Creativity

Growing up I never considered myself to be creative. At school I didn't enjoy wood-work, I was terrible in art and I absolutely hated home-ec. I remember complaining to my mum that having to learn sewing at school was ridiculous and archaic, and that I could see no part of my future that involved a sewing machine. Um yeah. Times sure do change huh!

Now I relish any opportunity to crack out the power tools, visit the hardware store almost every weekend, sew things regularly and spend a good portion of each week being creative and making things.

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I don't know if it was me being a typical rebellious kid or if it was something I needed to grow into, but I think creativity was always something that was going to be part of my life. Now I'm not claiming to be any kind of creative genius, far from it, but I do get so much satisfaction from making things.

I think part of where it comes from is my Mum, she has always been incredibly creative. She was always making something when I was growing up. Whether it was clothes for my sister and I when we were younger, furniture for our house, embroidery or quilts... she always had and still does have something on the go. My sister is the same, she is always creating beautiful things. In fact it was her sewing blog that first started me blogging in the first place (she doesn't blog there anymore, but has recently started a new blog here). I don't think she ever denied her creativity though (although she did study accounting and that is a sure fire way to stiffle any creative thoughts!!).

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Another one of my friends was recently saying to me that she spent the first 30 years of her life feeling like she didn't have a true passion. She's recently taken up photography and is taking some of the most gorgeous and creative photos I've seen.

How about you? Do you consider yourself to be creative? Is it something you've always known you were passionate about or is it something that you've only stumbled upon recently?

Toddler Tuesday - Handmade Father's Day Gift

In yesterday's post I mentioned that it was Sean's birthday on the weekend. In honour of the occasion Max and I made him a sweet little handmade present. Sean absolutely loved it, and whilst we gave it to him for his birthday, it would also make a really great Father's Day present.

It was so quick and easy to do, and the end result is really effective. First up I got Max to draw a picture of Sean. I had him do this part a week in advance, he's two and can be very contrary when he wants to be. I didn't need to worry though, he was happy to oblige and I used the very first picture he drew :)

Later on in the day I sat down with him and asked him some questions about his Daddy. He thought it was a fun game, and loved answering the questions.

All I did after that was type up and print out the questions and answers and frame them along with Max's cute little drawing.

Sean really did love it, and Max loved giving it to his Daddy and seeing his reaction when he opened it. He was so proud of his art and loved seeing it in the frame!

With Father's Day still just around the corner I've been scouring the net for something else to make Sean for next weekend. I'm not going to say which project I've decided on just yet (because a certain baby-daddy reads this blog), but here are some of the best ones I've found.

Julia from Kuku Couture Invitations made this adorable little card with her 2 year old. I love that she has made it into a printable and has it available for download on her blog. It even comes with sweet little 'fill in the blank' coupons that you can include inside the card :)

Another blogger who's made up a free printable is Britni from Hubby Made Me. She created this gorgeous tie bunting and card for her daughter to give her Daddy on Father's Day. So cute!!

I really love this little handmade book from eighteen25. It would be perfect for anyone with slightly older kids, there are a few different pages for the kids to fill out, it's so gorgeously presented and (yep, you guessed it) the eighteen25 girls have a printable all ready to be downloaded on their site.

So tell me, what do have planned for Father's Day this year? Or if you are overseas and have already celebrated, do you have a link to a project you did this year?

Chocolate & Raspberry Pavlova Decadence

Brace yourselves. I'm about to share a cake I made for my husband and mother-in-law on the weekend. It's not the kind of cake that should be taken lightly. It is insanely good, ridiculously rich and completely indulgent. The perfect kind of cake really!!

A couple of years back a friend of mine made Nigella's chocolate raspberry pavlova for a party, and ever since then it's been in the back of my mind as a cake I wanted to make. This weekend I had the perfect excuse - well two of them actually. We were up in Hervey Bay to celebrate Sean and Aggie's birthdays and it is also time for the Red Cross's annual Big Cake Bake. I'm not sure if anyone else knows this, but if you make a cake in the name of charity and then make a donation to said charity, it complety cancels out all calories in the cake. With a cake like this one that was an absolute necessity!

When I went looking for the recipe I came across this version of it over at What Katie Ate. After seeing it I decided I wanted my cake to be a layered pav too. I followed her recipe to the tee, only instead of making two layers I made three. This cake was seriously huge!

