He Works Hard for the Money

Now first off, I can't take any credit whatsoever for this little gem I'm about to show you. A friend of mine had this project in mind for a while, but with her little boy still only 4 months old she took on the challenge for our little guy so I handed over a spare work shirt of hubby's and let her go crazy!

Basically its a cut-down-to-size shirt for the little man and he thinks its the best thing ever! EVER! Okay, so maybe the best thing after Superman and Astro Boy.

When he first clapped his eyes on this I thought they were gonna pop right on out of his head - and the squeals of delight that accompanied the eye popping were a little crazy.

Here he is modelling the new pride & joy of his dress up box......

 Could the grin get any wider? Yeah, someones impressed.

 The best part? The pen pocket! 

(Or pencil for those yet to obtain a pen license!)

 

Now a couple of days later "my friend Sophie" (as he affectionately calls her - bless) came to play. And SHE loved it! And she wants one. 

So what does one do when your best friend is taking the new shirt for a spin? Strip down to black undies and become Astro Boy of course! I love kids at play, just mind bogglingly imaginative.

I love how the shirt looks in the next few shots - "Look mum - look at the reflectors!! HAHAHA!!!".

And so begins another chapter of Oliver at play. I caught him walking around in this shirt talking to himself..."I need to go to work to make money so I can buy things". Love it.

Pining for Christmas!

I promised more pine cone craft, right? Well here we go!

I spotted these while trawling the internet looking for ways to use up our mini mountain of pine cones and I've gotta say, these rate as super easy and look super chic!

So, take some ribbon of your choice, fire up the hot glue gun and have your pine cones at the ready! It really is as easy as putting a big glob of hot glue on the back of your pine cones to attach lengths of ribbon and securing all the ribbons together at the top once you are happy with the arrangement.

Wanna see??

While I was happy to leave the pine cones a la naturale and go with the rustic look, hubby thought they looked a bit 'blah' and were missing something. Now I am no fan of the snowy look at Christmas time - I mean, we live in Australia where Christmas Day can be like a melting pot! But alas, to the shed I went and gave them a little spritzing of spray paint to finish them off.

Happy hubby. Uh huh - he likes them!

Its kinda weird, but superhero's keep popping up in my photos :)

 Oh, and i made the bow to glue on the top. MADE it! I am quietly chuffed as I am a pretty average gift wrapper, but look! A big pouffey bow!

Now it gets real technical - brace yourselves! A bent out of shape paper clip was sewn on with some embroidery cotton as its thicker and will hold a little better, then on with another big glob of hot glue and we're done!

Fancy schmancy right there.

Stockings to be Stuffed!

Some of you may remember this post from last year? Now that we have a new addition to the family this year, our beautiful little Ruby, another stocking was in need! I was soo close to cheating and going the shop-bought option but then I had a vision of my kids hanging their own handmade stockings each year and I simply couldn't do it.

So to the stash! I knew I had some left over fabrics from this project last year, and when I looked I even had loads of squares I had pre-cut that I had totally forgotten about - my heart sang! Just when I was feeling particularly lazy, right in front of me one step is already taken care of.

So again just placing the squares together, adding a toe piece, a top piece and a backing (all one piece - no patches on the back) we have a new stocking to hang ready for Santa to fill with goodies!

 

Posing by his stocking! As Astro Boy, no less. :)

Although I made them slightly different, I'm not sure the kids will really be able to tell the difference so I grabbed some embroidery cotton and stitched on a letter at the top - Oliver is getting quite good at his letters now and was very proud to announce "It's O for Oliver and R for Ruby!". 

Nailed it.