Poor little neglected blog

Sigh. I have such good intentions but I just stuff myself up in the end. I love my new camera, but I've already lost the cord that connects it to the computer so all my photos are stuck on the camera instead of being blogged and shown! And boy have I had some blog worthy times, I went to WA to surprise my friend Jannah for her birthday, and ended up spending 2 weeks in Perth with my lovely friend Barb, then 5 days in Kalgoorlie then back to Perth before heading home. I want to go back. I miss warmth! Hopefully I can blog all about it soon, I just can't get in a blogging mood without photos! Here's one taken on my phone on the drive to Kalgoorlie, oh red dirt! Blue skies! I miss you!

Another photoy post

My head is the clouds at the moment, and I'm finding it hard to put a coherent thought down in writing! Lots has been going on in the treehugging household, I picked Indigo up from school last week and she came bounding to the gate saying "I emptied my locker, I said my goodbyes, today was my last day!" So I can add homeschooling Mama to my repertoire! It's been a long time coming and I'm glad we've reached a conclusion, school dramas do my head in, and Indigo is going to be a great homeschooler, she's driven to learn which gets a bit squashed at school, even though their school is awesome (I should know, I went there growing up!) she's just not suited to the school environment. So a little sad, but mostly excited about this new phase of our journey. As well as that my niece is coming to stay! We haven't seen her for 3 1/2 years and she's just turned 11, so we're pretty excited! It's just a quick visit, a night or two, but we've been waiting for her to come down here for so long, I can't wait to give her a huge hug! And she and Indigo have already planned what they're going to do on their sleepover.

look what I have!

Sorry for the lack of posts, will be brief as I have a feverish 2 year old asleep on my shoulder. I'm pretty lucky that she hardly ever gets sick, I would not want to deal with green boogers more than once every second year!

I GOT A NEW CAMERA!!! NO MORE FUZZIES!! Some clear pics for blogland:

Rainbow and Crystal at a party with their cousins
Rainbow climbing high in a tree, trying to get up to where her sisters are
Indigo and Crystal tree climbing.

I've realised most of my awesome photos I need to rotate, and I can't do it on the program I'm using! Will have to edit them and put them up next time!

Um, no, I don't like it!

Um, nice threads Indigo! Ugh, I have to say animal print and lime green are two of my most despised things in life. Truely. And the top doesn't do it for me either. But Indigo has a keen sense of fashion - well her own brand of fashion - and bought this outfit with her own money. While I watched on thinking hmm, wonder if allowing my daughter to commit crimes of fashion falls anywhere under child abuse laws? But I'm trying to suck it up and let her form her own identity, which in her words is "Wild, hippy, mismatched and individual" well she's certainly done that. Now to make sure that I'm always at least 3 meters behind her in public so no one clicks on that she's with me...

Montessori-ish playroom- part 4

Whoops, I thought I was done but I forgot about the nature table. Which is more of a Steiner concept than a Montessori one, but oh well, I'm just borrowing different bits of a few philosophies and forming my own :) I can do that right? In the pic it's still set up with summer finds, we're slowly slowly changing it to a more autumny collection.

Garage sale finds

I don't get to go to garage sales for pretty much the same reason as op shops - there's never any around here. Since we've been living here (31/2 years) I've gone to 2 garage sales! When we lived in Melbourne I'd go to garage sales nearly every weekend and I really miss them! But yesterday we were going into town and I spotted one - there was a manequin wearing a fruit platter head dress by the letter box which to me signaled that there was a lot of potential at this one! And I was right, if I had a trailer and lots of cash I would have gone nuts. But I stayed calm, got a few things I really liked and only walked out $16 poorer. In this first pic is a little bird in a cage, the lady gave that to me for nothing - it really helps having a cute little fairy Rainbow going up to her saying "Ascuse me, how much money is it?" in a sweet 2 year old voice. The lady said it was broken but Indigo had a fiddle and now when you wind it up the bird swings back and forth to a music box tune.

We also got a new umbrella for the dress up box, 3 wooden containers with butterflies painted on, a laquered black and red oriental container with a handle and lid, and excitingly, a new salt lamp. I love my salt lamp that's in my lounge and I've always intended on getting one for the bedroom too.
And Indigo got this dome with a butterfly and dried flowers in it, which led to a discussion of how some people kill and preserve butterflies and insects. Indigo and Crystal agreed that they thought it was terrible to take the butterfly's life, but they still wanted to buy it!

Everybody cheer! It's holidays!

I love love love school holidays! Why must they only go for 2 weeks? Today is the first day of the holidays, so my head is swimming with all of the plans for good times. Tomorrow is dance class all morning, then I'm thinking we'll go for a drive to town, I have to do a few boring things but we'll mix it up with a trip to the beach or the Botanical Gardens. I've got a few easy crafty ideas - we need some placemats so we might make some together, maybe drawing or sewing or glueing some things together then laminating them, who knows, we'll see where our creating takes us! Plus a few other craft projects, we'll do a couple of trips to Melbourne, I'm fairly desperate to hit Ikea, Indigo wants to go to the museum, Crystal wants to go to the Aquarium. I want to eat at my favourite vegetarian restaurant. Or maybe go to Collingwood Children's Farm followed by lunch at Lentil as Anything. I don't know, I just know it has to involve yum vegetarian food! Indigo already has a couple of sleepovers booked, and we scored some free movie tickets so I'll have to see what's playing (and appropriate!) I'm hoping to catch up with friends, and do as much of this as I can:

Indigo made her own face masks and treated us all. I think the main ingredients were sorbelene, essential oil, crushed lavender and the ash from some nag champa. It actually was great and felt awesome! I didn't have the heart to tell her that traditionally you have slices of cucumber on your eyes not zucchini... but the zucchini was still refreshing and cool! Maybe she's on to something!