Fairy Party

Happy New Year! 2009 suddenly seems to be well and truly underway. Milly turned 3 on Friday and life / work seems to be getting back to normal.

Millys birthday was spent at my sisters place on the Northern Beaches and on Saturday we had a family party here. Despite all guests being aged 12+ we celebrated Milly with a fairy party. It was such fun - there were pink and blue fairies everywhere! I bought the wings and wands from a $2 shop that was closing down. My mum is a gem - she made an AWW 'barbie' cake complete with wings made from a paper doily and fairy bread using an oversized butterfly cookie cutter and my lovely sister made fairy cakes.

For Walls removeable wall stickers came to my rescue for a wall banner and I dug out my dusty card making box for some floral paper to cut out for her name. I bought some sweet fairy fabric to make a table runner (rather a well-ironed table runner to disguise that I hadn't got the sewing machine out yet). The weather was perfect and the Alimrose floral bunting was a quick way to pretty up the deck overlooking the lawn and garden.

You can't be too old to enjoy bubble blowing or sparklers!

*Mother guilt - just saw the last post re teethbrushing - my five year old son ended up at the children's dentist at Castle Hill last week with 1.5 fillings needed. Tooth at back of mouth up top - juice is the only thing we can put it down to... and this mum not cleaning thoroughly enough....

Clever marketing...

My kids favourite song at the moment? No - it is not even a Christmas song - it is the Oral B kids advert. Very clever - I thought it was a song from nick jr lazytown when I first heard it. Won't complain though because it has made cleaning the teeth much less painful!

Kids shoes ...

Love them!

Christmas traditions...

There was an article in December's Notebook magazine written by Sarah Bryden-Brown from Kidspot about finding your own Christmas traditions. It struck a chord with me as it is something that Kirk and I are quite aware of for various reasons this year. There are lots of lovely traditions that we are a part of, the first of which we attended today.

I come from a large family and my dad's side get together a few times throughout the year. Today my fresh and delightful Adelaide cousins were able to join us enroute to Nelson in NZ to be with their parents and brother over Christmas. There are thirteen cousins and now with partners and my kids there are twenty of us to exchange Kris Kringle gifts. My cousins are a special bunch of fun and caring people and I love getting together with them. They are the types of people whom you always feel better after having a conversation with. I am the eldest and I feel privileged to be a part of the Harris clan. My kids think that they are the cousins as mummy is too old (at 32!).

As I get older, I am finding that there is so much more joy in finding gifts for others and seeing them open them than there is in receiving. I gave my 22 year old cousin a Pantone mug and a black tshirt - he was stoked with both and esp the mug. He is a designer and colours, fonts, etc are his thing. I was unaware that there is a Pantone colour of the year - yellow is the colour of 2009 apparently. I love learning random bits of information! This week we sent a mug to Cornwall, UK. There is obviously a Pantone following across the world!

One of the tricky things is that there are cousins in Oxford, Cambridge, Adelaide, Melbourne and Nelson other than in Sydney so co-ordinating getting the gifts to each other can be quite a feat. It is a tradition that I hope that we continue.

Decorating Henry's room

Henry is currently in our bedroom, tucked in the corner in his little timber Boori rocker. I love hearing him breathe and recently hearing him chatter (well, I guess more like coo) before the cry for food!

Thomas informs me (and as told to his class in news time) that once his little brother is one he will be moving into his room (I hope he is as enthusiastic once the move becomes a reality!). Thomas has a double size bedroom and his little brother will be joining him at some stage. We ended up keeping the nursery as a study and decided that the boys can share. I am not sure how to deal with the lego all over the floor and a toddler but I guess we will jump that hurdle down the track.

I came across this bedspread today (I am having a love affair with Sheridan) and have put it away for when he is old enough for a bed, which hopefully doesn't come around too fast. It is a perfect match for the Little Chipipi Ships Ahoy wall stickers. We grew up spending holidays and weekends in the water and on the water so I am a lost cause for anything nautical. I still love the breeze between the ears getting rid of the cobwebs. Bring on some summer weather and a holiday on the coast!

*Love some ideas of how to control lego especially when it is a work in progress and all sorted into piles across the carpet ready for the next design but impossible to manuevre a vacuum cleaner around!!!

Weekend Musings

It is Friday night Sydney time and it is pouring outside!

We have a busy weekend ahead but I like it that way. It is a privilege to be busy with activities and with people that we love. At some stage though I will sit down with the weekend papers and read them in my 'order'. My dad has always been a SMH newspaper with breakfast and lunch person and the newspaper was and is always read in a certain order. Now, this is something I always thought was a little bit obsessive, but like so many other things, I am no different. The order has changed a little over the last couple of years, but there is still an order! I start with employment, not for any other reason anymore than to look at the education section as it keeps me up to date with the movements in the private schools in Sydney. Then it is the front and back pages of the news section, followed by spectrum. Then I read the Good Weekend. Now this has an order of its own as well! (writing this makes me realise how funny this may sound!) I read Megan Morton's article, followed by Maggie Alderson's, then the real estate 'you wish' page, then the two of us (some of these people are inspiring) The whole magazine is then read from the start to the end.

