Elephants EVERYWHERE!

Almost exactly a week ago my hubby Mark and I sat down with some pieces of mohair and had a brainstorming session. My plan was to create a couple of teds in various sizes out of the same fur, but Mark had the brilliant idea to make them elephants - specifically a whole family of elephants!

So we got to work printing out various sizes of our Elephant pattern to achieve this look. We ended up with two in the original 9" size, one in a 115% enlargement (ended up at 11"), one at a 130% enlargement (13"), one at 80% reduction (ended up at 7" tall) and two at a 55% reduction (ended up a petite 5" tall).

(This can be done with nearly all of our instant download e-patterns. Just play with the percentage settings before you print. The seam allowances will automatically decrease/increase with the pattern pieces. So as long as you follow the same proportions there the altered pattern will work just as well as the original)

This is how bizarre elephants look without eyes and ears!

But we quickly remedied that! It literally took ALL week, but slowly little elephant faces started to peer back at me...

(closing the last seams late this afternoon)

I had busted my butt to get all 7 of these guys done before the kindy pick up (so I could get photos before the kids got home and wanted to 'help'!), but I got outside to my photo-spot and the lighting was TERRIBLE! I nearly had a little tantrum. I'd worked so hard to get them ready in time. But I didn't. I vented to Mark in the car on the way to the kindy, and by the time we had the kids and were driving home I'd totally gotten over it. I decided to give it one more go, but if the light was still crappy - the photos would just have to wait until the next morning.

But the light was good again! And we managed to get these lovely photos of all the elephants.

From largest to smallest we have:

Estelle Elephant - 13" (SOLD)

Ella Elephant - 11"

Esme Elephant - 9"

Edgar Elephant - 9"

Evie Elephant - 7"

Elsie Elephant - 5" 

Elmo Elephant - 5"

The fox stole returns

Some of you might remember my adventures with designing/creating a realistic looking, yet obviously fake fox fur stole back in August last year. This was the final design - long, funky black and red fur.

The fox was the brilliant idea of my sister, who had the occasion to actually wear it recently! And oh my goodness - doesn't it look so perfect atop her shoulders. Like it was made for her ;)

Kimora

My awesome husband recently expressed an interest in helping me out with some of my creations - kind of like an experiment to see if he could do it, and secondly to try and speed up the process a little (as the kids have slowed me right down!)

This is 'Kimora', and she's our first collaborative bear.

She's my design, and completely sewn and finished by me. But assembled/stuffed/weighted by Mark. And he did a bloody awesome job too. I think there's a bear-making career for him yet! (Just have to get him designing now!)



Kimora is a gorgeous little golden bear, and is currently available in our etsy store for immediate adoption.

Rosebud - the pink mohair rabbit

(Chelsea and her Uncle Sam enjoying MORE food at my Dad's place Christmas afternoon).


How was your Christmas? Ours was CRAZY! Definitely fun, but I am glad it's only a once-a-year event!


In the midst of all the craziness, I managed to get the pink mohair version of my new bunny design completed. It was actually really lovely to sit down with it on Christmas Eve after the house was spotless, the food prepared for the next day and the presents placed under the tree... just listening to Christmas Carols on the TV and sewing away.

I then got another chance to finish her off on Boxing Day after lunch while all of the family sat in our lounge room in air-conditioned comfort half watching the cricket on TV, and half watching the kids exploring their new toys.





So here she is! I've called her Rosebud - for obvious reasons... (I do seem to have a LOT of pink bears in stock at the moment... maybe 2011 was the 'year of pink' for me!?).



I think the mohair works quite well. She doesn't have the same puffy/soft/fat look at the faux fur gave her, but I think it works to give her a more lean/muscular 'wild hare' look.



She can currently be found for adoption on bearpile.

Can I do it again!?

Byron is 8 months old now and just starting to figure out how to get what he wants. A lot of the time he wants what Chelsea has. And vice versa. Pretty normal behaviour, but pretty exhausting when it happens constantly, ALL day! His latest target has been Chelsea's most beloved 'Mr Elephant' that I made for her (exactly) a year ago. Every opportunity that Mr Elephant is left unattended, and within reach, Byron snatches him and starts munching away! Needless to say, Chelsea does not handle this very well at all!

Mr Elephant comes with us everywhere. Chelsea sleeps with him, travels with him, plays with him, and is comforted by him. In fact, there are some situations when only Mr Elephant will comfort her! Not even a mummy or daddy hug will do!







