messy Miss Kate

Christmas Day 2011...

Christmas post 3 of 3:

Well the day started around 1am for us. Yes you read that right, 1am, about 30minutes before I put myself to bed!  Georgia woke up & came rushing out all excited because Father Christmas had already visited [apparently] and put something into her Santa sack at the end of her bed.  Well I did not see this coming, I must have been in the bathroom when the man in the big red suit dashed through the house & placed pressies in 5 Santa sacks!

She then wouldn't settle - beaming with excitement!  She ended up having a little peek in her Santa sack & crashing on the couch in our room.  The day then officially started again at 6.11am when the twins came rushing into our room with their Santa sacks!  Lachy woke up, as did Georgie & it wasn't too long after when our best sleeper Charlotte, came in also.

Father Christmas brought each of them a little camera & SD card.  The twins also got mini Blythes/ LPS sets. The big girls got lalaloopsy dolls in sets. Buddy got a Thomas Tank Engine book with keyboard.  Nice one Father Christmas!  All VERY excited!

Then we headed downstairs for breaky. Collecting all the little chocolates on the way left by Father Christmas in a trail down the stairs!

After a bunch of excitement seeing the stack of pressies under the tree from Jeff and I, we headed in for breakfast.  I know its torture for them but we feel because they are so little, we need to get something decent into their little bellies before the day of indulgence begins!

After breakfast, we all assembled in the lounge for the present ceremony to begin!

First up a Thomas the Tank Engine ride on for little Buddy. That kept him quite amused for a bit.  One by one, Jeff handed out pressies until they were all done.  Everyone spoilt with lots of lovely gifts.

Next up, we all got spruced up for the day ahead & headed out for our first stop, my parents house with my siblings & nephews & niece for presents & Christmas lunch.  Here's all the cousins together near the tree, a wee bit excited to open a few more pressies!

My dad surprised them this year, all dressed up as Father Christmas. They all loved it! Oh, except little Buddy who couldn't really look at my dad for the rest of the day & freaked out if he got too close. Funny.

After pressies, we sat down to a glorious spread put on by my mum.  Kids loved sitting together & pulling crackers & reading jokes. Kinda the first year my kids could read properly & share jokes with my sisters kids. It was great!

After lunch the kids bashed about a pinata until mountains of chocolate spilled out!

Even Lachy headed into the scrum & grabbed himself a chocky.

Next up was bubbles!

Love this photo of Lachy chasing bubbles that my sister captured.  Excitement plus!

Here's my mum & dad, Mother & Father Christmas.

After we left my parents, we headed up to Jeffs parents house. The Christmas event at Jeffs parents is a bit different from ours. Very casual, relaxing, laid back.  Very much an Australian Christmas I would say. Less formal than my family. I love it, best of both worlds. Its nice to experience two different ways to celebrate the day. And its also nice at the end of the day to be able to just sit around and relax & pick at the food, have 2nds, maybe thirds.....

At my inlaws, the children exchange gifts with their grandparents. The family is very large now, Jeff is one of 10.  So exchanges between all the siblings families became too much.  The kids all got lovely gifts, Zhu Zhu pets & crazy fluffy haired pencil topper sets which they have wanted all year! They spent the night, eating & playing with their cousins. We left very late as usual & I don't think I took a single photo while I was there! Aaaghh! See, totally relaxed!

We got the girls & boy home, all were super exhausted!!  Some slept in the car on the way home. Most of them needed to be carried up to bed.  Here are the girls with their new dolls.  

Chelsea & Lulu Chocolate [she's a Simply Chocolate doll].

Mimi & Amy Vanilla [she's a Simply Vanilla doll].

Charlotte & Sweet Candy [she's a My Little Candy hybrid doll].

Georgie & Ruby Christmas [she's a Bohemian Peace doll].

One of my favourite traditions at Christmas is the night of Christmas once Jeff & I have all the kids to bed, the lovely day is behind us & we are left by ourselves in the quiet with all the lovely presents to organise.  We like to get all the packaging & recycling done & then set up & display all the kids pressies over the couches in the lounge so that when they wake up the next morning they are excited all over again!

This year I got Bridesmaids on DVD [most hilarious movie EVER] so we watched it as we worked away.

The kids were so lucky this year, lots of wonderful gifts... 

The girls of course got their Blythe dolls as their main presents + a few summer clothes [leggins & tees], bathers, lalaloopsy dolls, hello kitty figurines, books, zhu zhu pets, strawbery shortcake dolls, lots of arty/crafty stuff, lipgloss, water balloons, Mario DS games, new school lunch bags...

