Happy New Year to everyone!

Happy New Year everyone, we have spent a great evening with our children playing max and jacks and discussing how sad it is that people don't read as much as they used too. Books open the imagination and make you believe you can do anything. My daughter read Anne Frank's Diaries when she was 10, she inherited the reading bug from me and I will always be grateful for that.
What books do you remember as good reads, if you are a reader there are a few that will stick in your mind for all time..
mine are:
I heard the owl call my name
His name is courage
Watership Down
Memoirs of a Geisha
Tom Sawyer
Call of the Wild
White Fang
Shadow the sheepdog
Black Beauty
My family and other animals

A good book will  always stay in your mind. As my husband says a good book lives forever.

I hope all your dreams and ambitions for 2013 come true but most of all I hope you have a happy year with lots of love and lots of laughs!

ramblings of a mind!

Occasionally a mind tends to wander through events that shape your life...so from time to time I will put these on here and please just skip them if all you are interested in is the crafts and if my ramblings give anyone any pleasure I will be pleased but for now I'm just happy putting it out there!

Cath and I started emailing each other a few years back when we were going through some trying times as you do sometimes, We found that by downplaying our difficulties and making them funny for each other we could laugh and look at our hard times in a different light. Sometimes when things are really hard it takes a friend to show you that maybe its not so bad as you think. You can still have a laugh with a good friend over things that normally would make you want to run away screaming.

It makes you realize that even though your life seems to be falling apart around you your friends and family around you are the glue that holds you together and the light that leads you out of the dark! You need to keep those people close and treasure them. Been the emotional beings that we are that is what makes us all tick and what makes us look forward to the next day. The amazing things that our friends and family bring into our lives every day because they love us so much.

To me the most precious things I have in this life are my family and friends who except all my faults and quirks and are always there to lift me up and laugh with me when I have fallen down. They can only be there for you though if you let them, the choice is all yours!

Well thank you Jo for the lovely things you said about my toys and dolls.  Well it all began when Courtney and I got that book from you.  We started at the beginning of the book and worked our way through  the book making toys and dolls.  Well before long we develpoed a great love for making all sorts of dolls.  We made Red Riding Hood Dolls, Blue dolls with huge hats, big dolls, baby dolls, you name it, we made it.  What fun my little girl and I have with this!!!!!  Our sewing room is full of our toys and dolls.  We modified patterns and clothing, most of which we made up as we went along.  We have got so much out of that sewing book.  And trust me, we are makiing more and more toys - at the moment we are making bright yellow dolls with pretty frilly dresses and hats.  I'm in my happy place, hope you are too.

caths soft toys

Cath, who is my truly amazing sister-in-law and a great friend got a book from me last year that is all about sewing dolls and soft toys because sewing machines run away screaming when they see me and swoon when they see her! These are a few dolls and toys she has sewn up over the past year with her daughter and as she is so amazing with sewing machine, she has made adjustments to fit her limitations of materials. As anyone will know living in a economically challenged time you need to make a plan with what you have if you want to do any thing. Cath pooh poohs the families praise of her dolls but we just love them!

Giggles and gift boxes

So today was our first day together looking at all the creative ideas we could find and think of over the past few days and boy were the ideas flowing!  It took us an hour or two to settle on the idea of gift boxes and the note books that I put on our previous post. We had fantastic helpers...our two daughters and Cath's sister who had many great ideas. We also had so much fun chatting while we were creating and are happily tired now because it gives you an amazing feeling of accomplishment when you have completed your project that you have set out to do for the day.

The gift boxes we made came from a magazine either a woman's value or essentials which are both fantastic magazines if you enjoy making things! Real value for your money and definitely essential to all woman who like great ideas. So lets get to the nitty gritty.....
We used:
colored cardboard
basic box pattern
Scissors
glue gun (which is a great creation!)
ribbon
Various letters, snail shells, jigsaw pieces (from that puzzle that half the pieces are missing from!) curls of paper, pencil stub, old birthday candles etc.....
It was another of those things that is really easy to make and so much fun to decorate because as a group you come up with your own ideas and borrow a few from each other and in a few hours you have several small gift boxes you can use for any occasion. 
We are having so much fun with this and we hope you do too!

Cath and Jo

A small notebook

This is my first two attempts at my notebook idea, the first is the red notebook and as you can see my punching was a bit off.
I used a small tile to make the squares
handmade paper for the covers
2 a4 papers folded and cut to size
a stapler
punch
ribbon
snowflake the kids made for xmas decorations

lavender from the garden
and glue
it is pretty easy to make and I am sure you can make various shapes for the covers using different shapes as a template. Just make sure your cut the paper slightly smaller so it fits in the covers without showing!
I punched a hole on both sides of the covers for the ribbon then stapled 1 a4 page cut small to each cover, then I tied the ribbon on both sides. I then pasted the snowflake on the cover and stapled the lavender I tied together with a ribbon on the cover...voila! a small notebook. Hope you like it.

2013 Jar

Hey Jo, it's Cath here - my sister-in-law in Aussie sent me this -
Start the year with an empty jar and fill it with notes about the good things that happen. Then on New Year's Eve, empty it out, and see what awesome stuff happened that year.  I think this is lovely - I'm going to put my jar ontop of the fridge.

New Year's Resolutions 2013 !!!!

Hello there, this is Jo and Cath.

After our dismal Christmas this year, we have taken a proactive stance to make sure that 2013 Christmas is the best one ever.  So we have created this blog to keep us on track, and more especially to keep a track of our accomplishments this year. 

Our very amazing children made us realize how special home-made presents can be - and we will be focusing on this for Christmas 2013.  There may be tears, there may be anguish, but we will persist and solider bravely on, and will be documenting all our mistakes and triumphs.

So we hope that you will laugh and cry along side with us as we take this journey of discovery.

Any great ideas you may have are most welcome - we would love to hear from you.  We fully intend to try out any creative ideas you may have to offer - but we may have to improvise on occasion - due to budget constraints etc etc etc....

To begin with, we intend to look at all the other amazing blogs out there to help with creative process. 

So here's to the beginning of our great journey - glad to have you on board.