mmmmminky

Ok so maybe I've gone a bit mental (and at 39 weeks pregnant I think I'm entitled to!) but I just can't pronounce the word 'minky' properly without drawing it out.  Even before I had kids and had never bought a scrap of it I couldn't walk past the minky table in the fabric store without giving it a good fondle before moving on to buy more fabrics I didn't really need either.

Anyway a few months ago I was searching for some minky fabric to make a change mat cover and some cloth nappies for the new baby.  When Lincraft had a 50% off sale I bought some of that bobbly minky in a pale yellow for the change mat (which is very high on my to do list), but even at 50% it was still quite expensive and the range of colours and prints was very limited.  I started to do some online searching when coincidentally the lovely Lisa from the OnlineFabricStore sent me an email asking whether I would like some minky and fleece fabric in exchange for a review here on my blog.

Now I haven't done any sponsored reviews before, mainly because I'm growing tired of those blogs that have either sponsored reviews or giveaways as the majority of their content with very little else interesting to read about.  Plus the offers I've received for sponsored reviews in the past have had absolutely nothing to do with what I blog about, so I've ignored or declined the offers.  But this offer was for free fabric! And fabric that I was actually searching for to make something that I would have posted about anyway, so I hope you'll all forgive me this once.

So I moseyed on over to the OnlineFabricStore and selected a minky fabric in a deep red colour and a fleece fabric in a chocolate brown with aqua polka dots, figuring that both were quite unisex so that it would suit Anna and the new baby no matter what it turns out to be.  There's quite a lot of choice in colours and prints, plus at $8.85/yd US ($8.50/91cm AU ) for the red minky and $6.85/yd US ($6.50/91cm AU ) for the fleece fabric their prices are better than what we can get here in Australia (yay for the very strong Aussie dollar!).

When the fabrics arrived I realised the red minky was far too lovely a shade of red to be hidden away on a baby's bottom so I decided instead to make little matching jackets for Anna and the new baby.

Fabric preparation:
I simply chucked both the red minky and chocolate fleece fabric into the washing machine on my normal cold wash before I sewed, remembering to overlock the cut edge of the minky because it does tend to shed little fibres a lot.  The fabric lost very little colour and didn't have any discernible shrinkage so it was a good start.  Another bonus is that these fabrics don't wrinkle, so I didn't need to press them either.

Sewing:
I was worried that the minky layers would stick to each and not feed through the feed dogs properly like I sometimes experience with velvet and corduroy, but the minkee sewed up with no problems at all.  I actually used my overlocker for 90% of the sewing on these and just used a stretch twin needle for some toptstitching.  Minky does have a nap so you do need to cut the pieces out with the grain in the same direction, which luckily I remembered to do, even in my baby brain state.

For the new baby I made a little raglan sleeved cardigan from McCalls 9407 which is OOP, which I got from an opshop some time ago.  Seriously is there anything easier than sewing a raglan sleeved cardigan? This took me about 1.5 hours maximum, from go to whoa. 

This pattern calls for a facing around the neckline and the front edges, but that seemed too fiddly to me and instead I lined the cardigan completely with a contrasting cotton knit fabric from the stash.  I just made two identical cardigans from the two fabrics, sewed them together with right sides facing, turned them inside out, stuck on a couple of snaps and all done!  Here's the finished product, sans baby of course:

I love the contrast of the black and white stripe knit against the deep red colour of the minky.  I decided to topstitch around the edge with a blanket stitch for decorative reasons, but I think a single stitch line would have been a better idea because the blanket stitch just made the minky look a bit ragged.  It looks better from the inside though (probably more so if I had sewn a little straighter of course):
 

I'm rapidly learning the politics of being a parent to more than one child: making sure the second child doesn't only get all hand me downs, trying to take as many photos of the second as the first and also balancing the attention evenly between them all.  So big sister Anna also needed something new and luckily the cut of minkee that Lisa sent was generous enough to make a hooded jumper.  I used trusty old Kwik Sew 2025, which is an ancient pattern long OOP that I picked up one time in a op shop. But again it's just a simple raglan sleeve style with a hood which never goes out of fashion for the toddler set. 
And here's what I made for Anna:

For the pocket, cuffs and inner hood I used some ribbing from the stash again bought from an opshop ages ago that is a pale pink and red stripe. 

