Are you still here?

Really? You are missing out on all the new stuff!

Come on over to www.shinyhappyart.com/blog/ now - and be sure to change any reader feeds that you may have.

I'm missing you too!

Here's what you've missed

Now, I've moved my blog over to my domain name, but honestly, it's feeling a bit lonely over there.

So if you haven't changed my link in your reader or in your favourites, come on over now and check out what you've been missing... there's the free downloadable candy cane paper (above). And ...

there's Emergency Cookies...

a special Christmas Dress...

 

Christmas Stockings sewn from scraps and denim...

And a quite ridiculous wreath that started with chopsticks...

You'd better come visit. Or I'll send the heavies around.

(Perhaps we're all heavies around here because one spoon is never enough.)

See you there!

YOU'RE INVITED

to the new home of my blog - here - http://www.shinyhappyart.com/blog/

I've rebuilt my website using Wordpress, so it makes sense to do the blog there too. (And considering I just tried to add an image and blogger wouldn't let me, perhaps I am doing the right thing!)

There's still a lot to learn, it doesn't quite feel like home yet, but come over now and help me settle in.

I've even got a FREE CHRISTMAS IMAGE over there - consider it part of your 'party bag'.

NOTE - I couldn't move the comments from some recent posts across, but thank you to everyone who said lovely things on my baby's anniversary. Every one was sincerely appreciated.

Now, I'll see you on the other side!

Animation Friday - get packing!

I'm not sure if this animation will work properly actually - I've built it in Photoshop (my first attempt) - so maybe you'll only see it move through once... if that's what happens I'll come back later and try and fix it. If it doesn't move at all... well, I'll definitely try again later. EDIT - HEY! Thanks Cintia - it works!

Anyway, a lovely lovely lady ordered FIFTY of my charity hankies last week (supporting the Scarlett Kisses Project), and here they are. All packed up and happily jumping into the Express Post bag.

They really are a great 'little' gift. When you want to give something, but the littler and easier-to-post the better. They're $6 and if you go to my new site when it launches this Monday you can order some to jump in a bag and be sent to you!

I wish I could have shown you my makeshift tripod set up (but the camera was in use!). A ridiculous assortment of boxes and New Guinean statues holding down the camera strap as the lense balanced precariously off the edge of the cabinet. Really professional.

So for more nifty (and perhaps more active) animations, come join in at my poppet (where you'll be glad this is not smellamation!).

Remembering

I've had this post in my head for MONTHS, but here I am, with a towel on my head, trying to get it posted before I leave to collect the girls (who had a sleepover at Grandma's last night). It's pretty personal, but somehow it seems appropriate for me to document this memory in this space.

This morning my husband gave me this sweet bouquet of flowers from our garden (they're pretty battered and bruised because it's been pretty wet here this week). Mainly it's all about the gardenias (ah, their perfume!) because today it has been TEN YEARS since I gave birth to my second child, Caitlin, who was born still.

 

And on the day of her funeral there was one perfect gardenia in our garden.

The quilt we were given in the hospital - THANK YOU GENEROUS QUILTERS - it has a little bit of her cord blood on it, which I'm crazy happy about, and a sweet tiny teddy a friend made for her.

She's moulded our lives for the better in ways we would never have known about, had she been able to stay. I now understand more and love more, but as anyone who has known grief knows, sometimes it sneaks up on you and you have to go with it. She's definitely made me a better, softer, mother.

So thank you Caitlin, darling child of mine.

What is the secret?

 

... to cutting Caramel Slice?

OK, one of you know. I'd like to be in on it thank you.

I've never made this morning-tea-staple before, and I suspect I should have made it in a bigger tin, which would have made it thinner, and I did try dipping the knife blade in hot water (which made a bit of a mess) but really, the thing was cracking up as I approached it with the knife.

Lucky, none of the kids at the music-break-up are going to mind. This isn't Masterchef (although if 'it all comes down to the taste', I'm a winner).

This is what it looked like in the Women's Weekly recipe book that I followed. I didn't add the walnuts because of possible allergies, of course.

Hmmm. Another first world mystery.

On a happier note, I finally got all my figures done and to my lovely accountant. Of course that meant redesigning my whole system and having to print out lovely fresh bookkeeping pages, blank and full of potential. I actually studied accounting at uni, and I think that was always my favourite bit, getting to write neat rows of figures on clean, ruled paper. Probably not enough of a reason for it to be my true calling (obviously). I used to do my figures on the computer, but since having the most recent batch of kids I've regressed to pencil and paper. It's just easier at the moment.

Other things have been happening on the website front and I am announcing HERE that it will all go LIVE next MONDAY. There, it's out there now, so it will happen. I'm also moving my blog across to the wordpress platform my new site has been built on, so I'll let you know the new address soon. Still a few things to figure out there... I can feel my brain expanding, and actually, that feels good.

OK so now, secret keepers, fill me in on the facts!

Musical Mural

At the end of each year, the Year 7 kids from our school do some sort of 'service' to the school. Leaving their mark in a positive way.

This year they decided to do a mural on the old 'whitehouse', which is a rundown building that houses the music rooms and second-hand clothes room.

And as I am a Year 7 parent, they asked me to design it, and the Year 7's will finish it in colour.  I got the outlines done today - can't wait to see them finish it off!

And here's another slightly blurry photograph from a memory of today, that makes my heart burst.

I love that kid. And he's not bad either.