Anto's birthday

We won't talk about how old young Anto turned this birthday, but Astrid told him he wasn't old, so that is all that matters!

For days Astrid had been talking about how she was going to wake Dad up for presents and drink her milk in the bed while he opened them. Sure enough she was wide awake early and chattering about presents!  Anto got to open an array of presents with Astrid help.  Despite having helped me wrap them all up just a couple of days earlier she was excited to see what each present contained. She was also very proud of the handmade card she had made for Daddy, complete with hand prints.

Since Anto's parents were flying out to the UK mid-morning we had to head for an early breakfast to celebrate the occasion. This meant being out the door at 7.30ish but luckily Astrid was raring to go. I asked her to go and pick a 'pretty outfit' for dad's birthday. Here is what she chose:

I was saving this dress for some events later in the year, but at least I know she likes it!

The cafe we had planned to go to (which we have been to before many a time) wasn't opening til 9am, which would have been a little rushed with getting the intrepid travellers to the airport on time so we looked for somewhere new and interesting. Clearly I'm not on the ball with the hipster breakfast scene since after about 2 minutes of googling during the week I found a host of cafes with great reviews that I hadn't heard of. We chose the Elk & Pea. It turns out it was indeed very hipster, and very busy!  We got there right on opening and the place was quickly full.  We had a booking though and an excellent table. The decor was amazing, the wait staff very hip but friendly, the food very, very good and the coffee excellent!  We will definitely be going back!  I didn't take photos of my food since I was busy catching Miss very grown up drinking her babycino and eating her own poached eggs and bacon.......

When did she get so grown up that we have to order her own 'proper' meals?  As you can see she ate and drank well.  Anyway, back to my meal. I had the Quinoa, Feta and Zuchini hash browns with roasted tomato and a poached egg. It was cooked to perfection and delcious.  Anto and Trevor had the Huevos Rancheros, Michael the Grande breakfast and Lorraine the scrambled eggs on toast. All the meals were lovely..... two coffees later we figured it was time to escape to make the most of the day and get the travellers on their way.

After a last play at home with her grandparents Astrid gave them their goodbye cuddles. She was excited they were going on a plane and 'to England' but several days later she is still asking when they are coming over to visit, so I'm not sure she entirely gets that they will be gone for a long time!

The rest of the day was spent enjoying the sunshine and getting jobs done around the house. Once Astrid had awoken from her afternoon nap she helped with the birthday cake making (which involved chocolate and a lot of mess). I have a separate post on the cake disaster coming up......

After suitably covering herself in chocolate (and consuming quite a bit) we managed to get her bathed and handed over to Uncle Mikl, who was in charge for the evening while we acted like civilized adults and went out to dinner and a movie.

Escaping the house all to efficiently we headed back into the city for dinner. We had hoped to go somewhere nice but there isn't much open on a Sunday night that interested us so we opted for some quick and easy Mexican. Anto's was apparently quite acceptable, mine was lack lustre and both of us finished our dinner in about 20 minutes so we headed out for coffee and cake.  Even Koko Black was closed early on a Sunday so we settled for good old cafe Essen and shared some pear and sticky date cake and coffees.  Unusually Essen were also very efficient and despite wasting as much time as possible it was still 45 minutes before our movie!

We wandered around for a bit but nothing was open and it was very quickly getting cold so we then attempted to have a drink at the very deserted cinemas (well Anto did, I just read the cocktail list with envy) but apparently Sunday night is not the night to go out as most of the drink ingredients were not available so he scored a free glass of red in lieu of the interesting cocktail and we settled in with the other 4 patrons to see Now You See Me which was surprisingly entertaining.

Of course the concept of a relaxing dinner and late movie is good, but in hindsight we are too old for that kind of caper and it was midnight before we were home and ready for bed! Next year I think we will try for something earlier......

Favourite Photo Friday - 30/8/13

Despite it still being quite chilly, the garden is definitely in Spring mode! Spring will officially be here next week but already we have lots of jonquils, magnolias, blossoms and crocuses out!

I love crocus. They only flower for a short period but they always herald the start of Spring. This week's photo is one of my favourite coloured crocus from our garden.

 

 D7000 with Tamron 90mm f2.8
ISO 320, focal length 90mm
Exposure: 1/160 @ f/4.5

Astrid's room - a bird and owl nursery

I have never gotten around to doing a post on all the lovely pretty things in Astrid's room. So here is a post full of pictures of all the cuteness.