Buddy got his Thomas ride on, a super large Mr Potato head with lots of smaller potato heads inside. Absolute hit with everyone.  He got a drum set, a keyboard, lots of books, summer clothes, art smock,  soft toy spotty puppy [which has barely left his side], a little talking dinosaur called 'Buddy'! And an angry birds beach towel & bathers. 

I bought Jeff a ladder, a Soda Stream, train DVD, Bickfords cordial, explorer socks & lots of lollies. He also got sexy Bonds shorty jocks & a whole other pile of things I cannot even recall.

We got some share gifts, movie vouchers, scanpan knives & skillet, luggage, hampers.....

I also got some lovely Christmas babushka mugs, a beautiful birdhouse & Womens Weekly Christmas book.  My kids gave me some beautiful books, Design Sponge & some Pip Lincolne titles [why hadn't I heard of Pip before?]  Jeff bought me a large Estee Lauder Beautiful perfume set [my fave perfume] and a middie Blythe, shown below.

Here's the new Christmas decs that the kids received this year. I have tags on all the decorations that have been gifted to my kids since they were born showing who it belongs to & who gave it to them. We give them each a new one every year too.

Here's my little drummer boy, cranking out a lovely tune on his symbols! Oh the house has been full of music & concerts ever since Christmas day. Some of it good! Not much, but some!

And here's a familiar scene from the last few days, the big girls playing Mario DS games amidst their new things.

They've been playing lots of dolly games too.

Me? I've been in my element, relaxing, pottering around integrating new things into the house, doing various house projects & getting ready for the next edition of Mason crazy.... having the two families over at our house for the twins 4th birthday party in a few days time!

Fabulous Christmas, cannot wait for 2012 Christmas already!

Kate xo

 

‎'Twas the night before Christmas...

‎'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house,

not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.....

[except mum & dad playing on their iPads!]

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

while visions of Mario Cart DS games & Blythe dolls danced in their heads.....

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Kate Xo

Family: Christmas Cards 2011...

Christmas post 2 of 3:

Well lots of blogging to catch up on, both from last school term, now Christmas & soon the twins will be turning 4 so I had better get cracking on my blogging as I have lots of plans & busyness coming up in 2012. Right skates on....

What am posting about? Yes, Christmas cards 2011!

The girls cards to hand out to classmates, super easy. They drew their picture onto the iPad, we coloured them in Photoshop & I maneuvered the digital handwriting under the pictures & copied across so I had 3 vertical cards onto an A4 sized sheet.  I took them to my printer & had them printed. Worked out pretty well having 3 on each sheet. A quick guillotine, candy cane attached & they were ready to hand out!

  


As for our family Christmas card.... not so easy.  I love to photograph the kids together at least once per year, looking nice, hopefully smiling & enjoying being with each other. Hopefully capturing happiness.  Candid & imperfect totally ok, just a wee bit of happy is what I am after.  Did I do good?  No. Supermum? Not so much.

Charlotte was upset about something, I cannot recall what. Buddy, well he was not in the slightest bit interested in joining the girls and wandered around in all directions. Then when I sat them all down, he burst into tears.  I gave up when I dropped my DSLR camera on the ground with my most expensove lense on board. Sigh. 

I did get some lovely portraits though.

 

Ok, so this wasn't so grand.... and she'll kill me when she see's I posted this but oh well, its real life.

 

  

Learning to be quite the little posers.

I wonder where they get that from?

After not really getting anything suitable, in a mad hurry, I took my camera with family in tow out to grab some shots just minutes before we visited Father Christmas for a photo. We stopped at a footy oval somewhere along the way & little Mr Bud once again decided he would not be in the shot unless there were tears. So this is the best of the bunch.

Maybe in hindsight, something from the first bunch at home was better. Not sure. This new batch taken on the fly, weren't at all sharp. Maybe I did actually do some damage when I dropped the camera. Maybe I was rushing the shot. Anyhow, will need to look into getting it checked out.

Not exactly what I had in mind but well this is our life. Little posers, sisters doting on the little man, little man doing whatever he pleases, because you know, he's the only boy and just entering into the terrible two's - which every parents knows actually starts at 18 months!  I guess 'terrible two's' sounds better than terrible eighteenmonthsthsthsthstheses!

Not a perfect Christmas card, but I like it anyway. Sharing the Christmas Joy!????

 

And what do you know, the camera chick taking shots of kids with Father Christmas, clicks once and gets this.... Gahhhhh!!

 

Anyway, we did manage to print & send all our cards out this year which is something. I am grateful for that.

Kate xo

The lead up to December 25th...

Christmas Post 1 of 3:

Jeff and I are usually pretty organised & plan ahead for Christmas starting in May/June. I usually go to the midnight Christmas sales & buy from a well prepared list.  I then can add little bits & pieces & make a few things throughout the remainder of the year so we are all ready to go for the big day.

