BALLS

Our lives are being taken over by these little balls- Bakugan. They are large marble size and pop open on a metal card. There is a japanese cartoon which 'supports' them, but the kids love them. Alexander got a couple for his birthday, and it turns out they have been great to assist with his issues at school. There are limited play areas for his age group and he is not that into soccer so he was left wandering and up to mischief. Now there is a big Bakugan match (??) every lunchtime which has expanded his social circle and given this group of boys something positive to focus on.

From what I can understand there are energy powers associated to each ball from the card they land on - called g's and so can I fool myself that they are at least talking maths. In my mind they are kinda like dungeons and dragons - almost a made up game, but that may just be the 6 yr olds that are playing it.

Now the twins are into it too - we had meatballs for tea which no one was into, but as soon as I said they were Bakugan balls, they were all cleaned up. Sometimes you just have to go with it.

FIGJAM

Yes, that too, but we actually made jam from figs! I was excited because it is actually the first time I have ever made jam. I don't know how I have lead such a sheltered existance, but it was fun, and not at all hard. It was a really great exercise in the process of where our food comes from - this was from tree to table. Our neighbours tree to be precise - well actually no one is there at the moment and they are growing over our side of the fence -but we did have to reach a bit for some- lets not mention the ladder. Anyway, we have figs, from a tree, and Alexander wanted to make jam, so we did.
Got to love Mr Google, who just tells me everything, step by step with pictures and all I needed was pectin. After a quick walk up the shops we got Jamsetta which did the trick. We followed the recipe on the back and ta da a nice small batch of Jam of the Fig.

Hail

Is it still called hail when it is this big????Our humid weather has been broken with an amazing and damaging storm. We are in the suburbs of Melbourne and were hit with a freak hail storm. We had hail the size of golfballs but some suburbs were pelted with tennis ball size. It sounded like we were being invaded, with them hitting the roof and windows with real force. Luckily we are on a hill and it hit the otherside far worse than us, however there are some serious dents in the car. We were lucky that we were at home and not travelling anywhere and none of our property was really damaged. There has been flash flooding, roofs collapsing and all kinds of things. Hope you were all safe. (notice spencer is still 'spiderman')

Use your imagination

The boys saw bits of the first Spiderman movie today. Alexander watched it, and Spencer was 'inspired' by it. All of a sudden he decided he needed to BE spiderman. We have lots of dress ups but no spiderman so we had to be inventive.
Mum initially grabbed Alexander's PJ top and while this sufficed, he needed accessories. First it was gloves - I quickly put my hand on these snow mittens (while it is a mere 28 degrees and humid here) I thought he would reject them and move on, but no, they went on without a quibble and then it was a ... mask...From the same bag I pulled a large woolen hat which I pulled over his eyes saying lovingly "here, just pretend you can see" I really didn't imagine that he would at all be happy with this, and he stood and looked at me only to say, "I need the boots now"

So with large skull gumboots he managed to walk to go and fight crime - spiderman style!

Birthday Season

It has hit my birthday season. Not my birthday, (August 27- lest you forget!) but a bunch of my girlfriends. In fact in a little over a month there are 7 gift giving birthdays for my friends. Here is one idea I am working on. Obviously they can't all get the same present, but there are a few different groups so I can look innovative when I am not so much.

This is Ikea fabric and you can see I have used different fabrics on each side of the middle two bags. They are unlined, but have plastic coating on the outside. I am really happy with the size and used webbing/belting for the handles. Easy to do and handy for the present cupboard.

I am planning a tutorial and hopefully I can get this up over the weekend- having said that am off to a hens night tonight (renewing vows not a new union) so who knows how the weekend will turn out!!!!

Step back in time....

Me, and 47,000 others experienced a time warp last night at the George Michael concert. It has been a very very long time since I have even been to a concert, so a stadium could have been really bad and I still would have loved it. Having said that, he was actually better live than I could have imagined. He catered to his middle aged crowd by having a few dancing numbers and then a nice sit down ballad. Maybe for his benefit too!

I went on a nostalgic journey of my own with his music - making up danced to wham at primary school, the upraw Faith at the house concerts, driving my blue datsun 120Y round town and dancing to Too Funky at Redheads. Hearing a crowd of 47000 sing along to a soppy ballad of Careless Whisper was actually moving, but we boogied a farewell to him with Freedom and we all could do with a bit of that!!

cool stuff - book

This book is hard to see (and even harder to work out) but very cool. It is called Flatness folded - a collection of 23 contemporary chinese garments.

The book basically talks about the utalitarian style of dress and exploring the chinese style. Miranda Tsui the designer has essays and then visual to explore the designs. This is one of my favourites that I plan to make for myself.

Each design starts with the model wearing the garment in their usual life - this is about the pants shown on a messenger boy.

Here is a shot of the actual pants which you can see have a shirt over pants.

Finally you get the detail shot of the front and back. The skirt is only over the front and the back looks like harem style pants. There are some generic measurements to help if you wanted to make it, but there is a lot of 'making' that has to happen in your head. This is as deep as the instructions go, and there are some garments that are twisted and folded and flipped that trying to work out how they are constructed gives me a head ache but it is definately a challenge and one I want to tackle this year.