Eighteen25 HOME Print

 The talented trio at one of my favourite blogs, Eighteen25, recently created these great prints which anyone is able to download for FREE!

They are calling these the 'filler print', perfect as a spare to pop into your holiday frame while waiting for the next holiday to roll around again.

I got my holiday print plain white frame from Factory Frames and it has been used for my Christmas, Valentines Day and Easter print, however since then has been sitting unloved in a cupboard waiting...

These cute prints are available in a few different colour options and are super easy to download and print off, either at home or at your local printing lab. I took advantage of a 50% off enlargements offer at Harvey Norman so this print only cost me $4.50, bargain!

Of course, the best part is the message it shares. I have it in our entrance way and after a long day at work, it is a nice reminder about what it most important. I love my little family and this brings a smile to my face whenever I see it. :)

Project Life Tuesday: Cupcakes

Project Life Tuesday today is cupcakes...

My beautiful friend Heidi invited me to join her at The Homestore in Milford for a couple of cupcake decorating sessions and wow, such fun! I am a complete novice at this type of thing and my cupcakes were far from perfect but I was actually still proud of them, flaws and all! lol

Challenge for Project Lifers: Take a snapshot of a new hobby you have tried. 

Simple Pleasures

The weather has turned and this past week has been freezing! We have been getting as close to the fire as possible this week and have rediscovered a very simple pleasure...hot water bottles.

Santa gave these cute little hotties for Rosie and Harry for Christmas last year and I must say, good old Santa was really thinking ahead. :) We tried them out for the first time this week and they have been an instant hit.

It is now part of our family bedtime routine to fill up the hotties and place them in their beds to warm them up. After their bedtime story they cuddle into their bottles and it makes this freezing weather just that little bit easier to bear.

Organising Project: Gift Box

Another quick little organising project that I have finally got around to completing. I am not sure why it has taken me so long, it took me all of 5 minutes to put together so there was no excuse really. :)

I have wanted to put together a little gift box for a while now, as a way of storing gifts, wrapping paper, gift bags and cards for times when I need to get a present together quickly. There are times when it seems my littlies are attending birthday parties every weekend and it gets time consuming and tiring to keep making special trips out to buy gifts.

Time pressures also mean you may not always get the best deal and end up paying more than you wanted to, or settling for something that isn't quite right. I have done both of these things on more than one occasion!

The idea behind this little project is that you pick up gifts that might appeal and store them away for when you need them in the future. For example, Harry and his friends love Transformers so when I saw a 50% sale on Transformers, I picked up a few to pop in the box and having them there has saved me several shopping trips on a Saturday morning.

This plastic crate was sitting unused in our garage but you can find similar ones at stores such as Payless Plastics, Briscoes and The Warehouse. They are inexpensive and easy to stack or store in a cupboard or closet.

Just gather together all your present supplies, from cards and paper, to cellotape and scissors and you will have your own portable gift station. It will save you time and money. :)

Busy Day Meal Idea: Spicy Beef Noodle Stir Fry

This is a great recipe to whip up on a busy night. It is inexpensive, fast and my family love it. I often serve it on rice instead of noodles and have successfully substituted the beef for chicken.

Ingredients

440g flat rice noodles

1/3 cup chicken stock

1/4 cup hoisin sauce

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoons brown sugar

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger

1/2 teaspoon Chinese five spice

1 tablespoon oil

500g beef mince

Assortment of stir fry vegtables, chopped and diced

Method

1. Prepare and cook noodles. Combine stock, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sugar, garlic, ginger and Chinese five spice in a small bowl.
2. Heat wok or large frypan, add half the oil and brown the mince for 5 minutes. Transfer the meat to a plate. Heat the remaining oil and add the vegetables. Stir fry fry for 2-3 minutes until the vegetables are bright in colour, tender and crisp.
3. Add the stock mixture, mince and noodles to the pan. Stir fry for 2 minutes or until noodles are soft and heated through.
4. Serve and enjoy!

Project Life Tuesday: Tears

Project Life Tuesday for today is a real life snapshot of a moment in our home which occurs reasonably regularly. Crying, or more specifically, tears. Both my kids are quite sensitive souls and their feelings are easily hurt by one another. On this occasion Rosie had made Harry feel unwelcome on the trampoline and he was a little upset about it.

I know it might seem mean, but before I reached down and gave him a nice Mummy cuddle to make it all better, I grabbed this shot. The camera happended to be right there and after all, Project Life is all about capturing real life, the good...and the sad.

