a day to garden...

I've stopped for a moment today to appreciate my garden, at a glance it looks a shambles.

Today though I made myself walk around it, to look at each plant, flower, weed (pulling those as I went), and the spaces they great on the outside of our home.

A garden is an extension of the inside of your home, it is a place to be creative in another way, it can be structured, formal, country, or a self-sufficient garden.  A place to escape from the indoors, and breath in the sweet aromas that linger in the air as the breeze passes you by.  

A place to pause from the chaos and business of life sometimes and stop to reflect on the simple pleasures in life.  So often I think to myself when was the last time I stopped to look at that flower and see it's beauty.

This little principle can be applied to so many aspects of life, not just your garden. 

When did you last stop to appreciate the ones closest to you? your children? your siblings? your parents? etc the list goes on.

Slow down and pause for a moment to catch your breath and re-appreciate your space, internally (your soul) and externally (what you have around you).

xxx

a broken limb...

The baby girl a week on from her 1st birthday has a broken arm.

what happened?

This occurred Monday evening while I was preparing dinner, she was playing, took a tumble, I heard a thud!! and thought oh! crap what's she done?! 

Take a look, loose my breath momentarily and assess the situation as best I can. My baby girl is lying on her side looking at me with those big blue eyes that swell up with tears as the shock of tumbling passes and she realises she is hurting bad. 

I pick her up and embrace my child and comfort her as best I can, she isn't screaming in pain, responding fine so no head injury...phew!!! as you see I didn't see the fall just knew something hurt.

After a while she seems to be fine, then I notice she hasn't moved her right much since I picked her up, it's limpish, won't use it or squeeze my finger with her fingers...hmmm...a broken arm? hurt shoulder? possible broken collar bone???

Off to Accident and Emergency for us at 4.45pm Monday evening.

Waiting for 2hrs we finally get to see a doctor, and a few x-ray's later we have confirmation Summah has broken both bones in her fore arm...by breaking her fall.

So yep a wee baby cast is fitted to her chubby little bubba arm!

You must understand our little girl is very adventurous, confident, a climber, and loves to live life on the edge even at 1.

How this made me feel as a mother? is another blog for another day. 

But today I am thankful that Summah is all good and a broken arm is not slowing her day one bit.

She is learning to use her left hand, adapting to a new style of crawling, and laughing like it's just a big joke having a cast on her arm.

bunting fever...

As it is birthday week, we have buntings and balloons hanging up around the house to celebrate with Summah her birthday.

I went on a little bunting crazy making one for the party, here is what I did.

I set out on an Op shop expedition one day hunting for some cute old pillow case's that were pretty florals, in soft pink/green tones.

my fabric selection, sides seams unpicked and ready to be cut up
NB: each pillow case cost me 50cents and I purchased 8! cheap option for buying fabric for your next bunting.

next I cut out a template from cardboard and drew triangles on each strip of fabric.
I was able to get at least 4-5 strips from each pillow case and then 3 triangles fitted on each strip of material.
This gave me at least 12 triangles from each fabric, lots to work with.

                       
next I cut around the triangles I had sewn on my fabric strips.

this is what they looked like all cut out and sewn around.
Next turn them right side out and zig zag around the edges to give a better finish.

                                                          

the trickiest part was pinning the bunting altogether, with my two helpers.

I saved one pillowcase to make bias tape from for the triangles to be attached too.

Needless to say there was a lot of sewing and even more pin pricks but the end result was two super long awesome buntings for $4!!

These are great birthday party decorations and will be used multiple times and possibly pulled out for Summah's 21st as a momentum of her 1st birthday. 

a road trip...

Wednesday the 19th September, we celebrated a year since Summah was born.

A whole year!! it's been fun.

Anyway my husband had a few hours work in Whangamata, so I asked if Summah and I could join him on a road trip for the day. 

I love spontaneous road trips, so we packed us a little back pack for all weather occasions as you can never tell what's going to happen in spring.