I highly recommend making this cake, it was an absolute hit :)

If you want to find out more about the Red Cross Big Cake Bake Appeal click here. You can donate to a great cause and eat cake. Win, win!

I know another couple of bloggers that have also made donations (and cakes!):

Germaine has shared the recipe for this delicious sounding Lemon Poppy Seed Drizzle Cake on her blog this morning. It sounds so good! She also shares a really sweet story about her Dad, he sounds like a man with a great big heart :)

Julia made this cake for her toddler's birthday the other week, and I'm so excited that she's sharing the recipe. It's a triple chocolate bundt cake, and according to the party goers it's the tastiest cake in the world!! Sounds delish :)

Rhi is also playing along, although I don't think she has her recipe up just yet so you might want to check back later.

Have you done anything for the Big Cake Bake this year, or have you made a delicious cake that you want to share with me. There can never be too much cake in this world!

I hope you all had a great weekend xx

28 Weeks

I am officially now in my third trimester!! Which I think makes this enormous belly I'm sporting a touch more except-able :)

I'm still really enjoying being pregnant, I'm uncomfortable and achy for the most part but I'm not letting that burst my bubble just yet (give me a few weeks). I have most of the same issues that I had with Max, dizziness, sore hips at night, needing to pee constantly and sciatica. Other than that though it's all going really well.

I did have a little trip up to the hospital the other day. I paid a quick visit to a local GP because some of my MS symptoms can mimic pre-eclampsia ssymptoms. He ruled it out pretty quickly but sent me up to the hospital anyway because I was just 'off'. They gave me fluids and a few drugs to help with the headaches and dizziness and I was as right as rain. I think I was probably just a little bit run down (what with my strenous 16 hour working week and all!).

I've also had braxton hicks start this week as well. With Max they started at about 22 weeks so I've been expecting them for a while. I don't mind them though, they're probably the closest thing to labour that I'll ever experience so I feel like they give me a glimpse of what it must feel like :)

The big thing that has hit Sean and I this week is that in 10 - 11 weeks we are going to have another baby!! All of a sudden it seems so much more real and I'm so looking forward to meeting this little baby.

Trucks or Fish

This year in December Max will be turning three and I've been thinking about his party for a few months now. Like I mentioned on Monday he is crazy about trucks. Garbage trucks, construction trucks, monster trucks, he loves them all. So I figured a truck party was an absolute no-brainer.

Apparently not. I was talking to Max about his party the other day and he all of a sudden told me he wanted a fish party.

I was completely thrown. So I videoed our conversation (like any good blogger would!).



He'd just woken up, so he was still a little fuzzy and cuddly :)

Which leaves me with a decision to make. Do I throw him a truck party or a fish party?  I really want to start getting things organised because at the time of his birthday I will have a two week old newborn. Better to be prepared early for this one I think!

I have some great ideas pinned for both (all images are from these two pinboards, or you can click the link below each photo to go straight to the source).

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I really like both themes, so I'd be happy to do either party. I think what I'll do is show Max these pictures, ask him again which party he wants and then stick with the one he chooses. Who knows if that will actually work (toddlers are so fickle!), but fingers crossed it does. Wish me luck!

Toddler Tuesday - Number Matching Board

This weeks Toddler Tuesday activity was inspired by this little peg board that I pinned the other day.

At 2 and a half I thought that colour matching was a little bit too simple for Max, so I decided to switch it up and do a numbers board instead.

To make the board I used:
 - Cheap dollar store canvas board
 - little black gems (also from the dollar store)
 - wooden pegs
 - coloured card
 - stick on numbers (from my craft stash)

Max really liked it, especially the pegs and numbers. He was really good with the numbers 1 through to 5, but did find the higher numbers a little more challenging.

After three or four days of playing with it he's getting better and better. The key thing for him is that he likes to do the pegging on his own. "No helping Mumma!' he told me multiple times :) So I help him count out the gems, help him pick the right number and then he pegs it on by himself.

Have you done any fun toddler projects lately?

Northside Fun Fair

Here in Brisbane we've just had Ekka week, it's a basically a really big carnival. I would love to take Max there one year, but I'm just not ready to face the huge crowds yet. Instead, on the weekend Sean and I took him and his cousin Ava to our local fair.

As far as they were concerned it was every bit as fun as the Ekka! (And it was definitely just as expensive, has anyone else ever been charged $15 for two buckets of chips and a dagwood dog!?).

