her wing top, which has wings on it already! Plus I must mention her lovely pettiskirt.... divine!

The children were mesmerized! I have never seen someone able to keep a group of children interested for over an hour. They did craft together, made a dream catcher to hang from one of the trees, she ran with them to show them how to fly; (very cute), they threw fairy dust and chanted that they believed in fairies and they went hunting for fairies.

Fairy Skye sprayed all of their hair to make it a fun colour, added crystals to their faces and made each and everyone of them feel like they were fairies and also made them feel like it was their birthdays.

Each child was given a gift of magic crystals, fairy dust and either a lovely necklace or a badge for the boys. The crystals were for the children to keep under their pillows to keep them safe from monsters and to also allow them to go to sleep on their own. I am not sure how Fairy Skye knew this was an issue for most of the children there, but she knew exactly what to say..... magic!

They were all given a special fairy name and it was so much fun to hear all of the names she had given her little fairies. Keely was Fairy Diamond Crystal, then there was Fairy Lavender, Fairy Pinkle Winkle (this is the one that all parents were giggling at), Fairy Bluebell, Fairy Floss, Buzzy Bee Xavier, Batman, Pirate Ollie, Surfy Kian and Buzzy Bee.

For me this is the best party I have been too, strange saying this as it was my child's party, but it honestly was. The children were so happy, everyone of them got involved and to see that is beautiful. I was relaxed as a host, I got to take lots of images, talk to other parents and watch the children create fairy magic.

Mostly Keely was the happiest I had seen her and she was so proud to be a fairy for the day.

australia day breakfast

We are very early rises, well the children are and we have had to succumb to being morning people. This morning was no different at 5:30am little rooster Taj was telling me he wanted to get up and start his day. Moments later Keely is up and we were all organised to get out of the apartment for an early Australia Day breakfast down the beach.

Our local beach has a lot going on and as I write this post I am sure it is a hype of activity. I have left Keely and Simon down the beach as Taj has come home for his morning sleep after eating his bacon and egg roll. We will go back down the beach in the next hour for swimming, beach play and to see our friends. Australia Day to me is a fun day, a day you spend with your friends. There will be BBQ's heating up around the country, many games of backyard cricket, thongs being thrown, (in Australia we line up and have thong throwing contests; it is actually fun), and lots of laughter.

Happy Australia Day! Enjoy your day, however you plan to spend it.

our craft weekend

It is no secret that I love craft!....We do some form of craft everyday and it is mostly the rainy days that bring out our craft box and paints. Although this weekend we did some craft to stay cool, with the temperature reaching 39 degrees, it was too hot to have some outside play while Taj was having his morning sleep.

I have no idea where my idea came from to make a fairy using different mediums, maybe it was from the whole fairy theme from Keely's birthday party; or maybe I was just seeing fairies! I also wanted it to be a craft session that she was really involved in.

We went downstairs to choose a leaf we thought would be great to make the fairies wings. Keely found a fern and with in moments we had the most important part of our fairy. Keely suggested we used a stick for her wand and she found one in the garden.

Once upstairs, out came the craft box, paints, sparkle paper and the camera! We put together all the items we were going to use to make Keely's fairy. Within minutes Keely had stamped her fairies face with her round sponge paint stamp. It was the beginning of her craft fairy!

She painted a sparkle dress with purple metallic paint and then Keely had painted the fairies precious wings and slowly pressed them onto her fairy body. We used scrap paper to cut out legs and arms, stars to decorate her dress and silver pipe cleaner for her hair. We then wrapped some ribbon around the stick to make her wand and waited for her to dry before finishing her.

Once our fairy was dry we added eyes and drew a nose and mouth, stuck her stick wand down with a butterfly end and put some shoes on her. The shoes were small foam butterflies cut in half to make them look like "glass slippers." (This is what Keely calls high heals, thanks to cinderella)! We made her a flower handbag, a shiny crown, and Keely stuck her on the fridge.

Fairy Diamond Crystal lives with us now and keeps all our food safe in our fridge!

silent saturday

styling network & my space

From the day I first started this blog and from the day I started little pinwheel, I never knew you could make such lovely friends from the written word, from images and from great customer service. I have been lucky enough to network in the right places to make wonderful friends and also connect with other mums buying online from me. It was my dream to make the blog the face behind little pinwheel, to show people that I am just like every other mum. I too have the hard times with my children and there are moments of chaos; this is an every day occurrence for me, there is never a day without some sort of chaos, mixed with a lot of lovely moments too!

I love borrowing my husband's camera and today I took some images of my space with some new additions. It was a good excuse to get behind the lens and to have some fun with some styling.

