Farmyard Party

Inspired by other stay-at-home-designer-project-mode-y mums I decided to try my hand at creating party printables. I mentioned this to my friend Jen who cunningly got me to design some stuff for her daughter's upcoming 2nd birthday. Miss 2 loves animals so it had to be a farm party!

yummy food! I love love love the butterfly fairy bread! 

Here are some of the printable bunting, cupcake toppers and tags I designed.

 I do love how cute labels and ribbons make even the simplest things look lovely. Printing the juice labels onto a4 stick on labels was a stroke of genius on my part (if I do say so myself!!) much easier than glueing every single one  - like I did for Little Man's 1st birthday!

Here's the birthday girl herself! All the other kids were invited to dress up as farm animals and Miss 2 was the farmer. Jen picked up these cute overalls and hat at Kmart (I think?) and I added the fabric  belt and flowers to it just to girly it up a little more. Don't you think this gorgeous family look like they belong in a magazine?

Speaking of farm animals... here is Little Man as a cow.. You can see the hat didn't last long. Fluffy chickens were far too interesting to bother about a hat.

 Jen had a Kiddy Farm come to the party and it was so cute seeing all the different reactions the kids had. Miss 2 was besotted with these chickens (perhaps she knew how well they matched her outfit??) and sat with them on her legs for ages being very gentle. I love her little hands carefully holding them.

 Another little cow makes his way through the party and this little miss on the right may forever be known as chicken choker! I've never seen 1 year old hands go so fast for a chicken's neck. It was hilarious!!

 The party favours were these super cute piggy banks - such a great alternative to lolly bags!

All in all a very beautiful party. Jen did such a wonderful job putting it all together and lovely time was had by all!

Christmas Present idea!

For those of you following along in Sydney who may also have kids here's a great (and affordable!) idea for Christmas presents for the Grandparents!

a lovely lounge

One of the first rooms I "officially" helped out on belongs to some of our favourite people - the Coe family. Their Little Guy #2 has a hilarious and almost obsessive attachment to our Little Man. It's so funny and I love it!

Anyway... So Adam and Nic had a pretty empty room and had just been given some $$ to fix it up, but didn't really know which direction to go in.. so I helped! The budget was limited, so I put my bargain hunting hat on, and off I went.

It all started with this mood board that I came up with after having my first chat with Nic.

They had already made an excellent eBay purchase of 2 chocolate brown lounges, so these gave me a great starting point. Ok, let's go on the tour!

Just a bit empty! But really, who could ask for a better place to start!

Great lounges right? I would like to think that this is the start of even more things to come for this room. When their budget allows there might be room for some more storage, but already, a big difference!

I really am a miracle worker - I was even able to disappear two little munchkins!

The three floral panels I made from a set of tea towels and the frames were old ones that Adam and Nic had that I sprayed white. The cushions were 2 for $15 from The Reject Shop (I lurrrrve that place!), the lamp base was $5 from a charity shop and the lamp shade was $8 on sale at Target. The rug was free from some friends (actually, from Pete and Lisa, whose gorgeous nursery - and not to mention new baby girl - you can see here).

Who doesn't love a good lamp/ entry table? (random Jess... random.) Anyway... The lamp table I found for $40 through Gumtree, but it was stained a yucky brown colour, so out came the white paint again! The mirror was a steal from Target - reduced from $90 to $30 (!!!), the lamp base was another charity shop find for $4 and the lamp shade, again from Target on sale at $8. (the camelia one of the boys brought home from their Nanna's place!)

The Coes had recently had some gorgeous photos taken by the very talented Hristina Piltz and Nic really wanted a way to show them off. I found the large frame at the Reject Shop for $30, and the other frames were again old ones the family already had that I sprayed white. I also had custom mats made to fit their pics. The white letters are from Lincraft and a few $ each.

So there it is! Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Oh! and here is that Little Guy #2 I was telling you about earlier. How could I not love that he loves my Little Man so much!

mmmm.... new old clothes

I discovered a new charity shop not far from our new home. It has a usual "shop" section where most things were between about $3 and $10, but then... wait for it... out the back there were bins (sweet, sweet clothing bins) that were $6 a KILO! ahhh I love it when clothing is charged by the kilo.

This is what I picked up for the Little Man.

I also picked up a few things for our niece who is about the same age as Little Man. The whole lot cost me less than $10. Love it.

penny pincher's party

Well, Little Man turned one on Sunday, and of course, there was a par-tay!

I wouldn't say it was completely budget conscious, but there were definitely some bargains to share.

Firstly, bunting. So easy to make and so effective as a decorating tool. These ones are "no sew" ones that some day I'll put up a tutorial for. All you need is fabric, rope, an iron and some iron on binding. The great thing about them is they can be used for more parties, or as room decoration - these ones are going into  Little Man's room very soon! (Don't you just love this paparazzi moment of Little Man eating his first piece of birthday cake!)

How great is Etsy! I ordered a printable party set from Dimple Prints for only $10 and it came with over 100 pages of great things to print out. From paper bunting to cupcake toppers (as seen here on the right) there was so much to choose from. Amazing value for money and while I probably only used about a third of it, I still think I got my money's worth.

Glass bottles - $2 - Reject shop.

