In the works

The other day my yarn order from Garnstudios last wool sale arrived. With my maritime project finished I was ready to embark on a new project. I don’t like having several ongoing projects. I’m not good at following patterns to the letter, so having one project at a time keeps me “in control”.

Amongst the yarns I orders were several skeins of Drops Karisma. I’ll show pictures as soon as I’ve snapped some pictures. In the meantime…

These look so lovely together. Here are the colors Lavender (74), Petrol cerise (75) and Petrol (73).

- what are you doing this wonderful Summer day?

Maritime jacket

for yours truly. Well not correct to say maritime..but it is navyblue and white. At a Tjorven yarn sale a small eternity ago I bought ten skeins of Big Fabel Mouline yarn. I has plans on making sweaters for SweetieS…but never got around to starting them. So the other day I came over this pattern called Cathrine on Garnstudios website and I thought it would be a nice project for the yarn I have laying around.
And inspired by this picture I came across while looking a fancy nails, I made a few changes to the pattern….well I didn’t follow the coloring pattern at all.

The stripes are made with some navy blue Nepal yarn leftovers.
I used about 8 skeins Big fabel for this jacket. Knitted on needle size 4,5mm for the cuffs and front band. The rest of the jacket is knitted on 5mm needles.

As it is with knitting projects I make for myself, SweetieS also wants one. So with the two leftover skeins I had, I started on a jacket for SweetieS. I found this jacket pattern (Drops Children 26-12) so I had an estimate on how many stitches I would need. Just as I was finishing of the yoke/body, SweetieS commented that she wanted a vest, not a jacket. Perfect! I was running out of yarn and dreaded the tough of knitting the sleeves. As I didn’t have any more navy blue yarn left, SweetieS got purple stripes instead.

Another Mommy and Me knit project completed. Allthough we are in July, the mornings are still cold and the jacket and vest have been used already.
- do you have any Mommy and Me projects to share?

Foam party

A while back I came over a frugal tip on how to “stretch” your favorite liquid hand soaps, on Pintrest of course. This tip to be exact. The past year it has been a very helpful tip, with kids using hand soap like it was free…

The tip is very simple. A foaming soap dispenser, hand soap and warm water. I eyeball about 2-3cm of hand soap into the bottles and fill up with warm water. Leave a couple of centimeters so the bottle doesn’t overflow when screwing on the foaming pump. Swirl or shake the mixture until the soap has dissolved completely. I have so far only used clear liquid soaps, but I have read that the creamy soaps with leave you with a cloudy soap. With a toddler in house I added a dash of Dettol for the antiseptic features. Not too much though, or your soap will have a antiseptic sting to its smell.

no fancy bottles….but works for us

Well the other day the girls were playing in the shower with foam and I came to think of the above mentioned tip. Would this work with shower wash too? So I gave it a try….

Let the foam party being!

- do you have any smart frugal tips to share?

Kawaii and a Frozen birthday

Warning: Picture heavy post….

Summer means enjoying life outside. But before we can relax and enjoy life some prepwork needs to be done. So the past weeks inbetween Summer showers, we have been painting. Painting floor board left and right, lots of fence boards..the end is near. Just a few more boards left. Note to self: don’t do both front and back patio the same year…

Back patio

Still need some greenery, just not sure what we want yet. And I have big plans of “making” some kind of steps on the right side so that the girls can play on the small woods we have right behind our backgarden. But think I might have to push those plans to next Summer…we’ll see…

Now over to some kawaii. My plans for tonight is adding some new and refreshing the girls lunch boxes. Some of you might remember a post a while back about my pimping up some boring Biltema food containers. You can see that post here. As you can see, the boxes have been well used and are in need of some refurbish.

So last night I did some surfing after new designs and today I found my Sharpies and clear nail polish. ready to add some “kawaii” to the girls kindergarden lunch boxes.

I will be changing a few design, as I’m not happy with how they turned out the last time. Hopefully the new designs meets SweetieS and BabyLs approval.

Since I’m on a “blog roll”, I might as well post the part I mentioned in my previous post. SweetieS Frozen birthday with the girls from kindergarten. As always when researching…check out Pintrest. There I found inspiration and help for the birthday invites. Of course they were Frozen themed….

I can’t take credit for these. Eventhough I did make them myself, I had alot of help from Jenn Ericksons blog Jennuine. Spesifically this post about how to make your own Frozen invites. Jenn even shares the picture file needed to make this invites! Thank you Jenn I scored HUGH with SweetieS with these invites.

Of course I had to make a Frozen cake….after spending hours on a failed attempt, this was the result @1AM.

Though a failed attempt in my mind…I had sooo many ideas for this cake and wound up with none…the girls approved and had seconds. With my big plans came huge amounts of fondant. As the plans failed I was left with large amounts of marshmellow fondant…in comes SweetieS with an idea. Can all the girls also make an Olaf? She remembered Olaf being very tasty last year and wanted the other girls to be able to taste yummy Olaf. So that’s is what we did! All the girls were given a lump of MMF and some accessories…Toothpicks for stability and arms, dried mango bites for Olafs nose and cloves for eyes and buttons.

Some cool olafs were made…a huge hit with the girls when they found out how tasty he was…

All in all, successful birthday in the eyes of SweetieS.

If I am to finish the lunch box lids before bedtime I better get cracking…

- what are your weekend plans?
- what birthday themes have you had success with?

Summer is finally here

With last weeks several centimeters of snowfall I thought for sure that Summer was far, far away. But this week the Sun finally decided to make an appearance. With temperatures well above 20 degrees Celsius Summer has started early. Norways Constitution Day is next week, so perfect timing.

With Constitution Day around the corner, so is SweetieS and BabyLs birthday. So on with the party planner hat and start cracking out ideas. This year SweetieS will be hosting her first birthday celebration with kids from her kindergarten. On the last tally I counted 13 kids. Oh my what have I agreed to??

Yesterday SweetieS put in her theme request, what other than another Frozen theme. If you don’t know the Disney Pixar movie Frozen, it’s time to crawl out from the rock you have been hiding under the past few years. Here are a few videos to start you of…

Wonder if the fictional city of Arendell has any relation to the Norwegian city of Arendal?