Colour my world event planning

I'm a fan of colour! I love it. And so when I start planning an event, the first things I work out are the theme and / or the colour scheme. Then everything else just seems to fall into place. My lovely husband just celebrated his 40th birthday and as he has 4 girls, he lives in a world of pink whether he likes it or not, so I thought we should have a really masculine colour scheme for his birthday. We decided on blue with orange. Blue on it's own can be a bit boring but orange is such a vibrant, exciting colour it really livens things up.

Balloons are great for decorating with - they are inexpensive and they come in such an amazing range of colours and patterns. The banner in the background I made with the girls: 40 Reasons We Love You and they each wrote their own reasons. (Some of these will be priceless as they grow older.)

David is really not a fan of celebrating his birthday, so when I saw the idea for the "40 sucks" bucket on  thesuburbanmom.com I knew it was a keeper. (David laughed when he saw it so it started off the day nicely too!) You will be amazed what you will find to coordinate with your theme when you start looking. The orange tub was a dollar store find and the blue foil was once a Christmas decoration. I also used orange cup cake papers and just made coordinating flags to jazz them up a bit in my colour scheme.

I have a tendency to go just a little overboard when it comes to party planning but owing to the busy time of year, I had to keep things simpler this time. We had a lovely birthday breakfast of mini pancake stacks with maple syrup, a beautiful fruit platter and then egg and bacon muffin cups. (You can find the recipe for the muffin cups here http://www.thehighheeledhostess.com/2011/06/fathers-day-breakfast.html - they were really easy and very delicious!)

My lovely husband with his gorgeous girls.

Now to start thinking in pink again! Rebecca turns 5 in the next week and has requested a Charlie & Lola party so I am back to party planning in a big way (but for tomorrow, I feel some more Christmas craft coming on!!!)

A New Tradition

Whilst playing on Pinterest recently, I came across a brilliant idea which I have implemented in our house for this Christmas season. I am sure it is going to be a hit with the girls and will become one of our Christmas traditions from this point forth. (It didn't hurt that it involved wrapping presents which is something I really enjoy!)

The idea was to gather a basket of all your Christmas storybooks and wrap each one in Christmas paper. Then place the basket under your Christmas tree and each night, have a child choose a "gift", unwrap it and then read it together. What a beautiful way to enjoy all your Christmas stories each season. And what child doesn't enjoy unwrapping presents.

Now, I happen to have 18 Christmas storybooks in my possession. You may (or may not) have quite as many. Don't let that deter you from enjoying this tradition at your house. Just gather up some of your all time favourite storybooks to share over the month of December. Wrap them up in paper, place them in a basket and away you go. Don't panic if you miss a night or two either. December is a busy month with end of year functions and the like but on the nights when you do have the time, enjoy a little bit of special time together with a book.

No cape for me....

I have written a few posts now including several that included crafty projects. And somewhere along this short way, I have earnt the unwarrented title of SuperMum with a couple of my lovely readers. So I thought I should set the record straight early on in the piece.

I started this blog to share with you the things I love .... my family, crafty fun and my organising projects. These are the things that make me happy and fulfilled but please know that this is only a small part of my life. What you don't get to see on here, is the day to day struggles that go on in my household as they do, no doubt, in yours.

And like mums the world over (and I know I am generalising here but I am pretty sure I am right) I have bad days, I yell at my girls much more than I (and I suspect they) would like, I get caught up wasting time on the computer instead of spending time with them and I worry about whether I'm doing a good enough job of being a mum. These are the types of things that us mums worry about. (Feel free to add your own list here.)

But I aspire to be a SuperMum, I really do. I love the thought that I could have a perfectly tidy home, that my girls would keep their bedrooms neat, that I would never have washing spilling out of laundry hampers and on to the floor, that I would always have nutritious meals on the dinner table at a reasonable time and that my children would say "sure Mum" to my every request rather than launching into a protracted dialogue with me. What a perfect world that would be. But it's not very realistic I'm sure you will agree.

What I do love though it to visit other people's blogs and to talk to real people about what works for them at their house. I am always looking to incorporate new ideas into our home and lives that might make things easier, more fun or more beautiful. None of us is SuperMum but we can help ourselves along a little by sharing these ideas and our stories. Besides, if I was a SuperMum, what would my girls have to tell their therapists as they get older? This way the therapist will have the perfect reason (or lots of them) to blame all their shortcomings on their mum! lol.

All the mums received a little card at kinder a couple of years ago and I keep it on my desk as a reminder, it says simply "You are doing a great job". No one ever promised that being a mum would be easy, just that it would be worthwhile.

Christmas Advent Jar

I have been crafting up a storm this past week so I will have several projects to share in the next few days. One of the things I have been working on is my Christmas Advent Jar. My girls love the chocolate advent calendars and they have amazing powers for encouraging (read 'bribing') good behaviour but I wanted something that would also remind us to do something special together each day in December.

So I bought a few boxes of matches, emptied them of their contents, wrapped them in papers to coordinate with our Christmas colour theme for this year and numbered them from 1 through to 24. Each box then has a strip of paper inside it which has a Christmas activity for the day (or night). I have put the finished boxes in a decorative jar which will sit on my kitchen bench come December first, next to the mini countdown board. The girls can take turns each morning at breakfast to pick out that days box and see what surprise lies in store for the day.

Might need to add a red ribbon to my jar before it takes pride of place on the bench. (And by the way .... I have 1200 matches that are now free to a good home lol)

If you would like to make your own Advent Jar but need some inspiration for the activities, you might like to check out this site http://justagirlblog.com/2010/12/christmas-advent-jar.html

Conquering the Paper Piles

I don't know how it is at your house, but at my house, paper seems to multiply rapidly. The pile I sorted and dealt with just last week has grown to gargantuan proportions. It is, in part, due to all those end of year notices, permission forms and catalogues but it is also due to me needing to update our system for dealing with all these former trees! So today, I tackled the paperwork .... again.

