{break in transmission}

see you all soon! (yum, we ate all the rest of the broc, pea and fetta tart we made - of course smothered with our family recipe sri lankan chutney)

tropical holiday

tomorrow, we're heading off on a plane to spend some time with the in-laws in darwin! tropical heat here we come!

this will be lottie's 5th time on a plane but she is such a pepped up bebe now i'm actually a teensy bit apprehensive. no more sleeping in mama's arms for starters....

so whats a mama to do? put together an action pack of never seen before toys, as well as some old time favourites all together in a homemade toy bag! i'm playing on lottie's absolute weakness for shiny, loud and colourful things and have sewn a bunch of stuff into gladbags. that way she gets to touch and feel without CHOKING! i've also been saving milk bottle lids and the likes and have threaded them, between cut straws onto some wool to make a super interesting and very chewable piece of bebe trash! she totally loves this kinda stuff!

and if all else fails - bring out the car keys!

(i implore you to go ahead and make such toys for your bebe but if they have teeth like mine, of course they'll need constant supervision when playing with them! but y'all mamas out there know that!)

new day

i'm so glad its a new day. its so hard when you feel super angry, frustrated and down in the dumps and you have no time or right to express it. i feel like i can't have those feelings anywhere near Lottie Pearl. Its unfair and just unhelpful. of course when she is older it will be important for her to understand that everyone has different feelings but right now, she just needs me to be full of smiles, love and enthusiasm.

as opposed to feeling like i could stab her miffy doll.

to be fair - yesterday got SO bad it became laughable. your sweet messages and even a parcel arriving from some friends in perth choc full-o-pressies of course made things better! i even went down to our local bookshop perimeter to buy myself some japanese books and the hello sandwich wrapping guide and that definitely put a smile on my dial.

so today i look forward to LP sleeping for longer, my mamas group coming over for lunch and packing our bags for a mini tropical holiday!!!

grey clouds

must be general winter discontent being blown around.....

today i'm going to be stomping around immaturely, leaving unwanted bills in the letterbox to get rained on and eaten by snails, being lazy, not playing nice and DEFINITELY not calmly talking through disagreements.

i'm so grumpy i can't even find a picture to suit! 

chewing straws is good for teef pain!

weekend!

opshopping, sewing bibkerchiefs and zippy purses, eating and cooking too much, lunching, dinners, all nighters (for K that is), great grandparents and listening to BON IVER's new record over and over and over!

what i didn't capture on film was my sunday arvo tantrum  at K about NOTHING. turns out i just needed a nap, a big cuddle and a glass of wine!

friday, as i find it!

today is friday and this is how some of the drawers around my house look! my faves are the last ones....small drawers i found in a junk shop. made with wood and sardine tins!

i think its nice to show a few more photographs of how things 'are' without too much primping and preening!

these modern times

how lucky, as stay at home mamas, are we to be able to connect with others without even leaving our own four walls? my mum speaks a lot about isolation when she was in a brand new suburb out in the sticks with 2 small children. it really affected her experience.

thanks hatchling for thinking of me and reminding me that there are so many lovely connections to be had out there in this world AND that i shouldn't be so scared of moving "home"

meanwhile - whilst i wait for overlocker lessons to start - my old bernina is getting a work out! bibs, bibkerchiefs and bloomers are all being furiously sewn up. i'm really enjoying cutting patterns, taking my time and doing things neatly. even if i have to do it in many stages, across several days!

winter comforts

we got fancy and purchased a beautiful choc brown leather sofa recently. perfect for cuddling, crafting and easy to wipe baby drool off of!

next on my reading list are these two books. recommended by the lovely book-nerd girl who said they are somewhat like my fave book 'a confederacy of dunces'. wonder how long it will take me to plough through these babies!

(if you look closely you can see the beautiful bird that Catherine from Little Glowing Lights made! Its hanging on our kitchenette drawer handles and is made from liberty fabric *oooooo*)

rainy days

something really special about watching lottie pearl listen to the wind and rain outside. makes you really take notice. the whoosh of the trees. squawking birds. the screech of corrugated iron. the flapping of our big chinese lanterns hanging outside. the sudden downpour of fat raindrops.

she looks and listens. then she looks up at me just to check i'm still by her side.

of course i am, piccolo!

baby anderson's shower

outrageously yummy high tea and some of the patches everyone made for baby anderson's quilt

like katrina & the waves said........

