im off to visit the queen...

the queen came to visit us here in sunny western australia this week, she popped in briefly to say hello and held a massively big bbq at the perth foreshore, so very nice of her

but alas i had to decline her offer as i was off to visit another queen 

{well a little princess really}

princess halle

{my adorable little niece}

had her first birthday party in the park

my sis-in-law went all out and the party was absolutely gorgeous

there was food galore, all sorts of yummy delicious home baked treats

the children were well entertained playing with bubbles, chalk drawing and swinging in the tree

little halle is truly a little blessing in our lives

she is like a ray of sunshine

reminding us that life is sweet and beautiful

i am blessed to be apart of her life story

love you princess halle

xoxo

dear dad....

 happy birthday!!!

yesterday we all got together at your beach to celebrate your birthday

the weather was sunny and warm

the water looked brilliant blue and reminded me of you.

we all miss you so very much and wish that you could still be here with us.

if you were here today we would have taken you out on our boat and enjoyed the sun and the sea.

you would tell us about the good old times you used to have out on the water in your boats.

we would shout you to an ice cream at our shop

and you would tell us how much you loved it and how great the store is going to be.

we probably would have gone with you to visit the queen

to wave hello and eat a sausage, and you would tell us all about her and the last time she visited your fine state.

if you were here i would hug and kiss you and tell you how much i love you...

happy birthday dad

xoxo

things i'm loving

I wholeheartedly believe that no matter what is happening in your life, there is always something that you can be thankful for... no matter how simple it is. 

this week i have been at home all week with the little guy who has been really sick

i am loving the wonderful ladies at work who have been praying for him to feel better

and have sent me get well messages

i LOVE those ladies

i am loving my wonderful mumma who came and looked after the little guy so i could go into work for a few hours

it is hard being a working mummy sometimes but life is a little easier when you have somebody help you out

i am loving our free health care system

we are the lucky country

i am loving having the gym to escape to in the evenings

it is hard work being a nurse!

i am loving that the queen decided to come and visit our humble little city

and because she is here we have a public holiday on a friday!

thanks queenie!

i wish i could go and see her but we have a packed out saturday tomorrow and we just couldn't squeeze her in

i am linking up with the super lovely kristy over at

paisley jade

happy friday to you

xoxo

twiddle diddle

having the past few days at home have been lovely

the boy is on the mend

almost back to his cheeky self

i have been doing some twiddling

i have twiddled myself some lovely yarn wrapped letters

 the idea of course came from pinterest

somebody else came accros the idea

i repinned it to my board

and then i made it

simple as

 i used paper mache letters that i got at spotlight

cheap as

light weight

and easy to work with

just tie the yarn on, you could glue it if you like and then just wrap away.

i wasn't to fussy with my wrapping as long as all the letter was covered.

now i am of to redo some furniture

wish me luck

it is my first ever go and repainting something, eek!

happy middle of the woring week to you

xoxo

nurse meek

this week i am taking time away from my regular job as a teacher and i am working as a nurse

the little guy is sick

he has a really high temperature

cough

runny nose...

= not good

i tried everything i could to get his temp down but couldnt

we could not get in to see a dr

so i made the excecutive decision to go to the emergency room in the afternoon

{instead of having to do a mad dash there in the middle of the night if it got any worse}

we were in and out pretty quickly

he has a virus

he should be back to normal in a few days

so i get to stay home and look after the little munchkin

we have been having a lovely time resting together

watching movies

reading

snuggling

and playing quietly...

if only he didn't have to be so ill...

he did have a very cute moment though

when we returned from the hospital he said that he wanted to play drs

so we got out his medical kit and he looked after his patient owl

::: i think he would make a very good dr :::

:::a sneak peek into my home:::

i just love having a little peek into peoples houses

{on blogs of course, never through windows} 

and one of my favorite houses to look at is mossy shed 

where the super lovely tif {dottie angel} resides.

you can have a little looksy into her home here...

she inspires me to get busy in my home

fussing, decorating, creating, shifting furniture and trinkets around

here is a little look into our boudoir... 

i am slowly making my way through the numerous crafty ideas i have pinned on my 

{make it} board on pinterest

i am so loving pinterest right now!

i have copious amounts of jewellery and i am always looking for great ideas to store it all.

i came across this super idea of keeping my bracelet collection on vintage glass bottles

well that is our little cozy space we call a bedroom

happy monday to you

xoxo

{vintage update}

as you know i love all things vintage and have lots of little vintage treasures in my home.

i have a few sweet little trinkets that i have found in op shops and they were in need of a little loving.

yesterday i had a little time to myself, the day was gloomy and it was raining all day as i sat inside and twiddled my thumbs a wondering what to do with my new found alone time.

i spent a little time {or shall i say wasted a little time} browsing pinterest and all the lovely little crafty ideas i had pinned on my {make it} board and i found me something to do on a wet rainy day.

remember the little vintage trinkets i told you about? well i showed them some love yesterday and doused them in spray paint!

