Here's what I know for sure, when I hang out with my cousin we are massive Dorks!! On any given day I can be an embarrassment and act that way especially now my juniors are growing up and embarrassing comes with being a parent. But when my cousin and I get together its safe to say we often have to cross our legs as not too pee our pants we laugh so hard. It's true. We are the same age, we grew up seeing each other most school holidays and we wrote to each other inbetween......long before the days if email and texting... Good old snail mail.
We got to hang out over last weekend with all of our juniors and other halves and what a hoot we had. Dress ups at the Op shop, coffee at the beach whilst juniors buried each other and swam in the freezing cold, meals together and a few or more than a few drinks shared....which may or may not have lead to our own version of The Voice in the loungeroom, spinning chairs and microphones and toothpick and some god awful singing. But laughs aplenty. Lots and lots of laughs and more memories created for all of us. That's what is truly fabulous about family and cousins the fun and frivolity just keeps going and going and going. I know all of our juniors will appreciate their dorky mothers one day, for they are destined to be dorks too.
Lots of making goes on in my world every week. I am so blessed to be able to do what I love. And I love making stuff. I hope you love what you do.
It's still pretty busy in my neck of the woods..... here is what I've been up too.
January is my busiest month of the year so on this TGIF I thought I'd post a couple of photos if what's been keeping me busy for the past few weeks.
It's a lovely busy too. Lovely to have lots and lots and lots of fabulous customers and visitors to Coco's. Lovely to have such a warm, sunshiny Summer. Lovely. Lovely. Lovely.
A couple of months ago I posted here on being grateful for learning. My learning was in relation to technology. My learning continues, my love of technology continues. As a mum in this very, extremely savvy techy world we are all a part of whether we like it or not we have a responsibility to our children to keep up with it.
I have been reading a lot lately, mostly online about young people, cyber safety, apps and social networking. One of the blogs I visited likened teaching your children about the Internet to teaching your child to Swim. Great analogy I thought. You as a parent would not take your toddler to the pool, throw them in and hope to God that they could just start swimming..... It's not going to happen. Same with the Internet. And much like swimming its ok if you don't know how to swim to enlist the help of others. Same with the Internet. As parents and educators of our children it's ok to ask for help in this ever growing, ever changing world of technology.
I do not like to rant on my blog, I do not like to tell people what to do or how to live but I feel so strongly, so passionately about the safety of children online, my own, my friends and my children's friends I'm compelled to step back up on my soapbox......
Do you know what your child has the ability to access from their digital media? I'm not just talking computers in your house or laptops. I'm including iPod touches, tablets, iPads, smart phones. I would hope you probably know that all of these technologies have Internet access, social networking access and even text messaging. If you don't your child probably does. They are true natives to this technology whilst you and I my friends are immigrants to the above said technology. And they love it, matter of fact I love it. The technology that we have the ability to use and learn from and share is nothing short of amazing. Yep amazing. Yet it frightens me just as much as it amazes me. It frightens me because so, so, so many children are accessing or have access to social networking apps, sites and plenty, plenty of material that allows them to be prematurely mature.
I believe it is my duty as a parent to be ever vigilant with this technology. I am as I have as said before not be the Internet police but I do have a responsibility to my children to help them grow in this ever changing, growing technological world and educate them on how to behave in a responsible, diligent and decent manner.
We have very specific Internet rules in our house that apply to all digital medias that we have access too. My biggest rule that I set myself and I believe I can instill in my children is that I will never blog, tweet, Instagram, FB, photograph or write in any form anything that I would not be happy for them to read or see. And I know as they get older they will have access to these things and my hope is that they will censor themselves in the same manner, if they don't believe they would be happy for me to read what they post, simply don't do it.
Here is our user agreement that had to be signed before an iPod touch was purchased by my 11 year old. Yep he had to wait til he was 11.
"With an iPod touch comes responsibility. If these guidelines are broken the iPod touch will be taken for a period of time that Dad/Mum feels appropriate.
~the iTunes account will be the one mum uses
~a pass lock is put on the iPod touch, Dad/Mum are to know the pass code
~if you are given a time limit for usage you stick to it
~stays in case
~limited internet access (safari is disabled and Mobicip is enabled)
~all games must be okayed by Mum/Dad
~age appropriate games - okayed by Dad/Mum
~ NO you tube
~ lives on the kitchen bench at night
~ Dad/Mum have the right to check it at anytime
~ contacts must be know by Mum/Dad, that means anyone who is a contact we must have met and okayed as a contact
~ the above applies to social networking/texting sites like Bump as well
~do not post, write, photograph (with the intent of posting/texting) anything that you would not be happy for your parents to read or see. Ever.
~ it does not go to friends houses
~ it does not go to school
Theses guidelines will change as you get older and are given more responsibility. "
As a parent of two children growing up so very quickly I will always endeavor to keep up with technology as much for them as for myself. To those of you who are not up to speed with the technology. Ask. Ask a friend, ask your kids, they know, they'll show you. Learn. Learn. Learn.
