It's funny what life throws at ya

So at present I'm trying - 

This is sometimes easier said than done. Sometimes I'd much rather



It's ok though don't worry cause I will be fine. I will not let the world beat me :)
As long as I remember




and 


and



Have a good day guys xo

Just checking in

Hi All.
Sorry I've been a bit quiet lately.
Have a lot on my plate at present which is making my life awfully interesting.

I haven't done any sewing lately. I have had my head stuck in books recently and I haven't done much else but read :).

I've decided my Kindle was one of the best purchases ever.
The books available for ebook readers are with in my price range which is awesome and there are some awesome books I've discovered.

Beautiful Creatures Series - This series I couldn't put down. I read all the books in what I thought was record time for me. Was a bit sad that ended but definitely a good read.

"Ethan Wate is haunted by dreams of a girl he’s never met. When Lena Duchannes moves into his small southern town of Gatlin County, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her. And he is determined to uncover the strange connection between them, even if it means uncovering the one secret that could change everything"

I should of listened though and steered clear of the movie but I wasn't quite ready to let go of the series and wanted to see how the movie compared. Yeah they stuffed it up royally, the main character was miss cast and they rushed the story which was highly frustrating. It's was worse than when I watched The Help after read the book (That was a mistake to).

From there Amazon recommended a few books and for some reason I went with The Infernal Devices series. The series kicks off with "Clockwork Angel"

"Magic is dangerous—but love is more dangerous still.
When sixteen-year-old Tessa Gray crosses the ocean to find her brother, her destination is England, the time is the reign of Queen Victoria, and something terrifying is waiting for her in London's Downworld, where vampires, warlocks and other supernatural folk stalk the gaslit streets. Only the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons, keep order amidst the chaos."

Loved it and quickly went through "Clockwork Prince" and "Clockwork Princess" (Was very lucky as the last book came out about 2 or 3 days before so was able to read them all straight away.

To my delight I found this series was actually a prequel to "The Mortal Instruments" series so I quickly jumped on that bandwagon to and read all 5 books straight as fast as I could get them. My only problem now is the 6th book doesn't come out until next year. 
The first book is City of Bones, story goes like this -

When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder — much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Clary knows she should call the police, but it's hard to explain a murder when the body disappears into thin air and the murderers are invisible to everyone but Clary.

Going back to books being turned into movies.
This one has a movie coming out in August in USA which looks good. Hopefully I won't come away disappointed in that one.

So now that I have finished all that I went back to Amazon and am now reading a book called "Divergent"

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself. 

Not quite sure what I think of it just yet, I finished it this afternoon and I think I want to read the next one in the series but I can't say that I have been as taken with this book as what I was with the others. It was sort of like Hunger Games, there were similar themes etc.

So now on to find the next good read if I can find one :)

Yeah I'm slack

Hmmm so yeah I know I'm slack.
It's been a couple of months since my last post.
A whole pile of thinsg are going on at present. Unfortunately I can't really talk about any of them here so we'll have to make do with a bright fluffy post about a mermaid :).

So a couple of weeks ago now, I had some inspiration to make Miss Midget a mermaid. Had thought about going and seeing from designs were out there and for some reason I decided against this and decided to make my own (Yeah crazy lady here).

So below is what I have ended up with :)

My drawing to start making pattern

All cut out ready to sew

Getting there

Her face

All sewn up but something doesn't look right.
Her arms also could of been a bit wider :).

She needed a necklace.

So again if anyone stumbles upon this blog post and you want my pattern just feel free to email me :).

Now that I have made this one though, I'm thinking I might actually see what free patterns are out there.
I'm waiting to find something easy that won't take me to long that I could perhaps sell to make a bit of extra money to go to Australia with.

So far I've found these - 

Source: bitofwhimsydolls.com via Donna on Pinterest

Source: thecraftingfiend.blogspot.com via Donna on Pinterest

Problem with these ones is I'm picking I'm going to have to get a bit better on the sewing machine for them. I'll see what I can come up with. Will let you know if I end up making them or if I get to the point I can sell them :).

Another surprising use for Hand Sanitizer

So yesterday as I was home alone I found I had lots of time to rattle round the internet just filling in time.
I came across a friend's status - Renette from South African Kiwi.
She had found something which to me would never of been obvious.

"Hand sanitiser removes permanent marker from carpets. Just so you know."

Well that got my little brain ticking fast and I knew I had a small bottle of the stuff that I'd never used so this lead on to me trying to clean the arms of my lazy boy chair.

Ok so this chair has had a hard life. Originally my Popa's chairs, we inherited them and they have been sitting in the lounge for the better part of 7yrs (not counting 6mths but thats a whole another story). Anyway this particular chair used to be Mr E's got to chair. So of course the arms looked horrible with all sorts of muck on them and years worth of it. You know the kind of muck that comes from a boys hands after they have been in the garage tinkering, or the kind that comes from being on their hands at work, that sort of stuff.

