messyart

a good good friday and an Easter DIY

family time at the beach....

This is a little Easter DIY project i did, tute poted over on the RubyJu blog.

 Now were off to dye some eggs :) Happy good Friday to you !

Happy Australia Day!

We're watching the surf comp in Burliegh...what are you doing?

Hope your all having a fun, relaxing, awesome day!

Happy New Bears!

or Years, or pears, or hears or just Happy New Ears! I only had one Y, but i did have this blank scrabble chip, so that just had to do....

WE had a low-key New Years....just that way i wanted it. I was too tired after all the Xmas festivities to go crazy for New Years too :) It was just us (me kids and the Mr.) and we went to see the fireworks at Cooly. But first we dressed for the occasion by covering ourselves in glowsticks. Serves as a dual purpose for me really....kids have fun, and i dont loose them in the crowds because they are constantly GLOWING! What's my excuse for wearing them you ask? So my kids can find me of course;) 

(just in case i get distracted by something and runaway....)

After the fireworks we all went for a walk along the beach. There were heaps of parties and a few bonfires along the beach, and it was fun walking past watching everyone celebrating the New Years.

Afterwards we came home and the Mr. and I sipped Mojitos on the balcony while the kids ran around excited to be up so late.

New years Day the bigger kids were at there dads and The Mr, TJ and i headed to byron. I would have loved to have gone with all the kids, but they just don't love Byron as much as i do, and the day always gets spoiled with "muuuuuum, how much longer till we go hoooooommmmmeeee?" and "I'm bored!" (how they can even say that when we are at the byron markets is beyond me!) "My feet hurt" ...you get the idea. So we tend to keep our Byron trips as something we do when the kids are with their dad. Suits everyone to a tee. Still , i do wish they would love it as much as me.....

Luckily, Tj's still too young to protest. Plus we bribed him witha yummy breakfast at the beachside pub in Byron...

and then with some Baskin Robbins icecream...

and kisses....

then beach time...

this boy is so spoilt ;)

 Hope you had a lovely New Years :)

Everything was Merry and Bright...

Firstly, let me say a late Merry Christmas to anyone who might still be checking in on this lil 'ol bloggity blog of mine. We had a wonderful day... full of yummy food, family, and good times. It was nice to have everyone together to celebrate Xmas with.  We had a goregous seafood lunch outside, followed by a sweets buffet full of yummies for our already quite full tummies. We all opened gifts together, swam (or floated, more like it), played games and had lots of fun. Heres some pics of our Xmas day.

Heres me and my dad just getting the table ready.

I made fabric covered stubbie holders for all the guys (with thier initials on them), and little woodenfans for all the girls, which my step-mum helped me painted (by helped, i mean she painted them all ;). Each person has a white wooden letter of thier name on thier plate, and a personalised bon bon. I also had little party favours of macaroons for each person which i tied up in sheer fabric bags and adorned with a little Xmas ornament. They sat in everyones wine glasses.

I borrowed some snow globes my dear friend Bec made and decorated the centre of the tables with those and jars of pretty white flowers from my step-mother (Thank-you Robyn! xoxo)

We had soooooooo much seafood! See those 2 boxes on the right side of the table? FULL of seafood! And such good seafood too! The prawns were huge, the crab was amazing, thier were oysters and bugs and salmon...OMG. Good.Food. There was enough for everyone to take home dinner for themselves , and we still had plenty left over for us! Thanks to my brother and dad who organised all that yummy food! You guys rock.

After lunch was gifts and swimming while i got coffee and desserts ready....yummy ;)

There was some kissing under the mistletoe. (yes, i made mistletoe :)

And then there were the sweets......mmmmmmmmmm.

Mums pineapple upside down cake. So.Damn.Good.

I'd say these two were more nutty than sweet...

 And  heres some more random pics taken from phones and ipod's through-out the day (which would explain the low quality of some pics)...

The Mr.

TJ feeding Tati's little doll.

And this pic is soooo blurry, but just check out that sweet little smile!

Hope you all had a Very Merry Christmas too!

Xmas idea #1

I came upon these adorable books by Penguin. Theses a whole series of them, all about different techniches/cooking tips/ recipes in the kitchen all by top chefs and foods writers. And even if you never use them to cook, they'll simply look good just sitting in your kitchen, right?

And how's this for a cute wrapping idea? Perfect for those on a budget! I mean, who needs cute paper and pretty bows when you have a garden?

{found at this awesome blog}

We found our Xmas tree....

The Mr. found this at work. They were throwing it out! We saved it, brought it home, decorated it....and now we have a Christmas tree :)

 The kids had no interest in helping me decorate this year. The boys not at all, anbd tati helped for mabey 5 minutes before finding something eles to do. So that left me n TJ. He was very good at messing up everything helping me unpack the decorations. There went my ideas of family moments shared as we decorate together with Xmas music playing in the background. Need to find a way to make this more appealing for the kids next year.