Luckily this was an easy style to make because the instructions were missing from the pattern envelope, but I think I got it right.  Too bad my model decided to be funny and ham it up when I was trying to take to her photo, but she did profess to love this:

So far I've found the sizing of Kwik Sew patterns to be pretty good, much better than the other commercial pattern companies, but on this one I found that the sleeves and the body were a little too short. It did fit over her head and around the body so I guess I could just replace those cuffs with some wider cuffs.  Or I could just make her walk around with her hands in her pockets which would be extremely helpful when out shopping in those annoying stores with all the easter eggs on display at floor level....

The final verdict? The fabric is good quality with a lovely feel to it that didn't go away after washing, the colours are very close to what appears on screen and the fabric was easy to cut and sew with.  Because I didn't buy these fabrics I don't have any experience with their customer service or shipping, but I do think their prices are reasonable and the fabrics arrived fairly quickly even with international postage.  I'll definitely be looking at their website to get some more fabric once the next baby is out and I know whether I'm in for more pink butterfly fabric or some blue pirate fabric!

Dress to see santa

I've just notched up another parenting milestone - the annual torture of getting a photo taken with Santa Claus! Despite getting to the department store before the 9.30am start time, there was quite a queue and we waited 45 minutes to get our photo. I spent that time showing Anna all the christmassy stuff trying to get her used to it all, but to no avail because as soon as she got close to Santa there were tears and screams and lots of them!

So Anna's first christmas photo turned into an impromptu family portrait with Santa because the only way to get her to stop screaming was for me to hold her. She still didn't smile though, and this photo was the best of many that the photographer took (thank god for digital photography!):
Of course I had to make her a little outfit to have her photograph taken in. I made a simple little cotton dress with matching bloomers, and a detachable red spotted belt with a fabric yo yo on it.

For the dress I used a now OOP Butterick 400, which is a simple and basic pattern but which I knew fitted her having used it before. Again the line drawing on this pattern envelope is deceiving - it says one size only and shows a baby in the picture, yet Anna is nearly 12 months old now and it is still a little loose on her! I know she is a skinny baby, but this would be swimming on any baby younger. I left the fit a little loose though to make it easy to get on her, and just used the red belt to cinch it in. For the bloomers I just used a pattern from the Amy Butler Little Stitches for Little Ones book, again because I've used it before and I know it fits. And I'm trying to get my money's worth out of this book!

Originally I was just going to tie the red belt in a bow around Anna's chest, but the little munchkin kept pulling it apart and it sort of looked messy anyway. So I did what I did for the lilac top in my previous post - I put a press stud in the middle to join it but I also folded the ties down so they would hang down at just the right angle:

To cover the press stud and the folded section of the ties I put a fabric yo yo with a fabric covered button in the middle over the top of it which I think looks ultra cute and better than a bow: I also made some little shoes to match, which you don't see in the christmas photo because Anna kept pulling them off after about 2 seconds! But they are too cute:

I made these by adapting the free pattern for Heather Bailey's Bitty Booties. All I did was cut down the upper portion of the shoe, and sew in a ric rac ribbon tie.

And speaking of shoes, can any of you believe that I have gone practically all year without buying any new shoes at all?! Except slippers, which don't count, but I've gone through three pairs of those already. Long time readers would know I have a little shoe obsession, even having a special shoe cupboard for them and I spent almost my entire time pregnancy wondering about what shoes to wear (as it turned out, high heels still at 8 months). But I rectified that recently by acquiring these two pairs in the last few weeks:













The red heels are a birthday present from my parents and are actually of a sensible height to be very comfortable. And the sandals I bought on sale for 30% off and are a lovely coral colour with a very soft and safe rubber sole which is exactly what is needed when chasing a baby around who in the space of the last few days has decided to not only crawl but to climb stairs, walk around holding onto the furniture and stand up without holding onto anything at all!


Don't worry, the flyscreen door is closed in that last photo!

oops, how did that happen?

Turns out Anna's head isn't as big as I thought.....

No matter, she seems to think it's funny.....

It will fit her in no time. She's turning into quite the lollypop - her height is 75.5cm which is over the 97th percentile for girls, her head is in the 90th percentile but her weight has dropped down into 50th percentile. She had grown out of her hats, and being the frugalista that I am I wasn't going to pay $15 - $20 for a kiddies hat when I have enough fabric to make hats for all the heads of children in the entire third world. I used Butterick 5717 which according to the Butterick website is now OOP, but I picked it up from an op shop. I used the x-small size, but as usual the sizing of the big 4 pattern companies has foiled me again!