{i promise you no trinkets were hurt or harmed in anyway during the spray painting episode}

originally i was just going to spray my eiffel tower {that i picked up in paris} and stop there

but when i got started i found it hard to stop and i hunted down more trinkets to attack spruce up

they still have their lovely vintage vibe but are a little less daggy and a little more trendy

happy sunday to you
xoxo

love to love you

I wholeheartedly believe that no matter what is happening in your life, there is always something that you can be thankful for... no matter how simple it is. 

this week i am loving things that make my life easier...

i am loving bakers delight...

and their fresh pizza bases.

you just roll them out and add your fav toppings and wallah, a quick and easy and very tasty meal.

i am loving pintrest...

i am also loving all the fun creative ideas that are out there on the world wide web

and i am particularly loving step by step easy to follow instructions to make crafty goodies.

i am loving my mumma...

she now comes once a week and cleans my house for me.

now that i am back teaching i have very little time and patience to clean our little cottage.

it was so wonderful to come home after a long day at work to my perfectly clean house.

i am loving my wonderful hubby...

he cooks dinner
{or when he forgets brings home takeaway}
he baths the little guy and puts him to bed while i am at the gym in the evening
he gets my favorite tv shows for me so that we can watch them together while i wind down after my workout
he is super!


i am linking up here


hope you have a happy friday
xoxo

{creative space}

i have been pinning all sorts of lovely little crafty ideas on pinterest and i decided to give one a go on the weekend.

i tried my hand at this sweet little flower garland...

fabric flower garland ::: oncewed

it was very easy to make as it had really simple step by step instructions. since i am not a sewer i had very little fabrics around the house, i decided to make the garland out of tissue paper.

i followed the same process and even stitched them, it had the same effect but i think material would still look a lot better.

happy wednesday to you xoxo

the day after sunday...

two special ladies in our family had their birthdays this weekend...

one little lady...

and one lovely lady...

my wonderful mumma celebrated her 60th birthday this year and my darling little niece turned one.

on sunday my little family had two birthday parties to go to. the first one was for my mumma and we headed down to the beach to have a BBQ lunch and enjoy the beautiful hot {not warm, it was HOT} weather that rolled into town.

in the afternoon we headed to another beach in our little city by the sea. we went down to the foreshore across from our ice cream store to celebrate halle's first birthday.

there was lots of presents, ice cream and waffles and more lovely sunshine. the afternoon tea turned into a long afternoon at the beach and we stayed until the sun went down while we ate a delicious dinner of fish and chips {i loved fish and chips at the beach, so very summery}

it was a great end to the school holidays and this morning everybody in this little household returned to work and to school.

only eight and a half weeks to go and we will be on our summer holidays, woohoo!

hope you had a fabulous weekend too, and if you are in my part of the word i hope you got the chance to get out yesterday and enjoy the summery weather.

pinterest

hello my lovely friends and hello saturday!

well i finally did it, i registered for pinterest
{i know, i am a little slow at keeping up with what is cool at the moment but any hoo i joined... finally} and i have been pinning away and let me tell you it is addictive! i stayed up way too late last night on it and i am regretting it this morning {so very tiered}

for those of you who have never heard of pinterest before, it is basically a virtual pin up board for all those lovely ideas, pages, websites articles anything you fancy really that you come across on the world wide web. instead of bookmarking the page you can pin it to your pinterest page and they store them all nicely together for you in cute neat little boxes.

you can find my pinterest page here {mrsblessed}
head on over and check it out and maybe even sign up yourself.
it is fun, addictive yes but a great idea.
happy saturday!

things i'm lovin

I wholeheartedly believe that no matter what is happening in your life, there is always something that you can be thankful for... no matter how simple it is. 

here are my simple loves for this week... 

i love my freshly cut grass

not so good for the allergies but easy on the eye

my place was starting to look like a jungle

the lawn mower man was on an overseas holiday

but he is back at work and now my yard looks wonderful

i love my crazy hubby and the crazy things he does 

like putting three legged giraffes in our chicken coop

like i said he is crazy!

crazy hubby = crazy son

the little guy follows in his daddy's footsteps... alot

i am always finding little crazy things that he has done

like re arranging my little ballet girls on my bedside table

cheeky little monkey!

i have loved hanging out with our wonderful friends this school holidays

over the past two weeks the little guy and i have been spending lots of time playing {him} and drinking tea {me} with our friends who we usually 

don't get to see too often when school is in

i cant wait until is school is over for the year and then we get to hang with them all the time!

and lastly i am loving
sleeping in on school holidays 
{even the little guy has been sleeping in till 8.30}
shopping for birthday gifts with my little family
waiting for packages to arrive in the mail
{i am so excited i keep checking the mail box everyday!}
and lastly the anticipation you feel when you are on the eve of a fantastic weekend
i can not wait for it to arrive!

i am linking up here
head on over to paisley jade and check out her super cool blog and all the other super cool blogs who are joining in with their loves for the week.