Lottie Pearl slept from 730pm - 7am. No dream feed either. This song pretty much sums it up  (not to mention transports me back to when I used to listen to this on my cassette walkman when i was about 6)

HOUSEWORK: 0 Vs FUN: 1

on the weekend, HOUSEWORK and FUN had a battle. FUN clearly won.......and the whole house is feeling back on their A game.

honey joy making, baby shower, cooking, sleeping, having alone time, crafting, football watching, and even finishing my book *gasp* which i've been reading since march. i used to average about 20 books a year.....not anymore!

picnic

i love 'weather envy' that happens across the hemisphere via blogland. winter here, summer there. quite fitting as we contemplate our move from wintery melbourne back to ever sunny perth!

one thing i'm really looking forward to is picnics for more months of the year! i'm imagining picnics at the beach, bush, river etc to be a pretty good toddler activity for my already bursting-at-the-seams-energy-wise bebe. its the stuff of my own childhood.

wouldn't these 'sangrias to go' be the perfect thing for mama and papa on said picnics? ooooh yes please!

p.s. happy birthday to my dear brother. i love looking at you and knowing no one else on this planet looks and sounds more like me than you. i love our quiet and ever-increasingly open solidarity. i love how intelligent, compassionate, hilarious and bombastic you are. i love it that you aren't willing to forego your principles even if it means causing waves. i love your sense of individuality and your incredible knack of making people think twice about all manner of things xox   

baby anderson

baby anderson is due in september and we're having his baby shower tomorrow a couple of streets over! it will be so awesome to see my old, good friend Rus as a doting, first time father.

i made a pram blanket from beautiful bendigo wool which is australia's only grown, dyed, spun and sold wool (most yarn companies send australian wool to be processed in china). i hope baby anderson has many years of pram strolling, snuggling, spewing and picnicing with the blanky. it really was made with love.

we also had to make a patchwork square to be sewn up on the day into a quilt for baby anderson. i used much loved scraps of mine - bits and bobs i've hoarded for years and some picked up in tokyo. i'm excited to see how it turns out and what everyone else will create!

Aint it always so.....

It always seem - just as you are riding that wave of happiness, feeling content and not thinking of anything but the moment - something (or nothing in particular) comes along and makes you feel flat, less than amazing and somewhat down in the dumps!

yesterday was one such day. nothing to do with Lottie Pearl. all just to do with me. granted, extra hair pulling, being vomited on and a day of teething anguish didn't do much in the way of improving my flatness! I then made myself feel guilty for temporarily being less than the mama LP needs me to be.

Lottie Pearl is now nearly 7 months old and whilst our little family continues to settle in and feel just fab I find myself at odds with the outside world. Again, this conundrum of who am i, where do i fit in now etc. My  mum always tells me "don't overthink it" so I console myself with the notion that Its Okay to feel like I don't have any petrol left in the tank. Its Okay to hand LP over to K and say "please take her" whilst i spend a little alone time in bed.

Leaving the house on a chilly winter night was not really what I had in mind, but we had a long planned dinner with my Mothers group, sans babes, and boy did it fill my tank right up! So good to laugh, be unattached, make irreverent jokes about any manner of things and just relish in the moment of feeling rejuvinated by each others company.

When we move, I'll miss these ladies more than words can say.

and today? I wake up feeling excited to pick Lottie Pearl up out of her cot. Excited about a day of hair pulling, traversing our neighbourhood despite the weather and most of all just relishing in the company of ourselves. cause it just won't. last. forever.

hello?

being a new mama you kinda struggle with the old self and the new self. the two selves collide, and sometimes awkwardly, not to mention the self that is forged from a combination of the two.

renee over at renosslah has inspired this post - what makes me feel 'me' despite now finding myself in this whole new world of stay at home mama-ness. in some ways i feel more myself than ever. i've never worn a full face of make up and have gone through stages of taking my time to get ready but now what informs my ensembles are a)weather b)what is clean c)boob access. i'll always care about aesthetics as such! its just another fun game to be able to put texture and colour together!

in recent years i've put away more of the vintage (although had a huge revival when i was pregnant as all i could fit were giant nanna frocks and i refused to wear maternity wear) and i guess gone for what can only be described as MISH MASH! i'm an op-shopper, a maker and unashamedly i find some of my best bits and bobs at target and kmart! i also love a good 'uniform' wardrobe in which about ten items circulate and mix and match and i do this for a good 6 months to a year until slowly new essentials find their way in.

i love anything 'sack-ish' over skinny jeans or leggings. the bigger and floppier the better! i call it 'bag lady chic' and feel there is nothing better than rocking a muumuu!

i also LOVE a good 'pattern spew'. sometimes K laughs at me as I walk out the door with what seems a haphazard approach to putting patterns together. in my world there are no no-no's only YES YES YES to PATTERN! i love pattern on pattern in my house and on me! even if the pattern spew is a bit crazy for me i still love the feeling of being fearless about putting whatever feels good to me on. i think i've been that way since i was a kid.

so cue what makes me me (at the moment!)
//ACCESSORIES
+handmade necklaces
+my riki watanabe watch from our trip to tokyo
+my wedding rings
+opshopped scarves
//GARMENTS
+a mix of patterns, textures and colours! yellows, oranges and fuschia pinks mixed with browns, greys and blacks. linen, wool, opshopped jackets - all put together unapologetically and usually layered like a bag lady!
//SHOES
+clogs, moccasins (bought in nyc), tie on plastics and always with coloured/printed/bold leggings, tights and socks!

so thats me? follow renee's lead and show us who you are!