Hats are super simple to make, I don't know why I don't make them more often because I wear them all the time. You won't catch me outside on a barely sunny day without a hat on my head, and I have quite a collection, but like shoes and bags there's always room in the wardrobe for another!

Mochimo - Anna isn't walking yet and she's barely crawling, mostly backwards really which is good because I can see that once she's on the move she's going to need alot more supervision from me. She does like to stand though, and has worked out how to pull herself to a standing position by grabbing onto anything nearby. But you're right, time has flown by this year - I've been off work for a full 12 months now although it only feels like yesterday that I started my maternity leave. I'll be back at work February 1 which sadly is only a bit over 2 months away now! I'll only be working three days a week though so it should be manageable. I enrolled Anna in childcare for those three days a week which is costing $99 a day but it seems like a really good centre and the kids seem happy, so hopefully she'll enjoy it. Has to be more exciting than spending all day every day with me, entertaining little kids is so tiring!

Anyway enough rambling about the baby from me, I have a hem on a dress to finish while she's asleep!

that's not a bib, THIS is a bib

apologies for the lame Crocodile Dundee joke, us Aussies do sometimes trot it out when we're trying to be only a little bit funny......

Anyway, I have a stack of bib from various stores and they all seem to have one thing in common: they're either small, or very small and don't do much in the way of stopping food getting onto clothes. Lately Anna has developed a real attitude around meal times - she only wants to feed herself, but likes to rub her food into her face, hair and all over the high chair before eating it! All of her clothes are seriously food stained, and I have given up soaking them in Napisan before each wash because they just get dirty again.

But I recently bought one of these very handy snap presses from Nappies Covered:

I bought this to use snaps instead of velcro on the next lot of nappies I make since Anna has worked out she likes being without a nappy best (there's that attitude again!). And it is so simple to use, I'm trying to use it on practically everything I can. Since I have a stack of terry towelling nappy flats and more than enough decorative fabrics, I decided to make some supersized bibs to defeat even the messiest meal time.

I trialled a few different fabrics - the yellow polka dot is a plastic coated polyester cotton from Spotlight which is wipe cleanable but liquid spills roll off very quickly, the blue dotted and ladybird fabric are woven cottons which work great and were easy to sew, whilst the pink dotted is a cotton knit which works great as a bib but was a bit shifty when sewing. I used this free download pattern from Chickpea Studios, but I enlarged mine a bit.

As you can see, it covers her shoulders and her entire front:

And this is the reason why it is needed!

I can't believe how fast last week flew by! When you don't really have any set routine day to day (ie going to work) the days seem to go slow, except last week I had things I wanted to get done but for various reasons I didn't find the time. On Saturday night just gone I had my first night out without the baby since she was born (yes we have been joined at the hip for the last 5 and a half months), to celebrate a friend's birthday with dinner at a fancy French restaurant. So I decided I needed something new to wear to mark the momentous occasion of going out without the baby.

After seeing this gorgeous top over at Amanda's blog, I wanted to make BWOF 11/08 top 114 in a lovely red floral printed silk satin I purchased from the Remnant Warehouse a while back. The fabric is so vivid that I thought this style would be simple enough to let the fabric shine:

I envisaged wearing this with a black pencil skirt, a thin belt and a silver cuff bracelet and I would look quite the yummy mummy. Well, luckily I made a muslin for a change because this was a MAJOR wadder on me! I think maybe the sleeveless version is better than the long sleeved version, 'cos it just looked about 20 times too big on me even though I traced a size smaller. And since there are no reviews over at Pattern Review for the long sleeve version, I'm guessing that no one else thinks this one is a winner either.

Anyway I ended up wearing a dress I'd made previously and now fit back into (yay for me!) and wore a pair of super high heels for the first time in ages - I literally had to wipe the dust of them before wearing them. And dinner was great - very little baby talk since none of the friends there that night have kids, lots of swearing and obnoxious raucous chat that was very non child suitable. But I really needed some time out from Anna and being a mum because I've been very cranky with her and just about everyone else lately over the smallest things so it was definately time to recharge the batteries. And Michael didn't mind staying home since the rugby was on the telly.

I didn't get around to sewing the dress I've had cut out and pinned for the last two weeks though, because my overlocker has decided to have a few issues with the black thread I've put in it, even though I've used that thread many times previously. The tension is all over the place, and the upper threads keep snapping and I've spent time cleaning it, coaxing it, trying all different tension settings to no avail so it is probably time for a service.

