Summer Lovin'... had me a blast!

Hey there Lovelies!  We managed to get a fair bit done on the weekend.  We finished painting the foya and hallway, and painted the lounge room, the bedroom doors and door frames.  We have finally finished all the pruning and tidying the gardens as best we can without some professional help.  I think we will mulch the gardens and finish it all off before winter sets in next year.  It was a hot weekend and we spent a little bit of Sunday afternoon in the blow up pool. The girls to washed their pushbikes and they played in the sprinkler... sooo cute!  Luckily Santa is bringing them some new cossies for Christmas,  Evie's togs are a little too cheeky now!

Scarecrows and Strawberry Lemonade

We have the most incredibly busy weekend planned...  painting, sewing, Santa photos and rubbish dump runs to name a few, not to mention the high possibility of having a needy, sore and sorry puppy after his operation to prevent him from, "falling in love" (as we have told Layla).  :)  

Papa Bear is heading up to the Pilbara to give all the boys their Christmas presents and make sure everyone is doing a good job, and he will be away for almost a week!  I am hoping to get as many chores scratched from the list this weekend, so we can all start relaxing and ENJOYING the holidays.   Layla has her Christmas break-up party on Tuesday, and I'm considering giving her the rest of the week off... it really is just dragging on now.  All the little kiddies are grumpy and tired after two weeks of swimming lessons every day and Christmas concert preparation.  So... while Mark is away with work, I'm really going to try and inject a little bit more fun and summer lovin' into next week...

• We are going to make some strawberry lemonade and have our afternoon tea as a picnic in the backyard.  http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/easy-strawberry-lemonade/Detail.aspx
• Make a scarecrow to keep the birds away from our sweet corn, another afternoon
• Take the little Cherry Blossoms down the hill to help pick some paint out for their pretty bedrooms.
• Wash all our dolly clothes and hang out to dry in the lovely warm sunshine, with the pretty, wooden pegs we decorated recently.
• Listen to some old Christmas records and make a big batch of scented cooked playdough to keep in the fridge over the holidays.

... sounds like a perfect start to the holidays!  We have got all our Christmas decorations up, and all our presents sorted out, (apart from the wrapping part) which I fully intend to take my time with and enjoy! 

I will post some photos of our adventures next weekend.  'til then, take time to make time Dolls!  T x  

Layla's Christmas concert.

Layla had her Christmas concert last night!  Oh it was so adorable!  They had a beach/Christmas theme and sang, "Christmas in Australia" and "Six White Boomers"... much to Mark's delight - he loves the Aussie take on Christmas!  Layla did a supurb job of singing and dancing, and even had a little stint at the microphone... She spoke so well! We are all so proud of her. Evie had fun too, eating smarties and watching the performances on her Daddy's shoulders, one more year and little Evie will be up there doing her thing too... GULP... Where did the last three years go?  Layla and her little friend Samuel are great friends and even got to sit next to each other last night! CUTE!  

         

Dear Santa...



Just in case you were wondering what I have on my wish list for Santa this year... 



Some lovely urns for the entrance to my front patio... x2 please Santa xx



A pretty bike with a basket on the front, for Sunday rides up to the stone fruit orchard.

A key or anchor Tattoo x

Some new Lorna Jane training clothes would be swell Santa... you can ask Tan to help you with them!

...and I would love you forever if I was to unwrap these two lovelies from India Hicks!

Thanks Santy... I will still love you, and be just as happy, if you just gave me, my family and friends, Health and Happiness!  Amore,  Tam.

 

Oh Christmas tree... Oh Christmas tree...

Hey there, I hope you had a lovely weekend!  Our's was a little rainy, but outstanding! Jam-packed with fun, AND super productive!  Somehow though, we all felt so relaxed despite how busy we were, and we just loved having a weekend at home hanging out together! 

Here's what we got up to...  in pictures!

We chopped down our beautiful Christmas tree, and set up our pretty, "bird and butterfly" themed decorations for this year.  Papa Bear added the fairy lights and candy canes, and started to get carried away with dressing the tree... before I had to tell him to leave some things for the girls to add to the tree... ha ha!

  

My little sweethearts helped me make their new little cousin's, "Corduroy Brown, Bunny Rabbit" from scratch and I have almost finished Evie and Layla's Christmas dress x

I made sure I took some quiet time out to make myself a lovely cup of tea and read some of "Narnia" to my little cherubs.

