Breakfast party with Santa

I can speak from experience from growing up having a birthday in December, so close to Christmas – firstly, a lot of the time your gifts get doubled up as Christmas and Birthday presents, secondly it’s tough cause schools on holiday (well, here in South Africa) and everyone is away and thirdly, December is just all about Christmas… so – when I saw this adorable party on Skip to my Lou I had to share cause I think it’s such an amazing idea to tie in a birthday party with Christmas…

You can read the full article over here, but basically Santa came to breakfast for this little girls birthday party! Can you just imagine the excitement in the room that morning! Seeing this, I almost wish my little monkey was born in December… maybe next year I’ll invite Santa to my birthday party x

 

Dear Santa

As mentioned in my previous post, this Christmas is the first that my Monkey is going to start getting excited and caught up in the Christmas vibe. Christmas is such a special time of the year, but so often we get caught up in the rush and craziness of holidays, going away, shopping and general December craziness… I really want to try this year to avoid too much craziness and just enjoy the simple pleasures that December and Christmas bring.

Some of the basics I need to make sure I do…

Write a letter to Father Christmas… (not sure Layla will quite understand, but we have to start the tradition at some point!)

Love the colours of this letter from Amanda’s Parties to Go (plus a bunch of other very nice Christmas printables)

There’s this letter that I really like, I’m not a fan of going massively overboard on presents, which is why I like this letter that I saw over at Somewhat Simple

I just love this video that you can download and then Santa emails it through to you… perfect for my little monkey and can’t wait to show it to her in the morning…

http://www.portablenorthpole.com/watch/g8BxlUkOZqy1mKPPX8JB6sA

You can check out 10 Ways to Make Christmas magical for Kids from here

And for when the kids are a bit older – imagine getting a letter back from Santa (download here)

Ho Ho Ho

Now that we’re officially in the Christmas month I’m starting to get excited and feel the Christmas spirit. This is the first year that our little monkey will  start to get excited about Christmas, and I already love how she points out Father Christmas when ever we see one. So – you’ve been warned… there might be a few Christmassy posts coming up in the next few weeks…

Image Source

Cute… from Polka Dots on Parade

 

 

Blogger Secret Santa

I’m super excited to be participating in this years Blogger’s Secret Santa, and truth be told I’m also kind of hoping it pushes me over the edge to start getting into the Christmas spirit cause at the moment I’m finding it difficult to believe that it’s already that time of year!

Anyway, true to my ‘style’ I’m leaving this post to the last minute, sorry the stilettomum

Here’s my wishlist

How stunning is this personal daily planner from Macaroon

I blogged about this a while ago, but only just recently found a local stockist (with far too much other cool stuff as well) of these Chew Beads

A funky wallet from Lou Harvey, or any one with vibrant colours like this

Washi Tape

And…. the Lime, Basil and Mandarin cologne from Jo Malone (the big one please)

Ok, so realistically for my Secret Santa here’s what I like

• Anything with bright, primary colours (but then you should have worked that out already. Yellow is my favourite colour)
• I love ‘handmade‘
• Stationery – pens, pencils, notebooks, paper, anything for my office
• I like hearts
• I love Africa, but not in a leopard print kind of way
• Photo frames
• I love anything that’s cute and funky for my kiddies
• I don’t like soaps, bubble bath stuff, or anything else like that… It reminds me of what I used to give my granny for Christmas

Over and out Santa

xxx

Our Family of Four

Remember me… I’m the chick that used to blog just about every day here… anyway, I’m the same chick, I just don’t get here that much at the moment, I’ve made my excuses in previous posts, so for now I’m just going with the flow and trust I’ll be back here more frequently when the time is right…

So many of you have been so supportive in our journey as parents though, and so I did want to share our latest news with you, and yes, I am so very proud of my family that I’m taking all opportunities to share our special blessings with the world.

So… without further ado… let me introduce to you little Miles John Foulston. Born on the 21st August, by C-Section, in Durban, South Africa. 3.02kg and 48cm of perfectness for us. Watching him sleep right next to me I am amazed daily at what a miracle each and every birth is and just how amazing God is to provide us with our son.

My biggest little monkey is being an amazing big sister so far, with lots of cuddles and helping hands. She’s test driven his bottle and dummy and there have of course been moments when she’s had her wobbles, but over all she’s a great big sister and still the apple of our eye.

Here are a few photos from a photo shoot we did with the amazingly talented Megan Hancock this week.

 

 

xxx

 

Our 2nd Birthday Bunny Party

My little monkey turned two on Sunday… a whole big two… two years of extra special love, giggles, early mornings, CBeebees, middle of the night cuddles (and screaming sessions).. Two years filled with baby loves, tiny fingers and toes, stinky nappies, learning how to be a mom, new friends, fewer glasses of wine, more pureed vegetables than I thought was possible, but more than anything 2 years of absolute happiness and blessings.

We had a party on Saturday to celebrate this big milestone in our lives, and it was just the most special day that I could have asked for. Surrounded by friends, in our home, with the squeals and giggles of little people all around. Ok, and my cake turned out half decent which I admit I was quite relieved about!

I chose a bunny theme, because our little monkey is just bunny mad at the moment and I knew she would love it… she didn’t disappoint…

Here are a few photos from the day, and I’ve also linked to a lot of the templates / recipes etc that I used for the party in case anyone else is thinking of a bunny theme any time soon.

Blowing out her candles (so much fun we had to do it about 4 times!)

Some of the decor and food ideas we had (I tried to stick within a DIY budget as didn’t want to go overboard with spending, so used lots of free templates off the internet and the most expensive prop we had to get was the paper!)

