dadda's birthday party

I am not sure about the rest of you and how your children see our birthdays, but my daughter sees it as a day that involves her friends and a "kiddy" cake! Today was Simon's birthday and Keely and I were busy organising all the details yesterday. We decided to do chocolate cupcakes with insects on them....lolly insects of course! I managed to explain to her that it was daddy's friends that would be coming to the party, but ironically we saw some of Keely's friends down the beach where we had Simon's party.

We had the best fun making the cupcakes and Keely was very much involved. We made a spider, dragonfly, butterfly and then Keely's number one choice was to do all the sprinkles, which we decided were ants!

While the cupcakes were cooking Keely made her daddy a card out of new sparkle paper we bought at the shops and a magic pencil. It was one of those pencils that has every colour in it, kind of like a rainbow... I had one as a child too! Keely showed me her angry face and her happy face; she is very much into the different expressions a face makes with her emotions or other people's emotions.

Today we had a great day for Simon's birthday, and he did too! The afternoon was spent at our favourite little beach, Freshie!

Oh, almost forgot, we bought him 2 cookbooks, I know sounds like buying socks, but he is so into cooking and great photography. One of the books is more about the chef and his story in Vietnam, The Songs of Sapa, and we have not tried vietnamese cooking, so that will be a lot of fun! There was a recipe for salmon, with a baby spinach, fennel salad in the new Donna Hay, Seasons book and I made that for him for dinner tonight... it was a nice way to end the day. The birthday boy is asleep on the couch!

adoption....the search begins

This is pretty huge for me to share something so personal in my life, but I thought this will become (it is already) part of my life in a big way. This will affect me as a person and my little family and in some ways it will become part of Little Pinwheel, as I hope that my family will grow. Also when I started this blog I wanted it to not be just about the website, I wanted it to be about my life as a mother and the experiences you face as a mum. I want people to feel like they are buying from a "real" person, not from their computers and so far this has been a real positive to Little Pinwheel and to me too as I have made some great friends!

I have begun a journey, one that may take months, years or if I am lucky only weeks. I was adopted when I was 10 days old. I had the best mum you could ever imagine and she will always be my mum. But for me after loosing my mum unexpectedly 3 years ago there is a huge hole in my life; a hole that is not only made up of grief and loss, a hole that is made up of questions that are unanswered. I am not looking to find a "new" mum or dad, I am looking to fill a part of my life. One that I was going to do with my mum before she passed away. We were going to look for my birth father, as this meant so much to me to have a father figure in my life after having a horrible childhood with my adoptive father.

I actually met my birth mother just over 10 years ago now and it was an emotional experience. I was still so young, although I did think I knew it all, don't we all in our 20s! She is just like me, quite scary to meet someone that you actually look like. Even though I did grow up thinking I looked like my mum anyway! She is a gentle and kind hearted lady, someone I hope to meet again. She has another daughter, who would be about 13 or even maybe 14 now. So I have another sister! My birth mum had me when she was 15 and a half, my birth father was 18. So they were both very young. It was a decision by her parents to give me up for adoption, one that she is very sad about. But as I said to her, I had (have, back when I met her) the best mum. Yes I had a horrible childhood with my father, but I would never want to have a life without the mum I had. Now I have children of my own, I can feel a bit of what she would have felt back when we met. I am sorry we ever lost contact, but we both decided back then that it was hard on us and we should walk away.

After grieving for my mum for over 3 years now, I am ready to start the search and to try and fill a bit of my heart. I am trying to not have high expectations, it is something you really need to prepare yourself for.....well the best you can. I think of my mum everyday and I know I will for the rest of my life. She is part of me and she always will be. This is a path I know she would want me to take. I know she would have been upset that I had such a hard time dealing with her loss. (I now sit here crying as I type....she is so missed).

the last photo taken of my mum...she passed away a week later

I could sit here and type for ages telling you so much more, but for now I will tell you that I have filled out the forms that I had to send to DOCS (department of community services) and 6 weeks later I received more forms to fill out, one for Births Deaths and Marriages to obtain my original birth certificate, which will have my birth parents names on it and a form to an adoption agency, which will eventually send me any background information, like health, appearance etc they have back from when I was born. The birth certificate should be about 10 working days, but the health forms take about 6 weeks. I will be assigned a case manager to help with the personal side of searching as this is an emotional rollercoaster ride I am on. The whole paperwork side of the search is what takes the longest. It took my birth mother over 2 years to find me!

Once I have the original birth certificate I can start the search at the electoral roll to look for their address and contact details. I may be lucky and my birth parents could have left their details for me to contact them, but as I have not heard anything I assume they have not so I move forward with the search.