This week my husband has had two shoots for Home Beautiful magazine and I have had the pleasure of going through the images. Both stylists he worked with are amazing, they give the room the wow factor and they achieve this by adding a couple of extra items to style the space. I cannot wait to share these images but it will have to be after the homes go to print. It will be worth the wait. So for now you can have a look at my attempt of styling and showing off my space with the new items, some of which are from my lovely new network friends.

I have to tell you about the little doll in the vase with my fun fabric flowers... she was chosen by my daughter, Keely. She is actually a brooch and was bought from my favourite paper shop, Pulp Creative Paper, along with 4 for Keely and 2 others for me to give away. She has now become my little side kick, my friendly voodoh doll.... not sure if they can be friendly, but mine is! I also bought the fabric flowers so I could always have a splash of colour and I love my sparkly dragonfly and my butterflies.... it makes my space feel a bit more me. Add some of this......

... and I am right at home! (kind of cheesy I know, but it was fun getting these shots)!

nellystella is coming!

Nellystella is a beautiful and very feminine label to come from the creative Nelly Chen. I was introduced to the label back in August and I fell in love instantly. I can see my daughter wearing every piece I have ordered and I especially cannot wait to receive the playsuit, which has become the talk of the press world.....I could not help myself and I have ordered three out of the four prints in this style.

I know we are at opposite ends of our seasons, but I felt the Little Pinwheel customer would see the potential of each style being versatile enough to run into our winter. I can already picture the playsuit layered with tights, long sleeve tee and a cardi. I know I will not be able to take Keely's off her!

Nellystella is arriving in store in 3 short weeks and you can pre-order now from little pinwheel!

the search

I know a number of you are interested in knowing what is happening with the search for my biological father and what has happened with my biological mum since we made contact. I thought now is good time to share with you where I am with all of this, before it becomes a huge post! For now I will share some of what has been happening, I am not ready to tell all yet.

I received the medical history of both birth parents, along with a run down on the day I was given up for adoption. It is nice to have some questions now answered. I will give you a run down on the important things, well the parts I find interesting for me and with me now having children of my own.

• I am quarter german (growing up I had so many people ask what nationality I was)
• both birth parents under 6ft (explains why I am not so tall)!
• bronchial asthma (only really had sickness and sport induced asthma, but explains where it comes from)
• birth mother's father has blue eyes as do both her siblings (she has a brother and a sister)
• birth father's sister has blue eyes (he has two sisters)
• I weighed 6 pounds 14 ounces
• I was 52cm (wow, that is long for a shorty)
• I was "offered" to my mum on 6th July 1977 and she was delighted! (go mum)!
• birth father interests include surfing
• birth mother interests include art and home economics

From this background listed, I now know why I have some german and austrian friends.... ok so maybe not; I cannot speak german or even look slightly german, although I am not sure what makes you look german, and that is all I can come up with! I am short... not that short, but at least now I have an excuse. I was a little baby, explains why I have had two 6 pound babies. The blue eyes popping up quite a bit now explains why we have a very blue eyed boy. I never knew it was from my side and now I can take the credit for his lovely eyes! I must say though, with my mum having blue eyes I do like to still say they are from her!

I love the part about the "offering" in my package of information; got to love the fact my mum fell instantly in love with me. I wish she was here today so I could use that as leverage if we were ever having one of our fun payout sessions. Birth father being interested in surfing shows why I am naturally a beach bum and probably tells me I should get back on my board. My birth mum being interested in art shows where I got my creative thinking and somewhat talent from..... now the home economics is a different story as I am not the cook of the house that is for sure. I must take after my birth father on this one.... when I meet him I will have to ask him if he is the cook of his house.

A few more things have been happening and I will share those with you soon. For now the search continues for my birth father and I am feeling quite positive about this. I have found with all of the emotions and feelings you have through this process it is best to stay positive, even when it is not going so great.

our morning constitutional

The Little Pinwheel world cannot start without our morning walk....or as my mum used to call it, "her morning constitutional." Our morning starts pretty early with the little people telling us when it is time to get up to start our day. I am a morning person, so I guess the roosters living in my house do not bother me so much.

The toddle as we call it now that Taj is toddling around, or should I say now running around cannot start without my coffee, which at the moment is an ice coffee with this warm weather. I am not one to drink a hot coffee when I am hot, it just makes me feel hotter! The ice coffee gives me that sugar hit to drive me through the morning and to keep up with the little ones all day; (there is of course a top up ice coffee during the day)!

Our mornings are never dull, there is always some people watching, dogs to have a chat to (Taj is obsessed with dogs) and playing to be done too. The sand and water are always stuck between our toes and it is a nice way to start our day. We are lucky to live close to the beach and have such a lovely backyard for our children to grow up in.

How do you start your day?