look who's two!

Hi y'all, I'm back home from holidays. Although any parent will tell you that travelling with children isn't actually holidaying, it's just parenting in a different place with additional challenges because the kids are out of their comfort zone. Anna was extremely naughty the whole time, but Cairns in tropical north Queensland is a beautiful place and we managed to have a good time despite her best attempts to sabotage it! We took a boat trip out on the Great Barrier Reef and saw some beautiful coral and fish, a day trip into the amazing Daintree rainforest (a world heritage listed wet tropics area), and a fair bit of splish splashing in the huge outdoor pool in Cairns since it was so hot.

I don't know if this has made worldwide news yet, but most of Queensland is currently under flood, in fact an area greater than Germany and England together is affected and today there is a major flood crisis in Brisbane and surrounds. There was no catastrophic event like Hurricane Katrina, but the aftermath of the flooding is just as bad. My inlaws in Ipswich have been evacuated and will be safe, but we are worried about their property though. My thoughts are with all those in Qld, I could not imagine losing everything or fearing for your life in this manner. I hope you all keep dry and safe.

Anna had her second birthday while we were away, I cannot believe how quickly the last two years have passed. It such a cliche that you hear parents often say, but now that I have lived it I can understand how true it is. How did I get from this:

to this so quickly?

Of course another birthday means another birthday dress. This year I went for a simple style with some cutesy embellishment:

It's a red stretch cotton poplin made into a simple shift dress with a double layered puff sleeve made using McCalls 5916 which is now firmly a TNT dress pattern. I used some black gingham bias tape for the neckline and sleeve edge, which meant I could eliminate the neck facing so it was even quicker to sew because while sewing in miniature isn't difficult it can get fiddly sometimes.

I used some heat'n'bond transfer paper to iron on a dacschund image from black gingham on the front of the dress. That stuff is magic - very quick and easy to use and this dress has gone through the wash twice now and there's no hint of fraying of the edge of applique, and it is still firmly stuck on despite no sewing. Basically all you do is iron the heat'n'bond paper to your fabric, cut out whatever shape you want, peel off the backing paper and then iron it onto your garment (or other fabric), and you're done! So simple, but much easier than doing applique stitch around the edges of your embellishment.

And here's my two year old who epitomises the phrase "terrible twos" to a tee, hamming it up for the camera:

Happily, she is back at daycare but my husband and I aren't back at work until next week so we have a few quiet days without her. I'd like to say we are relaxing and re-enacting life pre-child, but sadly we are painting the kitchen and hallway, so it's all go, go, go around here at the moment.