A Wooden Anniversary Present

I like traditions. I think. Sometimes, at least. Quaint traditions. Not inflexible traditions that attempt to define who we are, what we are allowed to do or like, but traditions that add meaning or history. We have a few family ones: anniversary couple selfies, homemade advent calendars, we visit the Enchanted Forest, take kids' birthday photos by the blackboard with current likes, height and weight, and eat homemade cinnamon scrolls on Christmas morning.

We are fast approaching March 5th. 5 years already! The 5th Wedding Anniversary traditional present is wood. Wood! I spent hours trawling shops for a wooden something that wasn't a pen or bowl or something equally trite. I was unsuccessful. So I made something.

We got married on Bethells Beach on 5/3/10 (KBZ!).

'Tis nearly the season

Tomorrow is December 1st. The day my brother and I used to await, way back when, with great anticipation. The day we got CHRISTMAS CALENDARS!

This is a fantastic tradition I have continued with my own wee lads (see more here). Finding the 24 (x2) bits and pieces has always been a bit of a challenge, but this year, with the boys' Lego obsession, this task suddenly became super easy!

I've become, over the past year when I have had to replace broken and lost pieces, a huge fan of BrickOwl and BrickLink - two Lego marketplaces where you can order practically any piece you want at a very reasonable price. These two sites made the hardest thing about gathering the wee presents actually choosing from the myriad of accessories and minifigures available. But then, of course, being my OCD self, I couldn't just wrap the wee presents and use last year's calendars. No, no. I had to make Lego bricks to present them in. Rather time consuming (to say the least), but they worked out pretty well :)

So the calendars are up and the boys are super excited about their first present tomorow morning! I haven't told them it's all Lego, but they suspect (and are hoping) it is!

And for those of you who want to know what's in them, the below photos show all the presents. Some days they get the same presents, other days they get things I know they've wanted for a while. Max's are on the left of the calendar boxes, Finney's on the right (except for Santa and the Queen: these are pulled apart and shared between the two of them)

KoboGloKoboGloKoboGlo

Oh how I love my Kobo Glo. Not because it's a Kobo, in particular, but because it enables my reading addiction. I read all the time. I don't need to turn on the light. I don't need to find or bookmark a page. I don't need to get up and get another book from the bookshelf. I read and read and read. In fact, since I bought it 20 months ago I have read more than 800 hours, which is, on average, approximately an hour twenty a day. Every day. For approximately 600 days. Which is quite a lot. I have devoured books, series, all genres. I have read genres I used to scoff at: historical fiction and fantasy, for example. I have read 58 books on it. Which doesn't really sound as much as it is, when you consider that the majority of those books were longer than 900 pages (Diana Gabaldon, I'm looking at you).

I really enjoyed so many of the books and series I read - books I didn't necessarily expect to enjoy so much: The Goldfinch, The Luminaries, The Miniaturist, The Other Boelyn Girl, Outlander series, Kvothe series, Magician series, Eragon series. Some were re-reads from teenage years (LOTR, Clan of the Cave Bear), others were just refreshing reads, after a particularly long and somewhat arduous (in a good way) book (Diana Gabaldon, again, looking at you). In fact there has been only one book I didn't enjoy and didn't actually finish - the cringe-worthy and extremely poorly-written 50 Shades. Yeuuck.

So, I sewed my Kobo Glo a cover. And then I sewed one for my sister's. They have magnets in them, making them turn on and off automatically upon opening/closing. They worked out pretty well. Mine used a cover from an old hardback, which was better than the stiff card I used for my sister's.

 

Max turns 6!

Oh. My. Gosh.  Where DOES the time go? How can my wee boy, my first born, the child who turned me into a mother, possibly be turning six already.

Max LOVES Lego, so it seemed only natural to have a Lego party. Cue the hours on Pinterest hunting down the best activities and decorations. (Whatever did we do without Pinterest?)





A Lego cake with Lego lollies and construction workers. A first attempt at fondant, somewhat easier than I had anticipated, and I definitely learned what NOT to do next time.

A copied invitation idea:

Lego banners:

 Lego-themed food:

 

  Lego activities:

Goody bags:



And yes, those are indeed homemade minifigure crayons. Super easy and fun with a minifigure mould!

Of Wings

Did I ever tell you how much I LOVE Pinterest? And did I ever tell you how much I HATE Pinterest? Oh. My. Gosh. I don't even know where to start. There is so much inspiration there, that I could pin and pin and pin all these things that I want to do and yet never ever get around to doing them, probably because I'm too busy pinning. I could dream my whole life away. And then feel so guilty that I have spent so much time looking for things to make, to do, and have never done any of them. Ok. So it's not really that bad - I have made a concentrated effort to reduce Pinterest use -put the iPad down slowly and back away- and have actually also played some things with the wee lads and made some stuff. Like these wings. Super ultra cool bird wings.

(We later made a mask to go with them, here.)

Coffeeeee

It's no secret how much I love coffee, and how, over the past five years, I have come to depend on coffee - (who would have thought those two lovely wee lads would be such terrible sleepers?). I drink flat whites. From my espresso machine with the built-in grinder. I *love* my coffee machine. No, really I do. We take it away on holiday with us!
But all that was just to set the scene, to let you know how much I value coffee. My sister-in-law drinks plunger coffee and I drew her name in the Christmas Present draw (well, that's not strictly true, my husband did, but somehow I ended up organising her present too...). So anyway, I like to give personal presents, different presents, homemade presents, ones that are difficult to put a price on.
Two days before the posting cut-off date I was still trying to come up with something for her, when it came to me in the middle of the night - she uses a tea cosy, so why not one for her French Press? And I even had some insulated batting to hand (a well-intentioned purchase which was never actually made into an oven mitt).

So here we have it, a coffee cosy!

The Magic of Christmas

Remember how magical Christmas was when you were little? The lights, the beautiful tree with its star or fairy or angel perched atop, the treats, the presents and Father Christmas (or Santa or Santa Claus or whatever you called that jolly fat man who travelled around the world faster than the speed of light pulled by nine flying reindeer).

Magic.

Creating that magic for my wee lads is important to me. I make Christmas Calendars (as my mum did for me) and bake Christmas biscuits (Vanillekipferl). We have a tree and add plenty of sparkles around the house. We visit The Enchanted Forest with its beautiful mechanical Christmas displays. We leave biscuits and beer out for Santa (my boys have a different name for him than we did - different era, more influence from American media) and carrots and water outside for the reindeer.

I wonder how much longer this will last. Max is already 5. Won't he find out from friends at school soon? And what about the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy? Other magic I encourage whole-heartedly.