Library Bag

My little man is starting preschool in a week's time and one of the items he needs to have is a library bag.  Up until now the kids have not had their own library bags, even though we go to the library every fortnight! We normally use the closest bag we can lay our hands on, but not any more!

Tonight I jazzed up a library bag for James, ready for him to take to preschool.

I got the bag at Lincraft for 99c and the fabric was from my scrap bag.  I found the moose template here. I attached the letters and moose shapes with fusible webbing.

I chose a moose because James has a little soft toy moose called Moosey.  Moosey is his best friend and he goes almost everywhere that James does. Since James won't be able to take Moosey to preschool with him (a topic of lengthy discussion lately) I thought this moose library bag might be the next best thing.

Do your children have a library bag? What does it look like?

I hope you have a wonderful weekend full of books and fun!

Celebrating Australia Day!

It's Australia Day on Thursday and we are looking forward to celebrating with our friends. 


Our Australia Day normally starts with an early morning trip to the park to meet up with friends at The Great Aussie Day Breakfast. There is nothing better than a sausage sizzle for brekkie! We then hang out in the park watching the entertainment (I think it's the Fireman Sam Show this year!) and then head home for lunch (more BBQ and pavlova!) 


You have to look your best for Australia Day so we made some very stylish hats from paper plates.

First we painted a paper plate blue and then cut around the middle of the plate, leaving a small part connected in front.

Then we stuck the flag onto the front.

The Australia flag template is from the Australia Day site, which also has a huge range of wonderful activity and colouring pages.


Happy Australia Day!

Favourite Five: Books about Soccer

My little man loves playing soccer and my husband is an avid fan. We had a great time playing soccer in the backyard today, so I thought I would share our favourite five books about soccer (or football, depending on where you are from).


Grug plays Soccer by Ted Prior


Soccer Crazy by Colin McNaughton


Shaun Sheep the Soccer Star by Erin Mirabella


Football Fever by Alan Durant


Starting Soccer by Helen Edom and Lesley Sims


Does your family have a favourite?


I hope you have a great week!

Wordless Wednesday: A bookworm in the making

Outdoor antics

My Son, James is having a holiday at his Nanny's house for the week which means I am able to spend some one-on-one time with my beautiful little girl.  She is normally a quiet little thing, however, since the chatterbox of the family is away she if full of conversation.


We spent a lot of our time outside in the garden, enjoying the mild weather. Emily loves being outdoors and helping in the garden, which usually involves eating a considerable amount of dirt! We played hide and seek amongst the hedge plants.

We then did some chalk drawings on the concrete. She took her little piece of chalk with her, leaving her mark wherever she went.  Here she is on the front step drawing another masterpiece with a little dirt mixed in for good measure!

The books we read this weekend didn't really follow a theme, just whatever Emily pulled out of the bookcase.  Here is a selection of what we have been reading:

 All About Me, which is full of photos of babies! Emily loves babies, dragging around a dolly which she calls Baby. This is one of her favourite books at the moment.


 Baby's First Farm board book, which is full of pictures of animals and we have heaps of fun making animals noises.


 Big Read Bath by Julia Jarman. I find it so funny that she loves a book about having a bath, but she doesn't like having baths herself!


I can't count how many times I have read these books over the past few weeks!

Friday's Favourite Find: What's Under the Bed?

I found a gorgeous book this week that I thought would be perfect for today's Favourite Find, being Black Friday after all. It's What's Under the Bed? written and illustrated by Joe Fenton.

It's time for Fred to go to bed, but he hears a noise! What could it be? His imagination starts running away with him, wondering if the noise came from something with a big grin, long nails or even two tails. Fred has to build up the courage to look under his bed! 

What's that noise?
What's that sound?
Is there something on the ground?
Could there be something under my bed?

The predominately black and white illustrations with splashes of colour perfectly depict the scary shadows at night.  I absolutely love Fred's large bespectacled eyes!


Happy reading and have a wonderful weekend!

Keeping up the books

With Santa's very generous additions to the kids' book collections, the bookcases are beginning to bulge! So I thought I would explore bookends as an option. The only challenge was that I didn't have any! 


I went through the many, many toys the kids have acquired in their very short lives and found two Bob the Builder machines, Muck and Scoop. They haven't been played with for quite some time and while they might be a little on the big side, I think they are effective just the same. 

I selected a variety of machine related books from the bookshelf and voila, we have bookends!

I even found a few small Bob the Builder books that were the perfect size for the back of Muck. I was planning to take these toys out of circulation, but they have been saved by the need to keep the books upright! 


For some more bookend inspiration, check out my Pinterest board, Keeping up the books!

I got an award!

A BIG Thank you to Betsy from Tippytoe Crafts for giving me the Liebster Blog Award!

Well, she actually gave this award to me a few weeks ago, but with all the Christmas preparations I am only getting around to it now and I thought it would be a great way to kick off the new year on a positive note.

The goal of the award is to spotlight up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers. The rules are:

1. copy and paste the award on your blog
2. thank the giver and link back to them
3. reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog
4. hope that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers

Here are my favourite five:

• Smiling Like Sunshine
• What happens in Storytime...
• Dinosaurs and Octopuses
• Room to Grow
• Australian Picture Books

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.  

Thank you once again Betsy!

Happy New Year!