messyart

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!

just slid in there...

Every year i set myself goals. Some big some small. I'm big on setting goals, i like the idea of having something to aim for. It gives me direction. And i need direction because i can get easily distracted in all aspects of my life. Anyway, one of the goals i had set for myself was to get my Etsy shop up and running again, as the end of the year grew closer, i was beginning to get more disappointed in myself for not achieving that goal. Then my friend Deb (amazingly creative, but sadly....no blog), had the idea of doing that craft markets at home, which was so much fun! And that spurred me to get some prints done to sell. I sold a few, and then set the rest up in my etsy shop. But the awesome thing is....i've done it. With only 2 weeks to go till the end of the year, i've finally got my etsy shop up and running again!

It's not very full, mind you. And it needs a bit of work (like a shop banner, which i just need to figure out how to do). But it's up and running with prints for sale and all ! I only have a few styles at the moment, but am working on quite a few more :)I have a few scrapbooking packs to go in  and some other bits and pieces i am playing with. I would love to hear your feedback, requests, ideas....whatever! 

 

Heres whats in my shop right now.

 

and for christmas....

You can go here to purchase one of my prints :)

to market, to market, to market we go

So yesterday we held a Mini Crafty Market here at my house. It was an idea my good friend Debbie had, because she is sooooo super crafty and makes so many gorgeous things. But she doesn't blog, so no linky love....bummer. Anywho, we thought we'd get a few of us together, including my sis who designs shirts, two gals that crochet, and Bec from RubyJu who's cake pops were an absolute hit! We transformed our dining room into market stalls and invited heaps of friends and family. It was loads of fun! It ran from 6-9pm, so people were dropping by all night. There were nibblies and drinks, and we all had fun looking at eachothers goodies and just catching up. I have some super talented friends! I LOVE all this creativeness around me! So lucky....

Here's some pics of us setting up through-out the day. I didnt get the best pics, i wish i had thought to get better ones once we had all finished setting up. I didnt even get a decent picture of my sisters stall, or Bec's stall! :(

But gosh, it all looked so cute!

This last table was my own. I will be selling some of those prints in my etsy shop soon....but i'll talk more about that later. The night was a success, i had so much fun and can't wait to do it again next year! Thanks to all who came . It was so much fun watching people walk away with handfuls (in some casees, armfulls) of stuff they bought from our mini markets :)

somethings going on here today...

I'm having fun getting ready for a little event were holding here tonight....Right now the house is a mess, but soon it will be full of cute stuff. Can't wait.

It's been busy buy here as usual (thus my lack of posting). But i have been making lots of stuff, some i hope to share with you soon!

Till then, heres what i made for the teachers gifts this year. Yes, it's another monogramed mug (sorry). It was just that i needed a last minute gift and i had all the stuff here. See i forgot all about the teachers gifts this year until the night before thier last day of school! bad mum. So i wipped these bad boys up, filled them with tim tams and added a coffee voucher to them.

I made the polka dots with the eraser on a pencil. But i left the last one plain as Tati's teacher is a guy.

WE also finally got some chairs painted! We got these wooden chairs from my sister and they were pretty run down. I forgot to take before pictures, but just picture wood and peeling stain. This is it now.

 And these were black cane chairs with hideous fabric seats. I am still yet to recover the seats because i haven't found a fabric i like . But hers the cane chairs now (without seats).

Well....gotta get back to cleaning!

Have a good weekend y'all!

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 ;)