Just wishing my favourite little pixie a big huge “Happy Birthday”!! She’s 3 already, I can hardly believe it!

Cake was our good old reliable – vegan victoria sponge – filled with strawberry jam, lashings of coconut cream, sprinklings of cocoa powder and dottings of chocolate buttons – so, so, so very delicious! Go on, make some – I command it!

Ooops, the lovely ladies who organise the annual Babywearing Ireland conference are going to have to ban me from the raffle next year as I won a splendid new sling this year (I won a sjaltai there last year!), I normally don’t win raffles, so this is very exciting for me

It was all the more splendid as we couldn’t get to the conference this year, so I asked a friend to buy me some raffle tickets, you know, just for fun! And I won a prize… and not just any prize, I won an SSC (soft structured carrier) made by my dear friend Bibble.

It may be a week or so before I get the SSC so here’s 2 pics I cleverly stole from Bibble’s site, doesn’t it look fab, and look at the BWI logo embroidery on the hood!!

If you pop over to Bibble’s blog you can see more detailed photos of the SSC!

Another lovely friend modelled the SSC in the sling fashion show at the conference and was very impressed at how comfortable it is, so I am very excited to try it out!

Woo Hoo!

Our little village is a very windy place, and in winter it’s a very cold windy place, in summer it’s hot & windy, see how we distinguish the seasons? Our back garden has fantastic near-magical clothes-drying powers due to the wind and is great for running around in but LP’s playhouse hasn’t got much use recently as it is colddddd in there, brrrr…

So today during no-nap-time, myself & Littlepixie decided to bring her much neglected playhouse in from the garden and make it into an indoor hut for her. Cue a lot of water, washing down the whole house, removing countless slumbering spiders, and eventually disassembling half of the house in order to get it through the door. It was an early birthday present from my mum & dad, and LP kept telling me “Uh, grandad made that, you shouldn’t take it apart”!

It’s too big for under the stairs, so we have made a wee spot for it in the kitchen where her play kitchen and market live. She promptly moved the play kitchen and tea trolley (an old wooden vegetable rack!) into the house and stuck her head out the window to say” Uh, how do you know a princess lives here?”.

LP has decided that princesses live in houses with flags (we have a lot of local football fans around, there are always various team flags in gardens) so thus instructed, I scurried to my recently tidied fabric box, got the good old pinking shears, some ribbon and my stapler and made cute little pennants for the sides of the house. Then we scavenged around and found a couple of rugs, some cushions, a scarf draped over the top and many, many sticky hooks to hang up all her accoutrements and we were done! We put the market at the side window so we can play market shop too

I present to you… Arabia! (LP is currently an Arabian princess, it will more than likely have a new name tomorrow, I don’t decide these things )

My mum had the fab idea of changing the decor with the seasons, can you imagine how splendid it’ll look when the winter fairies pay a visit?!

Gosh, I’m exhausted now, hopefully LP will nap tomorrow

Oh yes, and with regard to my previous post, I’m fairly sure that the dictionary definition of “declutter” is not “the act of moving a perfectly functional garden playhouse into your kitchen to fill up even more space”. I am so bad at decluttering

What does it say about my household cleaning habits that whenever I say “Ok, let’s clean up this room”, Littlepixie jumps up excitedly and says “Woo hoo, Who’s coming to visit?”

Hmmm…. I do clean, really I do (even when we have no guests due), sort of, occasionally, you know how it is Actually I bought this postcard for the fridge while I was in London at Easter, everyone who calls by is impressed at how well it suits me (and the outfit is virtually identical to my housecleaning clothes, uncanny!):

(apologies to those of you who do have clean houses, I’m just bitter and jealous, don’t mind me ).

Actually, note to self (BIG note) – Declutter house… one of these days.

Blessed as I am with genetic weak enamel in my back teeth, I do appreciate modern dentistry and all its wonders, but bloody f*$k, I hate fillings!

I had to get an old one replaced today and also a new one put in the tooth beneath it, so one whole half of my face had to be numbed. The lower half de-numbed itself halfway through the procedure (that was a very pleasant surprise indeed, I love that shooting drill-nerve pain so much), so my lovely dentist had to redo the anesthetic on my lower jaw, so all in all, I was unable to feel half of my face until 14:00 in the afternoon (I was out of the dentists at 10:30)! Ugh… and once the numbness finally wore off, the over-sensitive feeling of recently drilled teeth took over. So not fun at all.

Although Littlepixie does keep coming up to me and rubbing my the side of my face saying “your filling is really boo-tiful mama”. What does she think a filling is, I wonder? I didn’t enlighten her! She has seen Topsy & Tim getting one in a book, so perhaps she thinks it’s a fun thing to have It’s not!

