Crafty time

Easter was a busy time for me, I have no idea how many of these bunnies I made but I think it was pushing 60! I have been asked for the pattern but at the moment I haven't written one, its all in my head. Maybe I will do one once my life settles down after the move. They proved to be a very popular gift for Easter.

 Part of the many made

 I love coming up with new ideas and this is what happens when I buy loads of tulle, I was going to make the girls some tutus, but this is all I ended up making.

 Here is a small bit of my stall from the March Shelly Beach Market I did.

 I cut up an old dress of mine and made Ruby a skirt and head wrap.

 My March makes

 I managed to make myself a top for myself

 My last stall at the April markets

This was my April round up

I just thought I'd post a bit more of my crafty things I've done.

I am also looking at doing markets in England, so stay tuned to see what I end up doing.

Emma x

3 months till the big move

3 months! 3 short months till we move to the UK. So lets look at the things we have had to do already.

Schools

So Olive is 4 in July and will have to start reception in September (crying) she is my baby and isn't meant to be starting till January 2019 in Australia, she is joining in with the older kids at her preschool doing the school readiness program. Some of these kids are nearly 5 and starting school next year, not 3 and starting this year! But she is a massive joker and has taken to preschool like a fish to water. My sister in law informed us we better get our applications in toot sweet and we missed the deadline by a couple of days, lucky they rang the school and explained our situation. They quickly processed Ruby's application which would help our application for Olive as she would have a sibling enrolled in the school. We didn't have a second choice but luckily Olive was offered a place and then we felt relaxed.

Ruby is in first class in Australia but will be jumping up to year 3 in September. The poor thing will have only have done 6 months on year 1, skip year 2 completely an go straight up to year 3. This obviously causes a few issues as she will be behind, but thankfully she is quite confident and is looking forward to making new friends.

The reason we are leaving in July is just so the girls will start the school year with everyone else. We wanted Olive to be able to start at the same time as everyone else so she wouldn't be behind. And at least Ruby has already learnt all the fundamentals, so she might need to have a bit of one on one time with a teacher to help get her up to speed with the rest of the class. 

So that was our fist port of call, second was our passports, I still cant believe we sent off 3 applications to the UK and got all 3 back in 2 weeks, I was shocked at how quick it took. So everyone has a UK passport. We should have had Chris apply for citizenship but we didn't and we rang and they advised to just apply for the same visa he is on, this is just so he can get back into the country when we come home.

Look how big they are now!

We will be moving to Hereford, it's a lovely little town. I really like it, I've never lived there, just London. I couldn't do London again, although Bristol is the next city we would move to if we need to look for work further afield. I am however excited to take the girls to London, I really want to go at Christmas and see the lights. I love London at Christmas, although it does remind me of morning sickness. I was pregnant and working in London. I remember having to get off the tube and take a breather as the train was making me sick. luckily it passed and I got to enjoy it sick free before we left. 

This was 2 years ago, this is where we will be living until we get our own place. But I think I can live with this😊

My next posts will be about packing and purging.

Em xx

Loss, clutter and moving

Sorry this is a bit wordy but I have felt better for writing it.

Loss 

I mentioned before that I lost my beautiful Mum to cancer late in 2015. Mum was brought us up from when I was 8 as a single parent. I'm the oldest of 3 and now as a parent myself I appreciate how hard that must have been for her. I only have 2 kids and I have a partner and I find it incredibly hard sometimes. So losing her when I was 37 was devastating, not just for us but our kids. My Nanna played such an important role in my life when I was young, so many of my memories involved her. I feel incredibly sad as my girls and my niece and nephew and any future kids will never get to experience her great love again.

On the outside I look ok, my life has just gotten back to normality, life with the girls went on and I just went along with it. But I do have an incredible sadness that I don't talk about. Seeing a lady dressed like my Mum sends a lump to my throat, I feel jealous when I see a grandmother and daughter with the kids. Every day I think of my Mum, I just want to pick up a phone and call her, have a chat meet for a coffee and talk. There are so many questions I would love to know answers to, complain about my Great Aunty and advice on helping her. I feel like a part of my families history has closed with us knowing only parts of it.

I will finish with that here, its sad and awful and its coming up to Mother's Day which is very bitter sweet. I'm a Mum and I get to be with my girls, but I'm missing my Mum, our Mum.

