Mummy Moments

These are the moments I never want to forget. The good, but also the bad.

Miss A is currently interested in 'Aborrigbanals' aka 'Aboriginals'. She was learning about our Indigenous people because it was NAIDOC week. She told me all about what she had learnt. She was especially impressed to learn that 'they make paint from ROCKS Mum'. We decided we would experiment at home and make some paint from things we found in the backyard. We found the leaves we had didn't crush up well. We found that depending on where in he garden we took dirt, it was a different shade of brown/black/grey. I watched as she painted with her dirt, carefully dipping in her paintbrush. She suddenly remembered about the rocks. At first I was going to explain that we didn't have the right rocks, that ours were too hard. Instead, I let her try. She gathered some rocks in a bowl but couldn't crush them. She decided to add water. She stirred them up, dipped in her paintbrush and tried to paint. 'There's no colour Mum!'. I asked her why she thought that was 'They're too hard, they not melting'.

I loved watching her learn, explore, experiment. I learnt to sit back, let her work things out for herself.

She teaches me as much as I teach her

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Mr M is trying to stand. He is still only 8 months old. I can see him watch us as we walk around. He wants to join us. He wants to get up and go like we do. I see him looking at his feet as he tries to will them to push him upwards. 

He has so much determination. 

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Miss A was overexcited after a special outing with her Nanna ans Cousin. She decided to run ahead of us while I was pushing her Brother in the pram. I called out to her to stop. Casually at first, then with more panic as she kept going. She was heading towards a pedestrian crossing that runs through the middle of our local Shopping Centre. I started to run after her. She ran faster. I managed to catch up and grab onto her, pulling her in close. She was laughing, unaware of my terror. A car went right through the crossing, never slowing down, just as I pulled her away. 

I scolded her, my heart in my throat.

Then I hugged her tight. 

Christmas 2013

My all time favourite time of year is Christmas. I have always LOVED the magic that surrounds the 'silly season'. I really love everything about it. I adore the decorations, and always put my tree up on the 1st of December, or the weekend before it.

 I love researching every gift and selecting the perfect one for each person. 

Now I have Children, Christmas has become extra special. I love, love, love the mythology that surrounds Santa. I have had personalised Santa sacks made for them. On Christmas eve they get put on their bedroom door handle just before they go to bed. A special key is hung on the front door to ensure Santa can find his way inside.

We carefully select the snacks for Santa  and the reindeer and leave them out so they don't leave hungry.

The excitement of Christmas morning was tangible this year, with Abigail (who is nearly 3) really understanding what was happening.

Marcus... not so much! But nevermind, his Sister 'helped' him open his pressies.

Christmas morning breakfast is a special moment for us to eat together before we are joined by our extended family. We keep it pretty light, as we know there will be plenty of food to be had during the day. 

This year we enjoyed 'Overnight French Toast' (Recipe  to come!) and fresh fruit.

I adore Christmas food, baking special treats that I only make a Christmas, and I take an active part in planning the Christmas day spread, no matter who is hosting it. This year we hosted Christmas at our place, and had my In Laws over.  We had agreed that there would be no pre-lunch nibbles, so we had room for our  beautiful lunch. Lunch was a mostly healthy affair, with different salads and cold meat. Dessert was much more decadent, with an array of slices, fruit, pudding & cheesecake.

It was a beautiful, relaxing Christmas Day surrounded by loving family. Made extra special because it was this Little Man's first!

We backed it up the next day, with a celebration with my side of the family. This one was hosted at my parents place, and we had the most amazing seafood spread. So amazing that I didn't take any photos!!

Christmas this year was one of the best I have had, surrounded by family and friends, and filled with love and laughter. What more could you ask for?

Our Movie Themed 30th Birthday Bash!

My Husband and I share our birthdays approximately 2 weeks apart, so we knew that it was going to be best to share a 30th Birthday celebration.Neither of us have had a birthday party since our 21st, and will be unlikely to have another until our 40th, so we decided to go all out!

We actually settled on a movie theme almost a year earlier. It was the only theme that we deemed suitable for the both of us. Originally our plan was to have a backyard movie party. However we realised the weather was too unpredictable, and our guest list grew.

We hired a local hall, booked catering and wrote up a guest list.

Now was the fun part. Planning. We both actually really enjoyed planning this celebration and commented to each other that we hadn't put in this much effort since our wedding! In fact, my Husband thinks he put in more for this celebration!

The Food

I love to cook, and usually I insist on making everything for a celebration from scratch. Yet, this time I decided to get it catered. I looked around at different catering options and found you can have woodfire pizza, made fresh. They turn up with a woodfire oven on the back of a trailer, dough and all the toppings for a variety of pizzas. The pizza was unlimited for 3 hours, and included entree, main and even dessert pizza.

It was a huge hit, people ate until their bellies were full, and we had about 20 boxes of leftover pizza at the end of the night! (These were pressed on people as they left, so happily we only took home 3 savour and 3 sweet).

I also made 2 salads and had a fruit and cheese platter, although truthfully these were not really needed.

The Cake

I do a bit of cake decorating on the side, so I made the cake. I was pleased with how it turned out, and wasn't too difficult. Although it was meant to be two tiers, however one tier didn't look right so I took it off and just cut it up when serving cake later.

The decoration

I had pinned a variety of ideas for table centrepices using news reels and other movie items. However, I found that to buy some cheap plastic reels would be $13 a table, which I thought was too expensive given we wouldn't use them again.

Instead, I decided to use some large popcorn buckets, and have some helium balloons in the colour theme inside them.

Around the walls we had some Elvis and Marylin posters (We had actually won these a year ago at a work trivia night, along with some movie themed plates and some banners. It was after we had already decided to have a movie themed party). We also found on the internet some high definition movie posters, and printed them at my Husbands work in A3, then laminated them, These posters were scattered around the room.

Tables and chairs were part of hall hire, and we were delighted to discover the chairs were black,which matched the roll of black tablecloth we used on the tables.

Entertainment

My Husband is a movie buff, and knows so much movie trivia, so he decided he wanted to have a trivia competition though the night. We spent a few weeks coming up with questons, making the slideshow, downloading movie clips for some of the questions and making answer cards.

Despite some questions being way too hard, people seemed to really enjoy the novelty of the trivia and many laughs were had.

For prizes we made up mini popcorn tubs filled with chocolate bars and microwave popcorn. The winning table each received a tub. We were lucky because the chocolate bars were on sale when we bought them, so each tub only cost about $6

Candy Bar

I know lolly bars are being done to death, but it is with good reason! They are a crowd pleaser. We used jars that were left over from our wedding and filled them with popcorn. I then borrowed the rest of the jars from a friend and ordered lollies in bulk from an online shop.

We found popcorn boxes that fitted our colour theme, and hung some '30' strings behind as a backdrop.
It looked amazing, and adults and kids alike loved filling up containers through the night, and took some home too!

Kids Corner

We had a few kids attending, including our own daughter, so we decided to set up a corner for them. We put down some rugs, pillows and beanbags in a corner. We set up a mini dvd player, and some crayons with paper. The kids played happily all night and were well behaved.

Dress Up!

We asked everyone to dress up as either a movie character or movie star. Everyone got really into it and looked great! It was a bit of fun, and worked as a good conversation starter with people.

Wolverine, Cleopatra and Jessie!

Our 30th was so much fun. The best part of all was being surrounded by the people we love. It makes you appreciate all you have achieved in 30 years and understand that life is successful when you are surrounded by people you love :)