Look mummy...

"I've got something for you!"

Encouraging creativity

I've written before about the boy-child's love of drawing and his emerging creative streak. It has been an interesting journey to be sure. For as parents we were totally surprised by this, dare I say it "talent". As he is our eldest child we had no good reference point for what type of pictures a child of his age would or could draw...and to be honest he went from scratching on a page one week to drawing well formed pictures the next when he was about 3. He is turning 5 on Sunday.

This brings us to some important decisions though as parents. Firstly and most importantly how do we encourage him to keep his love of drawing? He draws ALL the time and uses it as a way of consolidating his learning and capturing extraordinary detail that he is able to take in all around him. His eyes are continually open to the detail of life, and in particular the colour of life.

Secondly, how as parents do we facilitate a creative life for him and for us as a family? By this I mean in part making it safe and OK to chose a creative career option in life. This one is close to my heart because as a child (and from a very young age) I designed houses over and over, to the point of near obsession....but did I become an architect - must to my frustration, NO! I chose the "safe" path, determined by what I was "good" at, rather than what I "loved". The man of the house is one of the lucky ones, his work and his passion are the same thing.

I've been doing some research in this area and will post more about this next week, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

BTW- that picture above is of a church inspired by the one that they moved on the SBS show "Monster Moves" ...made equally incredible by the fact that it was drawn about three weeks after he saw the show and also that he has never been inside a church!

A nice surprise

I'm not sure about others out there, but I try hard not to pre-determine what my squidgets will be like when they are all grown up. Despite my best intentions however the odd thought creeps into my head every now and then, like "my dad was good at sport, and I was a sprinter so maybe they'll be good at sport" then I beat myself up for trying to preempt the future - let it be Suzy I say.

So in the last few months it has been so refreshing to find out that my boy has this unexpected talent. He can draw, and more importantly he LOVES it. This came as such a surprise to us, and we only really noticed it after his teachers and other mums kept commenting on how good he was. We, as the parents, were a bit slow on the uptake.

So here is his latest 4yr old version of the house from the movie Up...now for the challenge for mummy (the frustrated would-be architect) - don't read too much into his subject choice!

A bit of last minute needle and thread

Yesterday I finished a bit of last minute sewing before we set off on holidays. But nooooooo it's not the crisp white resort pants that I had imagined me strolling around in the Fijian sunset, but a Car Caddy for the boy-child. If the truth be known I meant to sew this for him as a Christmas present, but well, umm...time kinda gotta away from me. Never mind, I think it does the job nicely as a pre-holiday surprise...and it helps me limit the cars that he brings along to 6...hehehe.

Kuka sent me the link to one from So you think you're crafty ...and it then led me to Little Gems. It was so ridiculously easy to make I think I'll start doing some more already for little boy gifts for this year. I used scraps for the inner, felt for the "road" at the top and some lovely soft denim as the outer fabric. I used some fabric paint for the line markings on the road, and figure if they give out in the future I can use some double-sided fusing and add some felt markings.

Well that's it for me for a week or so, Happy New Year everyone!

Guest blogger - Little Miss One!

Hi,

My name is Sophie, sometimes known on this blog as "the girl child" and today I'm one! So this is a first for suzy hausfrau all around, the first guest blogger and my first birthday.

So I thought I would tell you all about what I love to do now that I'm one.
I love...

• food, and lots of it!
• sorting shapes
• twinkle, twinkle little star...especially copying my mum with the hand gestures
• dancing, no I REALLY love dancing
• my big brother, and crawling after him wherever he goes
• did I mention that I love food?
• sleeping in mum and dad's bed a bit too much...hmmm
• bath time
• going for long walks in my pram with grandad
• talking, babbling, gibberish whatever you want to call it
• oh and of course mum and dad, who I can now point to and name with about a 75% accuracy rate

Thanks for stopping by....

Blog mojo

I just had a look at how many blog posts I've been doing each month and if I was a betting kinda gal, I would expect the whole blog thing to implode somewhere around November.....but NO I don't want it to.

Yes the last couple of months I've been a bit light on posting, lots of reasons really, but mainly because daily supervision of a crawling rug-rat takes a fair bit more time than looking after a sleepy newborn. I have several projects on the go, and one completed which I will post about tomorrow.

But for today, please check out the following link . It's some gorgeous, with a capital G, snaps of moi with my family taken by the gorgeous, with a capital G, Christine of Pobke photography...we just love them!

