My baby girl is nearly 4!

It's Chelsea's 4th birthday tomorrow (sunday the 21st). I still find it hard to believe that this gorgeous, VERY cheeky little girl is the same little baby that I used to feel rolling around in my belly. The same baby that refused to sleep on her own for the first 6 weeks of her life (until mummy and daddy got so tired that a new technique was necessary!). The daughter I dreamed about when I was still a little girl myself... But it is true. And she is indeed very much a little lady now.

Her daddy and I have been busy this week planning and preparing for her party. There was a lot of pink. And a lot of sugar!

I think she had a blast. She and her little brother certainly both went to bed very well tonight - the sugar had worn off and we were all feeling quite exhausted I think! And on that note I'll leave you to head to bed myself.

(No bear photos to show today! I don't think I even got a chance to look in at the sewing room today! lol)

Three new HUGE bears, a Birthday Party (and a bear show!)

In the last few weeks we have been CRAZY busy! Firstly, I decided (in my infinite wisdom) to create three more HUGE 21" bears in the same pattern as Samson (see last post). But this time using a few different faux furs. The two bears shown below are made in some fur I had lying around in my personal stash - something a little different to the fabrics I have been working with from our Fur Addiction store for the last year or so. They've come together quite nicely in panda form - see Sequin above and below, and in dark-head, light body form - see 'Schubert' far below.

We gave Sequin some shimmery green glitter detail to match in with her vibrant hand-painted and sculptured eyes. The crazy-green bow helps to bring it all together too. Sequin is currently available in our etsy store. 

This is Schubert. He got over-sized eyes to give him a different look again. He is actually quite soulful, and it's hard to take your gaze from him when you're in the same room.

Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.... lol

And this is Hazel. I hadn't made a bear example in our 'Toasted Marshmallow' faux fur yet - so thought I'd take on the challenge of a bigger bear. It's actually turned out quite well too. It's not as fluffy of a look as the previous fur fabrics, but just gives her a neater over-all appearance.

Hazel also has hand painted eyes in a hazel green-gold (hence the namesake! lol), and big detailed and shaded paws. Hazel is also available in our etsy store. 

And because it's always so hard to see how big bears actually are in photos - I decided to brave a photo of myself with Schubert. These bears are big. And chunky!

The three bears together. 

So, the other part of the reason that we've been so busy over the last few weeks was that we were prepping for a doll and bear show again. We don't tend to do a lot of these, mostly because we aren't brave enough to take Byron and Chelsea with us (and babysitters can be a little hard to come by). But this show was 2mins down to road from Nonna's house - so it was like it was meant to be! The kids got a day with one of their most favourite people in the world, and we got a day meeting and greeting fellow bear crafters. 

It turned out to be quite a rainy day (again! The rain hasn't really stopped here in Brisbane since I last posted!) - so we didn't get a heap of visitors. But we were still kept very busy with lots of questions about the bears, patterns and fur fabrics.

We actually only just collected our latest shipment of faux fur from the port of Brisbane two days earlier as well! You can see some of the new colours in the photo below. But THAT is a whole other post that I'll put together for you guys in a few days. Watch this space for lots of photos of some VERY colourful fabrics!

The OTHER big reason we've been so busy since our last post was that we've been celebrating our 'baby's' 2nd birthday! Byron turned TWO on the 1st Feb. It doesn't seem like 2 years ago that he made his way into the world... but it is. He's a big boy now to prove it!

I attempted to make him a sponge cake in the shape of a car.... it ended up more like an eggy chunk of pudding slathered in icing and sprinkles. Byron still ate it. Well... he ate the icing anyways! lol

(and yes - it does look like he has three candles! One of them was supposed to be a sparkler candle... but it didn't work. So we lit him two normal candles as well. I realised AFTER the photos that this is probably going to be really confusing for him when he looks back on these photos as a grown up! lol)

Big sister Chelsea watching on while Daddy (Mark) cuts the first piece. And below we have the aftermath... 'let me wipe my hands on your dress mummy'!

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

Oliver's First Birthday

Oliver is 1 year old today! Seems like we've had him for a lot longer than that! :P



He got a big juicy bone as a treat for his special day. I think he was pretty pleased.

He's a pretty good dog, he has his moments and I have mine (where I think it would be easier and cleaner not to have a dog!), but we're preserving. He still jumps up to greet people though. Usually putting dirty paw marks all over our visitors pants. And it's not just one jump, it's continual jumping that gets a bit annoying. He knows not to do it to us but obviously we missed the whole 'don't jump on guests' bit of his training!



He's not allowed inside as he can't be trusted with food/toys/furniture/bins/anything-we-want-to-keep-nice etc, so he lives on the patio. We gave him an old couch of ours that used to live in my studio before I got my shelves. He loves it! This is where he sleeps, all rugged up with a fleecy blanket and his winter jacket.



We tried putting a kids jumper on under the jacket to give him a bit of extra warmth, but the little bugger can wriggle out of it, even when the jacket is over the top! I don't know how, but he does it every time now. So we don't worry so much about the jumper! :P

Hopefully this year will be a bit smoother with him as we slowly get out of the puppy phase. I would say he destroyed at least one toy a week over the last year. Maybe some days more like one toy a day. So we'll see how the stats work out next birthday!

First Birthday Bear

Chelsea and I are going to a first birthday party for a close friend of mine's little girl in a few weeks. The party is 'teddy bear picnic' themed, so I figured a teddy gift would be appropriate!

I sat down a few nights ago and mashed ideas from my one piece bear body design, and my centre-seam magazine bears design and ended up with this lovely lady.

She has safety eyes and no joints, but I did add a few pellets to her body to help her flop, and a bow by her ear. But I think with a bit of supervision, this teddy should be fine for little hands to play with.

My early birthday present

My birthday is (exactly) a month from today. I asked my hubby for shelving for my incredibly disorganised sewing room (aka 'The Emma's Bears Studio'). This is what he built for me! (Thank You IKEA!)

The bears are very roughly positioned at present. I just wanted to get a feel for how much I could spread them out. And we still don't know where to move the big picture stuck behind the shelf at the moment... but it does give you an idea of all the awesome space I have now!


Here is my Reborn monkey 'Ruby' from Judy's Reborn Nursery. She gets a section all to herself!


These are 4 of my bigger collector bears, a Kaygee brown and cream panda bear, a big old-style bear, a gorgeous traditional bear by Jennifer Laing from 1994, and a little Lexie Hamilton brown bear in front.



My two 'Bears of Bath' mini's.



My two rainbow LJ bear and bunny.



My vast collection of bear by Pat Morris!




And lastly, here's a shadowy photo of two of my prized pieces, a Bean Bruins Bunny and a tiny crochet bear.