Challenge for Project Lifers: Take a picture of the emotion behind an incident in your home.

Hidden Treasures

I am soooo excited about this hidden treasure that we have have just found at our house. For the last four years I thought that all these precious momentos from my pregnancy and Harry's birth were lost forever. We have moved house twice since he was born and I assumed that they had gone missing in one of our moves. Words can't explain how excited I was to find these tucked away in an unused set of drawers yesterday!

 

I found all the cards we received when Harry was born, my pregnancy diary, all the DVD's and photos from our scans (we had at least 6), my feeding notes for the first few days and a packet of photos from the first four weeks of his life. I even found both of our hospital bracelets!

We have had several laptop crashes since the kids were born and have lost countless photos from their first years so I was over the moon to find these. Finding these lost treasures has given me the incentive to get onto compiling Rosie and Harry's albums and finding a permanent place for these special items. :)

Winter

Winter has always been one of my favourite seasons, probably largely due to the fact that you can stay indoors without guilt! When the weather is fine I feel compelled to get out and about and appreciate it, but in winter I can stay at inside and enjoy being in my favourite place...home.

I love the sound of the rain hitting the roof, snuggling up in front of the fire with my family and feeling like there is no other place I would rather be. I hope you all enjoy your winter weekend. :)

My Flatpack

Calling all Ikea fans...you can now buy your favourite Ikea products in NZ!

Sure, it isn't the large Auckland store we were hoping for but it does mean you can save yourself an overseas trip and excess baggage fees at the airport. :)

Ikea Expedit
Image courtesy of 6th Street Design School

My Flatpack has been around for a while now but they have recently updated their website and it is now even easier to order your Ikea goodies. Whether it be the the Billy, the Expedit or the PS Cabinet, you can get it all through them and if they don't have it in stock, they can get a quote and order it in for you.

Ikea Billy Bookcase

I for one am excited about the prospect as it is no secret that I love Ikea for cheap, fun solutions for your home. Not to mention Ikea stores, you need to set aside at least a day in there to soak it all in, followed by some Swedish meatballs at the cafe, of course. :)

Ikea PS Cabinet
Image courtesy of Decor Pad

So in lieu of our own Ikea store in NZ, I think My Flatpack will do just nicely for now. :)

Project Life Tuesday: Eating Out

My Project Life photo of the day today is of our family eating out. This is not something we do often so I thought it might be nice to get a picture of the rare occasion we do go out!

Most family friendly places are great at providing pictures and colouring pencils for the kids and they really enjoy choosing from the menu. It makes it extra special due to the fact that it isn't a regular occurance. 

 

Challenge for Project Lifers: Take a photo of your family enjoying a meal out together. :)

Interviewing Your Child

A few months ago I saw a fantastic idea out there in blogland. The idea was that you interview your child and capture a great little memory of their responses for you to keep and enjoy in future years. I have been meaning to do this for a while and today I plan to sit down with Rosie and Harry and have a really good chat and fill in our interview sheets together. :)

There are a few versions of these floating around on the web but none had exactly the questions I was looking for. This meant I had to devise my own and I have saved the template to use for next time. I think it will be a great thing to do once a year with the kids and to keep in their personal albums.  

First of all, I have decided to ask the 'favourite' questions:

How old are you?

What is your favourite colour?

What is your favourite animal?

What is your favourite movie?

What is your favourite book?

What is your favourite food to eat?

What is your favourite song to sing?

What is your favourite holiday?

Then a few more general questions:

Who is your best friend?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

If you could change your name, what would you choose? (This should be a laugh!)

What games do you like to play?

What makes you happy?

What makes you sad?

What do you love about Mummy?

What do you love about Daddy?

Finally, I will get them to write their name for me.

Rosie will be able to fill her own sheet out and I will record Harry's responses for him. I am sure he will enjoy signing his name at the end. I am really looking forward to spending some time on this today and it will hopefully springboard some lovely discussion. :)

The Boys are Back in Town!

After two weeks with just us girls at home, Taff and Harry are back from the UK and Rosie and I are sooo happy to have them back. :)

It was very quiet without them and towards the end we were counting the days until their return. We were really excited to pick them up at the airport on Thursday and it was fantastic to see them coming through the gates.

It was also fantastic to see that all the shopping luggage arrived safely and intact! lol. I went a little overboard on Ebay UK and took advantage of the great exchange rate at the moment...there were many bargains to be had. :)

Our house is now back to normal and it is great to have the boys back. Holidays away are always great...but so is coming home. :)

Rosie trying her new Next satin party dress...$6!