And to finish off our weekend we took a Sunday drive in the Monaro with the windows down and "Angus and Julia Stone" up as loud as can be!  We picked out our Christmas lights from Bunnings, and got lots of "thumbs up" as a show of appreciation for the Monaro as we were driving home.  After we had set up the Christmas lights, Mark went to the shops and surprised me with an enormous bottle of Italian Merlot to go with our roast chicken!  We ate our yummy dinner on the front patio with our Christmas lights, and then Layla and Evie decided to help me with the washing up... what little Sweethearts!  Well it's another busy week for us, so I'd best get to my ironing.   Big love, Tam. x

Sew pretty *

I have picked my fabric to make little Hunny and Baby Bear's dresses on the weekend, hoooray! and after unpacking the Christmas decorations last night... I came across a box with all my old poetry books, and also a couple of vintage children's books, I found at a second-hand shop years ago in Darwin... it really is Christmas!  I'm looking forward to cuddles with Papa Bear, lots of sewing and cups of chai tea, cutting down and decorating our REAL x-mas tree, and reading to my Cherry Blossoms this raining weekend... I hope you have a lovely weekend too! Love  T.

Christmas hoarding x

Hey... well you know when I said that I thought our plums would be ready by Christmas? well, they're ready to eat now!  Evie and I harvested a whole heap today... enough to fill our little basket. The ivy is our very own as well, and I can't believe I didn't think about it before... but it will be perfect to help dress our Christmas table for lunch x 

I had to brave the shopping centre today to grab a few essentials... and I hated every second of it!  I picked up a plum pudding and a beautiful tin of Walkers biscuits... with our favourite boy who never wanted to grow up on it!  I have started stocking the pantry for Christmas now, but I am absolutely dreading having to do it all again in a week!  I hope your all organised with your Christmas shopping... or at least enjoying the process - I'm glad ours is just about done!  Love x

Bubble and Lolly-Legs present..." Tic Tac Toe"! Tooo cute x

I thought I'd upload this video of the girls singing one of they're favourite rhymes.  It just makes my heart melt!  I've been teaching them the "Shirley Temple is a star" - they're almost ready for action, so I'll post it when they have it down-pat.  

"The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies." -- Gertrude Jekyll

We have PLUMS... only little yet, but I'm certain they'll be ripe for the picking by Christmas eve to add to our basket of stone-fruit  for Christmas Lunch! Mmmmmmmm!

Look at our Veggie Patch... it's growing so, big so quickly thanks to our chicken poo, compost heap and a little help from our friend... SeaSol x  :-)  We have flowers on our Zucchini and Tomato and the Strawberries just keep on keeping on!  I have my gooseberry bush now, and we added a passion fruit and a white grape vine to the rest of the patch the other day.  It's such a lovely thing to water and nurture the garden, I really feel so lucky to have one of my very own now. 

We have some cute little visitors in the Veggie garden as well... some days it's covered in little white butterflies, bees, and the tiniest little birds.  I have finally got the grass  growing between the step stones... we will have to mow soon!  The only other thing I want to add to my veggie patch is my beautiful rustic gate, and some house numbers to attach to the stepping stones for the girls... such little things, but there are soooooo many little things to do!  

This lantern was a present to myself on my birthday.  We have it hanging up in our gorgeous shady tree in the back yard.  Evie and I found it hanging up in a little tea house/nursery just 3 mins down the road from us... and I just needed to take it home.  I love the whimsical, almost Gothic look of it. I'm going to get just one more to hang in our orange tree, it's the perfect addition to our evening bbq's.

I have some little apples starting to grow on our tree in the back yard, and our semi-formal agapanthus boarder is about to flower, it makes me a little sad and happy at the same time- it's almost 12 months since dear Grandma went to heaven, and agapantus have always reminded me of her.  It's nice too, because agapanthus remind me of Queensland!  I LOVE that we have some huge palm trees in our gardens, it's almost like we bought a little bit of the Tropics with us ;)  The orange tree has just finished blossoming, and the hibiscus flowers are all out, and we're still getting lemons, (how lucky) which is lovely to add to our Friday arvo Corona's!

Cheers Dolls! x T.