Another Birthday!

This is our last family birthday (in our house anyway) for a wee while.   Miss M turned 7 today and we were so glad the forecast rain didn't come after all.  It has been so cold in the last couple of days that we all made the most of the sunshine and had breakfast outside.

Her main present was a ticket to see Mary Poppins in Sydney, but, due to a thoroughly disorganised Mother, we won't be going until the 1st October!  I really struggled to find presents for her this year.  She has never been a particularly girly girl but I often wonder if that's by choice or out of necessity.  When I thought about the things she enjoys, it hit me that she spends hours drawing, sometimes reads, likes listening to and playing music, and plays with Lego.   Hopefully she will enjoy the last day of the holidays painting and creating!

I loved that she sat and read every word of every card she was sent.

As is our tradition, we went out to lunch and picked Blue Water Pizza in Warners Bay, mainly because kids eat free!  Obviously when you are taking 5 kids out this is an appealing offer!  The pizzas were good, she got a candle in her ice-cream, they have colouring in sheets for the wee ones and play stations for the bigger ones, so everyone was happy!

The sun was shining so despite the cold wind we had a quick muck about at the lake.

Why do Small Children feel the need to chase seagulls?  All the time?

I had been struggling with my Cake Mojo.   Unlike her brothers she didn't have a specific request and I had no inspiration this time.  I had baked a cake and ganached it but when we got home at 3.30pm I was still no nearer to a clear idea, Google Images are always great but I was very aware of the time.  I finally iced it and cut out some shapes to stick on it, the colours were wrong and that irritated me, however, there was cake and they always look good when the candles are lit!

A Boy did point out that it wasn't one of my better ones, but was wise enough to not make eye contact and moved swiftly away!

I think they all enjoyed eating it anyway!

Happy Birthday Miss Munch!

Amigurumi

This is my first attempt at Amigurumi (the number of times I spelt that wrong and had to be corrected by Google!).

He is (loosely - my apologies!) based on this pattern by a lovely, very talented, friend from University, Emma Varnam.  Smallest Boy had been invited to a 3rd birthday party but I have had ALL of the children at home for one or both of the last 2 days with headaches and temperatures, and couldn't get to the shops to buy a present.  I had decided that I will try and make as many presents as I can this year anyway, but boys are tricky.  I had a stash of wool and remembered Emma's gorgeous patterns so decided to give one a go. 

Well, I have been doing crochet for about 9 months now and figured "How hard can rounds of Double Crochet be?".  I confess that this little fellow nearly reduced me to Bad Words.  Even  looking at his picture now I'm noticing more mistakes!  If I had thought about it earlier (other than 5pm last night) I would have bought some felt for his eye and tooth rather than cutting up one of Smallest's old t-shirts at 9.30 this morning! 

Thankfully The Birthday Boy was pleased when he opened his present, calling his Mum (the lovely Rachel of Polly's Dolly and artillumina) to come and look, and was even spotted playing with it and a fantastic hippo made from recycled flipflops later on!

My Boys were also fairly impressed and are now putting in orders for their favourite Pokemon characters...