You can set up lots of parental controls on iPods and iPads which is indeed fabulous as younger and younger children have them. You can set up safer browsers for them, you can filter lots of content and then adjust that as they get older. Don't just think their iPod is a gaming device. It's not. It's not just a music player either. It's not. It is so much more and if you are a parent of children that have these devices, chat to other parents. Attend cyber safety talks. Read blogs or websites that educate parents about cyber safety. Be aware of the content on your child's device. Educate yourself.
Here are some sites I value
And here is a fabulous iPhone contract that has made headlines recently. I read it to my kids and they know one day they will have one just like it.
*Stepping off soapbox, again.
This week I'm grateful. Very, very grateful. I haven't linked up in ages and ages so it's lovely to be back today. I'm grateful this week for Mr.Magoo and Miss. Muffet. Both so very different but both teach me lessons everyday.
Mr Magoo- he extends my baking capabilities all the time. He has no concept of hard or difficult recipes. Recipes I have in the past shyed away from, sponge cakes and choux pastry are now in our repitories. Today was not different. A gingerbread house mum, Can we please make one..... I love baking so ok, how hard could this be???
Hard! I made sure I followed the recipe to the tee, and we made lovely house cutouts and lots of spare little gingerbreads to decorate. Cool. Gingerbread made, tasted ok'ed and all is travelling sweetly. I persued the kids to let me glue the house together with the icing glue and I told them (reluctantly, cause I have control issues) they could decorate it however they liked. However. That is quite big for me to relinquish that control.
Now here is where the fun began...... note to self - read instructions on assembling the house pieces and do not go all gun-ho and just think you can whip it together. It just aint gunna happen!
Here is the one we thought was cool and were inspired by.....
I could tell early this house was so not going to go close to resembling our "inspired" picture but I kept on.... the roof was a tad undecooked I think and I wished I'd rolled it a little thinner. The longer I looked at the roof the more it caved.....
bugger..... it fell down.....
must need more icing glue.... we rebuilt.
I know....it's beginning to look sad and saggy.... and there is a gaping hole in the roof where the chimney is suposed to be going. Then it went....
by this time I was thinking it was indeed funny and not easy. A friend suggested I prop it up with cans and take my time.....there's that patience I do not have.
But here is where it dawned on me, grateful number two this week, I'm grateful I do not give up or in!! Yep no patience and stubborn. Miss Muffet is really, really like me!! We do not give in, we butt heads alot her and I, we will not give in. Today that is a fabulous thing! Fabulous.
Our house had fallen down and was a shambles but all of the pieces except one roof side had not broken. Woohoo, time to rebuild. Slowly, I went slowly this time and propped up the walls with cans. The smalls laughed when it fell over and were all ready to eat it any way but I told them, nope, this house is getting built one way or another.
The roof was not going to last long if it was going to make it up ontop of the house so we decided to decorate the house before we put the roof on. I had tried to glue the broken roof together but I knew it was going to be too heavy for the rest of the house, so Mr.Magoo and I debated and debated about the roof and how to fix it, we had a big differing of opinions. My friend had text me a chocolate glueing suggestion so we decided to trust the mother and I had full control over the remaking of the roof.
I figured if I could make a white chocolate roof it might just pass of as a heavily snowed on gingerbread house.
Two skewers and a white chocolate coated sheet of baking paper later we had a roof. Waiting for the chocolate to partially set then quickly draping it over the skewers was the plan and what do you know, it worked. I added freckles to jazz it up and a jube chimney.
And the smalls think it worked! And it did work. I think it looks like Dr.Seuss could move in but that cool cause I like him alot. It looks nothing like the "inspired" one but it is ours and we never gave up and we pushed our cooking boundaries agian. They are small but they know stuff and they help me realise it in funny ways!! And now they have asked if we can make a gingerbread house every year. Yep, we sure can!
Grateful yes. Alot. Go here to find lots of gratefuls.
Gracious weeks go fast! Is it already Thursday again? My creative space this week is sprawled all over my house! Yep amidst all our Christmas decorations, folding and ironing (things I put off for another day) is my creativeness gone wild.... I shifted my sewing machine and over locker to the dining table and its been a lovely few days listening to the whizz of my machine, a few cursing words when the over locker thread breaks and I have to re-thread... Pet peeve! I also purchased some stunning, like totally stunning, I'm so-in-love-with-it satin silk fabric to make thyself a frock, hopefully! It's red and orange floral with some black thrown it and it falls stunningly, hopefully I won't massacre the fabric when I cut it and more so when I sew it. I'm used to sewing with cotton, so we'll see how it goes!
I had a couple of sewing projects to complete this week and woohoo I can check those off.
