Finally!

I've finally done it...  I feel like I can actually sit back a little now and relax.

What you ask?

I finally have more than 3 items in my Etsy store, and I've created a banner from one of the photos from my photo shoot a couple of months ago.

So it's no snazzy and streamlined website or representation, but it's something more than it was.

And I feel like my efforts have been realised!  Yay!

So pop on over to the store and have a look and PLEASE give me some feedback!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/MoppetsNMunchkins

I cursed myself

Even as I hit the Publish button last night I had that moment of hesitation - if I put it out there, then something's going to happen...  So I should have just deleted the post and kept quiet!

I got woken at midnight, then again at 2, then again at 5 and have been up since then...  Miss5 has another whopper of an ear-infection that was keeping her up and screaming.  Poor little love has had the worst of them this year!  By the time I got her to the doctor for the usual round of examinations and antibiotics at 9 this morning, the eardrum had perforated again and now we're on the way to getting grommets!

So next time I'll just shut my mouth and cross my fingers instead, rather than posting about my grand plans...  What's that saying about best laid plans...?

Can I wish for a reset button...?

Well another week down and kids are tired, Mum's tired and Dad's wired and ready for the weekend...  It's not been the best of weeks here at M&M with kids giving me a little grief and making me run off my feet and cranky, but I have a whole weekend planned of nothing but sewing - actually some grocery shopping and then heaps of sewing and designing!

So look out Monday, here I come with lots of stock for the shop and lots of stock for the website...

(Here's hoping for co-operative children for just 48 hours!)

They say never to work with children...

OK, so these are some of the photos from the shoot last week.  They are all adorable kids and were SO excited to be "modelling" for me, but why is it when a camera is pointed at a child they pull a funny face?

 And there were some good action shots too!!

All in all, it was a fun afternoon and I got some great images to use on the website.

There was also a little impromptu photo-shoot in the backyard yesterday too with another couple of items for the shop...

Anyway, off now to get the website done!

OK, now I can't help myself!

I've just got to put up some more photos!  These are the clothes that were in the photo shoot last week and don't really need to be organised or critiqued or anything like that.

So, there's the little party dress...

And a little wrap dress with a love heart buttonhole for the tie...

And a little pinky and bloomer set with a ruffle on the bum...  I just love frilly-bum bloomers for little girls!

And there was another couple of outfits but I didn't get photos of them on hangers, just on the kiddies running around.  So more tomorrow!

And I'm BACK...

OK, so I can't even remember when I last did a post and now that I'm typing up one I can't check either.  It's been a really busy time lately and I hardly get time in front of my computer at all these days, but I really have to make an effort to get some more things online.  Just looking at the blog with my very sparse posts, I actually feel like I've been achieving things.

But onto more important things - SEWING!

I have made quite a few things to put in the shop and although these photos are a little old now (by a couple of months!), I still just love looking at all the neatly little clothes hanging in my space.  It just gives me a little creative thrill!

So just getting back into the swing of posting again at the moment.  My next post will be a doosey!  To get my business website up and running I had a mini photo shoot on Friday!  I feel like such a professional saying that!  But as soon as I get all the photos organised I'll put them up here.

More sewing...

I'm really into the little projects at the moment, and animals are always popular with the little people in this house.  As I was just stuffing this one into life, MissMini5 decided that she was first in line again for the elephant run, just like she was for the turtles...  Sadly she's mistaken because the test run is mine...  All mine!!  It's really cute and I like this one better as a pincushion, so I'm keeping Ellie, and the kids can have all of the turtles...

But I'm sure that by tonight I'll cave in and let them pick out some materials to have their elephants made...  I'm such a pushover sometimes...

So meet Ellie!.  She's still not finished yet, she needs eyes and some pretty felt flowers, but you get the idea...

YAY for Summer!

I love Summer...  Just love it!  The heat and the outside playing and the fun and beach and just everything about it.

There is just one drawback for me - humidity.  I have very dense, think wavy (wiry!) hair and in any humidity it just turns into a frizzball.  But anyway I digress... 

I also love the cute kids clothes that are more fun in summer...  Winter is just about layers, but summer is Fun!

And as such, this is the latest addition to Bubbs Summer wardrobe...

Sewing FRENZY!

I've been on a little sewing frenzy lately, playing around with some patterns and fabrics, and just generally making my kids heaps of clothes.  And they love having things that are made by their Mumma, and that no-one else has...  They LOVE one of a kind things!  So here's some of the things...

Random thoughts...

A friend asked me the other day why moppets 'n munchkins...  And it's something that I've always just called my kids.  When the first two were littler, I used to ask both of them if they were moppets or poppets...  And usually one would choose one nickname, while the other would choose the other name, and so we'd spend the day calling each other moppets and poppets.  Then when BubbyGirl came along, the older two were moppet and poppet, so she had to be called the little munchkin.

So I looked up google, and a moppet is another name for a rag doll (which is kinda cute!), and a munchkin keeps popping up pictures of munchkin hats.  So I'm still at a bit of a loss as to what a munchkin really is, but I've got a photo of BubbyGirl in a munchkin hat!

Cakes, cakes and more cakes...

And now for a more light-hearted post, and as one of my catch up posts...here are some cakes that I've done lately.

My family lives in another state, and my sister is always asking me to get around to putting some of my cakes up online so that she can look at them too.

So here goes...

So there's a few to start with!

Blogtoberfest 19-Oct-11

I know, it's been 9 days since my last post...  That almost sounds like I should be sitting in a confessional!   I'm going to make up for it though by posting a few posts per day...  Just to get into the habit again!