Not much more to say about that! Such and affordable way to add a special touch to something that normally gets shoved in a corner in a laundry bucket with some ice.

Matching outfit. Ok yes, you need a bit of sewing skills to whip these overalls (there are straps, they just kept falling off!) up, but the little tee is very easy to make, and just another way to personalise your little one's party. I picked up the white tee for $5 and used fabric scraps and some iron on binding to make this matching top.

Bubbles! So cheap and so much fun for kids of all ages (clearly!)

Containers for food. So I bought a LOT of stuff from the Reject Shop here in Sydney for this party. It's one of those places that if you can look past the cheap and nasty stuff there are a lot of great buys to be found. I got the red and white tin buckets for $3 each and the big glass jars for only $5 each! They are my favourite bargain! A quote from a friend when I told her the price "No WAY! Get out! I thought they would have been at LEAST $20 - $30!" Ahhhh the satisfaction of a bargain buy!

Much like the bunting, the great thing about all these containers as they can be used again and around the house. I'm thinking crayons and pencils for the tins and cookies or craft supplies for the jars.

And finally here are just a few more of my fav pics from the day.

(the candle was a little bit scary for our poor little muffin!)

cheap thrills

With my new whizz bang camera and lens, there isn't much more that makes me happy than being able to take pics of my Little Man. 

spying on the neighbours

having a rest

showing me his sore hand (he burnt it on the heater.. poor little muffin)

A new arrival

and no... I'm not pregnant.

but I am almost as excited to announce the new arrival of a Nikon D90 into our family! (apologies to those who don't really care for camera talk.. feel free to look away now)

ooooh look at it! All shiny and new... I haven't even taken off the protective film yet. (mainly because I haven't started using it yet.) My Father-in-Law has very VERY kindly and generously been lending us his D90 for the past oooh 12 months (!) and we thought it was time to get our own. Also.. Little Man MAY have broken his Poppy's lens, so Poppy gets the kit lens that our D90 came with and I'm getting 2 new ones. (yet to arrive, hence the protective film still sitting there, tempting me)

So look forward to improved pics on the blog - hoorah!

Latest bargain purchases

So after our big move I realised I needed ("needed?" debatable) to find and check out all my local charity shops. I was not disappointed! Here are some of my recent bargain buys...

Some shoes and gloves for my Little Man. The shoes are leather, look brand new (I don't actually think they've ever been worn) and were $4. The gloves are so cute and super soft. $1, but then slashed to 50¢. 

Some more leather... a leather shoulder bag for me. Perfect size for wallet/ phone/ keys/ spare dummy and some wipes! Originally $12, but the shop this one came from was having a 50% off sale - $6 for leather?... yesssss!

And a bumper seat for Little Man. Not sure how much these retail for, but probably not the $6 I got it for!

Ok, so these didn't come from a charity shop, but they were still a bargain! They match the theme for Little Man's upcoming 1st birthday and at under $2 a pack - bargain!

Who else has picked up some bargain treasures lately?

The Little Man's Room

Well, officially only 3 or so weeks left in our little townhouse. We sold it about 3 weeks ago and are now looking for somewhere to rent until we find the "perfect" (is there such a thing?) house to buy. We saw a great house tonight and fingers crossed our application will be accepted.. but it's all a bit bittersweet. I'm very excited to be moving, but a bit sad about leaving our Little Man's room behind. I went into full on nesting mode before he came along and this room had lots of planning.

*sigh*

But I AM looking forward to making a new room just for him. In the meantime I thought I'd share some old pics of his room before it is no longer.

Welcome to Little Man's room... I guess it's no secret what his name is now!

This room started off with just the green stripy wall and once we had our boy i introduced the blue and the red.

In my "nesting" state I made the monkey canvas and I had the coathanger hanger custom made by lilafrances on etsy.

Good ol' Ikea! Here you can see the often used in nurseries expedit bookcase and poang chair. Often used for a reason! They are both so reasonably priced and the chair is perfect for feeding while the bookcase has so many uses! Mine, as you can see, is also doubling as the change table. I custom made the cover for the headrest and then added a matching cushion to finish the seat off. Nothing like customising Ikea!

Red Hot

I was wandering through Spotlight (a fabric and craft Mecca of sorts) today.. a common occurrence. Sometimes I go in and it's daytime and then I leave and it's dark. It is somewhat of a black hole that I happily get sucked up in.

I made three very excellent finds:

The first is a very cute J (the first letter of our Little Man's name) complete with little man attached. It came in raw "wood" and while the packaging suggested adding boggled eyes, blue skin and shirts and ties to the little man, I opted for creating a silhouette by painting it in my favourite colour, red. I think it'll look lovely on the wall in Little Man's room when we move.

The second is a pair of my and Mr Jess' favourite vehicles of transport. The little bus reminded me very much of a London red double decker bus (my fav...sigh...) and Mr Jess is crazy about old planes.

These too came in "the raw" and a lick of red paint and some black and yellow texta fixed them up a treat.

So here's the total:

Letter J - $4.00

Bus and Plane - $3.00ea

Tube of red paint - $3.00 (I actually couldn't believe I didn't already own red paint given all the red in our house!)

Total: $13.00

Not bad for some totally original pieces of art to add to my Little Man's room... that is if I can steal the plane off Mr Jess!