A couple of months ago, I came up with a system for broadly categorising and storing papers that are "in use". I bought inexpensive white magazine boxes and jazzed them up with labels I made (so they matched the rest of my colour scheme. Coordinating makes me happy.) Each child has a box which is where I keep their folders for their activities eg. calisthenics, singing etc; their homework books (so their littlest sister doesn't use them for colouring in) and classroom notes and newsletters (I cull these at the end of every term). David also has a box which is great for anything he leaves lying on any flat surface - it winds up in his box and has some hope of being found again. I have several other boxes .... home, party planning and so on.

These boxes have worked really well but I really needed some way of having my current projects in view. It is definitely a case of out-of-sight-out-of-mind for me. So today I added a new "tub"to my kitchen bench.

The tub on the right has my diary, pen cup, notepad, blogging ideas book in it. This is my EVERYDAY tub as I use all of these items on a daily basis. The tub on the left is my current PROJECTS tub and contains several clear folders that I use for ... paperwork to be completed (permission slips and the like), Christmas, summer holiday (including packing lists), a follow-up folder and one for Bec's birthday party which I am in the throws of planning as I type this. The folders in here will change frequently but with any luck, this stuff will not get lost somewhere in a pile on my desk. Here's hoping ......

(Feel free to share how you manage your paper piles in the comments section below. I love to hear how other people get organised.)

My 'Lightbulb' Organising Moment

I LOVE to organise. I mean, really LOVE to organise. I am ridiculously happy when I am rearranging and reorganising, well, anything! I also love to read books about organising; to see how other people organise their homes and their lives. A couple of years ago, I went to a session at our local library with professional organiser, MaryAnne Bennie. It was here that I had my lighbulb moment. MaryAnne was speaking about 3 ways you can organise your stuff .... (1) Organise to a number, for example, decide to keep only 12 coffee mugs, t-shirts etc, (2) Find a better (bigger or smaller .... OK, most likely bigger) space for your craft supplies, DVD collection etc or (3) Organise to the space. DING!

I have always subscribed to the "find a bigger space" or better containers to store whatever it was I was organising. I did organise by number when I finally came to terms with my coffee mug addiction but to decide on the space I was willing to let something occupy and then make my collection fit .... revolutionary! Why hadn't I ever thought of that? It was so simple I think I had overlooked it because I was too busy shopping  for the perfect container or basket (just ask David about my addiction to those lol).

So these days, I organise to the space more often than any of the other methods. The girls have a (large) toy cupboard but that is the space they are allowed to fill. If the cupboard is overflowing, it is time to cull. The same for my linen cupboard; the bath towels can only occupy 1 shelf.

As we have spent most of today cleaning out our downstairs area (laundry, scrapbooking studio and under-house storage) I have another word of advice to share: It will likely get worse before it gets better. You need to be able to see what you have before you can cull and then put it back. I tried to keep this in mind as I surveyed the incredible mess we made of my studio room. There will be no "before" photos but I might share an "after" one once we have it all looking gorgeous.

Hope you had a productive weekend too.

Freddo Night

At our house, Friday night is Freddo Night! This is a tradition that David grew up with and that we wanted to continue in our own family. Freddo Night is family movie night (and we eat the odd frog or two!) The girls really look forward to Friday Nights as family time. We often have a meal that they either help cook or assemble (tacos, nachos, baked potatoes....) and then we all sit back and enjoy the show. This week, it was mini hotdogs and choc-top ice-creams for dinner.

I found these cute ice-cream cups a while ago and the girls loved that they came with the little wooden spoons. (We have made little choc-tops in cupcake papers too - just add ice-magic to a scoop of your favourite ice-cream flavour).  

  

So, what great ideas does your family have for spending time together? I'd love to know what you do at your house.

A Crafty Christmas

As I mentioned in my profile, I love everything about Christmas. I already have my Christmas CD's ready to go come December 1! I love everything about the season .... decorations (I'm going red, white and blue this year), Christmas carols, baking and all the special food, getting together with family and of course, wrapping presents.  I am almost finished my shopping with the help of my Christmas Planner (I'll share that in a post another day) so my thoughts turn to crafts.

My girls love their chocolate advent calendars each year, but I thought it would be nice to have a larger (colour coordinated lol) display for my kitchen bench to remind us how many days we have until Christmas. I created this with a mini clipboard (available from OfficeWorks for $2 or $3). Cover with scrapbooking paper and then decorate . Quick & easy. Each day I will just change over the numbers or perhaps I can give that responsibility to Miss Meg as she is always the first one up in our house.

I saw a cute shadow box with bells in it recently on Pinterest (my new favourite website - you have to check it out!) I made my own version with some gorgeous black & white photos I took of the girls last Christmas in their Santa hats. My thought is that this will be a decoration that will come out every year to remember my girls when they were so little.

I don't want to alarm anyone, but it is only 5 weeks til Christmas (and less than 2 weeks til I can break out the Christmas CD's).

Savouring Every Minute

Today I sat out on the balcony with Rebecca (Miss almost 5). We had a picnic rug and cushions and we sat and played a game together. She smiled and sang and chatted away and I drank her in. For in a few short months, she will leave me to start her school journey. This 5 years has gone past so quickly and I find myself wondering if I have made the most of this time together. There are days where I have been so caught up with things that need to be done around the house and out of it that I forgot to cherish these early years. But not today .... for today she is all mine.