The reason for my slackness is that I've have been pretty busy!  Three kids will do that to me periodically, but this time I went away for the weekend with a couple of friends, for the first time in 4 years.

It still amazes me that sometimes we can meet people that we just click with, and feel totally relaxed around and they are just a blessing in our lives at that precise moment.  These two friends have come along at a time in my life when I was feeling quite alone, not necessarily lonely, but definitely separate from the rest of the Mum's at school and kindy.

They are two women that I really enjoy spending time with, mostly because we all just really GET each other and each others lives.   It's always really comfortable, compassionate and supportive (and crafty!) when we're together, talking for hours, drinking too much coffee or wine (not often enough!).

And if either one of them is reading this post, I just wanted to say how grateful I am that they have both come into my life.  Sometimes it's easier to type these things than it is to say!

Blogtoberfest 10-Oct-11

OK, so I registered a few days ago but only got to the linking and the icon on my page late last night, so today is my first official Blogtoberfest post!

Now that the kids are back at school, we've had to return our adopted silkworms.  When the holidays started, there wasn't many and the few that were there were little, scrawny looking worms.

By the end of the holidays, there's stacks of them and they're all big, fat and healthy, with three of them spinning their cocoons, ready for the metamorphosis into the cute little white moths that they become.

Anyway, I might have complained about having to clean out their home daily and drive around looking for mulberry leaves, but now that they're gone I miss them and their cute little fatness every morning!

Popcorn Picnic

I just had to share this photo.  Now that school's back in session, I'm trying to get the kids back into routine as quickly as possible.  The best way in this house is to have a popcorn picnic after school - just to make sure that they have afternoon tea, which equals less complaining as we near dinnertime...

And my apologies for the dreadful photo - it was just taken very quickly with my phone - kids move too quickly for me to have gotten my camera organised!  But aren't they cute?  All staring intently at Playschool while munching on popcorn...

And finally, some more sewing done...

I took the photos the other day but have only just had some time now to upload them.  So here goes...

And just to even things up in the house, I made some funky shorts for TechnoBoy...  He's just so excited that his mummy got to sewing some stuff for him too!  Poor little fella gets a little forgotten with the creative things, generally the creative things all being so girly!

And I got quite a few different fabrics for boys while I was at it, so I can see that this summer he's going to be mostly into the funky shorts.  I think the thing that he was most excited about was that there was no tricky buttons or zippers and that the material was nice and soft to wear.  Cutie!

A cute day out...

Isn't this just the cutest little girl?  We had a morning out recently and the day before a little outfit arrived in the mail that I'd had custom made by a lovely lady in Melbourne.  What the photo doesn't show is the stunning little doll that was made to match her little outfit just perfectly.

And this is my darling little BubbyGirl.

Decisions, decisions...

So I've got a selection of kiddies clothes ready for opening an online store and I'm wondering where to do it.  There's pros & cons of everywhere, obviously, so I'm just not sure where to start.

There's Etsy  - mostly handmade things, 

Ebay - everyone knows ebay.

Both would be a good forum, but there's drawbacks to both.  Ebay is SO huge that one little online store of specialty kids clothes would be lost, unless I want to pay the bigger fees per listing to get bold and highlighted items in the search results.  Then Etsy, I'm not 100% sure but in the fine print it looked like I couldn't then sell anywhere else online.  Or maybe it was just that I couldn't promote the items anywhere else through the Etsy site.  Meaning, having a direct website in the listing description so that people could buy the items directly from me without the listing fees of Etsy.

Then of course, there's a personal website and Facebook.  I've actually seen a few shops recently promoted on Facebook, and the owners then take custom orders through Facebook postings.  Drawbacks here are that people don't go to Facebook looking for items to buy, and the cost of setting up and hosting a direct website is a bit beyond my finances at the moment.  

And then finally is how to promote myself...?  Posters up on the local message boards?  At school and kindy?  Swimming lessons?  

Anyway, I'm off to take photos of all the gorgeous things I've been making and put them up in posts...

The mosh(pit) of Henrietta's...

So, I have added to the collection.  The green gingham one in the middle is TechnoBoy's, and the blue floral on the right is mine.  I pushed in.  I had planned on doing the kids first, but I NEEDED a new pincushion.  So by the time I got two of them done, I was so annoyed at putting all my pins into a ramekin that I pushed up in the line.  And now I have a gorgeous new Henrietta pincushion.

Another little dress...

After much fiddling and fussing with fabrics, and patterns and which fabric was going to go where and all of that...  I finished another little summer dress for bubby.

I'm not sure if you can really see it in this photo, but the skirt is a double layer, dusky pink on the bottom layer and the floral on the top.  And it's got a little zipper under the left arm, so is pretty easy to get on and off.  But it's just so CUTE! and so GIRLY! and I can't wait for her to wear it.

We have to be careful at the moment, she loves little dresses...for about half an hour.  Then climbing stairs, jumping on the couch, rolling around on the floor, all of those activities aren't good fun with a dress on.  So she starts pulling at the skirt and crying to get this damn thing off!  But for that first half an hour, she's just the most adorable little living doll of a bubby!

Summer dress

Well, now that the weather is starting to warm up, I thought it would be a good idea to start some sewing for the kids again...  And another trip to my favourite shop (the patchwork fabric shop), and I found some gorgeous new material for the little DD1.  It's just so adorable, that I had to make her a little summer dress, shoestring straps for the warm weather, but it had to have lots of material to show off the cute little pattern...