Here We Are Together

After I took George to the beach alone to find his special rock,
Emily kept telling me how she would go to the beach without me.
I think she was a little bit jealous, so yesterday i took George with me to the Synagogue, & Emi got some special alone time with Daddy.

(Thank you for the lovely photo, Anthony!)

We are going to make these a weekly thing, the Mama-George Daddy-Emi time. I am hoping to also have some Mama-Emi Daddy-George time soon.
How do you make solo time with your little ones work?
What do you do together?
I wish you all a lovely weekend!
♥

I am sorry I have not been around much,
life has been very busy around here, a lot of cleaning for Pessach, a lot of packing for our move, sadly very little crafting or playing.
We have been enjoying many,many Falafel recently,
& we are still loving them a lot. I have to admit that we used a Falafel mix to make them, & the result is fantastic.

(See, that was a plate of at least 10, but we all love them so much!)
I wish I had lots of things to tell you, but the boring truth is that I just wanted to let you all know that we are still around,
& now I will have to go back to put things into boxes.
(& quite possibly order more Falafel mix!)
I hope you are having a lovely day!

ps// Maybe you noticed some changes on this site, on the right you can see a list of links to articles that i enjoyed, & i answered a few frequently asked questions on the more about me
page.
I always love to hear from you, so if you have an interesting article to share please do send me the link
♥

I wish I could tell you all about how we are almost done packing things, how we are super organized & ready to move, but really, we are not.
I have packed up a few things here & there, but most of our time this week was spent enjoying the lovely weather,reading, playing, and, of course, a lot of making.
I have this vision of a home filled with handmade love, things made by friends, things made by us,
so I started to knit, crochet (yes, i finally figured it out!) & sew.

I did not get quite as much done as I had hoped for, because I was rather busy hugging my little ones:

Look at that tummy!

Oh, the cushion is one of the things that I made for the new house.
What do you think?
Do you have any plans for the weekend?
Is it as sunny where you are?
♥

Today we heard back about the house we love,
& it looks like we are moving in really soon.
I can’t wait to start packing everything into boxes & move to the new place.
Of course I will always love this house, it was our first home, but the other house felt like home the second we walked through the door.

Also, the postman handed me two packages this morning:

Some lovely linen & muslin from Anthony
& this gorgeous vintage flower brooch from the very lovely Julia.
I love it, & I can’t wait to wear it, thank you!

Now that we know about the house I want to sew & knit a lot for it,
what are your favourite handmade home things?

♥

Spring came suddenly this year.
No shy flowers slowly finding their way through the muddy ground, no few minutes of sunshine followed by a lot of grey.
When we got up this morning we could all feel it, we all knew.
The birds were singing, there were flowers in our garden, the sun was shining.
It was a day for firsts, for our first meal in this lovely new season, the first meal of the year to be prepared & eaten outside,

(as soon as the weather allows it every meal will be eaten outside)

The first of many plays with water & sand,

The first flowers picked to come inside with us,

& a very first, the first handfull of green grass, touched, smelled,felt,licked.

It was a good day,
a spring day.
How are you? Does it feel like spring yet?

Today George & me went to the beach to find him a rock, because everyone needs a rock.
(thank you for the link, Blair!)
George quickly picked his rock , & even though I tried to offer him different ones, smoother ones, cleaner ones, he would not let go. So he has his own rock now.
(If he ever lets go of it I will show you a picture..)

(The lovely scarf was made by my sister.)
Do you have a special rock? I will show you mine tomorrow!
I hope you are having a lovely weekend,
♥

Our days are rather busy, because I try to distract myself from all the waiting that is actually happening.
We had hoped to hear back about the house this week, but nothing yet.
They made sure Anthony earns enough for us to live in that neighbourhood, who knew that such checks exist? I certainly didn’t.
Now we are waiting for the call.
I am trying my best not to think about it, & I am sure that,if we don’t get it, there will be other houses, in other nice areas, but really? I am in love.
We have been building castles, having teaparties in under-the-table-tents, we played with playdough, washed every single dinosaur Emily owns, & still, no call.
( you see, that not-thinking-about-it is going well..)

Emi decided that she & George are in a band together, so there is a lot of band practise going on around here, & preparations for a big show (maybe even at nanny & grandpas house?) for them to play their songs.
Emily plays the drums & Georgie plays a little wooden flute that we got from germany:

How are your days? What do you do to distract yourself when you are waiting? I am not good at this at all!
also, if you can find some time while your little one naps, & if you are feeling okay with watching something that made me terribly sad, I suggest you watch the 40 min. documentary Children of the Secret State. I am very much at a loss for words about this, but I did want to share it with you.

I am watching this documentary on & off at the moment,it is long so i have to fit it in between games & lunches, but so far it is really worth watching.

Have a lovely day.
♥

Today my sweet little George is 6 months old.
It is a strange thing to know, because it feels like he was born only just yesterday, yet i can not remember life without him. It feels like he has alwas been here.
When we made the decision to have another baby I said to Anthony
It’s going to be easy!
after all, we already had one child, & I thought that another one would be just the same.
I could not have been more wrong.
It is amazing how two children who have the same parents,live in the same house & play the same games together can be so very different from each other, yet love each other so very much.
Emi says
Georgie,you are the best ever seen!
& he laughs.
He always laughs, because she is his Emi,
and he is her Babygeorge.

A brother is a friend given by Nature,
A sister is a little bit of childhood that is never lost.

Happy half birthday, Baby George, we love you all so very much.
♥

Today we were quite bored, it was a grey day & we had very little planned,
but as we all know , art that just happens is the best sort of art.
I was cutting some canvas while Emily was painting some things.
I thought she looked rather happy there, so I went to get George,who had woken up from his nap.
I came back to all of my lovely fabric covered in dots.
My first thought was
will this come out in the wash?
but my second , much better thought was
this looks lovely, how can we use it?
So we had a little think about it & decided that the best way to use it is to make it into
these neat little suncatchers.

How we did it:

We used:
some muslin fabric, but any fabric will work as long as the sun can shine through,
(you can recycle old white tshirts or even underwear for this!)
paint in nice colours

Put a mat or a wipeable tablecloth under your fabric, as the paint will probably go through.
Then simply let your child paint the fabric.
You can either colour the whole fabric, or seperate the fabric into embroidery hoops before you paint.
After you are done & everything is coloured in paint simply put it into an embroidery hook & hang it in the window.
nice!!

( for a neater result & less weight don’t use an embroidery hoop but use a simple blanket stitch to stitch around the outside of your circle . That way you can make lots of these & don’t even need an embroidery hoop.)

If your house is anything like hours you probably have a cupboard full of empty glass jars stored away for some crafting.
We love to make little candle holders out of them, it’s an easy,toddler friendly craft.
It can get a bit sticky,though.

You will need:
Clean, empty glass jars
tissue paper (cut into shapes if your child can not use scissors just yet)
white glue
some water
a paintbrush

How to:
start by brushing white glue onto the outside of the jar, or just pour some glue onto the table & let your child roll the jar around in it. (Emi loves that part!!)
Then you cut out shapes & let your child stick them all over the jar:

After the whole jar is covered in tissue paper you mix about 1/3 of white glue with 2/3 of warm water & brush it all over the tissue paper.
Now simply let it dry for about an hour & you are all done already!

I really hope you enjoy making these, we love to make them on a rainy day, because not only is it something fun to do, but it always looks so pretty as well, it really lights up those days!
♥