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Life is so amazing.  What an incredible thing it is to be a mother.  The most important and special title that I will ever have in my life. 

My beautiful mum and I, 1980.

My beautiful Ivy and I, 2011

Being a mum makes me want to be the best person I can be.  It makes me want to be healthy and grow old so that I can always be there for my little girl.  I want to help her to be everything that she wants to be, to protect her and to love her more than anyone else in the world could ever know.

We have just gotten back from a nice night away. We all love going to new places.  We explored a new town, ate nice food and went to sleep all snuggled together in a nice big hotel bed.

I love being a mum and I love my mum so much too.  Happy Mothers Day.

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Child-proofing.

Just thought I’d share this photo of Ivy’s sun-smart doll.  I learnt three things after this little discovery…

1. Ivy can climb higher than I realised.
2. That a little girl in a big girl’s bed means that child-proofing her room needs to go to a whole new level.
3. Getting sunscreen out of the carpet is hard.

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We have lots of birthdays at this time of the year, so I have been busy thinking of, finding and making presents for mainly little people.  We found Ivy’s best little friend a gorgeous old cradle for her birthday and I thought I might make a doll to go with it.

It was actually very easy, I’ve never made one before and couldn’t find a cute pattern, but this is what I came up with.  Ivy really loves it and wants one too.. but she would like hers with brown hair!

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After posting some inspiration for Ivy’s big girl room, I thought I might show you some pics of some of my favourite things in her room now.

    

1. My only from new purchase (eBay) and I do realise only one light on the chandelier is working ;)
2. A lovely old wardrobe with perfect little shelves that actually came with our house and I painted white.  The most amazing old suitcases that mum and I found in a lady’s shed for $1 are on top, they are a deep brown silk inside and came with their own canvas covers for when they were used for travel.  On top of them is the little white baby carry basket that mum and I searched for before Ivy was born and we scored for $2.
3. This is the mobile that I made while I was pregnant (and there is another wooden one on the inside that she was given when she was born).
4. Old picture cards from a school clearing sale.
5. An op shop find.
6. Another recent op shop find… I love it so much and so does Ivy.
7. Her dad’s creation.
8. My mum’s old turtle money box she had when she was a girl. 

I’ll take some more photos when her room is a bit cleaner than it is today!!  I have some other beautiful things that I haven’t even got in her room yet, so it’ll be fun to do another re-shuffle.  I can’t wait to set up a little “drawing spot” with a gorgeous little table that my brother gave her and THE cutest little chairs that I got ages ago. 

I especially love Ivy’s room for the fact that the only thing that I have bought new for the room is the chandelier (and a new cot mattress, which I will also do for the bed when I find it).  Every single other element  has been found in op-shops, at garage sales, either me or my dad has made it, or it was Brett’s, mine or my mum’s when we were little.  It makes a really special little room.

Her beautiful cot deserves a post all of it’s own, so I might do that another day.

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Ivy is very excited to be moving to a big girls bed soon.  She has been sleeping in a bed when we stay at her nana and pop’s house and she loves it.  So I am now thinking about another change around in her room.  I’ll need to move out her beautiful cot (my mum’s cot when she was a baby) and will also get to move out the change table soon when she’s finished potty training.

I’ve been looking for some more ideas about set-ups for little girls rooms and have come across these lovely pics.  Although not all of them have big girl beds in them, they’re still cute so I thought I’d share. 

1. Design*Sponge  2. Global Mama  3. Apartment Therapy  4. Global Mama  5 & 6 Interior Divine

I love Ivy’s room now, but I also love changing rooms around.  I have everything I need for her big girls room except for the amazing bed that I am going to find somewhere soon. 

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How cool is this?! I picked all of these today to cook tonight.  Without really any effort at all, we are eating all of these beautiful things out of our backyard! I love being able to go and grab what I want rather than having to go down to the shop and it is the best feeling feeding such freshness to the people you love. 

The chooks are my favourite.  I love having them.  They have a big area out the back that they cruise around in, eat all of our food scraps and give us eggs each day.  Before we had our vegie garden they used to have run of the whole backyard, but after eating most of our corn seeds (there is only one survivor), we fenced off the back area for them.  Luckily we have a really big yard.  They are all great friends with our big dog and we often see them with their heads poking out of her kennel.

Ivy loves them too, although she is quite bossy with them while dealing out their wheat.

It has been great for Ivy to watch the vegies grow.  The strawberries have been specifically hers and it has been nice for her to watch them and wait for them to “be ready”.  She eats things with such gusto when she knows that they have come out of our garden.

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Like Christmas, birthdays have taken a whole new sense of meaning since my little girl has come into my world.  It is like the fun and excitement of childhood returns to you for another round and it is another lovely part of being so instrumental in the life of a child.

We have been lucky enough to have had two lovely parties and a Christening in the past week and Ivy is now right into the whole ‘party’ thing.  Her birthday is still  more than a month away and even though I am a completely disorganised person, I am already thinking about the fun things we’re going to do.

It is very true that I am going to be doing things that she won’t care too much about, but it is so nice for me to also be able to do something special for the people that are so important in her life.  It also feels very much like a celebration for me too, what an incredible thing I did almost two years ago and her birth also brought with it a whole new life for me.  She will love it.

The fun parts for me will be doing some nice decorations, making things look pretty and cooking things that you would only bother with for a party. 

  1. sweet shop lulu  2. please let me know!  3. kasies allee

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I have had this little picture in a frame for ages. I have no memory of where or when I got it, but it was probably while I was waiting for my baby to be born and would definitely have been from a little country op shop.

I had always thought that it was a hand drawn picture.  I was looking for something to put as a profile picture for ivy loves jack on facebook and thought that this one might be cute, so I took it out of it’s very old frame.  I have collected old pictures and old frames for years and always had visions of finding some treasure underneath the frame, but as they are always so old and usually very carefully framed I have very rarely taken them out.  I was therefore very excited to find that this was actually an old postcard, I love this kind of thing!  I am pretty sure that it is written in German and the only half-visible postmark says that it was sent on the 13 March 1940-something.  I would love to know what it says.  Anyone??  I wonder what it would have been doing in a little Australian country town op shop.

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I’ve just added these to the shop.  They are some of my best finds yet!!  I finally found some amazing boys things too, which I love so much.

                      

            

All of these are available in my etsy shop.

We have had a nice couple of days with my mum this week.  We love having her around.  She has worked full time as a teacher pretty much forever, so has always been very busy.  This year however, she is taking a full year’s long service leave, so we’re hoping to see lots more of her!

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I’m excited to see that I have my first mention on a great blog Smile and Wave in their ‘Vintage here, vintage there’ feature.  Very small, but it is a link to my etsy shop and the cute red shoes that I have for sale.

Here are a few more things that I have added to my shop today…