I really should blog smaller posts more frequently! But to make up for the HPP drought, here is a little infodump of random goings-on in HPP-land….

Overalls: My wonderfully talented friend Bibble recently made Littlepixie a gorgeous set of overalls.

These are all the more special because they are crafted from my muchly loved cord skirt that I treated myself to when LP was born (and I was no longer a giant walking belly!). I wore the skirt almost 24-7, so comfy! But it started to get worn-out and faded so the lovely Bibble repurposed it into funky overalls for LP, and she even made a caterpillar pouch for LP’s animals. We love Bibble and are very muchly in awe of her sewing and repurposing abilities ♥

Star Wars vs. Trek: Littlepixie loves Star Wars, Mr. HPP showed her the first one (I mean the 4th one, you know, the real first one, with Harrison Ford), she calls herself “Space Princess” and dresses as Princess Leia (the long white dress, not the other outfit!!) and carries the little Mr. Potato Man R2D2 around with her. It’s all very sweet, and she is free to like whatever she likes and to choose her own path in life, BUT…. we are a Star Trek house, we quite like Star Wars, but we prefer Trek. Hmmmm…. what if she likes Episodes 1-3, what if she likes Jar-Jar, what are we raising her like!!!? Must put the original Trek on continuous playback on tv to brainwash her out of her Star Wars ways. Speaking of Star Wars, Fanboys is very worth a watch, very funny

TV Shows: You may recall that I was lamenting the loss of Sarah Connor & BSG in our telly watching lives. Well, we tried out some of your recommendations, and so far we have loved the online show “The Guild” about a group of online gamers. The episodes are only 10 minutes long and it’s good fun to watch and there is a catchy little song too. It’s made by Felicia Day who was in Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, another must-watch for you all. We are also (finally) watching Firefly, another Joss Whedon offering, we’re not totally convinced yet, but it is enjoyable. And we briefly checked out True Blood, but I am not liking it much, it’s a bit too much on the nasty side of voyeurism for my tastes!

Naps: Yes, I cannot speak much of these, suffice to say, LP is dropping them. Booooooo hoooooo…. She is taking a nap maybe only every third day now, argh, my lunch break, my entitlements, all gone! But I am pleased of course that she is getting so big and grown-up, but my time off…. boo hoo

Gnomes: I am making Christmas babywearing gnomes now, Nollaig & Holly, I do realise it isn’t even Hallowe’en yet, but with LP abandoning her naps, my sewing time is very limited so I thought I would start making them early. They have gotten a good reception, my waiting list is nice and long now! I have the very first one kept aside for LP to hang on our tree.

Harry Potter: While I sew the gnomes I am really enjoying listening to the Harry Potter books on the computer. One of my lovely friends gave me them, and they are fab. They are read by Jim Dale and they are just amazing, his Voldemort is so creepy, Prof McGonagle is spot on and his Snape is just wonderful (mmm…Snape) I just finished The Deathly Hallows and I’m listening to The Half-Blood Prince now (yes, I am listening to them in reverse order) I highly recommend listening to them if you get the chance, they are a perfect background while you are sewing or crafting.

Naps (again): You see why the nap-dropping is so traumatic for me? I can’t listen to my HP books everyday now, LP would talk over them

Fillings: I have to go and get an old amalgam filling replaced, it has cracked, and results in a fairly unique and nerve-shattering pain when I chew on hard things like bagel crusts (I like bagel crusts). Fun and games, not! I hate the injection they give you to numb your mouth, I normally get fillings without it, but seen as this is a removal and replacement… I’ll be all slobbery. Has to be done though, if I wait till after breastfeeding, I could be ages with this annoying pain and the tooth wouldn’t fare too well with a cracked filling in it. From Kellymom:

Hale (Medications and Mothers’ Milk, 2004, p. 528) recommends that “the replacement of amalgam fillings should if possible be postponed until after pregnancy and breastfeeding as the removal of amalgam fillings while breastfeeding could potentially increase the transfer of mercury to the breastfed infant.” If replacement of an amalgam filling is necessary, Hale recommends that the dentist take routine precautions when removing the old amalgam: “use copious amounts of cold water irrigation to minimize heat, use a rubber dam to isolate her mouth from the particles, and use an alternate source of air (oxygen) to minimize mercury vapor inhalation.”

Ugh!

That’s all for now, hope you all are well!

Well here is a very accurate portrait drawn today and proudly presented to me by Littlepixie… have a look, I’m sure that those of you who know me will agree that the likeness is uncanny, isn’t my hair gorgeous, and wow look at that friendly smile!