I got some orange card stock and rolled them into cones, punched some holes in the top, threaded some green wool and filled with popcorn… What would a bunny party be without some super sized carrots.

We did of course have real carrots as well. I would have preferred to not have used the carrot balls, but Woolies let me down with only having these in stock… One of the mom’s told her little guy to stop eating so many cause she thought they were those apricot sweets we used to get…remember them?

And suprisingly, the bunny poo was a big hit with both kidlets and big people…

I followed a recipe that I posted in my last post for these jelly squares – seriously, sooo easy and they were perhaps the biggest hit at the party! So much of fun (and you know i can’t resist a bit of fun and colour)

A bunny hopped right up into our house (using these templates from Activity village)

I made these little pom poms (using this tutorial to make pom poms just using your fingers) and tied them to elastic for some bunny tails – they were so cute on the little kidlets, our monkey didn’t take hers off until late in the afternoon.

I got this recipe for a carrot cake off the Your Family website and turned it into cupcakes (only because I wanted to use the cute little bunny ears that I had found!) The recipe was so easy, seriously – I mean that, and was yummalicious.

How much of cuteness is this little marshmallow garden that one of my very talented and creative friend’s made for the party… Too precious huh..

I found these free printables from Mr Printables to make some bunny party packs, and filled them with a few sweets, some stickers and some bunny tails… Nothing fancy, but I’m not a massive believer in excessive party packs!

The bunny tails were similar to these ones from Eighteen 25 – I forgot to take a photo of the ones I did..

And that’s basically a wrap of our Bunny Party…

Easter treats for you and your little ones

Not sure where I’ve been, but I’m just woken up to the fact that Easter is just around the corner! I’ve been pretty quite on the blogging front so thought putting up some ideas for Easter would be a good start again!

How cool are these dyed eggs from Skip to my Lou. Pop over to see how to dye eggs using food colouring.

Serve these for breakfast on Easter Morning…

(From Singing with Birds)

Don’t forget to have some bunny bait on hand to make sure the bunny pays your home a visit

How adorable are these cookies from The Decorated Cookie (where they explain how these were made)

Make sure your little ones have an Easter basket of sorts to collect all their eggs in… See how this one was made from Small Fry and Co

Download some free Easter printables from Pieces of Me

Make yourself one of these cute Easter chicks… Pattern (and more adorable pics) available for download over at Myrtle and Eunice 

Here’s another very cool tutorial for dyed eggs from Not Martha – this time they’ve actually put sweets inside, so when they’re cracked open there are treats inside… YUM 🙂

And last but not least, let’s not forget to teach our kids what the real meaning of Easter is, not just bright and colourful eggs!

Happy Valentine’s Day

Wishing all our preggy moms, new moms, tired moms,  single moms, working moms, stay at home moms, and all the mom’s out there today a very happy Valentine’s day. Hope you’re spoilt rotten and your day and year is filled with love love love.

Camping update

I’ve been scarce on the blogging front, I promise I’m not gone, just battling to get my posts up! Anyway, I got heaps of advice from my last post when we were about to set off on our big camping adventure and so wanted to share a few moments from our weekend!

Here are some of the highlights 🙂

1) Arrived in the dark after missing the turn, directions weren’t great and we actually first arrived at a camp site (with the name that was on the booking) with no on at the site… we did for a few minutes think our mates were playing a practical joke on us, but no… we were just at the wrong place

2) When we did get there, it had just started to drizzle. I left ‘putting up the tent’ to Gav and the rest of the guys while I bathed the monkey. (Having even taken a bath plug with me in case the facilities didn’t have.. I’m happy to report that they did have one, but was also quite impressed that I had brought my own (Thanks to Cat from Juggling Act of Life blog post on camping with kids). Anyway, I’m getting distracted. The actual point here is that the guys realized that we hadn’t brought the tent poles with the tent (can you tell it’s been years since we’ve used the tent, and yes we should have checked. Lesson learned.

3) Checked into luxury chalet 15 minutes away from our camping friends and spent half our salary on the night (without really speaking to each other) …not ideal on all levels

4) Ended up going back to the camping ground the next morning and joining up with all the mates who had driven down from Joburg and up from Durban and took some mates up on their offer to take one of their rooms in their tents (love have mates from Joburg 😉

5) Spent lovely morning at rock pools, splashing in waterfalls, having a picnic with the little girls, and a great walk there and back.

6) Got back to the campsite just in the nic of time before one almighty thunder, rain and hail storm tore the campsite apart (together with the gazebo we were using as our communal area). Half the party were still up the mountain on walks, some with little kids. I was very happy that we were safely in our car while the storm passed (and that our camping friends were able to take control of the camp site after the storm with uber MacGuyver moves and problem solving.

7) All in all, it was a great weekend, we learnt that we still need to get a lot more organized, but it was amazing to have the little ones tear around the camp site, to spend most of the weekend outdoors, for sweet coffee out of a tin cup at the break of dawn and if I’m honest, to get back and fall asleep in our bed on the Sunday night!

Here’s two pics, taken by the uber talented photographer mamma to my monkey’s best mate, sharing a special moment in the campsite…

(swapping juice bottles)

(yum, thanks mom’s, we quite like this camping thing)

My Happy Family

The weekend of our family photo shoot finally arrived and we couldn’t be happier with the results. (If there’s any family reading this post please don’t show the grandparents as they’re getting some of these in their Christmas stockings!)

A massive thanks to our friend Megan Hancock for capturing our gorgeous monkey so perfectly.