Hit the road before 8am, and stopped once on the way over for Summah to have a quick play in a playground and walk on the grass.

I've discovered she has the tendency to getting car sick...not fun on NZ windy roads.

Summah and I were dropped on the main street of Whangamata, we browsed the shops, only to find many didn't open until 10am.  The other half didn't open mid week, the joys of shopping at a summer holiday destination town, not early spring. 

I have to say we never bought a thing other than bakery for lunch and a coffee for me.

We hit the beach for about 45mins and just sat there playing in the sand, listening to the crashing waves and enjoying the peace and tranquility a beach offers. 

crawling proved a bit tricker than on solid ground to start with, but she got the hang of it quickly.

the super cute my sister gave Summah for her birthday.

  

baby Summah foot prints to the ocean for a quick toe dip.


Something I love about New Zealand is that we are an Island country and the beach is never far away.

Happy birthday my sweet girl.xx

birthday girl...

It's birthday week for little Miss Summah, her first birthday experience.

One whole year has gone and time really does fly, I've had a great time and enjoyed the first year of many to come being a Mumma.

Summah is a delightful little girl, happy, chatty, bubbly, silly, and has some great facial expressions that make me crack up in laughter often through out the day.

I love her and know that each day we have together is a blessing from above, at no point do you know when your days together can be taken. 

I savour every moment we have together as Mother/Daughter and I love watching her grow, develop and challenge her world around her even at 1.

So this is her birthday week and we kicked it off with a celebration of the first year, and invited family/friends to celebrate with us.

I find it is more of a 'thank you' to those closest to you for their support, advice, help and encouragement as this is what gets you through in that first year as new parents.

(whether each year gets easier or not I am about to find out)

The party girl became very sick late last week and we had to nearly cancel the party, but she pulled through and loved it!!!

She loved it so much that the Monday morning she woke up looking for all the party guests, wanting to play again like the day before.

It was very cute to see...a social butterfly in the making I think.

Anyway here are a few photos of Summah's big day.

1st birthday cake...delicious!!

a timeline of Summah's 12mths

photo timeline to celebrate the last 12mths....a big hit!

a little drink for the small people at the party

sweet treats for everyone

so incredibly happy she just doesn't know what to say?!

1.2.3..blow out the candle!

me and the birthday girl.

proud parents of a 1yr old.

What a fun year it has been, and I look forward to the next year.

Love you Summah xxx

bathroom makeover part 2

It is finally finished, and our super blue bathroom is no longer!

This is a good thing and a great achievement, with many hours of hard labour by ourselves we have it all completed.

Even with the help of a near 1yr old and a very inquisitive cat (aka.Mr. Austin), we achieved what we set out to do before Summah's first birthday party this coming weekend (16th Sept).

It wasn't easy to say the least there were moments of tension, frustration, maybe the odd snapping here and there but all in all we had fun together doing up our bathroom. 

The thing is with my husband and I we have similar taste when it comes to decorating, and I love the fact he has an input and opinion about what we do to our house.  It's not just me left to decorate, it's a team effort and it is so much more fun when you are working together on something. 

(No matter what that may be).

We love to decorate and do up house's but not to the extent that everything is torn apart at once and then slowly reconstructed. It's more along the lines of  room by room as we can afford it, and now more than half the house has been redone...yay!! 

Anyway photo's of the bathroom make over.

Cringe with me, as you see the before photos. 

(as I do now looking back wondering why it took us 3 1/2yrs to change it from when we purchased this house).

before

after...huge change and improvement if you ask me.

celebration time!!!

For this room we:

* new vanity

* new shower

* kept exsisting mirror...(too expensive to replace)

* new light above vanity (on sale)

* vinyl (bargain purchase from Trademe)

* new towel rail & hand towel rail
* bench top (which was a pantry door cut down)
* re wallpapered by ourselves (a first for us)

The toilet room was redone at the same time in the same colours, so all in all it has been a very busy 2 weeks, hence why I haven't blogged in like for ever.