Super mum? I think not...

So on Friday, I had a particularly productive day and was feeling pretty proud of myself. I managed a trip to the pharmacy, grocery store and pet store. Cooked a batch of chicken noodle soup and a batch of risotto, defrosted the freezer, reorganised the fridge and even had a nap. All while caring for my two boys, one of whom was pretty sick.

Now, before we all go and start heaping on the congratulations for being such an awesome mum, I want to take a minute to praise the man who made all this possible. My husband, Chris.

Every second Friday, Chris has a day off as he works a nine day fortnight (which I might say is super awesome). When after having gotten up at 5:20am with Jeffrey (who was unwell), I went in to Chris at 7am and demanded sleep, he got out of bed and took over the kids. He let me sleep until 10:30am! When Jeffrey woke from his nap with a coughing fit, Chris went straight in to him, and when Jeffrey proceded to projectile vomit all over the carpet, he happily handed him to me to clean up and calm down... And then proceded to immediately get a bucket and cleaning supplies, and clean up mass amounts of vomit from the carpet.

He was in charge of the kids while I did my running around, and my cooking etc. And he also did the laundry.

I often don't tell my husband how wonderful he is because I am too busy focussing on the little things, like how it drives me mad when he leaves his clothes on the floor beside the bed instead of putting them away or in the laundry. But Friday really reminded me of what a fantastic man, partner and father Chris is.

Big hugs and kisses to my wonderful husband, and I can only hope all women are blessed with the same.

Christmas is Coming!

Not much is going in in the land of sock animals as I’m waiting on some socks I ordered to arrive (still! Mind you, England is far away). So instead, I’m busy building up stock of animal types that I already make.

In the mean time – I have started thinking about Christmas. I know, I know, some of you (especially my husband) will be thinking “but it’s only September!”. And you’re right, it is early to be thinking Christmas, however it is my favourite time of the year. Also, if I am sending gifts to my family in Canada, I need to do that soon in order to make sure they arrive on time.

So this year Jeffrey will be making Christmas ornaments for family and as predictable as that is for his age, it has been so much fun making them! So far we have made two batches of ornaments. One has been made of salt dough (still need to find a recipe that I like), and one made from Das.

For those of you who don’t know, Das is a paper modelling clay. The reason I used the Das is because I just happened to have some in the house, so I figured we should use it. Not something I am going to do again! It was stiff and unmalleable, making it difficult to roll out flat to cut out the shapes. We used regular cookie cutters to cut out the shapes and acrylic paint to paint them. To finish off, we will simply add ribbon to hang from the tree!

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Sock Giraffe

In the last fortnight I received a request from a friend to try and make a sock giraffe as she wanted to give one as a baby gift. So I turned to my trusty friend Google for some inspiration as I have learnt that there are a lot of us sock crafters around and it is a good way of seeing what other people have done.

Flicking through the pictures on Google Images I soon came across one that I particularly liked. When I clicked through to the website it came from it turned out that the creator of the sock giraffe had actually posted a tutorial online! Yay for me! So I followed their instructions (which can be found here) and made a couple of sock giraffes.

I made two different giraffes to start with from two different sizes of socks, one from a regular ‘crew’ sized sock and one from a pair of ‘knee-high’ socks. I found the process of making them to be a little more challenging than making a monkey or owl, due simply to the nature of the neck and how it is attached. Getting the neck to sit correctly under the sewing machine was a bit fussy, but once it was done it was well worth the effort. Turning the neck and stuffing the head and neck were also fussy as it was only a small opening which made things more difficult.

The finished giraffes turned out well, and I like the long neck of the giraffe that I was able to achieve using the knee high socks. In the future though, I will not make the neck quite so long as the weight of the head makes it so that the neck doesn’t actually stay upright without being propped (or in the case of when I was taking the photo, pinned). I also modified the face to what I liked, as well as the horns and ears - so it is a bit different from the tutorial.

I liked the giraffe enough that I decided to go looking for giraffe print socks online – it turns out that though you can find them, they aren’t available in stock in most places and the places that do have them don’t ship to Australia (at least not at a feasible cost)! This makes me very sad. Oh well, the cheetah print socks I used for these two seemed to work well, and cheetah print socks are available almost everywhere (though I can’t figure out for the life of me why people like cheetah print so much). But, if you come across any giraffe print socks – let me know where I can get them!

Sickness Sucks...

Well, it has been longer since my last post since I wanted it to be as sickness struck our household (totally blaming my dad for that one!). About two weeks ago Jeffrey had a runny nose and I thought nothing of it – it’s not unusual for a kid who can’t blow his nose yet. That night he went to bed and an hour later woke up with difficulty breathing – it turns out he was having an attack of croup for the first time ever. I crapped my pants to say the least! I took him to the hospital and by the time we got there his breathing was ok and he didn’t need any medication, and he hasn’t had another attack since – thank God. Chris and I have never been as scared in our lives as when he first woke with the attack as Jeffrey is a kid who never normally gets sick. Lets just hope it never happens again.

Since both Jeffrey and I have been sick (I’m still coughing away), I haven’t been able to do as much sewing as I wanted. However, I did manage to get my dad’s fathers day gift done. I made matching aprons for my dad and Jeffrey. Unfortunately due to an uncooperative child, this is the only photo I managed to get of them wearing them!

The aprons are made of cotton, with ribbon as the ties and cotton applique on the front. Deciding on the pattern and making the aprons themselves was easy enough, but boy was doing the fabric applique a pain in the butt! (It says: Big Chef, Little Chef respectively) I decided not to sew the applique on, but rather use an iron on transfer sheet which made the entire process quicker (in theory). Cutting out such small letters from the fabric, with the transfer pinned was very fussy. I’m not sure I’ll be doing something so fiddly again in the near future!

I did manage a couple of other small projects in what little spare time I did not dedicate to sleeping: bean bags, bungee balls and a sock penguin.

The beanbags are made from cotton fat quarters, with one fat quarter making six bags. These were very simple to sew and have given me a new skill to master: namely top stitching (I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned that I’m a novice with a sewing machine…). The bags are filled with dried red beans and are perfect for teaching kids to throw and catch, with less risk of breaking things as they do not bounce – unlike balls!

The bungee balls are a project I periodically make over the years, and something I first learnt to make when I was in Girl Guides many moons ago. These balls are made from balloons, bird seed and glad wrap. They are really easy to make and a lot of fun for young children. Something to bear in mind for little kids though is that through repeated use the strings will eventually break.

Finally: the sock penguin! As requested by my penguin loving friends and family. The penguin is made from one black and one white sock, with felt used for the patch on the front, beak, feet and eyes. The body and wings of the penguin were easy to make, as were the eyes and sewing on the patch at the front. The feet were a little fiddly trying to get them to be the right shape and size – mostly because my small embroidery scissors broke! The beak was also a little fussy to get sewn on to the main body as it didn’t want to stay pinned in place. All in all, I think he turned out pretty well!