Happy Valentine's Day 2017

Did you celebrate Valentine's Day yesterday!

Valentine's Day is a holiday that we never celebrated before we moved to America. Back home in Australia, Valentine's Day is really just for couples - and I am not into all that lovey-dovey stuff! But, here in America, Valentine's Day is also celebrated in schools with kids giving out small gifts to their classmates. While I'm not into the lovey-dovey couple side of the holiday, the getting creative with the kids to make gifts for their classmates side is something I have totally embraced!

This year Ava and Lola gave out personalized cards with small heart shaped balloons attached. As always, I couldn't help myself and just had to add a cheesy greeting. To be honest, the cheesy greetings are my favorite thing about Valentine's Day! Here's a look at their cards...

Happy (Australian) Father's Day 2015

Today is Father's Day in Australia.

Well, it was actually Father's Day in Australia yesterday, but it's Australian Father's Day in America today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. Damn time zones!

Anyway, today we are celebrating Father's Day. Lucky Kim gets to celebrate Father's Day twice a year as Australia and America hold Father's Day on different dates (June for America and September for Australia). Not so lucky me only gets one Mother's Day as they're held on the same day in both countries. Technically we missed American Father's Day this year as we were on a plane to Australia at the time and due to crossing the international date line we skipped ahead a whole day. We boarded the plane on a Saturday and less than 24 hours later we arrived in Australia on a Monday. The Sunday, which happened to be American Father's Day, just disappeared into thin air. Confusing, right? Even though we missed American Father's Day, the girls still treated Kim with presents and home made cards when we arrived in Australia.

For Australian Father's Day the girls also treated Kim with gifts and home made cards. They always choose a pair of socks each to give Daddy for Father's Day, because that's what Father's Day is all about, right? Socks and underpants! I love the colorful designs from Swedish company Happy Socks so the girls chose a crazy pattern each to make Kim's feet a little happier.

And here's a look at the cards that Ava and Lola made for Kim. Lola was over drawing by the time she made Kim's card so it was a little rushed! Ava's card has some interesting spelling!

Happy (Australian) Father's Day 2013

Yesterday was Father's Day number two for the year, otherwise known as Australian Father's Day. Lucky Kim gets to celebrate Father's Day twice each year (American Father's Day was back in June), while I get just one Mother's Day.

We had organised to spend the day at Lego KidsFest in San Jose so I figured that a Lego themed card would be just the thing for this Father's Day. I played around with a few different ideas (trying to write out different messages in Lego) but kept coming back to the simplicity of a Lego heart. Much easier to make than a Lego message and it ties in nicely with this year's Mother's Day cards, which you can see here.

Here's a look at our Lego inspired cards plus a few shots from our photo shoot. I really wanted to take photos up on our roof but as always the wind came out as soon as the camera did so Ava has some interesting looking hair! 

Don't "Lego" my heart!

Mother's Day Cards 2013

It's Mother's Day again. And that means Mother's Day cards...

Lately the girls and I have been taking lots of photos with the hearts in San Francisco's Union Square. This gave me an idea for a cheesy Mother's Day card. Much like our Valentine's Day cards, I like my Mother's Day and Father's Day cards to be just a little cheesy. Not sappy or overly lovely-dovey, just a little bit cheesy - in a cute way.

We love Nanna!

Father's Day 2012: Australian Edition

Time for Father's Day number two for the year!

Lucky Kim gets to celebrate Father's Day twice a year. American Father's Day was back in June and now we have just had Australian Father's Day this weekend. Can you believe it's September already?

Seeing as Kim has already been spoiled once this year with Father's Day treats we decided to keep it a little more low key this time around. No presents this time but we did come up with a cute card.

You may recall that we attended our first baseball game a few weeks back. You may also recall that the girls were super excited to wear "baseball fingers". I thought that these two things would work nicely together for our Father's Day card. I'm always partial to a little cheesiness!

I took one of the photos from the game of the girls wearing their Oakland A's "baseball fingers", edited out the logo and text, added in my own details, added a cheesy greeting and voila, perfect Father's Day cards. I personalised them with the names Daddy, Papa (for my Dad) and Doug (for Kim's Dad - yes, the girls call him by his real name!).