I love chatting with my mum & sister about Megan and Maggie's articles. It has been scary how many times I feel as though they are writing about my life. For example Maggie's recent article about jeans and how she started a week with no jeans wearing. Just that week I swore myself off jeans to see how long would last (my 'uniform' is jeans and a white shirt'). I almost repainted my whole house for the 4th time in 6 years after Megan made a derogatory comment about Magnolia paint colour the same week Kirk put the Magnolia paint brush down. There have been the articles about how to hang the washing on the line (where do you put the pegs on tshirts etc etc) that have me reflecting on quite random things. I love the articles. Random. Random is good. Like the cornwall blue picture used for this post.

Pruning the Roses

Gardening used to be my obsession. I once was an early bird, almost feeling ill if I slept in. I would head outside at 6am with my walkman turned on the weekend gardening show with Graham and Sandra Ross on 2GB and potter away. It seems like a very long time ago!! Water restrictions and 3 babies later, my garden isn't as manicured as it once was, but it has grown! It is exciting seeing fences disappear and being replaced with lush green plants.

This time of the year I attempt to time the roses to bloom at just the right time. It used to be for Christmas, but now it is for Milly's birthday in January and Thomas' in April. I was stoked to come home from the hospital with Henry to a garden full of flower - so now each child will have their flush! So 6 weeks before the event, the roses get chopped and fertilised. My aim is to prune at least two bushes a day and that way the job should be complete by the end of the week.

Nature is amazing. I love the Jacarandas against the blue sky on days like today. I think we underestimate leaves in a garden - greenery is so soothing. Today I found some gorgeous hydrangeas outside Coles - I don't know where I will plant them - but they look great sitting on the porch!

Although nature isn't always forgiving. I moved a rose away from a path this winter and I lost it. It survived kitchen trademen reversing into it chopping it in half a couple of years ago, so I overestimated its toughness. I am now on the hunt for a Mrs Cant rose. Unfortunately not a common one & I may have to wait until next Winter to replace it.

My favourite roses? Mrs Cant, Julia's Rose, Just Joey, Souvenir de la Maison, Iceberg, Grace, Tara.

I am loving wallpaper!

My grandparents had wallpaper on the walls in their home in Eastwood. I loved it - that along with the grandfather clock that chimed every hour, it forms part of my childhood memories.

In my parents current home they have wallpaper in their bedroom that dates back who knows how long and it is gorgeous - green background with pink flowers. Kirk reminded me a few days ago that we once talked about stripping it back and painting the room for them as a surprise when they were o/s. So glad we didn't!!!

Catherine Martin's range of wallpapers with Porters Paints for little ones and grown ups is fabulous. If only there were more hours in the day to decorate ... at the moment thankfully there are great wall stickers to transform a room quickly!!

P.S Looking for the Alimrose Monkey often photographed in the photo shoots? We have him :)

Ten Little Finger Ten Little Toes

I LOVE kids books. Before Mummy's Favourite became a boutique gift store, I contemplated opening an online book store. I think I see myself as the Meg Ryan character in You've Got Mail. Reading stories to a class of children is one one of the aspects of primary school teaching that I miss. Yay for my 3 kids because I get to read to them! I read to my kids from newborn. Thomas' first book was a soft cover book called Snail. He is now teaching himself to read & I am loving it. The first book he read was Where is the Green Sheep by Mem Fox.

I went shopping for some bedlinen the Thursday night before Henry was born and browsed David Jones' book department. I came across the new Mem Fox Book, Ten Little Finger and Ten Little Toes. Whilst reading it I started to get very teary (embarrasingly emotional when pregnant!). It is the sweetest book about babies who are all born at the same time around the world. I didn't purchase it as the cover was already torn and regretted it worrying that the hardcover might have been hard to track down - but yay - The Children's Bookshop rang me today to say that they have got it in for me.

It would be hard re-creating a bookstore like the one in You've Got Mail online!

My Gorgeous Little Boy

I am a bit behind with blogging, but I have a good excuse! Little Henry William Barker was born on the 14th of October. I can't believe that is now over a month ago! In some ways it feels as though he has always been with us, in other ways it all seems so new :)

Henry is my third child. He has a VERY helpful big brother Thomas (5) and sister Milly (2).

I went into labour naturally on the day before his due date (I think being on the pre school roster that morning as the aid probably helped push things along!). I have been blessed with smooth labours and healthy babies. Contractions started intermittedly at about 3pm and by 7:30 we left the kids with my parents to go to hospital. 4 hrs later Henry was born. It was a drug free labour mainly because I would rather go with the pain than have an injection or go through a caesarean section. I can highly recommend exercise balls to bounce on to help distract during contractions! My husband Kirk was a gem -

Henry was 53cm long and 4.06kg :)