Clutter

As Mum was by herself in the house we spent a good part of our lives in. We moved to the Central Coast in 1991 when I was starting High School. This was our home for so many years and then we had the hard task of clearing it out. We only went over a few times after Mum's passing, we just put it in the to hard basket. After a few months and when Ruby started school I began going over by myself and began sorting through things. I'm sure we could have been loads quicker doing the house but the time we didn't spend there made it easier for us to cope with.

I think we all took something different from the experience. For me I started to look at possessions differently, when you leave the earth, you are gone but everything is still here. Things, stuff, clutter and memories. We tried to organise things in three classic piles keep, donate and sell. We also got a storage shed which I called the "band aid" we still have it, its filled with things we just don't know what to do with. The keep pile began getting so big, extreme guilt over items became apparent. "Mum said to never get rid of that" "where are we meant to keep it?" these where the kind of conversations we were having. My sister's house is full of boxes as she found it hard to let go of some things. Lucky we spent  so long at the house as it made us re evaluate what we were keeping, and we turned 3 boxes into 1 and felt better about it.
We had a garage sale and I knew it would be interesting to say the least, I didn't realise how crazy people were. I was exhausted  at the end, I even had to tell a lady to leave as she was quite possibly the rudest and crazy woman I have ever encounted. We donated lots of things also, and then filled the storage shed and walked away.

We eventually cleared it out and we were happy to have another single lady around Mum's age buy the house, it seemed fitting and perfect.

I live in a very small townhouse, we simply don't have the room to keep things which for the past 3 years has been good as I really cant buy anything as we don't have the space to keep it. So what I did take from Mum's where the things I loved and held memories for me. I also stopped buying little things, cute things, things that have no meaning or value. Why? whats the point? it will be just stuff at the end, stuff that someone will have to get rid of or maybe keep. It really made me re evaluate my spending habits, and try and stop the clutter creeping into our house.

Moving

My main quote whilst getting rid of things was "I'll be moving I cant take that", we aren't doing a small move, its a big one. But I made a small decision which made me feel better and more at ease and less stressed. My partner is English and we had talked about going back to live for a couple of years. So after Mum we made the decision to go. Chris has a lot of family and his Mum and Dad are still alive and we thought it would be good for the girls to spend more time with their other side of the family.
At first we were going to take everything, furniture and all, but this was making me stressed. So we are getting a storage shed instead. It will be cheaper than moving furniture twice across the world and make life so much easier.

So it's all quite exciting and sad as I'll be leaving my Sister and Brother and Dad and nieces and nephews. But that's how Chris has been feeling the past 7 years, and I want to come back so I feel doing this when the girls are younger is the best option.

I have so much more I want to talk about with this move. I will do some more posts on the logistics of moving a family of 4 overseas.

But we have passports and the girls are both enrolled in school so the main 2 things are done and we also have booked tickets so it is all very real now.

So that is my story, it has been quite nice writing this, quite cathartic.

So we are England bound in July, What? 3 months....... I better get a move on


Em xx

Part 2 of things I made in 2016

Here is my part 2 of some of the things I made last year. Looking at them I've realised that the only things that were from a pattern are the Storm Trooper and Darth Vader. The rest of them I made the pattern up. As I said before I'm really bad at writing down a pattern and quite often no two are the same as I cant quite remember how many increases or decreases I made. I love coming up with new ideas then seeing those ideas come to life.

 I made a Giraffe and put spots on him and loved him, Also the fox has become a new favourite of mine

 After making just pears I experimented with other fruits, I was super happy with how they turned out.

 Christmas decorations for Ruby's teacher

I've been making some more of my Giraffes as I haven't made any in ages. I'll be making more of these bunnies for Easter I think, they are super popular.

Em xx

A small collection of things made in 2016 (part 1)

As I began uploading these I realised there was alot of photos, so I've decided to do 2 posts as there are just so many photos. If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen these, but I thought I share them here too. This is only a small amount of what I've made, these are my favorites.

Some of these were orders, some were gifts and the rest were for the markets.

Apart from the snails, handbags and the above doll, each of the designs were my own. I've really embraced writing my own patterns and I've loved coming up with new ideas and being able to turn them into a toy to go to a new home.

Em xx

Hello again

Before I get started I had to check the last time I blogged, it was a year and a half ago! and now I'm trying to think about what has happened in that time, and then I realised quite a lot has happened in this time. So many reasons why I stopped blogging, so many life changes and reasons why I decided not to bother even opening up Blogger.