So last night I thought "What the hell, lets give this a go".

Well I was quite surprised with the results.

Take a look for yourself below.

Arm before (It's pretty gross huh)

Arm after

The state of the chux cloth after.

So there you go. Not sure how cost effective this would be if you decided to do this on a regular basis and I'm sure they have proper cleaning products that possibly would of done the same job. I just wanted to test it on something that I knew was stuck and wouldn't be that easy to clean (The other arm of the chair did actually have permanent marker on it. Not any more though).

So if the apocalypse ever comes and you find yourself without cleaning products but you have a stock of hand sanitizer you'll be fine :).

Have a good day :)

When the holidays over.............

Managed to survive Christmas and News Years and we're all still in one piece :).

Miss Midget has been extremely spoilt over the last few weeks with trips here and there. Mr E and Miss left today to go spend a few days down in Managwhai

This is the view from where they are staying.

Yeah I'm extremely jealous to :).

Over the holidays we mainly spent it hanging out with family and friends and just enjoying the weather. We have had some beautiful stuff here.
I'm very thankful for Mum and Dad's pool as well as there were a couple of days last week where if there hadn't been a pool I would of melted.
I figure I'll leave ya with a few of my favourite photos from over the season as they pretty much explain it all :)

Christmas Present I made. Did 6 in total

Miss's cool pirate patch she got from her friends birthday party

Christmas eve and Santa has been

Santa didn't just leave presents. He left footprints to

Miss painting up our Balloon game with Nanny J

Bath time at Nanny J's

Our strawberry when we got home from being away at Christmas

The view from the house we stayed at in Parua Bay for New Years

The view from Mum & Dad's house

Miss Midgets super cool water slide.

Miss Midget's swing that turned up magically after new years

Miss Midget having a ride on the Bishop's bike :)

So as you can see a good time has been had by all.

Will try and post a bit more regularly now that the holidays have finished.

Have fun 

D

Tis the season to get crazy busy

Ok so lets see, what have I been up to since last I wrote.

I know I was meant to come back with what was happening with my voice - Yeah it was lost from Wednesday through to Saturday morning. Took ages to find the bloody thing :).

All has returned back to normal.

Work is going good at the moment. Extremely busy with content entering and training and helping clients which is good. I'm starting to make a bit of progress with things so it's all going well.

Miss Midget is still going through the toilet training process. Little witch decided she didn't want to go grow up the other day and wanted to be a baby. So we have been reinforcing she's such a helpful big girl. It seems to be working.
We've had a few battles with her stubborness but we appear to be winning. We are so close it's not funny. Obviously have our good days and our bad days with it. Due to the warmer weather it's a bit hard to keep clothes on her at home. She's turned into a nudist. This is also helping with getting her to use the toilet :).
She shouldn't be to far away from being all good and just in night nappies. We'll see how we go.

We're all geared up for Christmas. The tree is up. We've had our visit to Santa and presents have been brought. We're actually pretty organised this year. Just a couple of small things to get and then we're good to go. Also have to work on my christmas craft. Have a few things that I need to do on the sewing machine but have lost motivation. Must finish off Missy's fairies, haven't forgotten about the pirate hat and patch I'm meant to make either. I just need to find some energy. Can tell it's the end of the year as everyone is hanging out for a holiday and energy levels are low.

Christmas plans this year, Well we have a couple of Miss Midgets friends having Birthdays so we'll be going to those. We also will be going down the line to Mr E's Mum's house and going and seeing his grandparents.

Might even try and fit our honeymoon in there somewhere :).

Oh I also have been busy setting up the Choose Life facebook page which I volunteered to help run.
If you haven't checked it out yet, please do. It's such a worthy cause that I feel everyone needs to get behind :).

www.2chooselife.org.nz

 www.facebook.com/2chooselife

Anyway must get going. Got a few things to do with Miss Midget before dinner :).

Will make sure I update before Christmas :).


Putting ornaments on the tree.

 

 



Can't talk right now.................

So can't talk right now due to loosing my voice lol.
Went to bed slightly croaky last night and woke up with squat diddly voice this morning only to have it almost disappear completely when I got to work.
Went to the docs and apparently I have strep throat which is currently killing my voice. Have been given 10days worth of pills and told to rest my voice.

Trying to explain to the doc what was wrong was interesting then having the ladies at the pharmacy try and talk to me was a bit of a giggle.

Having picked Miss Midget up on way home and having her with me for half the day has certainly been the most trying of the lot. Trying to explain to a 3yr old why Mummy sounds funny and how talking hurts mummy was a challenge to. Pretty sure she doesn't get it. She told me that she didn't like me talking like this and I should talk like I normally do. If only it was that simple.

Mr E is going to think it's his lucky day when he gets home from work, he'll have a quiet wife for a change :).

I'll update this post on how I get on for the next couple of days :)