Before I changed the thread though I made Anna a new sleeping bag from some quilted cotton and flannelette I picked up from a garage sale a while back because it's gotten pretty cold around here lately. Gotta love making a sleeping bag for next to nix when similar ones (albeit cuter more embellished ones) sell for $80.

I also made some simple pants in a stripe stretch corduroy because Anna wears far too much pink on pink for my liking, although I also made her this pink fleece jumper so I guess it's hard not to dress a little girl in pink. She's also discovered the joy of blowing raspberries hence the expression on her face:

This week's plan is to get the overlocker fixed so I can sew the dress because I want to post it over at Sew Retro for the June competition, as well as find time to decide on a new kitchen benchtop colour so we can make arrangements to finish off the kitchen sometime this decade! And before anyone asks, the house renovation is still not finished because there has been weeks of sometimes torrential rain so the backyard is still a muddy mess with unconnected drainage pipes sitting in puddles of water. The supposed three month renovation is now entering it's eighth month........

does my bum look big in this?

I bet you all saw that post title in bloglines and rolled your eyes right? You're thinking to yourself 'is she still going on about her post preggie body?'. Well I'm actually talking about this little one:

I finally finished sewing up the nappies for the second time and they work great. I don't think they last as long as disposables between changes, but since nappies should be changed frequently anyway to reduce the potential for nappy rash its not a problem. I'm glad I made the pattern with leg gussets because these are still a little big around the legs even with those chubby little thighs, but Anna will grow into them so they should last for longer this way. I used the Wee Weka pocket nappy pattern sized S-M but from what I've read from other users of this pattern they are big enough to fit until toilet training.

I was a bit worried that Anna's clothes wouldn't fit over the cloth nappies because they are a little bulkier than a disposable but since Anna is mostly in 00's for the length it's fine. Actually here's a question for all you cloth nappy users out there - how many layers of absorbent fabric do you use in your nappies? I've got four layers of microfibre in the pocket nappies, but I'm not sure whether I should use less or more. She still fits her bodysuit, it just looks a little lumpy:

Thanks for all your feedback on sleep habits, it seems lots of babies don't like to sleep each day but I guess each baby is different and changing all the time. Anna in fact had three short naps today, even after sleeping in until 9.30am after her 5am feed! So I had a little sleep in this morning myself, then also had time to shower, have a cup of tea and hang out some washing. I just hope she sleeps well tonight since I'm on my own - my husband is off at a work conference for a few days which just happens to be at a golf resort and his golf clubs just happen to be still in car after his usual Saturday golf.....

sewing in rewind

Is there anything more disheartening and energy zapping than unpicking your sewing mistakes? Tracing off a BWOF pattern comes a close second, but for me spending quality time with my seam ripper is almost tantrum inducing..... I had made 14 of these:


for this little munchkin:

and since I now have a laundry and clothesline again I was ready to start using cloth nappies full time. However instead of a 'ta-da' moment, I had a major d'oh moment when I realised I had completely stuffed them up. The logic behind modern cloth nappies is that the outer layer is waterproof, the inner layer is moisture wicking and the insert is absorbent. Well this doesn't work so well if you accidentally switch the fabrics around, in fact it doesn't work at all! So I guess I'll be spending the next little while unpicking, recutting and resewing, which is even more annoying because I got the new BWOF mag (well the 2/09 issue) in the mail and would rather be sewing from that instead.

Oh well, on to more exciting things. Our backyard presently looks like this:

My husband (and his spotty four legged supervisor) was busy the last two weekends building a retaining wall. All it needs is some turf and landscaping and it will be done for now - next summer we'll get busy painting, building a deck and putting up a shade sail, but not right now because I don't want my handyman to get burnt out LOL! Oh and moo-i-made-it, if you're reading, our flowering gum tree there in background has finally flowered. After several years in the ground being well looked after it gave us nothin', and then six months of neglect and abuse by the builders it not only survived but came out with some beautiful orange flowers! So to reward it we built the retaining wall around it's root ball to let it keep growing and hopefully flower again soon.

And when it rained on the weekend my husband also finished putting the flooring down in my sewing studio - here's a sneak peek of it:

On to the comments to the last post - Mary Nanna I'm still cracking up at your puppies in a sack comment, I think we could all do with someone that honest in our lives. Vicki stop telling me the harsh truth, I wanna live in blissful denial! Jean, Kath and Kim the Australian version is a funny tv show about an aspirational Aussie family (thankfully it's all tongue and cheek and we Australians are not like that, well not all of us anyway). And I've been well and truly put back into my box regarding using pattern tissues for anything other than cutting out the patterns, I so didn't think of those patterns with pieces missing or ones that are falling apart and unable to be used. If I did have some of those, then I definately would use them for decorative pieces.

