He Sleeps... Therefore, I Hobby...

Well my only real hobbies before have been beading/jewellery design or reading. Since having been pregnant my hobbies have been complaining about sore joints and sitting in front of the fan. Since having Riley, my hobbies have been singing silly songs in a horrible singing voice, trawling TradeMe and baby stores for cute baby things, paper scrapbooking and having coffee with other mums. Now that Riley has figured out how to sleep in predictable amounts, I have been "siggie making" and digital scrapbooking... and I love it! 

No longer do I look longingly at my favourite bits and pieces and settle for second best so I don't use the good ones. No longer do I look at a completed page and think to myself "well to be honest that's pretty crap" because by the miracle of an "Undo" button and a copy and paste, all that has changed! 

In fact... I am a Designer in Training on 2 siggie making websites... Simply Siggies which can be found here and Little Monster Designs which can be found at this link. Not only that... but I have been asked to join a CT (creative team). 

Claire of Tink Designs. (My layouts can be found on the forum)

Would also like to mention MJs Digital Creationz where I made a couple of Layouts using her first for-sale kit "Perfect Moment" which can be found at Sunflower Scraps Boutique

What A Weekend!!!

Had one of my most exciting weekends, and here I am on Tuesday morning finally writing about it... well lets start with Saturday shall we?

My big little-man........ (drum roll please)........ rolled over!!!!! When he first did it, I didn't believe it was him... but when I thought about it, and realised that Dave wasn't even sitting next to him and I hadn't helped him... I was so excited that I kept popping him back on his tummy. After 4 rolls he was pretty over it and didn't want to be on his tummy any longer. But dare I say it...? I cried a little. Is there anything more precious than watching your child learn and grow right in front of your eyes? 

Even have a short vid of him on the Sunday rolling over on camera... I would like to stress how hard this was to obtain. He is a poser and everytime he sees the camera, he stops what he is doing, stares at it and smiles. (Gorgeous, yes! But can get a little frustrating when you are trying to capture some video!) Anyway... here he is on the Sunday, ignore me talking... please? ;-)

And my other exciting news is that..... we finished the mural! Well except for the outlining and the eyes, but have to wait for it to dry before we did that, so will just leave it til Sunday this week (only real day we can do it) and will be completely finished then. Took us a while and a few inhaled paint fumes which gave me a killer headache when I stopped painting long enough to notice. It was raining so the room wasn't properly ventilated and Riley was with us, not at my mum and dad's (like we did last weekend to paint) so had the lounge room shut off, so couldn't even get any house-breathing-cross-breeze-flow going on. I was a little too excited about the painting that night...! Here is a pic of the room where we are up too now... you can't see the elephants trunk at the moment, and there are a few white spots from the wall, but will look great when we have outlined :-)

On that exciting note, I am now off to go climb under Riley's playgym with him and make some stupid faces in the mirror, just to hear him laugh :-)

The Jungle has Grass!

Spent today painting Riley's bedroom and if I do say so myself... it's looking great!!!

Have made it to the 3rd stage out of 8 (background, foreground, foliage, giraffe, elephant, lion, bird and snake, outline)  so next weekend we move onto the animals! I am so excited and can't wait until its finished!!

And here are some pics to have a squizz at!

Stage 1 (background)

Stage 2 (foreground)

Stage 3 (foliage)

The Sleeping Bag Saga...

Well the last week I have been doing some research into baby merino sleeping bags. I am wanting to start a home based business type thing that I can do while looking after my little one... and also any excuse to dress him up and take pictures... well I'm there with bells on! 

Have been asking alot of women about what they think of my ideas as during my reseach I have noticed something I could offer that I haven't found in other sleeping bags yet... so fingers crossed it goes as well as I hope. At the very least I might get a bit of pocket money for mine and Rileys clothes as we need them so we don't have to be short one week when he grows out of yet another set. 

On that note also, I have been looking at bibs and blankets as those would be quick enough to just whip together, and might be a good place to start until I have some money to get some sleeping bags made... Pre-selling might be an idea, but then again, if something happens and I'm unable to get it done, well that would suck for me and my customer... 

The ideas flow and the thinking peaks and the designs continue... watch this space

Its a Jungle in there!

Well when we found out we were having a boy we began thinking about his bedroom and how we should paint it.

Personally I found plain walls, wall stickers, borders, wall hangings/paintings a bit boring and mainstream and too generic... so I am very glad I have an artistic man and he agreed that it would be an awesome idea to paint 3 walls I none colour and paint the entire 4th wall as a mural - feature wall.

We found the perfect picture through a google search and have gone with a cartoon styled drawing of a group of jungle animals. In the background we have a few vines and a (palm?) tree... in the foreground there is an elephant, a lion (not eating the elephant, that would make for an interesting childrens room mural!), a giraffe, snake and bird.

So far we have completely painted the 3 plain walls and the background of the mural. Over next to the door by the light switch, we are going to do a tall giraffes neck and head as a growth chart. We decided on a mural, because it will still be easy (ish) enough to repaint it when he decides he doesn't like jungle animals.

Dave has already been talking about painting the entire room in Manchester United theme.... it would be nice if he talked about changing it AFTER we have finished... but what do you expect? Luckily we both love painting rooms/houses so neither of us sees it as a chore. And we also love our own types of painting... he loves cutting in and doing all the fancy pants "neat edges" and I love getting a huge paintbrush and painting what I describe as "demolition painting" where you just attack the wall and get the paint on there. So glad we work well as a team and don't tread on each other's toes.

Cant wait until its finished!!! Riley is 3 months old now and we only started the mural today... woops!

Photos to come! (When we finish hehe)