Papa's #1 fans

My Mother's Day 2012

Now that I've shown the cards we made to give out on Mother's Day I thought I'd share what my girls made for me. Ok, what Ava made for me. Lola's still a little young for much creative input :)

Ava decorated a plant pot a grew a petunia from seed for me at pre-school. It had two lovely pink flowers on it when she gave it to me but I didn't get around to taking a photo of it before they fell off. As you can see from the photo she had a little help from her American teachers with the spelling on my card!

Ava also made me another lovely card featuring the girls and I at the park. I love the shape of the dresses we're wearing. Very 1950's party frock!

Another little crafty surprise that Ava made for me is a little treasure box full of pictures and jokes to make me happy when I'm having a bad day. Ava made this at a workshop at the newly opened Family Book Lab here in Berkeley. You can see Ava's little creation there on their webpage :)
One little envelope in the treasure box contained my favourite joke...
Q. What happened to the blind skunk?
A. He fell in love with a pop off!
I hope the teacher got a little giggle out of that one when she wrote it out for Ava!

I was also spoilt by Kim and the girls on Mother's Day with a gift of my favourite luxury splurge item: a Diptyque Baise candle. Our house smells like heaven :)

And then there was the gift to myself, a much overdue cut and colour. Goodbye year old regrowth!

Mother's Day with my girls (and my new hair) in Yerba Buena Gardens

We had quite a quiet Sunday at home for the most part. We did venture into the city for a little iceskating in the afternoon though. Kim entertained Lola while Ava and I skated around and around the rink. Ava tried giving me tips on how to do swizzles, backwards swizzles and one foot glides but I was content with just making it around in one piece! No need for tricks! I need a bit more practise yet before I'm at the same level as my little skater :)

Ava and I on the ice

I hope all the mums (or moms) out there had a lovely day :)

Mother's Day Cards 2012

Mother's Day 2012 and has been and gone so I thought I'd share the card that the girls and I made for the Grandmas and Great-Grandmas back home in Australia.

This year I worked on about three different ideas for cards before I settled on the final idea. I had great ideas in my head about some fantastic photos I was going to take of the girls but they just didn't work out well enough. A lack of natural light in our apartment, grey days, uncooperative children and me just not having enough time to get everything done got in the way.

But we did get there in the end and I think the result was pretty cute.

Wishing you rainbows and happiness for a special Mother's Day

Mother's Day card

I had hoped to take a photo of the girls up on our rooftop garden with the beautiful San Francisco Bay in the background. As luck would have it we were having rainy weather and the view was completely shrouded by cloud - which is often the case on sunny days anyway! I figured I'd make the most of the rainy weather and have the girls pose under Ava's umbrella. I then added a little Ava magic to the card by adding in a rainbow and hair bows from some of her drawings.

The original photo of Lola and Ava in the rain

Little sisters in the rain

 One of my earlier ideas had been to have the girls play dress ups with my clothes, shoes, jewellery and make up. The had a great time dressing up and I really wanted to use photos from this little shoot but the lighting just wasn't good enough. These were taken on the same rainy day as the photos above. As our apartment faces onto a central courtyard in our building it doesn't have the best natural light on gloomy days.
Maybe this is something we'll have to try again for another card idea (Mother's Day 2013, perhaps?) and hope for better lighting conditions.

Little Mummies put on their lipstick

Applying blush

Working on their makeup at the bathroom sink

All made up and ready for a little shopping!

High heels

My original idea for Mother's Day cards this year involved making paper magnolias. I had planned to make masses of pink and white magnolia blooms and take beautiful photos of the girls with them. The flowers were easy enough to make but quite time consuming. I ended up only making three before I was running out of time to get the cards done. I think the magnolias came out quite well though so I'll get around to making more of them at some point and they can adorn the girls' bedroom.