I finally got around to making our Autumn table! Littlepixie is really only now getting interested in the concept of a nature table as a permanent evolving feature in the house, previous table attempts were usually scattered to the four winds within minutes.But now she is more interested in the seasons and how the days change so it’s a good time for me to get more organised.

Today was wet and miserable very Autumnal, so myself and LP decided to brighten up the hallway with our new nature table/repurposed bedside-locker.

Some of the ever-splendid pumpkin spice fabric that I love so much made a quick mat, and then we liberally scattered our large stash of real pinecones and wooden acorns all over it. The Autumn gnome that Jumbleberrymama so kindly made for us last year arrived with his house, and LP’s new-ish Autumn mama, baby & daddy gnomes promptly moved in too.

LP located her stash of plastic squirrels from the Ice Age movie that she convinced her granny to collect for her (they are from McD’s, a place that LP is still unaware of ). She just loves them, mostly because they throw acorns at you! The squirrels invaded the table to scoff the acorns, and we added a tied sheaf of dried grass, a felt pumpkin from our market, lots of new felt hastily cut-out autumnal leaves and a colouring picture of a squirrel.

Et voila…. our nature table…. within seconds of my taking this photo, LP moved in a whole heap of other animals, there is now a purple octopus, several fwees and a horse on it!

And here is a gem from LP:

LP: “Mamette, it’s Autumn, what’s next after Hallowe’en?”

Me: “Winter”

LP: “And then Spring?”

Me: “Yup, and then Summer”

LP: “And then what?”

Me: “Then it’ll be Autumn again”

LP: “Oh WOW!! It’s just like a big circle! Wow “

Isn’t that so sweet!

Thank you all so much for entering my little giveaway!

Using the magical powers of random.org I have found the two lucky people who will soon be the proud keepers of a custom babywearing mama gnome keychain. So without further ado, let’s say a big “hooray” for…

Comment #4 from Mama’s Apple Cores who said

I like Pops best I think. And Fern…

But they are all lovely!

and…

Comment #18 from Paula (Crafty Panties on VET) (I do so love that name!) who said

It’s so hard to choose! I think Araminta might be my favorite (I like the brightly colored ones the best).

But it doesn’t matter which ones were their favourites as they get to design one of their very own each! Yay! So Mama’s Apple Cores & Ms. Paula Crafty Panties, I will be emailing you now to start your gnome adventures

Congratulations! And if anyone else fancies a custom babywearing mama gnome keychain, I would be delighted to work with you, you know where to find me

Here’s the small print…

Babywearing mama gnome keychains are for your bag or your keys, not for your child. They are small with metal parts, so not a good child’s toy at all. OK!?

Well folks, today I am celebrating my 2nd bloggiversary, well today is actually 2 years, 1 month, 1 week and 1 day since HPP started, ok, I admit it, I forgot about HPP’s bloggiversary this year

Anyhoo, moving on from my bloggy negligence, I would like to celebrate by offering you lovely people a little giveaway. These days it is all about the babywearing mama gnome keychains, there are none in the shop at the moment as I am busy like a bee making custom gnomes for a group of lovely Irish & UK babywearing mamas. This weekend I should have a few spare moments and will hopefully get to repopulate Little Pixie Shoppe with a few more gnomes keychains.

The custom orders are great fun to make, it is delightful having other people choose the colour combos for me. And, as you know, all profits from the shop are going to a children’s charity, so the big pile of custom orders is absolutely wonderful to receive! Speaking of custom orders… I have penciled in a little treat for HPP readers in my crafting calendar… read on…

Oooh tell me more!

In order to celebrate HPP’s 2nd bloggiversary, I would like to give not one, but two of you the chance to design your own babywearing mama gnome! You can choose the style of babycarrier she wears and choose your favourite colour combos from my big pile of multi-coloured eco-felt, now doesn’t that sound like a fun prize!

Oooh I want one! What do I do?

Simply visit my flickr collection of mama gnomes, and then come back here & leave a comment telling me which is your favourite so far. Simple as pie!

Would you like two entries into the draw?

Yes? If you feel like blogging about the mama gnomes or the giveaway, feel very free to do so, then pop back here and leave me another comment linking to your post! Et voila, you now have two chances to win!

But I’m from a faraway land! Don’t fret, in the interests of fostering international communication and spreading world peace, this prize is open to all of you, humans, Narnians, Capricans, Vulcans, even (gasp) those without a blog, wherever you happen to be on our fine planet!

Just make sure to include a valid email address with your comment so I can find you, and I’ll pick 2 random winners on Wednesday 2nd September at 18:00 GMT. Duplicate entries will be removed and put on the naughty step.

Here’s the small print…

Babywearing mama gnome keychains are for your bag or your keys, not for your child. They are small with metal parts, so not a good child’s toy at all. OK!?

Good luck!!!