This year I might have some new big changes with our little tribe of 4, things I would like to start sharing. Things I'm quite excited and scared about, things that are constantly running around my head that I would like to write out, but first I'll do a little recap of the past year and a half.

Its the school holidays in Australia, my first lot of summer school holidays, its hot and we are inside with the air con on. Last year my eldest Ruby started Kindergarten, crazy! I think back to when I started this blog, I was eagerly waiting for her to make her debut on the world, and I began documenting my craft projects as a way of filling in time and showing anyone that read this little blog the things I had lovingly made.

Ruby is now 6 she is a confident little girl, she is a beautiful big sister and caring friend. She has loved the new and exciting world of being at school. She loved her teacher and made loads of friends and was invited to so many parties. Each day she would learn something new and eagerly tell us about it with such enthusiasm, and inform us about the games she played with her new friends. A year of school has passed by so quickly, and before we know it she will be starting year 1, back to school which I can tell she is missing.

Before Ruby started school, she had to do a head start program for 4 weeks. Going to school on a Friday morning and meeting her teachers and doing some work in her future classrooms, meeting new friends who have since become her close friends. This was meant to be a happy and exciting time, but unfortunately it was a horrible time and the lowest of my life. I wont go into to much detail, but at the same time I was taking my daughter to school, I was back and forth at the hospital as my Mum had terminal cancer and in those 4 weeks of school my Mum passed and a funeral was arranged and had. It was so hard being 2 different people, the proud Mum on the outside and a heart broken daughter on the inside. 

We knew the day was coming but I have to admit I didn't think it would actually happen. Mum had been a fighter for decades, so many different forms of cancer came and she fort them hard. But it all became to much and she didn't even get to see Ruby in her uniform. Having this happen has really made an impact on me as a person, in different ways, ways you don't even realise. My brother and sister and I really united together, we all took it in turns going to the hospital and being with Mum, our relationship is strong and we have really banded together since. 

2016 has been a strange experince ever since, Mum passed in the November and the new year saw us all continue on with a lives, and with us all having a gaping big hole that really couldn't be filled and that constant feeling of a piece of our puzzle forever missing. 

Family life, lets make it happy again. My partner Chris and I have been together 10 years now. He really is the best, the best partner and the best Dad. Ruby is now 6 and a half and my little Olive is 3 and a half. 2016 saw Olive and I spend lots of one on one time together, having coffee dates, play dates and fun. Olive is my little independent girl. She can sit and play with anything for ages, she has an amazing imagination and creativity. It was so great having her to myself, we had a great year together and this year she is off to preschool for the first time, I loved our time together but I feel she needs the extra social interactions that being at home with me just doesn't have.  

To market, to market.

This year saw me have my second year on the market scene, I'm so happy with what I've made this year and the positive feedback I've received. I will be doing some future Blog posts on this, and posting some photos and thoughts on this.

So this is the most basic of run downs I can give, I may refer back to this in future posts, YES future posts, I'm really going to make a go of it this year. I'm so looking forward to what I will be writing about in December this year, I'm really looking forward to 2017. 

Thanks for stopping by

Em xx

My market stall

So, its only been forever that I've said I was going to have a market stall. My new years resolution was to have a stall, and I finally did it. If anyone is from the Central Coast, you will probably be familiar with the Shelly Beach Markets. They are on the last Saturday of the month, I've done a few this year so far with the next one being next Saturday 25th July. My dear friend Larissa from Sugar Plum Tart and I have been going together and it has been great finally selling our hand made creations.

 I found this amazing vintage sheet a little while ago, brand new/old never opened. I love how bright and colourful my stall is, you should see the kids eyes light up when they walk past, love it.

 I finally have started selling my felt cakes, how long ago did I make these? 5 years maybe.

 I've also sold loads of my little Russian dolls. And I went on a hair clip making frenzy.

And all my new crochet toys. It's funny that each market is different, I will sell loads of one thing and the next market I sell none.

 It's all a good learning experience and I will try and make new things for each market to try and mix it up a bit. I also get bored making the same thing over and over. I have also found pricing to be hard as I don't like to under price myself as I put a lot of time into making everything, but I also want people to want to buy them too. 

So if you are on the Central Coast and around the North end of the Coast, it's a great day out. Also Long Jetty is 5 mins up the road from the Market. It has really become a great little hub with loads of great shops and cafes, definitely a great day out if you are coming up from Sydney.

Em xx ♥♥♥