Then I decided to keep the machine humming and made a few Coco Dresses, and they look so, so cute. They are now hanging in store and look just like Summer.
Most of the fabric scraps are still gracing the floor cause we have been festive and partaking in a week of festivities, who needs a clean floor at this time of year? The rest of the fabric has been tuned into rosettes and hair slides and headbands.
Whilst purchasing fabric like a lunatic racing through Spotlight I found some new acrylic beads that I have been fashioning into bracelets this week. As I have mentioned in the past patience and I are not friends so when I get something new in my head to make or do IT MUST BE DONE LIKE ALMOST IMMEDIATELY! I am not good at waiting. That said I managed to punch out a lovely amount of groovy saint bracelets this week, and I like them a lot. As well as a few leather necklaces with word ring pendants, the leather is slip knotted quite long so they can be wore lovely and long.
I had Tuesday afternoon with my Sunshine Girls at Craft Class and they made 5 scratchies each and a Christmas Scrabble tile pendant. My sunshine girls brighten my day whenever I get to go do craft with them. We chit chat and giggle and craft and I think they are totally ACE. They are a lovely bunch of young women and I'm very blessed they embrace me and we have the fun we do.
How's your week? Has it flown by too? Have you been creative? I think Christmas is totally the best time of year to be creative, even though we are all flat chat with school and shopping and decorating and partying and working, it's still fun to make stuff. I love making stuff. I hope you do too. Pop on over here and have a looky at all the creative spaces going on. They are very, very creative.
Gosh I haven't played along in like ages. Ages and ages. I have Christmas craft class next week with my sunshine girls so I need to get organized. We have about 2 hours to get some funky craft happening so instead of wracking my weary-almost-end-of-the-week-brain I just swung over to *Pinterest for divine inspiration.
I'll edit this post tonite to provide all the cool links cause maybe it's me, but I can never get typepad to link from this device!
Inspired by *artmind via *Pinterest we are going to make some groovy scratchies with a Christmas inspired feel good theme. I'm going to follow the *tutorial tonite with the smalls and see how we go. Prepping for that I have combined two apps to create myself some cards to scratch. I just looooove *instaquote and I bit the bullet and paid $1.99 to upgrade so I can play with more fonts and styles. The style I thought looked very cool is bike. You can see from my photo that its a bit cloudy and starry. Perfect I thought, I added 'this Christmas....' In that app, than saved the picture to my camera roll. (and if you upgrade you don't get any watermarks)
To save myself a ton of time, I open my *pages app, I love this app. I've had this app for a fair while now, from memory it's about $10 and I use it lots. It's great for newsletters, recipes, documents. It reminds me of publisher, yep I'm a publisher lover.
So in a matter of minutes, cut and paste, cut and paste, I have a full page of 'this Chhristmas...' to play with and I simply added text boxes to each image and played with the wording so each card is different and inspiring.
I think the smalls will have a super duper time making these with me. I'm super excited and I think if they work a treat my sunshine girls will have lots of fun with them too. We usually make two crafty products, the second one is still coming.
There seems to be lots going on over at *Village Voices creatively. Even though I haven't played in ages I do pop by and am always awestruck by the amazingly talented people and makings going on. If you haven't popped by you really should. It's totally cool.
*will add all the links tonite- done, all linked up xxx
It's been awhile, I think I've been on a bit of a forced hiatus. It's been busy and my blog has been neglected.
I have a newish obsession.... A Shrinky Dink obsession. It's a cool obsession. I can colour and draw for hours. Then, seriously I must look a little bit mad but I sit in front of my oven to watch the shrinky magic. The oven makes them all curl up and shrink then magically flatten out and wha-la a shrinky of sorts is produced. It is so totally clever. I love them. Like heaps.
They also bring back cool childhood memories of shrinking chip packets in the oven and shrinky things in cereal boxes. Are you old enough to remember those things? I wonder why we don't get stuff in cereal anymore? Any how I've digressed.
I also had a fabulous time at The 2012 Art Bazaar in Newcastle yesterday, it was my third Summer Art Bazaar and by all accounts was a fantastic day. Very, very hot but lots and lots and lots of lovely customers came down to Civic Park to visit my pop up shop and purchased lovely handmade gifts for Christmas. Thanks to the wonderful organizers that are The Hunter Arts Network, it is a massive job to organize these events and they do a magnificent job. Well done and thank you.
Time to get myself organized for Christmas. It's such a fabulous time of year. I love Christmas. I love our tree, I'm a bit of a traditionalist so I can never get past mostly red and white decorations and they all hold special memories but I've added a touch of aqua to the whole paper gift wrap this year. I like all my stuff to go together, not match just go together. A bit OCD, I know. Can't help it. Are you organized for Christmas yet? I have gift wrap but no gifts to wrap yet. Better start thinking about that I suppose or everyone can just get Shrinky's. Now there's a thought.
