Monday, November 28, 2011

Blessed

So a little while ago, the hubby walks in with the mail... now for those of you who have been reading along for a while, you will know I LOVE MAIL!!! (Well, except for bills and such, that is!)
He had with him a parcel... even better!!! :)
Ooooh, really? The parcel is for me? :D
Wanna see?


Don't you just love packages tied up with string?

Inside the first thing I set eyes on was one of the beautiful cards that Miss Rockmelon makes (she has loads of cool stuff. If you have never been to her site, go check it out). This has to be my favourite one so far.


One day I'd love to travel to France. Not just for Paris - mind you. I want to explore the provinces, and try to get a real feel for the place. I did six months of French in Uni... but that was about 10 years ago, and sadly I have forgotten much of what I learnt! 

I also have a penchant for maps (I just bought myself some from the oppy the other day)... check out this cool envelope.


But wait, there's more...




And then I spotted it... the coolest personalised card! :)
The sheer effort put into it amazes me, and I feel truly blessed to have such a friend that would make me something like this. I have a plan for it... but it might be a little while before you see it again. Check out the green "E". This is the very same fabric that I used to make a reversible Diana Hobo bag for my sister last Christmas.


And on the back...?


Another personal little touch.

How have you been blessed this week?

Monday, November 21, 2011

Baby Hexagon Jacket

I've been meaning to share this with you for about two months now! So sorry for the delay. I know that things seem to be quiet around Seaweed & Raine, but things on the home front have been busy, busy, busy (more on that some other time perhaps).


You might remember this Bendigo Cotton yarn that I found some time ago? Well the last time you saw it it looked like this...


I have finally uploaded the photos so I can show you how it turned out. I'm pretty chuffed with it really. My first hooky baby garment that isn't a pair of booties!!! YAY! It isn't perfect (I know where the mistakes are), but if you aren't looking for them you would pretty much miss them entirely. This pattern was so easy to do - once I figured out what the creator was REALLY saying in a couple of places (that would be me still being a novice-self-taught crochet-er). It's so repetitive, I watched several episodes of Grand designs while making it (which might be possibly why there are a couple of mistakes... I wasn't counting carefully enough! LOL).
So are you ready?
You are?
Fab! Let's get to it then! :)



And a close up of the buttons... Which is why it was October instead of the beginning of September when I finally finished it! I took me forever to find buttons that I liked to go with it.


I'd love to say I Ravelled it here... but I never did update the deets. Gifted to a cute little nephew.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Farm Birthday

The whole idea for a Farm Birthday for Little Clam started when Jellyfish and I were looking through one of my cake books for birthday cakes for HIS birthday. JF randomly pipes up and says "I think you should make a Barn cake for ...". There were no pictures of a barn in the books we were looking at - it was just random - off the cuff... but I loved the idea! :)

I used the party invites to kick off the theme. I know in the past I have just emailed a lot of the party invites, but I really love receiving mail in the post, and I just think it makes it that much more special.


As always I was far too busy enjoying the party to get many photos, but here are a few for you.



The cake is made from 2 x 20cm square cakes that hubby trimmed to add to the top layer, and 1 x loaf pan. I made the windows and doors out of piped white chocolate (lets just say that my hands were none too steady at the hour of the night I was making them!). The roof is just ice cream wafers, cut to size, and the characters are per favour of the kids' duplo set. :)

When it came to party favours, I wanted something that was way more than just lollies. I searched many times till I found these milk pails in colours that the birthday boy chose. And there were JUST enough of them for the day!


You can see poking out the top one of the straws that I made for the party (tutorial here).
I filled them with plastic animals, Pascal Milk Bottle lollies, little fuzzy chicks, the duck crayons that we made the week before the party (posted here) and fruit scented highlighters.



The Thank You tags were sourced from Anneliese here.

The menu was based around brunch (thanks for the idea Anneliese!), which lent itself readily to the whole farm theme I thought.

Scrambled Eggs
Homemade Muesli (Granola to all my US friends. Recipe from Nov 2010 Martha Stewart Living magazine   - which I doctored a little.)
Pancakes with either Homemade berry compote or Maple Syrup with cream
A selection of toasts, spreads, and cereals
Fresh Breakfast Juice


And for the kids we had milk in little glass bottles. These were juice bottles that I removed the labels from, and added Moo "juice" labels (found here). Note to self... set up table and get photos of everything BEFORE the kids sit down! lol
Farm Girl

I used a vintage sheet with farm pictures on it for the table cloth on the main table (It was mine when I was about 6), and a light blue one on the kids table - which is what Little Clam chose. Apologies for not getting a photo of the actual table!!! ( I had to get the sheet out of the cupboard to take this one).


The men were good enough to give wheelbarrow rides to all the little peeps, and in between turns the rest played on the swings, bikes and sandpit. I had some games ready to go... but didn't end up using them - woops (pin the nose on the pig, pass the parcel, etc.). We finished off with everyone sitting down and watching Little Clam open his presents, which had been stored in a drum at the beginning of the party.


All in all, it was pretty stress free - just the way you want it for a 2-year-olds party.  :)

Check out where other peeps are being creative...

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Straw Topper Tutorial

Well I guess it isn't really rocket science as to how you would put one together - but I believe I will share it with you anyway! :) (Even though I didn't get a good photo of the finished products - thought I had taken one... perhaps it got deleted). I wanted to make straw toppers to go with the milk bottles that I will show you later this week, so keeping with the farm theme, and using some of the same print of stickers that I used for the invitations I gathered my materials.

To fit the stickers, I cut rectangles of cardboard 7cm x 4.5cm, and then folded it in half. I stuck the  stickers in the centre of each side, trying to make sure that the top of each sticker matched where the top was on the other side.


I cut some of the excess off from around each sticker to make them more shapely.  Here they are before I stuck them onto the straws. I used two different types to glue to assemble it all. Lampshade glue down either side of the inside of the card stock, and non-toxic glue stick to glue it onto the straw surface. (I didn't want to take any chances with the chemicals transferring to the straw!)


Wrap them around the straw so that the edges match, and press together till the glue holds.
Viola! Straw toppers.


For this set I just used regular stiff card stock - but if I were doing it again I think I would try for something that has a coating on it and so will make it a little bit more drink proof.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Making molded crayons.

So on Thursday I showed you a little bit of what I had been up to during the week. Now I'm here to show you the whole lot.

We decided that for Little Clam's birthday this year we would do a farm theme (or rather his bigger brother thought it would be cool, and since he loves making animals noises, I thought "Why not?") so after looking online for farm animal molds we found this duck mold.


I bought some crayons from Kmart (hindsight says I probably should have bought really good quality ones), brought them home and Jellyfish and the hubby helped peel them. We chopped them up and the boys helped add them to the molds.


We first tried putting them in the microwave - but although they got hot and started to soften, they didn't seem to be melting, so we put some foil on a tray and put the mold in the oven. They melted quite quickly, but seeing the finished result, the pigment settled faster than the wax. After talking to a few lovely people in the blog world, I have discovered that they seem to work better when you melt them in a tin in a water bath on the stove and then pour them into the molds. Maybe I'll try again... the boys have lots of crayon stubs around and I have another pack of crayons! ;)


So there you have it, some duck crayons for Little Clam's farm party.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Crayons

Well, my creative space has looked a little like this since last week...


Enter some chopped crayons and silicon molds.


And the product is finished, but I'm not sure that I should show you just yet. Maybe on the weekend :)
I will say if I were doing it all again, I think I would try cooking spray on the molds first, as I think I might have totally trashed the mold. :(

 Linking up here.