As well as having seriously pricey food, sideshows and showbags it did have some really cool free activities that we made the most of. We started our night by going to the circus. Seating was really limited so once I found a seat I tried to convince both of them to sit on my lap. Ava didn't mind, but Max was seriously unimpressed!

Once I let them go and stand next to the ring with a bunch of other kids they were so much happier. Max would run back over to me every few minutes to tell me all of the exciting things that he was seeing, it was so adorable!

After the circus we met up with Sean (he came straight from work). We played some sideshow games, ate junk food, helped Ava choose a show-bag and wandered around watching the rides. Max and Ava both played the fish for a duck game as well as the one where you put balls in the clowns mouth. Both games came with a guaranteed prize, so both walked away happy :).

Next up we went to check out the major reason we'd decided to go... the MONSTER TRUCK! Max is 100% obsessed with trucks at the moment. So much so that I had actually considered buying tickets to a monster truck show so that we could take him. Trucks really aren't Sean or my thing though, so when we saw that this one was free we were all over it.

Max thought it was the best thing ever. Ava and I ducked off to go on a pony ride and when we came back Max was up on Sean's shoulders yelling, cheering and clapping with the rest of the crowd. It was so gorgeous! His little eyes were all lit up, and he was just so excited.

After that we grabbed some ice-cream and took a very happy Ava and Max back home. We all had so much fun, I think we'll definitely do it again next year!

I hope you all had an awesome weekend too!

Facebook - I finally got myself a page

As the title of this post suggests I finally went and made myself a facebook page. I put it off for so long because I've been bored with facebook for over a year now. The funny thing is now that I have a page and have found other pages that I like, I'm all of a sudden loving it again!

It's going to be the place that I post updates for my esty store, link to other great blogs I've found and share some of my favourite posts, pins and photos.

I would really love it if you would come over and like my page - www.facebook.com/maxandmehome. You will have my eternal gratitude (because that's all I can afford to give away right now!!).

Please leave me a comment (here or there) telling me about your facebook page too. Like I said I'm loving that my newsfeed is now filled with new and interesting things (not that my friends are boring or anything!).

PS - I always use brackets & exclamation marks way too much, but I seem to have outdone myself in this post!

Thanks and see you on facebook!!

Max's Wardrobe Make-Over

This week I ticked one of the things off my long to-do list for Max's big boy room. I added shelving and storage boxes to Max's wardrobe. It's one of those DIYs that probably doesn't look like much, but it makes me seriously happy! There is nothing like a well organised space to make you smile :)

I made the shelving from scratch and like I often do I just winged it. I asked Sean for advice, but he kind of said 'just do whatever you want'. So rather than googling or youtubing for tips on making shelving I went in blind.

It took me a bit of trial and error to get it right and because I was concentrating so hard on not hammering un-neccesary holes into the wall I didn't take as many photos as I would have liked, and some of the ones I did take were just on my phone.

This is the space I started with. It's a lot wider than it looks in the photos - 1.7m wide to be exact. This room used to be our home office / craft room so the wardrobe was a bit banged up with lots of marks on the inside of it. I didn't worry too much about them though, you can't see them once the wardrobe is full.

We have a new Masters that has opened up just near home so I picked up all of my supplies from there. They offer a free cutting service so I got my boards and support timber cut to size before I loaded it all into my little corolla. It all worked out really cheaply too. I got the materials for under $45, the ten cloth storage boxes for $4.98 each and the 5 larger woven baskets for $12 each.

Once I got the boards home I primed and painted the shelves - I painted them the same colour as the walls in Max's new room (canvas cloth by Bristol Paints).

To instal the shelves I ran two rails (for the two shelves) around the walls of the wardrobe. I didn't get a better photo or a shot of the railing running the whole way round... You'll just have to picture it.

Then all I did is put the painted shelves on top of the rails. I didn't even need to screw the shelves to the railing, they're wedged in there so tight that they're not going anywhere.

I put Max's clothes and toy baskets back in and that was that. All done!!

It makes such a difference having a perfectly organised space. I seriously can't wipe the smile off my face each time I open the wardrobe doors.

(Max doing a random pose in his big boy undies - I swear he doesn't get it from me!)

 

I'm so glad to have that part of his room finished. Next up I'm going to spray paint some frames for his art wall and install some open shelving on one of the walls. Can't wait to share it with you!