My firstborn turns 18

Wowser, how did that happen? Just the other day I was giving birth and now she is turning 18, I'm pretty sure that somewhere along the way someone stole some of my days/weeks/months/years!! I think Evie might have been at least as excited as Gage, she jumped out of bed and rushed in to wish her happy birthday. I made cups of tea and then we sat down with the little pile of presents and cards.

A few grown up presents and lots of money, it's times like this that you appreciate the pound to dollar conversion. I'd like to thank everyone who sent cards, presents and money, it's great to know that even though we aren't in the UK anymore you all remember these special occasions.

Here's the cake Gage requested, she went for grown up and sophisticated.

We went out for dinner to a local Thai restaurant, the food was fabulous and the only down side was Callum fidgeted and got a bit bored. Gage excitedly had a beer with her meal, the first legal drink. Then back home to eat cake. She is having a party on Saturday with her friends which I anticipate will be a little bit wilder than her actual birthday with us.

Happy birthday Gage, I'm so proud to be your Mom. I love you. xx

Deb's Beads

I just have to share with you the most incredible bead artist, her name is Deb Batten and she is a Christchurch based New Zealander. I first came across her beads about 18 months ago and thought they were stunning, I bought a few and made some jewellery for friends and family. The beads were lovely and the jewellery a huge success.

I have since bought a number of beads from Deb, I guess I'm a regular now and recently she has been making the most amazing beads with a new glass made in New Zealand by Gaffer Glass. The glass is Chalcedony and gives beautiful shades and depth of colour. Deb's beads have a stunning organic feel to them and the shapes and colours just flow. What I love most about them is the way you see so much in them, they aren't just a flat picture of a flower or a pattern, they pull you in and every time you look at them you see something else, another colour or reflection in the light. As you can probably tell I'm a big fan. Her latest listings are amazing and here are a couple of my favourites.

If you get a minute or two you should really check out her site Firebird-NZ.com, it is well worth the trip. Thanks Deb for being such an inspiration and also giving me encouragement in my own polymer clay bead efforts.

Birthdays

We have some significant birthdays coming up in our house in the next few weeks. Gage turns 18 on the 15th of this month and then 4 weeks later I will be turning 40. I have been asking Gage what she wants and also what she wants to do but so far answers have been vague. She still hasn't learnt how to drive so we looked at getting her a little car but me being such a worrier I didn't want to get her a wreck, which is what you'd buy yourself at 18, so I am no further along with plans. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

As for my birthday I think I am going to just have a few friends over, some good food, a few (haha) drinks and good company. Oh and I'm going to insist that Neil takes me out as well, somewhere lovely where I can get dressed up, you know like you used to before you had the kids?

Catching Up

We had a public holiday here on Monday so had a three day weekend, what fun, an extra day to relax and do nothing...yeah right! It was busier than  ever and I didn't get round to doing the things I had planned to do. Which primarily is I haven't got around to making the blinds for the kids rooms but here is the fabric they chose themselves (months ago). I'm showing you because I think if I get it out and share it I might feel that I have to do something with it!

Here are a few beads I did manage to make at the weekend, this I can do while sitting on the sofa after a long day of cleaning, sorting and working in the garden .

And I baked as well, some yummy peanut butter cookies and another egg free muffin recipe, this one tasted good but  the cakes were completely flat, one day I'll get it right if I keep trying and the kids seem to enjoy trying the different variations. No pictures of my baking though as I forgot, here's what's left.

Trying a new clay

Now most of you, even those of you who have bought beads off me, probably haven't even given a thought to the brand of clay I use, why would you? Well normally I use Du-kit, there are a number of reasons but the main one when I first starting using polymer clay was that this is a New Zealand made clay and I love the idea of buying locally when I can. Yesterday, however, I was in one of the local emporiums and they had some Cernit clay. The colours were lovely, lots of pearlescent effects, which are not available in the Du-kit, and they were well priced. I treated myself to three blocks and some other things that I needed, well they just called out to me so I did the decent thing and gave them a home!

As soon as the kids were sleeping I unwrapped those blocks of clay and started to condition them...oh the shock, they crumbled, why? I was horrified, had I been sold some terrible unconditionable clay that I wouldn't be able to use? Well no, but it is very odd. It is crumbly and dry when you first start using it and then it gets soft, VERY soft. I was struggling to get it to stay in one place it was that soft. Finally, conditioned and in rolls I popped it in the fridge for a few minutes. That was much better. So here's a tiny cane I made with it, I only made a little thing to start with as I wasn't sure how it was going to work. The really odd thing about it though is that it slices wonderfully, no drag and yet the blade goes though very easily. I'm looking forward to playing some more, now I just need to find the time.

Learning to Knit on a Circle Loom

I bought a set of circle looms from our local craft store about 8 months ago and they have been sitting in my big bucket of wool and needles since then. This weekend I decided I really should try and learn how to use them. A quick Google of "Loom Knitting" gave me plenty of sites to choose from but this one is just brilliant "The Purling Sprite", her "Loom Knitting Basics" tutorial is great. I had a little practice of the basic stitches and then decided for the sake of speed I would just knit using the very simple twisted knit stitch. It is SO simple, I remember doing French knitting as a child with a wooden cotton reel with some little tacks in it, this is basically the same but on a larger scale. 

I set about making a hat for Evie and quickly realised that I should have been knitting on the next size up of loom, no problem I just unravelled and started again and because it was so fast to do I didn't spend ages wondering if there was a different way around it. It knitted up quickly, I had some really chunky wool which in the UK I would call double double and which I think in America is called worsted. It was perfect and I was soon finished. Then I just needed to make a little pom pom for the top, all done. 

Except that Callum, aged 2, decided that he needed to have one as his big sister did. He only likes things in the colours of Thomas (blue) or Percy (green) so I rifled though my wool and found some that I thought would suffice, it was thinner though so I knitted it double, a strand of each colour. Back to the loom only this time the smaller one that I had discarded for Evie's hat. I gave it him when I was done and it's been on his head ever since! A success I think. 

The top photo shows some green wool he chose yesterday when we were out as he wants one knitted in this colour too!

Choc Chip Banana Muffins

I had a friend coming over this morning for morning tea, this always makes me laugh as it sounds so formal which is hardly a Kiwi thing. Anyway I hadn't done any baking this week so nothing yummy to eat so the kids and I decided to make some muffins. I had a bunch of bananas sitting there getting over ripe so decided to try and use them up. On to the internet in search of an egg free banana cake recipe. I can't eat egg but most of the recipes I've tried so far haven't been great, some are dreadful, some OK but nothing great yet...until this one  you need to scroll down a bit as the site is a shopping site but they're there. I'll probably go back to ty some of the others too. It really was lovely and really easy to make. The kids just mixed it all up and hey presto yummy warm muffins. The only thing was they did deflate a bit after taking them out of the oven but they still tasted great.