Well this year, I left some of the little bits & pieces until the last few weeks as I've been fairly busy with preparing for my exhibition in Queensland, I had several commissions, lots of new art & print releases, we've been away, I've been away several times..... the list goes on!!

So anyway, I was looking forward once my commitments were mostly taken care of, to finishing off all the Christmas things to be done when the inevitable happened....

The entire family came down with a terrible flu.  My GP although didn't test for it, thought it must have been swine flu because it took us [especially Jeff & I] down, to comotose level for a week! - and SO fast.  I can't recall feeling so sick, so unable to move, & just weeping because of the pain.  It was awful.  All the kids got it, one by one. We turned our lounge into a makeshift hospital dormitory & took turns of sleeping & feeding the kids - whoever wanted something to eat that is.  We kept well hydrated, we all slept lots but other than that, it was a really yukky week.

It coincided with me having to go to Sydney at the end of that first week for my 12wbt end of season training & party.  Well it was definitely touch & go but in the end, the Tamiflu had kicked in & I did feel better than I had. Jeff was also feeling better & felt capable of looking after the kids.  The kids had all bounced back alot quicker than Jeff or I so I felt like there was no possibility of them ending up in hospital. They were all running around by the end of that week & helping us get better!  There's no way I would have gone if any of them were still in the thick of it.

I'll post more about my weekend away later but basically I had a great time. Spurred on by adrenaline of being with my sister & friends. When I returned to Adelaide - I was actually only gone for one night [!] I completely flatlined. I slept for almost the entire following week. Clearly I had taken on too much & probably shouldn't have gone away, but I loved it anyway. A teeny break.

But back to Christmas, we were now behind schedule!!!!!!!  Two weeks wasted, still things to do, make, buy...

Here's the kids with their cousins at my parents house after all helping to decorate the tree towards the end of school term.

In the following weeks, I managed to have little pop outs here & there and also buy some things online. I even started to make progress on measuring up my own pattern for girls dresses & get the cutting out done.  I stitched up some pockets, did a little messy Kate style applique & then.....

....my beautiful sewing machine jammed so badly & I have been unable to fix it or finish the girls dresses!  It'll sit like that until the sewing centre re-opens early January. They will get their dresses eventually! And Blythe doll dresses to match too! I was also going to be sewing their traditional Christmas decoration too. Not this year. I'll start early & have it done for 2012 Christmas, I hope.

Another setback.  Anyway, we just kept swimming.

We got the kids Christmas cards out, post coming up about that. School finished for the year. Yay, more freedom!

Next up we pulled out all the Christmas decorations...

We got our tree up & decorated. Well the top half anyway. We learned quickly that Bud enjoyed pulling decs off & tossing them around, so one by one, we have been moving them all higher up the tree!  Not a very good photo of our tree either! I took this shot of my new clock in our formal lounge and realised that apart from Christmas morning, this is one of only a few shots of our tree this year! So, like my new clock? I bought it for the house with my art earnings!

We started getting in the Christmas spirit, decorating the house too....

I used to have all my special Christmas decorations scattered around years ago but now they of course need to be up high so little hands don't smash all the snowglobes etc.  Love all our special Christmassy things!

We got the stockings up.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I finished all the Christmas shopping in time for Jeff to run off & have his knee surgery a few days before Christmas. Happy to report he is fine, all cleaned up & repaired inside that torn & worn knee of his.

We finished the present wrapping! Family Christmas cards were even sent!

And then I made my first ever batch of rocky road. I had seen a fantastic recipe in the freebie Coles Christmas magazine but of course I lost that & just made up my own. Happy to report I tasted the Coles recipe & my own - mine wins!

Recipe:

diced marshmallows [if Coles has run out of mini marshmallows like mine had]

diced Allens snakes [because they are the best]

diced snickers bars

diced strawberry creams lollies

Method:

spread out over baking paper in deep pan

pour over melted chocolate

set in fridge

cut into chunk sized pieces

eat & enjoy

then exercise otherwise it'll go striaght to your thighs.

Notes:

Next year, or whenever I make this recipe again, I think I would add a very thin layer of chocolate to the base of the pan before putting in all the diced treats.  I think it would just make it hold slightly better than it did. I had the odd snake or nut falling out when cutting up.  Other than that, yummo!

And before I knew it, Christmas was upon us.  Christmas Eve & our family festivities & excitement was here! Woo!

We all glammed up a bit & headed into the 'big city Adelaide' as our little ones like to call it!

We dined at Cafe Brunelli in Rundle Street & it was delicious. Lots of full bellies. 

Here's the kiddies in a very surprisingly empty Rundle Street after dinner.

We drove around the city and showed the kids the big Christmas tree in Victoria Square and then we drove out to the brewery lights. A huge Christmas tradition in many Adelaide families is to visit the brewery lights sometime over the Christmas period.  We like to do it Christmas eve.