I don't know what it is/was about the home made elephant cushion that became so magical for Chelsea, but with the current squabbling over him, it is time to try to work the magic again for Byron.




This was attempt no. 1. An 'octopus'. Lets just say it kind of looks more like a mutant flower with eyes! :P Byron doesn't mind it. But's it's no 'Mr Elephant'.
So I'm going to try again with a less bulky design. Fingers crossed there's still a bit of magic left!

Birthday Month

July is birthday month at our place.

Oliver's birthday is the 4th July. Mine is the 18th July. Chelsea's is the 21st July and Mark's is the 30th July. Poor Byron is the only one not born this month.

But because of all the clustered birthdays we thought we'd do something special this year and purchased ticked to Cirque Du Solei. We got my Step-mum to babysit Byron especially, bundled up Chels and off we went to the (rather expensive) circus last friday. She lasted about 30sec before she starting thrashing around and kicking people in front of us and screaming like a banshee. In the end we got ushered into the 'sky room' right up the top of the entertainment centre it was being held in. But not even her own private viewing room was enough to pacify Chels. So we ended up leaving shortly after intermission. Needless to say, Mark and I were a bit annoyed.

Then Monday came, and it was my birthday. I actually had a good day despite waking up to a mountain of washing up, the dirty laundry basket overflowing and three dirty guinea pig cages!



Mark bought me some awesome flowers and a WHOLE chocolate cheesecake. (I'm trying to loose weight - 12kg down in the last 4 months through Weight Watchers so far) - so this was an interesting birthday situation. Yummy, but not ideal! My mum had asked me what I wanted, and I explained that the only thing I really needed was more fur. So that's what she got me. I asked her to choose things she thought I wouldn't have chosen myself, to try and give me something a little different to work with. These are the three awesome pieces she picked out!



Then on wednesday it was a mad dash out to the shops to buy provisions for Chelsea's 2nd birthday and her party scheduled for today. I managed to juggle both crying children through the supermarket to collect colour matched table clothes, cups, cuttlery, party bags, food and ingredients. Got home. Fed the kids. Started on the rainbow jelly cake, and was maybe 5mins away from having them both in bed at the same time when I caught sight of Chelsea falling from her new trampoline head first.



I ran outside and she was screaming. (which in itself isn't unusual for Chelsea!). But this scream was different. She was physically shaking and not holding herself properly. I figured out that she wasn't able to use her left arm. So after a couple of frantic phone calls to Mark to get him home to watch Byron so I could take Chelsea to the hospital, we were on our way.

Originally the doctors thought it was her elbow. So they got me to hold her arm out straight, palm side up for an x-ray while she screamed the place down. We quickly realised why when the x-ray showed she had actually broken her wrist. And the bone was misaligned.




So they strapped her up, told me to give her some panadol and present to the children's hospital in the city the next morning. Which basically translated to a night of no sleep for Chelsea, me or Mark. I was literally going from feeding Byron, to cradling Chelsea in my arms while she whimpered 'hurt hurt' over and over. We all finally fell asleep at 3am this morning, only to have to be up again at 5am to head into the hospital.

They were great though. We'd seen the specialist by 7:30am, were up at theatre by 9:00am and in recovery by 10:00am. Home by 2pm. She then slept until 4pm when we were finally able to give her her presents and try and make the day feel a little more like her birthday.

It still felt like a crappy day though. I know she doesn't understand that today was any different to other days. But she loves everything to do with balloons, candles, singing happy birthday and unwrapping presents. I get really sad when I think about the day I had planned for her versus the day we actually experienced.




She's sleeping now, and seems reasonably comfortable (after a fight to get some pain relief medicine into her - resulting in sticky pink syrup spat out all over my face earlier). So I really hope we all sleep better tonight. You don't really realise how amazing a full night's sleep is until you haven't had one for the better part of 12months. And then you don't realise how good slightly broken sleep is until you don't sleep at all! :P

Baby and Toddler update

We got another awesome package from our USA guardian angel Julie this week. And in it were three super cute plushies! This baby blue elephant was for Byron. He's almost 5 months old now. Where did that time go!?

I checked his stats after his 4 month immunisations, and he was only 5cm shorter and 1.5kg lighter than Chelsea was at 12months! He is a BIG Bubba!




He was quite partial to his elephant too! Thank you Julie!




Chelsea got two teddies! She's almost 2 (just a few more weeks), so is a little harder to capture on camera. But here I have a series of blurry photos showing her trying to position her teddies on my new bear shelf. Very cute! I suppose with all of my collection on the upper shelves, she must just think that's what we do with teddies!