Excitingly Anna slept through the night last night - she went down at 8pm and woke up at 6am which is just brilliant! She is actually a good sleeper at night, she usually only wakes up at 3am for a feed and then goes back to sleep really quickly, with her next feed at 6am and then we both sleep in until 9am (how luxurious!). However, she is a terrible day time sleeper, only napping twice a day for about 45mins at a time which doesn't leave me much time to get things done - this is when I spend all my time walking her around trying to get her to sleep so she doesn't get overtired and ratty by the evening. But I shouldn't complain because at least I'm not tired and worn out like some new mums whose babies still wake multiple times a night.

Happy sewing all, may your seam rippers be resting in peace rather than working overtime like mine will be....

Beating the baby at her own game....

Hands up everyone who is bored of baby related sewing on this blog - my hand is half raised here! I am dying to get into the last three BWOF issues and have even traced some off but keep getting side tracked with 'necessary' sewing such as nappies and curtains, and this sleeping sack I made for Anna to sleep in. Anonymous was right when she posted a comment on my last post that sewing for yourself becomes a real delight...

All the baby books I have read recommend wrapping babies snugly to help them settle and get a good sleep which is fine if your baby is not a kung fu master in training like Anna is!

Seriously, she is like one of those magicians wiggling out of a straight jacket whenever I wrapped her, so I've given up. Instead I cut up one of the receiving blankets I bought from an op shop to make into a sleep sack because it was too small to be used for anything else.

This was such an easy project too, all I did was fold it in half widthways, cut out arm and neck holes, sewed up the shoulder seam and added a zip down the front. I also reused the pink bias binding for decoration and then just sewed the bottom shut. It's probably a little too long judging by the photo below, but it will do the job and it allowed me to have a gloat to my husband when we were in a baby shop the other day and saw these for sale for $80!!!

The other thing I made recently was my very first softie (ie soft toy) for my friend's little boy who has been sick lately and got quite scared in hospital. Borrowing inpsiration heavily from others I have seen on the internet, I made this little monster:

I made it from a cardigan I bought on impulse last year when I was heavily pregnant and it doesn't fit and nor do I like the colour and as a result never wore it. So now it has a much better life as an ugly looking monster that will hopefully bring a smile to a little boy's face.

A few people have asked in the comments how I have managed to get anything done with a newborn baby. Comparing Anna with the other babies at my mother's group I realise that she is quite well behaved for a little one, and she has the delightful habit of doing this:

She doesn't sleep for long though, 30 -40 minutes at most but it's long enough to get something done and luckily I have my priorities right and put housework last on the to do list ha ha ha.

and now for something completely different

thank you all for your advice re Anna's poo habits - she seems to have settled into a routine now of only going every few days which according to you all is normal. I guess it's a good thing because it means less really messy nappies to clean up, especially as now I have a laundry again I'm going to start using cloth nappies which was my intention from the start. While Anna is still relatively small I'm going to use terry towelling flats since I have a stack of them thanks to the lovely Raewyn who gave me a heap last year and they are a better fit on little bot bots.

But you know you've sewn almost everything when you've made one of these:

Ok, sewing your own menstrual pads may be much weirder, which plenty of people do I have discovered while researching nappies! Anyway I'm not going down that path, but I have made a pocket nappy, made from the Wee Weka pattern, and it's designed to convince lazy and recalcitrant husbands that using cloth nappies is no harder than using disposables! It's made from a PUL outer layer, which is some fancy schmancy waterproof but breathable laminated fabric, with a lovely soft microfleece inner against the skin, and in between those two layers (ie in the pocket) I've got some bamboo fleece which is ultra absorbent.

It even has leg gussets to contain leakages, and with the velcro across the front it's just the same as a disposable but won't contribute to landfill and huge energy costs required in it's production and transportation. I know, I know there's huge debate over whether the water and energy used in washing is less evil environmental issue than that of the disposables, but since I have a water efficient front loading machine and will dry in the sunshine since we have that in abundance, for me using cloth nappies makes environmental and financial sense. Rightio, I'll get off my high horse now......