You can find instructions and a template for these paper magnolias at marthastewartweddings.com

Paper magnolias

Ava also drew a lovely Mother's Day picture for each of the Grandmas and Great-Grandmas and we included these with the cards. I love the attention to detail in these pictures. Granny C (my maternal Grandma) has a prosthetic leg and uses a wheelchair. Ava drew Granny C in a wheelchair and made sure her two feet looked different from each other! Granny O (my paternal Grandma) was given a walking stick and all the Grandmas and Great Grandmas were given grey hair. I also love the whimsical touches - rainbows spreading colour over flowers, love heart flowers and suns, a girlish bow in Granny O's hair...
There's one more Mother's Day drawing for my Mum, but as she will be joining us here in America in just a few day's time I don't want to spoil her surprise :)

The girls with Nanna (Kim's Mum) as drawn by Ava

The girls with Granny C  

The girls with Granny O 

Mother's Days Past

Mother's Day is only a few days away so I thought I'd share a few of the cards I've made in the past.

Let's go back in time...

2007
Mother's Day 2007 was my first as a mother myself. Ava was only 3 months old at the time so not really the most cooperative when it came to taking happy snaps for cards. I posed her in our backyard with a stem of bright geranium flowers from the garden. Being a baby, she started trying to eat the flowers while I was taking photos! Lucky they weren't poisonous.
Look at how much darker Ava's hair was back then...

Holding the flowers nicely...

... and then taking a big bite!

Christmas Cards Past & Present

I like sending Christmas cards.

I don't particularly care if I receive them in return - although it is nice - I just like creating them and sending them. Come to think of it, I like creating and sending cards in general!

Each year I try and come up with something interesting to feature on our Christmas cards. Of course since the kids have come along it's been a no brainer what to feature on the cards. The trick each year though is to come up with an interesting way to photograph the girls. Scratch that, the tricky part is trying to get the girls to sit still and smile while I take the photos. Extra tricky now there are two of them!

Some years I get one perfect photo that I use on all the cards. Other years I end up with a few that I can't decide between and I make an assortment of cards to go out. I usually print and assemble them all myself but this year without all of my craft materials (which unfortunately have not made it here with our shipment) I had to resort to using a photo card service.

I was reluctant at first as there are so many tacky options out there, but then I came across Paper Culture who make the most perfect flat cards on recycled, matte (no horrible shiny photos here), round cornered card stock. And unlike most card printing services, Paper Culture actually have real designers working for them. If your photo needs a bit of tweaking, they'll do it - included in the cost of the cards. If you don't like the colour of the text, they'll change it. If you've positioned a photo so that text (or a hole) goes over the face of your child, they'll let you know before printing - unlike some other services. I'm looking at you Snapfish!

So here is the final result of our Christmas card for 2011.

Father's Day Card 2008

For Father's Day 2008 Ava and I had a photo shoot with Kim's Vespa. 

Ava dressed in her best biker-chick outfit, put on Daddy's (very heavy) helmet and gloves and grabbed a couple of spanners to "fix" the Vespa. 

There were so many good photos from our little shoot that I made a composite card from my favourites. The final card is below.

Mother's Day Photo Shoot

Mother's Day is fast approaching - only 2 more sleeps - so today the girls had a photo shoot for Mother's Day cards.

I decided to put my floristry skills to use and made floral headpieces out of chrysanthemums for the girls to wear. It's not Mother's Day without chrysanthemums! Ava's headpiece was a wired mass of pale pink and white blooms which I clipped into her nice, thick hair. Lola, however, does not have a lot of hair so a wired headpiece was a bit much for her. Instead I just poked a few stems under a soft head band. I also made a small bouquet for the girls to take turns in holding. This ended up going to Ava the majority of the time as Lola delighted in pulling out petals by the handful! And then eating them!

I had decided to take photos out in the backyard as, for once, our lawn is actually looking pretty good. Lola was happy enough outside and smiled for the camera, however Ava did not stop whinging - the grass was itchy, the sun was too bright, blah, blah, blah... So after a few attempts at getting nice photos we moved inside. Ava was happy with this but Lola was NOT! This meant that I ended up with outside photos of Lola smiling and Ava looking grumpy, and inside photos of Ava smiling and a snotty nosed Lola screaming at the top of her lungs!

We did eventually get there in the end and I've just finished turning the photos into a card for the Grandmas and Great Grandmas. Here's a sneak peak...

Mother's Day Card 2011