I decided when I found out that she was a girl that I wanted a bird and owl theme.  Of course a couple of years ago birds and owls were nowhere near as trendy as they are now, and I ended up making virtually everything in her room myself. I've noticed recently there is a heap of similar stuff available in baby shops, but not to worry I had fun making it!

The colour theme for her room is sage green with touches of pink and red. I didn't want it to be either too babyish, or too over the top.  One wall was painted sage green (the rest stayed the same neutral as the rest of the house) and I put a tree wall decal on it with red and green birds and owls.

These pics were taken before she was even born, when the room was much more empty and the cot was on the newborn setting!

There are two windows in the room and I decided on blinds. We couldn't get any to match the colour theme and I decided getting them custom made was going to be too expensive so opted to buy some plain roller blinds and cover them in some sage green dot fabric (by spray gluing it on). This turned out to be a very time consuming and fiddly job and I've never been that happy with the end result so in hind-sight should have had them made.  They do look like what I wanted and they serve their purpose but 2 and a bit years down the track the fabric is starting to come a little loose and it has the odd bubble in it that totally annoys me!  To hide the tops of the roller blinds we made pelmets and covered them in wadding and a pink and sage stripe, then added pink beading to the edges. I do love the pelmets and they were definitely worth making as they have held up well and weren't that hard!

The furniture for the room is white. A white sleigh cot, change table, bookcases and toy box. The bookcases and toy box were painted by us and came up well. I also covered the top of the toy box in an owl fabric to match in with the room. There is also an Ikea Poang chair in the room which we used a lot more when Astrid was younger and woke during the night. These days it's just a convenient place to read stories of a night!

I obviously took some of these photos awhile ago! I spy an 11 month old Astrid in them :).... there was also far less stuff in her bookcases and yes that is an alpaca outside her window (they sleep outside her room)!

I made most of the cot bedding.  The quilt is patchwork on both sides and made from a variety of fabrics I chose for the room. It took forever but is lovely! We didn't actually use it much in the cot as she just slept with a wrap/sleeping bag for a long time. Now Astrid is older she has her pillows and quilt and loves them and knows I made them for her.  The pillows are cot sized and made to match the quilt. I also made the valance for the cot, which hid the under drawer when it was on the newborn setting, and just looked pretty when the base dropped down. In some pictures you will see a padded rail cover on the cot sides, we added this when Astrid took to chewing her rails!

The owls were all made by me, from a design I kind of made up. They are all out of coordinating fabrics and stuffed with belly wool from our alpacas. They took quite awhile to make but they are very cute!  Astrid has always loved them and they have moved to various locations around her room over the years.

Some other bits and pieces include a lamp that was covered using coordinating fabric and matching beading (another very annoying job), some pink minky change mat covers and the bird mobile that hung above her cot.  The birds were all made from a patchwork of the different fabrics, hand sewn and stuffed with wadding. They were then mounted onto branches from trees in our garden and hot glued.  The birds were a little fiddly to make but not hard. The hardest bit was getting them all balanced on the branches and I remember that being a particularly frustrating processes that involved me yelling at Anto quite a bit as I wanted it done before she arrived and I think we were still working on it when I was about 40 weeks pregnant (along with the blinds and various other bits and pieces).  It was all done though and then she slept in our room for 5 months!

I bought a few bits and pieces for the room. Some pictures and wall hangings and a cocoon couture bean bag.  The all tie in nicely and look effective.  After our trip to Europe Astrid ended up with a heap more bits and pieces throughout the room but I haven't yet taken updated photos.

What has happened recently, is she has moved to a bed!  We weren't going to move her until Summer. The new baby will go into the hammock in our room for several months so we were in no rush to transition her to her new bed.  Just after her birthday we had bought a convertible toddler/single bed from IKEA and she was keen to move to it but we decided to see how she went with the toddler rail on her cot first.  A few days after her second birthday we took the side off the cot and put the toddler rail on and aside from a couple of times in the first week she didn't get out or fall out, so it's been a success! It was a bit of a gamble to change things around when she is normally a good sleeper but we figured we should take advantage of her willingness to be 'a big girl' and do the transition now.  It also helped that she could then get in and out of her cot without me trying to lift her, since my back is now way too sore to be lifting her into the cot.

A week ago we moved the cot out and put her bed in. It's set up as a toddler bed at the moment but does extend out to a full sized single. Astrid loves it! We've had no dramas at all with the transition and she now has more room for the thousands of toys, comforters and pillows she likes to take to bed with her.  The only downside is that her beautiful quilt is a little small for the bed so I'm going to make her a matching single bed doona soon.

Once she has all her new manchester I'll take updated photos of the room, since it has evolved a little since a lot of these were originally taken.