I've switched to the new Blogger, and chosen a new look for this blog. Hopefully everything still works!
I'm supposed to be in the garden, potting fresh seedlings so we can have a few bits of colour here and there, around the deck mostly.
I'm 100% certain it's going to rain later so I'll be back, maybe with some garden pics.
Happy New Year's Eve!
Jen and I decided to make cookies for her class on Sunday, which was fun, but so so time consuming. You know what I mean. Bright idea: 10 seconds. Mixing cookie dough: 10 minutes. Cutting, baking and icing cookies: way too bloody long.
They did look great though, with tiny tags courtesy of allsorts (thank you Jenny!)
Next year, we're sticking with *cards only*!
Christmas is an odd time of year for us. We don't celebrate "the true meaning of Christmas", or observe any other religious traditions around this time. As the girls get older, it's increasingly difficult to keep things low-key, increasingly necessary to explain to them why this is. At least, it's a good opportunity to help them learn about what beliefs and traditions and values make different cultures ... well, different.
One thing that I'm pretty sure we have in common though, is that we're all looking forward to the holidays! Only 1 day to go, yippee!
It's been a long time since I used to go to work in an office each day. August 1999, I think. Since then, I've been mostly at home. Mostly with my kids. Mostly surrounded by mess of one sort or another. I love being here, but from time to time the mess bothers me. I can't think straight when I have no surfaces, my mind gets as jumbled as the junk on my kitchen counter-top. Remember Edina from AbFab? "I just want surfaces, darling. I don't want this, look, I don't want this. I don't want things on places like that." That's me at the moment. On a good day.
So at the moment my house is too messy for being creative in. I'm trying to get the motivation together to actually tidy it, but even that's doing my head in, I'm afraid.
One little crafty thing before I go, this bag tag I whipped up for Jen the other night.
I'm off in a few minutes to spend a couple of days at my Dad's place. It'll be a nice relaxing break from normal busy life, I will get in to sleep in! And not be woken up in the night! Yay!
At Playcentre, we plan for our children using the national early childhood curriculum (Te Whariki). One of the aims of the curriculum is that centres provide an environment where children can discover different ways to be creative and expressive.
So, here's Helen at Playcentre on Friday. 
We had an excursion to see Ian at work and he took photos of the children for our photo board at the centre. He gave us a huge piece of background paper, a bit tatty in places, but perfectly fine for us. When we got it back to the centre, we set out paints and brushes and the children got to work. Helen painted herself entirely blue (she had help with the pink!) and danced and dived and rolled around on the paper, being a humpback whale in the ocean.
How marvellous it must be to feel that kind of artistic freedom, to literally be able to put your whole self into your creations.
I finally finished some kimono flower pins last night. I gave up on the tsumami folding with these ones. I think the busy floral pattern suits this style of petal better. As I was attaching pin backs to them, I did think they'd actually have made cute Christmas decorations, if I'd made a wee ribbon loop to hang them instead. Oh well, maybe next time.