It was pretty simple to make, thanks to the wonders of fold over elastic, but a bit fiddly. Given the cost of the fabrics and the time to make it I can see why these are selling for $20 - $30 a pop, although I would never pay that because I'm extremely thrifty (*cough* cheap). For anyone else who may be interested, I got my fabrics online from Green Beans which is a New Zealand company but have such good prices that even with postage it was the best value I could find, plus they posted really quickly. There's also a comparison of the three most popular free nappy patterns here, which helped me decide which to use.

So this week I had what could almost be called a social life! I went out to a restaurant with my parents and Anna slept most of the time in her pram until the end when she sat quietly in my lap, much to the visible relief of the other diners (it was a small restaurant). Then on Wednesday I watched a movie with my mothers club group in a cinema that has one of those crying rooms but none of the babies cried the whole time anyway! And then yesterday I met up with some friends for a walk in the park and yum cha for lunch, and since Anna was being so good I even took a walk around Ikea. That place is baby central during the weekdays, of which I am now one of those ladies of leisure with nothing better to do than shop during the day (ha ha just kidding, I wish!).

In response to Benes' question in the comments to the last post, half of the room has louvre windows, the other half is a big glass sliding door, and the triangle windows on top are fixed glass. They are fantastic in a temperate climate like here in Sydney because you can control how much the windows are open so you can get as much or as little breeze in the house as you want. Unfortunately though the new room is so bright during this summer sunshine we're having it practically burns my retina, so my mission this weekend is to find some fabrics to make some sheer curtains to filter. Looks like it's time to break the fabric fast......

Oh and a big congratulations to Carolyn over at diaryofasewingfanatic who welcomed a second grandson into the world this week! Also congratulations to my friend Jenny who just found out she is going to be a grandma for the second time, which is fantastic news since her daughter had a cervical cancer scare recently but thankfully was ok - go have pap smears ladies, it may save your life.

little sewing

This week I only managed a little bit of sewing, but I did trace off three BWOF patterns from the November and December issues in preparation for our coming winter. The sewing I did manage this week were making little things for Anna finally. We've been having sort of in between weather where it's been too cool for the sleeveless body suits and little bloomers Anna has in abundance but also too warm for the hand me down winter pants I was given, so I decided to make some long pants for her in lightweight cotton interlock to get through this crazy weather period. They were so easy and quick to make I managed to make 4 pairs during one of her naps using fabrics from the stash of course. Here is my favourite, a pair of pink polka dot pants:

I used New Look 6310 pattern size, which has sizes for new born to large. I used the small size which according to the pattern sizing is for babies 6-8kg (13-18lb) since Anna was 6kg at her 2 month weight check (yes even my doctor calls her a little buddha!). Well I should have checked pattern review first, because this pattern is HUGE, which the reviewer mentions. So note for anyone else making this for their baby or as a gift, size down for sure. I thought the pattern sizing on women's patterns from the big 4 were way off, but this is crazy - in the photo below the pink stripe pants are size 000 bought from Target that fit perfectly, and the light grey pair are the ones I made that are supposed to be 'small':

In the end, I even had to reduce the new born size a fair bit, tracing off the Target pants to get ones that will actually fit her now, not in years to come..... What I'm extremely embarrassed about though is that I made these pants and top for a friend last year for her baby and if she tried them on her little girl they would be way too big and they must think I'm bonkers or have no idea about babies (which would be right actually!).

Now check this out, my lounge room and dining room have floors thanks to my parents staying at the weekend to help us put the floating floors down:

All that's left to do is put the skirting boards down, paint them and the architraves around the window and get busy decorating with some light fittings, furniture, artwork etc. We're still undecided about the staircase, we may change it for a more modern design but for now it will stay as is.

Outside though is still a complete disaster zone though, with the builder still to remove some rubbish and then some earthworks to be done before we can turf and landscape. But thankfully the builder wil soon be finished his work and will go away, because frankly I never want to see or hear him and his dopey offsiders ever again, they've been hanging around for far too long already.

Of course we still have a mile long list of things to finish off, like painting the outside of the house and garage (eek!), some additional cabinets and new benchtop for our enlarged kitchen, and some more painting in the rest of the house as well as fitting out my sewing studio (which incidentally is at the top of the list!).

Anyway must go and check Anna's nappy - I've become a bit obsessed with her poo habits lately because she hasn't gone for three days which is unlike her so I'm worried she may be constipated. Oh how exciting my life has become.....