 

twiddle {my fun new word}

ahhh, finally a day at home all to myself, well not completely to myself as i have a wee young man following me around but this is pretty much as close as i can get to having a day by myself.

any hoo as i was saying, ahhh finally a day at home.

so today there was a fair bit of twiddling going on. what is twiddling you may ask? well i picked up the phrase from the lovely tiff at dottie angel who in my opinion is the master twiddler. she is superb at fussing around her house and arranging her lovely vintage treasures and crafty bits and pieces on display in her home mossy shed. you can see some pictures of her delightful shed on her flicker page. some of my favorites you can see here, here and here. and her biggest of all twiddles here {a cute display for her book launch}.

so back to me and my twiddling...

i have one of those rooms in my house where the door is always closed and nobody and i mean nobody is allowed in there, not even the little guy.

nobody is allowed in there because simply there is no room for anybody in there. it is the designated junk room, you can open the door and take one step in and that is about as far as you can go! it kind of reminds me of the room of requirement in the harry potter movies. all the junk that nobody wants or is trying to hide is all stacked up in teetering piles, one breath of wind and the whole lot will come tumbling down.

eventually we would like to clear this mess out and have this as the little guys room, so today i started sorting through things and moving them to new spots around the house.

i found some more little vintage treasures hidden away in there so then my sorting and cleaning turned into twiddling {remember the master twiddler and her lovely little displays?}

this little shrine is a tribute to my dutch and french heritage

i made a little dent on the teetering piles of junk in the spare room, i probably should have twiddled less and cleaned said junk room more but overall a fairly productive day at home for me.

boys just wanna have fun

remember how the little guy and i were having a wonderful time together the other day in our little cubby house that we built in the play room?

{if not you can read about it here}

well i came home the other day from working out at the gym to find the boys {the big guy and the little guy} playing in a castle!

they had taken down the cubby house and built a much better one.

i was really impressed with my hubby's efforts. the castle was complete with a draw bridge and a peep hole {to spot dragons who may be sneaking up on them in the castle}

can you see a little face peeking through the peep hole?

there has been endless amounts of play happening in the castle, it is just wonderful to see the two boys playing constructively together, even if it does involve scary dragons!

blessed to be a blessing

have you ever heard of Operation Christmas Child?

Operation Christmas Child is a unique project of Samaritan’s Purse that brings joy and hope to children in desperate situations around the world through gift-filled shoe boxes, It provides an opportunity for people of all ages to be involved in a simple but hands-on project that has the power to transform children’s lives.

In 2010, our teams in Australia and New Zealand delivered 305,976 gift-filled shoe boxes to South East Asia and the South Pacific. Over 8 million children around the world received shoe boxes last year. Over 130 countries have received shoe boxes since 1993. As each shoe box gift is delivered, it is treasured by the child that receives it, and is a lasting reminder that he or she is precious to God.
quoted from Samaritans purse website 

 

i love being involved in operation Christmas child, God has blessed me in so many different ways and now i need to be a blessing to others even if it is just something as simple as sending a small gift to a child in need.


every year i have filled a shoebox with love and gifts and sent them off to little boys and girls all over the world and now i get to share that heart warming experience with my little boy.

i think that it is really important to teach our little ones about the spiritual gift of giving. it is no use storing up all of our earthly treasures, you can not take them to heaven with you. God has blessed us and we should share what we have.

so the little guy and i went to the shops and picked out all the toys and school supplies {will made one for a little boy and i made one for a little girl} and then we came home and packed them up into the little boxes that we were provided from our church, i just wish the boxes could be bigger so that we could give them more!

will is at a good age now where he understands that the gift is not for him and that it is for another little boy in another country who is not as blessed financially as he is. i think this little guy is going to be great at gift giving :)

we packed up the boxes, added a letter, photo of our family and a drawing from will and now we will give them to our church who will pass them on to Samaritan’s Purse and they will distribute them around the world.

if you would like to get involved and open up a whole new life through the power of a simple gift you can get in contact with your local church or go to the operation Christmas child website for more information.