Our usual tree topper wouldn't fit on this tree, so we had to come up with another idea this year...

 I also made some of my own little Xmas tress out of sticks. A friend of mine made something similar last year, and i've been dying to try making one since. After i made these...

I decided they'd be cuter with some decorations hanging from them...

Cute, no?

This is where i worked .... right by the front door. Cup of tea and all.

Goodness only know what the neighbors think...."oh look, that crazy new neighbor of ours in playing with sticks. on the floor. by the front door." Hmmmm.....

This is what we did to our car.

No one and nothing is safe from us during Xmas time. But really, how cute is Charlie? (Charlie is our car. Yes, we named our car. All my cars have always had names. I know, i know... call me crazy but i've always done it ;)

I'm thankful for Ashlee Ann and awesome step-mums!

I am American (living in Australia) and sometimes still find it hard giving up my American holidays.

Like halloween.Obviuosly.(see here if you dont belive me)

And Thanksgiving.

Every year i have these great ideas of how we can celebrate our version of Thanksgiving here, but they just never come to fruision. Probably becausae i have a tendency to overdo everything, and being in between Halloween and Xmas, 2 very busy holidays for us, i usually am sparce on time. So when i saw this great idea here, i was thrilled! What a cute, thoughtful and SIMPLE idea!

 The best bit was that i already had everything on hand i needed, and it literally took me all of 10 minutes to out together :) Thankyou Ashlee Ann!

So heres our version of a 'Thankful' tree which will be a new November tradition for us from now on. For a tutorial of sorts (and some really cute pics), visit Ashlees blog.

 

Bear was keen to be the first to put a leaf on our tree...

We made the tree the first week of November. This is our tree now. As you can see, it's growing every day.

I love reading the things my kids choose to be thankful for everyday. They are so sweet. And speaking of things to be thankful for, My step-mum snuck into my house while i was out the other day a cleaned my kitchen, mopped my floors and left these gorgeous flowers for me. And these are actually only part of the bunch she left me...there were so many i split them into 3 seperate containers!

Better go put that one on the tree!

Happy Fathers Day !!!!

To an amazing and wonderful father.

Hope your first year of fatherhood was all you ever dreamed. To many many more wonderful years of being a father!

It just keeps getting better, and so do you. We love you.

 

 

Friday...

So we've started celebrating Fathers Day already! Today we had a special lunch for both mine and Bec's man. One of the Mr.'s fave meals is french toast with bacon, bananas and maple syrup. Bec cooked up a delicious batch of french toast using this recipe here. Bec and i made some cute little decorations for the table and food, which you can see here, and the kids wrote some sweet little love notes for the dads, which we placed in decorated envelopes and placed on thier plates.

(The only pics i took were took hurridly with my iPhone, so plaese excuse the blurriness of them all)

TJ loved the carrot cake, not so much a fan of the french toast.

After lunch we walked down to the beach and the kids all had a super quick go on the Mr.'s board before deciding it was too cold. Mostly they just ran around playing in the sand while relaxed and watched them play. We stayed till evening before walking home to sip on hot chocolates and coffee. It was such a lovely relaxing (well most of it anyway ;) day spent with good good friends. Just the way i like my days :)

If you check out the RubyJu blog you'll see Bec's pics from the day. Just for fun, i thought i'd make a couple of quick tutes for last minute fathers day decoration ideas. 

Fathers Day Gift Bag

(aka. super quick last minute wrapping idea! ;)

What you need:

some different patterned papers

a paper lunch bag

scissors

thin doule-sided sticky tape

pen and paper to write on

a cd, dvd, or sandwhich... even a tie would work ;)

1. Cut some patterened paper into little rounded flag shapes.

2. Place them into 3 rows in the order you want them , and then turn them all over so the back side is facing you.

3 and 4. Place thin double-sided sticky tape across the top of each row (on the side facing you, which should be the back side)

5. Cut out a decorative space to write your Fathers Day message.

6. Start aticking your strips to the bag, beginning with the bottem row and layering to the top to create some decorative fringing. Then add your message.

Viola! You have a cute little gift bag (or sandwhich bag)

Fathers Day Bunting

or for any day really!

What you need:

coloured and patterned paper

scissors

thin double-sided sticky tape

twine

two skewers

a cake to decorate!

(ps. these pics were taken at night with poor light, so again, please excuse the not-so-great pics :)

1.  Cut out some more rounded flags (like a rectangle with one end rounded)

2. Place them in the order you want them to hang

3. Flip them over and add double sided tape to the top of each one

4. Peel off the tape and start attaching the twine

5. Roll the tops of the paper flag over the twine

6. Flip it over and make any adjustments

7. Tie either ends of the twine to a skewer

8. Pop into your cake to decorate!

more d-day gift ideas (and some printables too)...

 

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Printables :

fathers day cards

Fathers day coupons

printable round up

another printable round up

and one last set of cute printables ;)