Six!

My little girl turns six today! Here's a snapshot of little Abner at six:

Her two lower front teeth show signs of being almost ready to come out but that's about it. Still a full set of baby teeth flashing every time she smiles.

She learned to read last year and has never looked back. Her favourites are Ivy & Bean, Junie B. Jones, Judy Moody, Clarice Bean and just about anything she can get her hands on. She read her first Judy Blume book last year - I don't think I read my first one until I was a teenager! One of my favourite things in the world is to hear Abner giggling from her room as she reads her books before bed.

She has the slightest of Kiwi accents but pretty much still sounds like a Canadian through and through.

She started getting pocket money (an allowance) at the beginning of the year and she has so far spent all of her money on stationery products. Seriously. Every thing she's bought can either write or be written on. It's an obsession.

She loves, loves, loves listening to music. Her tastes range from John Denver and James Taylor (yup. really.) to the Village People and Queen (that's my girl) to Walk Off the Earth and Avicii. Oh, and of course, Frozen (so much Frozen!)

Happy birthday to my sweet little girl.

Stripey love

This is one of my favourite pictures of Little miss Abner. It was taken a little over one year ago when the two of us did a mommy-daughter road trip while TDSH was away in a little place we'd never heard of called Dunedin for a job interview.

One of the many reasons I love this picture is that cute little tank top she's wearing. We both love that top. It's been a go-to in all seasons for the past couple of years. Sadly, it's getting a wee bit small these days and will soon be retired and sent to friends for their little girl to enjoy. Before passing it on, I used it as the inspiration for a new top that should fit Abner for many years to come.

I used the same knit black and white stripe fabric I used on my own stripey top a few months back and traced around the original top adding a few centimetres here and there to increase the size just a bit. The finished top is perhaps a bit too big at the moment, but that hasn't stopped Abner from wearing it several times in the past couple of weeks. She reminds me almost daily how much she likes wearing her mama-made clothes. I will keep pumping them out until she tells me to stop!

The heart (the kids call them 'love hearts' here...I don't know why) was painted on with many, many layers of iridescent purple fabric paint (chosen after much deliberation by Abner herself). I used tape to mask out the heart shape. It worked pretty well but it did bleed through in a couple of spots. Abner assures me this doesn't bother her one bit - phew! She had such a hard time waiting for all those layers of paint to dry! My little girl is many things, but patient is not always one of them (I wonder where she gets that from?!)

I still have another hunk of that stripey fabric left - just enough for another kids' project. What do you think I should make with the last bit of it?

We were on a break

Please excuse the quietness around these blog parts lately. It's been term break for little Miss Abner for the past two weeks so we've been up to our eyeballs in fun and excitement! Our adventures were many, but our photos were few. Here are a few of the highlights for your viewing pleasure...

Looking chic as we headed north for a wee day trip with friends.

Braving the rope swing for the first time. How would you like to have this beautiful spot for a family getaway? I feel so lucky to have generous friends who let us join in the fun at their spectacular holiday house.

Enjoying the first of many Crunchie bars aboard the Crunchie Train. Dunedin has its very own Cadbury factory and every year they host "Cadbury Week". It's an all-out festival of all things chocolate. We did chocolate decorating, rode the Crunchie train up the Taieri Gorge, and took in our first Jaffa Race.

What you're looking at is 25,000 candy coated chocolate balls racing down the steepest street in the world. They do two races, sweeping the entire street (by hand) between races. It is extremely bizarre and totally awesome.

The children (and plenty of adults) help out by digging in the gutter and grabbing as many Jaffas as they can before the sweeping crew comes. Forget the five second rule - these things have rolled down a busy city street and came to rest in a GUTTER for Pete's sake. Eeeeew!

There was plenty of other action happening during the break; we managed to take in two plays, go for plenty of walks and go to a movie as well. I fear we may have set the bar a little too high and Abner will come to expect this much fun on every term break!

Presto-changeo Reversible Skirt

How do you like the cute little skirt I made for Abner last night? Sunny, warm yellow with little white polka dots - the perfect skirt for my wee little girl. Yellow not your thing? Well, just a snap of the fingers and...presto-changeo, we have a cute little orange skirt!

Pretty clever, eh? I had this idea for a reversible skirt in my head when I woke up yesterday morning and sat down after dinner to work it out. I don't know what it is with me and reversible garments...no matter how many I make, I always think I can get away with sewing them up and turning them out through a hole I've left in the seam. It just seems like that should work, don't you think? I can assure you, it does not. Not at all. What you wind up with is something closer to a mobius loop than a skirt. By this point, Abner was getting quite keen to have a new skirt so I had to suffer through and pick it all apart and start again. In the end, it turned out beautifully!

The waistband has to be one of the comfiest options available (as far as waistbands go). Four separate casings for four separate strips of 1/4 inch elastic. Our little girl seems to be growing like a weed these days, so I left a bit of extra room in the waist and in the length. Last week alone she outgrew two pairs of jeans and several shirts!

The binding on the bottom was a piece of homemade bias tape that was sitting on the floor when I was looking for something to finish the hem with. Yup, I didn't care if it matched or not...just sewed that sucker on and stitched it by hand to finish it.

I love this skirt so much, I want to make an adult version. Give me a couple of days and I'll have pics and maybe a tutorial in case you're inspired to make your own.

Terrarium

Our little Kiwi house has been lacking in the plant department since we moved in. For obvious reasons, we had to leave all of our indoor and outdoor plants back home when we made the big move to the bottom of the earth. Recently, I found I was actually missing having plants. They're just nice to look at, don't you think?