Shopping at Your Own Home

Today's post is all about saving money when it comes to decorating your home . It is something that I do all the time and is great fun...if you like that sort of thing. :)

I get bored with my surroundings very easily and love to make changes around our home on a regular basis. I am very much a home girl and it is my favourite place to be, so I love creating something new out of things I already own.

I have made cushions out of old bedspreads, pillowcases out of duvet covers and quilts out of bed sheets. I love upcycling old things into something new. It takes a little bit of time but the end product is so worth the effort.

One of my favourite things to do is to go shopping...in our own home! I love going through the house and looking for ways I can change things around. Remember the vintage Sanderson cushions I made for our bedroom? They have since had a stint in our lounge, along with a throw rug from the spare room and the hall table from our entrance way.

It is amazing how different things look when placed in other parts of the house and best all, your shopping trip is free! Try and walk through your house with fresh eyes and see what you can steal from one room to embellish another.

Happy shopping!

Project Life Tuesday: Relaxing

What does relaxation look like at your house?

Sometimes at our house, this is what it looks like. :)

Snuggling up with your favourite Dora blanket, the remote control and your fingers in your mouth (ewww)!

Challenge for Project Lifers: Take a POTD of your family relaxing at home.

Rosie's Big Girl Bedroom Update

It has been almost two months since I blogged a sneak peek of Rosie's bedroom update and I have finally organised myself to get some snapshots to share.

As I mentioned in this post, Rosie's room doubles as a guest room as our spare bedroom downstairs is still out of action at the moment. I decided to purchase a double bed for her room as it is large enough for guests to use and not too large that it dominates the room completely.

Double beds have fallen out of favour in recent years and have been replaced with King Single and Queen beds. This created a challenge for me as this size is hard to come by. I knew exactly the kind of bed I wanted and after a few weeks of searching, I found the closest match to it.

It is a Northwood slat bed from Bedstop in a satin white finish and I really liked it's simplicity. Then I had to track down some suitable linen and I took several weeks to decide on this as well!

I finally settled on a duvet set and cushion from Wallace Cotton's Rebecca Range. It is beautifully made and isn't too babyish and should last Rosie for a while.

Everything else in the room were things we already owned and we just switched some of them around so they fit in the room better.

As with all our DIY and decorating, it is still a work in progress and there are a few things I would still like to do in here before I declare it truly finished.

I would like to make some bunting and hang some of these super cute polka dot lanterns that we have left over from Rosie's party last year.

Sort of like this!

Rosie is enjoying having her own space again although just quietly, I think she also misses her chats with Harry at bedtime. :)

Traditions...

What are some of your family traditions?

One of our favourites is stopping in Pokeno for ice-cream when we travel to Hamilton to visit Nana and Papa. Rosie and Harry both look forward to this and love choosing their flavours. It is such a simple thing to do and yet it is these simple things that help to create memories for years to come. On this day I thought I would take a picture of our little tradition. :)

Our Hallway Update

Remember this wallpapered wall? Yes, I loved this paper so much and we always got lots of positive comments on it but I don't know, it just didn't "feel" right. As I mentioned in my previous post, the cool grey and white just didn't work with our warm timber floors and I wanted to have a better sense of flow with the colours throughout the rest of the house.

So one night, quite some time ago, I got out my bucket of warm soapy water and started stripping all the wallpaper off.

Given that it was only put up a few months prior, it all came off pretty easily, unlike the wallpaper in other rooms in the house.

I must say, we were quite sad to see it go and it has been replaced with a far more boring painted wall.

On this plus side, the wall now matches the rest of the house (Resene Soapstone, of course) and although boring, I feel better about it. I am quite conservative in my decorating tastes and this little wall confirmed that to me.

I have plans for our little front entrance but these ideas could take a while to come to fruition. We are cursed blessed with a 1960's home which feature wall lights. They are everywhwere...and I really don't like them. Mainly because I love light and I don't think they throw out enough of it!

This wall has a light smack bang in the middle of it, thereby making it very difficult to hang art or anything else on. Our plan is to get rid of this light and put up a large mirror instead. I still haven't decided whether to get a new ceiling light installed or just a power point and have lamps on our hall table instead.

Either way, these plans are in limbo at the moment so it is a rather unexciting part of the house. In the meantime though, I will continue to dream away about the possibilities.. Did someone say gallery wall? :)