And here's my little posers again at the brewery.

Next we took a long drive home as it started to get dark, winding through the streets to spot as many Christmas lights on houses as we could.  Then home to put out food for the reindeers & a beverage for Father Christmas. Lastly, the traditional night before Christmas stories. We have several. And then bed!

Five little babies off to bed & then the elves & Father Christmas got to work.....

Kate xo

Elfing around + 1 million + 22 things...

Lots been happening around here & I have seriously written 1 million + 21 posts in my head but lots of other things taking precedence over blogging so I will get back with more things to share, promise.

Today just 1 post.  A bit elfing around to share....

Merry Christmas to all my lovely family, friends, online friends, crafty peeps, shy readers [say hello in 2012 will ya? I'm nice!] and fellow bloggers.

See you all on the flipside!

Kate xo

 

Escape 2 Create

A wee bit excited to announce I'll be teaching a little workshop at Port Lincoln next year!

Fellow teachers, also from South Australia, are Mardi Winen and Natalie May who I am both so excited to be meeting!

I'm pretty sure the event is sold out but you can find out more about it here.

Kate xo

Get Scribbling - the modern way...

A while ago I was guest blogger over my friend Kass Hall's blog.  For my readers & the sake of recording... yada yada... here's my article.

- - -

I think many artists would agree that their ideas for working creatively come from anywhere, often unexpected and at any time.  I wish I could harness all those ideas that plants seeds in my brain & get them recorded, written down, scribbled out.  If there were some sort of USB port implantation into the brain to capture ideas, I'd be first to put my hand up for that innovative new surgery, for sure.  But I don't think its coming any time soon.

I also think many artists would agree that to progress work from just an idea to something real, tangible, workable, you need to get that idea written down, sketched out, expanded upon.  Artists often keep visual journals with notes, scribbles, swatches, colour options and research prompts. Its one of the first things you learn in arts study at uni. And you are assessed on it! 

There is no doubt in my mind that I find it difficult to progress any new work at all without first scribbling it down in my visual journals. Its not often I've left the house without a sketchbook, just in case inspiration strikes!  Until more recently that is...  You see I got an iPad this year.  And I am loving the ease & fun I am having with the Adobe Ideas application.  Its a vector based drawing program and its fabulous.  I find no matter where I am, I can get out my little iPad and scribble out some ideas very easily.  I've also bought the additional 'layers' program so that I can easily add layers from photos or previous artworks I might have in my iCloud, Dropbox or iPad photo albums.

Whether your work is digitally based, paper based or on canvas, this portable way of progressing ideas with easy save & email functions is definitely worth having a look at.  I mean for starters, not only can you access varying widths of line, but a comprehensive colour palette, eraser tools, opacity levels & layers relocation.  You will seriously love seeing your lines, handwriting & each mark made, snap up sharply, taking out all the wobble. Its fabulous. Did I say that already?

And there is no bulky pencil case to lumber around! Nor eraser & pencil shavings.  I also love how you can zoom right in to work on tiny details too and zoom back out to get the right perspective on things.  

Whilst I still do love paper & there's nothing like the feel of scribbling with an art marker, there certainly is a case for using this new tool to work out some great colour concepts with ease or working an entire digital piece from scratch on your iPad!  Documents are saved & emailed as PDF's so they are quite a decent size once emailed onto your desktop, should you need to expand your work in photoshop or other graphics programs.

Here's a quick little step by step of how I created my one of my little scribbled ladies, which will later transfer onto canvas for collaging.

Image 1:  I pulled a work in progress [on canvas] photo into Adobe Ideas as my first layer as I wanted to have a patterned dress to work from.

Image 2:  I've added a new layer and painted all the areas from the photo layer I don't need with white to block them out.

Image 3: I've now got my basic dress shape and I've opened the colour palette to choose my skin tone.

x

Image 4:  New layer has been added & I've sketched in arms, neck & head

Image 5:  Another new layer and now I've zoomed in to work on the finer details of the face

Image 6:  New layer and this time I've added hair & outlines to body & dress 

Image 7:  Last layer added, I've added a birdcage to finish off.

Image 8: Saved my image & emailed the PDF to my desktop. Easy peasy.

 

Adobe Ideas can be purchased from the AppStore for around the $7 mark & the layers add-on [which I think is definitely worthwhile] is another $1.  And even if you end up not finding it useful in scribbling out some ideas on the go for your own art practice, you certainly will have some fun with it.  My 5 & 6 year old daughters are very proficient at using this program [without the layers] and use it on a regular basis for their own digital art working, so its obviously very intuitive and hey, its lots & lots of fun!

Kate xo