So, this weekend, we popped out to a couple of stores and picked up all the items needed to make our very own terrarium. When it came to choosing the plants, I hemmed and hawed about going with succulents. I love succulents. Love them. But really, the terrarium I had pictured in my head was lush and green so we went for mini little houseplants instead.

I remember making a terrarium in school back in the day. It really is a perfect, quick project for even the littlest of kids to help out with. Abner poured the first layer of gravel, I sprinkled on some activated charcoal, she took care of a layer of sphagnum moss and I poured in some soil before Abner decided where each little plant would go. She was also responsible for nestling our two little pottery frogs into their new home and placing her favourite little seashell just so (i.e. jammed straight down into the dirt).

I'm not sure that Abner's even looked at it since we finished it, but I'm sure enjoying it; so much so that I just might make another!

Finger knitting

What's a crafty mama to do when she finds her child home from school with no activities planned (Like I did during last week's snow day)?! Teach your kid to finger knit, of course!

We found this great tutorial over at Lines Across and it had Abner busy for at least an hour. I'd never done finger knitting myself, but the tutorial was really easy to follow. Nothing like learning a new skills about 30 seconds before teaching it to your kid.

Of course, she also played in the snow plenty. Our backyard had its own little snowman family by the end of the day. Such fun but I'm sure glad the snow didn't stick around!

Photography scavenger hunt for kids

In the last few days before Abner started school, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel finding ways to stay entertained around the house. I think we were both sick of all the games and books we have and one can only spend so much time at the local library and museums. In a fit of genius, I came up with the idea for a photography scavenger hunt.

I wrote out a list of things for Abner to find around the house and yard. She had to read each item herself before running off to photograph it. Once she'd taken the picture, she had to bring me the camera so that I could see the photo before moving on to the next item on the list. I tried to write multi-word, descriptive clues so that Abner got some good reading practice. As Abner put it, "it's fun and I get to work on my learning skills, too!"

I love that it kept her busy for about an hour as I worked on some sewing. Abner loved it because she got to practice reading, use her digital camera, and she got to proudly show off her photos each time. Here are a few of the photos she took the last time we played:

a favourite book

a pretty quilt

a wooden elephant

FIVE!

My little girl turns five today (or tomorrow for those of you reading this in North America today). Here's a snapshot of little Abner at five:

She has two adult molars already and is quite excited to lose her first baby tooth. She keeps wiggling her teeth trying to loosen them and speed up the whole process.

She can read a good deal for her age - even her teacher remarked on how well she reads! She's now able to read short paragraphs of text on her own with only occasional help from an adult. Now that she can read, one of her favourite things to do is look over our shoulders while we're on the computer or reading books and call out words she recognizes ('cause that's not annoying at all).

She has not picked up any kind of a Kiwi accent yet, but has adopted a few local words, like: wee (small), carpark (parking lot), and heaps (lots).

She can pour her own cereal and milk for breakfast (which comes in handy when TDSH is out of town and mommy doesn't want to get up at 6:30 a.m.)

Her favourite chores are setting the table for dinner, pouring her own milk (into a mini wine glass, no less), putting clean dishes back in the pantry, carpet sweeping, putting beers in the fridge for mommy and daddy, and helping to match socks fresh out of the laundry.

She can also tie her own shoes...if you have about five minutes to spare before actually needing to head out the door.

Happy birthday to my favourite little girl.

our week...

Did you play with Lego as a kid? My brother and I certainly did back in the day. It's a hit with Abner too. We managed to fit a fair sized bag of it in our luggage and have been making up designs most afternoons while laying in the sunbeam in the lounge.

We're lucky to live in a part of town with easy access to great trails and parks. Abner and The Dear Sweet Husband head out after dinner some nights to explore the paths and check out the views of the valley. The other day they came home stuffed with fresh picked berries and telling tales of all the cool things they saw, like a bird's nest which had fallen from its tree.

Of course, not all of our exploration has taken place on foot. We recently got Abner her very own scooter and she's taken to it like a fish to water. They're very popular here with kids and are far more affordable than bikes, so we bit the bullet and got her one even though it's not her birthday - it's pink (ugh). Requests to "go for a scoot?" have been heard almost daily since.

And that's the week that was.

Smoothie

When we were packing up to head out to NZ, The Dear Sweet Husband nearly cried when he had to part with his coffee maker (he's not ashamed to admit it). For me, it was parting with my immersion blender that had me getting misty eyed.

You see, Abner and I have shared a smoothie almost every morning for the past couple of years. We happily resumed the tradition the other day and celebrated in the sun with the biggest smoothie 'stash this side of the Pacific.

Just peachy in Dunedin

Fresh summer peaches and apricots sitting on our kitchen window sill during our first NZ rainfall. I'm sure the farmers and orchards in Otago are grateful for today's shower (portions of NZ are in drought), but those of us who are only going to get a few weeks of summer this year are a little less than impressed.

We've been in our new house for almost two weeks already, but we just got internet in the last few days. Our furniture is due to arrive in about two weeks, so I'll do some posts about the house after that. I can't wait to share some pics of this incredibly cute - if cold - house.

I think my family is getting a bit eager for pics of Abner, so here are a few from some of our recent adventures in Dunedin. Just realized as I uploaded these, that Abner's back is turned in most of them. Sorry.

Getting her groove on at a free concert at the Botanic Gardens.

Climbing the Duddingstone Steps near our house.

Guess who got in trouble while visiting First Church?

It's still warm enough to get sprayed with the hose in the backyard.

The warmest spot in the house - the sunbeam in the lounge.