Birthday Beading

I spent Saturday afternoon hosting a 10th birthday beading party. I designed 2 simple necklaces and one bracelet for a group of (mainly) 9 and 10 year olds to make. I set all the beads out and after a lot of oohing and aahing they set about choosing the design they wanted to make, once that decision was made they had to choose their beads... that took a LONG time. It looked like it was quite painful for some of them deciding between colours and some opted for a rainbow of beads when choosing one or two proved just too hard.

They all worked really hard, listened to my instructions and asked questions when they weren't sure. You would never believe that 10 girls could be so quite, you could have heard a pin drop between questions and the occassional sigh and giggle when things went wrong. A lot of them found the crimping near the clasps and the covering of wire a little too tricky so I helped a bit but the majority of the work was theirs.

After finishing the necklaces they all put them on and went for a break, cake, present opening and some running around. After that they could choose if they wanted to make a bracelet, some opted not too and instead ate more food and did more running and laughing but five made the bracelet. This was a lot quicker as it was a simple beading design and they were all soon outside running off their sugar highs.

It was a great success, the girls had a lot of fun and Katrina (the birthday girls mom) said she was really pleased at how well it went and how much fun they had. I even gave out my details to a couple of people who are interested in doing something similar for their girls. Here's how they took them home.

It's so great to do something you love and have other people love it too. Evie was invited as she knows Brianna and she had a great time, here's what she made.

Finding serenity

I am struggling at the moment to find time for myself to do the things I want to do. I seem to be spending all my time looking after kids, my own and for my job, cleaning and cooking. I am so tired all the time as Callum hasn't slept through the night for about 6 months now and it's really taking it's toll. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. It started off with him having nightmares but now I think he is sleeping so lightly that any noise is waking him; birds, cars, the dog taking a drink.

To this end I have a really short temper at the moment and am feeling very harrassed. The kids are getting shouted at and I am feeling thoroughly unloved, hence the need to find serenity. I was hoping to just pop to a local shop and buy a bag of it but apparently that's not an option. Instead I took a walk in the beautiful suburb where we live and tried to take in the scenery. The picture is Rangitoto Island which we can see from the beach at the bottom of our road, it's beautiful and I'm so glad we made the choice to come here.

It helped a little but I'm just still so tired. Ideas?

A Star is Born

Evie has been doing ballet for about 2 years now and was lucky enough to be involved in her ballet school production of Cinderella. To be honest the dances the little ones did had nothing to do with Cinderella but as far as they were concerned they were the introduction to it and Evie loved every minute of it. Especially the costume and the lipstick.

They started learning the dance about 4 months ago and built it up week by week. I was so please with the way she danced and even more so with the way she behaved after. They were allowed to come into the audience to watch and she behaved impeccably, now I just have to figure out how to get her to do that at home!!

They danced at a proper theatre, albeit a smallish one, with proper lights, music and costumes. She's a natural performer so she cant wait to be a bit older and have a bigger role in the next show.

Pallina Designs Giveaway

Amanda from Pallina Designs is an amazingly talented jewellery and handbag designer. I have had a number of handbags from her (three for me and two as gifts) and Gage bought me a pair of her earrings for Christmas last year too. She is having a giveaway on her blog at the moment so you should go check it out and leave her a comment to be in to win. You can find it here. And here's the brooch she's giving away. Good luck.