Plus taking a stroll through Christine's blog has given me some of my blog mojo back again! See you all soon.

Wonderful winter weekend

We have had the most fantastic wintry weather for the last few days...fog, rain and cold, cold, cold. I just LOVE IT! Probably the best thing to me about living in Canberra is having four distinct seasons every year. I So different from my childhood growing up in a sub-tropical climate where the weather was hot or hotter.

Not much happening in the way of craft this weekend though. Part of me just wants to sit inside and make like a hausfrau...but the other part of me took over and we went for a lovely chilly family walk around the lake.

My favourite hour

Sometimes I think we focus on the bad, I know I can. Sometimes being a mum is full of hard, "I don't really want to remember this" moments. But yesterday, I took the time to enjoy a great "I really want to remember this" mummy moment. It was my favourite time of day, the hour or so before sunset. Usually known in our house as cocktail hour. I love this hour year round. I love it in summer, especially when it's a balmy evening just after the lawn has been mown. I love it in the colder months, when I close all the curtains and blinds and get ready to cocoon inside for the night, such was the case last night.

Anyhoo, it was my favourite hour, I was in the kitchen preparing dinner, the girl-child at my feet and the boy-child working on his masterpiece with Vivaldi's Four Seasons - Spring playing on ABC Radio as background music. Bliss. It may sound cheesy but it felt like a good mummy moment!

Easter tree....*&%$@$!

I'm happy to be convinced otherwise, trust me I'm a sucker for another excuse to do something fun with the little ones, but is there really such a tradition as an Easter Tree? Some bloggers who shall remain nameless cite German and Austrian Easter traditions as including a tree!

So reservations aside, we dyed the eggs on the weekend with some food colouring, vinegar and hot water. On some of them we created some little pictures, and letters on with white crayon before colouring, not an easy task to hand a 3 year old, writing on an empty egg that is. But he championed through it.We've hung our eggs from some foliage from the garden, and what "tree" would be complete without a nest, made from pipe cleaners and beads from my crafting stash..........sometimes being a mum is just an excuse to do some fun crafting!

PS: Excuse the crappy shots here, I've had to use my old snap'n'shoot as I STILL don't have a macro lens for the SLR!

Scary Jack Frost!

I think I had an unrealistic idea of my maternity leave. I imagined all sorts of fantastic garments and homey things running off the sewing machine, many blankets skipping off the crochet hook and time to learn that elusive, but ever so popular mystery known to everyone else as knitting. The truth be told, I had just forgotten how much time it takes to demand breast-feed. Let alone trying to spend quality time with the boy-child.

But there are times when the distractions of the boy-child are just so great. This morning he called me outside to show me "Scary Jack Frost." For those mums of Thomas-mad boy children (and any random girl fans out there) you will know the episode where Percy gets stuck outside and covered in ice, causing all the other engines to cringe in fear thinking him scary jack frost! Oh to have the imagination of a three year old again.I did manage a batch of orange marmalade for my dear old dad, but it hasn't set properly so I will reboil it up tonight and post the result tomorrow. Unlike the plum and strawberry jam I had a lot of trouble regulating temperature with the marmalade. Too low and it didn't really boil furiously enough, and too high made it spill over the big pot. Hence the failure to set I believe. Who cares right when there's scary jack frost in the house.

Ta da!

Just a quick post today, showing everyone the results of the last week's efforts...

Not a lot happening on the hausfrau front, lots of wrapping presents, our tree is absolutely lurching with gifts - so off to the post office today to aid its relief.

Maternity Leave

Well here's my first blog posting...I've been yapping on forever about setting this damn thing up and to quote a fellow blogger who has been very patient with my yacking on "dude, just start a flipping blog already!" Yes you were right krafty kuka it is easy and just like writing an email!

It is probably a perfect time to start a blog about my alter ego the hausfrau as I enter my third week of maternity leave with three weeks to go before baby #2 arrives. The first week was interesting I didn't really achieve much, something to do with Mstr 3 at home, but a lot to do with me not really knowing how to structure my day. Did it need structure at all is the question? Last week was much better, managed to sew and cook a bit, took Mstr 3 to the lake for a picnic and a play and basically started to embrace being a full-time suzy hausfrau.

Well I'll make this one short...and will post again soon with a bit of a show and tell of Christmas goodies. No names for the recipients of course, cause you might be watching........