This will have an affect on my children, one that should not be too bad with them both being so young, but it will be a process that I will explain as I go along. My little family means so much to me and to have their support is lovely. What this will bring me, my husband and my children is unknown, but the search begins!....

little one baby

I am not sure if you are aware of the new baby magazine that is onto its second issue this month; the magazine is Little One Baby and it seriously is gorgeous! It is about real mums, dads and their babies, with lots of lovely products that you can buy for them and for yourself. I was so in love with their first issue that I advertised in this one.

I love doing ads for magazines, it is fun to design something and then to receive it in print months later and to see if your design worked. Having a graphic design background I am pretty hard on myself with the ads, get quite critical! I am a very clean and simple person.... love white space! The ad I came up with had Keely in it with the most divine Sudo dress on, and I used my clouds from the Little Pinwheel logo and lots of red....love red and there we have an ad!

To my surprise and what a lovely surprise, my husband came home with my magazine that was delivered to our po box. I opened it up and it just got better, the magazine had been wrapped in tissue paper with one of their stickers to hold it down, the small, but very nice detail of wrapping the magazine, just makes it even more special.

Tonight I am going to jump off the computer, grab a licorice tea, some chocolate ice cream (as I have no chocolate in the house, due to my husband and I deciding, no more; big mistake) and I am going to curl up with Little One and read it from front to back! Something I don't think many of us mothers do... well I know I don't, there is no time to clean the house sometimes, let alone read a magazine!

the mommy (mummy) and me photo challenge!

I love a good challenge, I am always up for one! I follow this incredible blog, kenzie poo and it is all about design, fashion for all things little and some big things too.... This week Rachelle has thrown her readers a challenge, which is to take a photo of yourself with your baby or children, post it on your blog and then she will choose her favourites to post on her blog. I did an image with Keely and myself to reflect the "girls just wanna have fun" times we have been having. Yes I know I have a son too, but he gets so much more of mum, with being dependent on me. So this was for the girls!

My image reflects my beautiful girl, my business Little Pinwheel and me with the wallpaper wall. I know Keely will be a huge focus on Little Pinwheel as the business grows into new directions and to have her by her my side will keep the inspiration alive.... plus my toe nails will need painting again soon!

little pinwheel and the free aye aye cap!

With Christmas only around the corner and the mad dash to find the perfect gift for your little people, I thought it would be fun to team up with the girls at Polka and give any shopper that spends over $100 on Polka a free aye aye cap to keep them looking cool this summer. These caps are super cool and would suit any toddler, boy or girl. My son has one and it may be a little big, but boy does he look cool! There is a HUGE range of Polka in store, from newborn through to size 10, boys and girls.

aye aye caps $19.95 or free with POLKA purchases over $100

I am right into the whole promoting one of my brands, why not, especially when they give me so much support and really I LOVE a photo shoot... any excuse really to have Keely do some styling shots. So this morning I grabbed my husband, his camera, some coffees and off we went for our early morning shoot.

It is not always about the clothing and the perfect image, we have fun and we all get into creating shots that are a bit more personal and images that reflect Keely being a little person.

www.littlepinwheel.com.au

girls just wanna have fun

The title of this post was my favourite movie as a child and it still is a movie which I love. There is something about girlfriends and having that woman, girl or mother in your life. You can have such a special bond, something that no one could ever take away, something I know I will always have with my mum.

I had a lot of lovely times with my mum growing up and even as an adult we did some great things together... we were two great friends and we had a relationship that was beyond a mother and a daughter. We had a great love and respect for each other, we were quite different but the connection was something I will never be able to find again. I miss her everyday and there is not a day or moment that goes by that she is not in my thoughts and my heart.

Over the weekend it was just me and the little ones and when Taj had his sleeps Keely and I got into doing a few "girly" things together. I thought it would be nice for us to do some of the simple things together and for her to have some really special mummy time.

Being a lover of craft, the first activity on the list of things Keely wanted to do with me was painting and it was a great laugh and lots of fun. We decided it would be nice to get right into the painting and we painted each others hands and did a hand print picture together. We also made a butterfly and anything else that came into her mind we painted onto paper. Keely and I also did some drawing and I taught her how to draw a bird and I must say I am very impressed with her magpie!

It was a nice day outside, so we kind of packed up the paints and went downstairs with our nail polish and painted each others toes. Keely decided on different colours for her fingers and her toes. I am not sure what it is about painting your toes with another female, even if it is with an almost 4 year old, it is a really nice time. We talked and giggled and just had a great time in the sun.

We then went for the bike and Keely continued to show off her newly painted fingers at any chance she got! We did the really girly things, like pick flowers and just hang out and enjoy having just some mummy and Keely time.

I found the simple things with my mum are the memories that really stay with me. I would like to create some beautiful memories with Keely too with some of those simple and lovely girly moments you can do together.

introducing cried wolf!

yippee.... I am swinging from the chandeliers over this brand coming to little pinwheel! I have loved cried wolf way before I even launched the website and to now have it on the website is fabulous. I know Taj will be walking the streets in cried wolf...it has spunk and boy does Taj have a lot of that!