Yashar weekly photo: amongst the tulips

More on this amazing park soon!

Little Lamb Cards

Some little Spring lambs! I know, I know - a little late for Easter, but these are fun to make for any little Spring lambs you might know! Yashar and I made these – last minute of course – for his friends from our wonderful Saturday playgroup. Yashar actually really got in to this activity- I think it was because the cotton wool was so tactile and because he knows what sheep are he could make little ‘maa’ noises at them – very cute!

I’m sure you can work out how these was made pretty easily, but I have put it down step-by-step for your easy crafting pleasure! For the non crafty types, please look away!

1. Firstly, while Yashar was having a nap I quickly drew a little lamb and then traced a few of them on to some thick paper (I used watercolour paper). If you would like to make some of these cards and don’t feel like dreaming up the lamb yourself, please feel free to copy my one.

2. Now get the glue stick out! This is a favourite activity of Yashar’s! With some guidance from me he put some glue on each of the lambs’ backs very nicely. Then I had to sneakily tempt him away from the glue stick and give his hands a quick clean so that the cotton wool didn’t stick to his hands instead of the cards.

3. Yashar loves pulling things apart so we then spent some time breaking up the cotton wool.

4. And then I showed Yashar how to put the cotton wool on the lambs’ backs and away he went. For some reason, saying ‘pat-pat-pat’ as we went really gets him into doing this activity.

Yashar also liked ‘patting’ the lambs afterwards hence the slightly bent card in the photos!

Yashar Weekly Photo: Party Time!

Yashar had such a wonderful time at a little friend's birthday party on the weekend, which included an Easter egg hunt! I couldn't believe how quickly those little kiddies were at picking up all those eggs!

I just realised that I tend to pick the calm, peaceful photos of Yashar as my favourites (I wonder why!)...I mean I could have picked one like this where he looks like he's about to go have a slug of some red cordial, shove some cake all over his face and go rip some dolls heads off... ;)
ps. since there is no Easter holiday here I have claimed one for myself! So I will be posting 'Making Mondays' on Wednesday this week - yep, I'm really shaking it up around here ;)

What it means to be a good mother...

First of all, thank you so much for your emails and comments about what it means to be a good mama. They really meant so much and for me, they articulated many of the thoughts swimming around in my head. I loved how it was put in this comment:

"I think that deep down, a good mother is one who makes her children feel loved completely and utterly...is their biggest fan."

Also the importance of patience, encouragement and living in the moment were mentioned. I plan to remind myself daily of all these things. For most of us, I think, parenthood is an amazing learning experience, a time when life is shaken up and changed forever. Patience, support and finding joy and peace in small things every day is so important.Looking back, some of things I really appreciated (and still do appreciate) about my mother is that she was always there for my sisters and I, to encourage us, support us and love us, no matter what. I liked that she had a life outside of parenting and a strong independence (a good example for us I think), but no matter how busy she was, or what else she had happening in her life, we knew we could count on her and that we were her first priority. She gave us so much love and such a strong foundation for us to go ahead and live happy lives. So thank you Mum and well done to all the wonderful mothers out there.

The Pebble Vest for Spring

I decided Yashar really needed a little woollen vest for Spring. I found the free pattern for the Pebble Vest at The Thrifty Knitter (via Soule Mama). I really liked this pattern. It was so quick and easy to knit up. I'm a pretty slow knitter and this was complete in less than a week -I just worked on it most evenings while watching a movie or a couple of shows.

The pattern is sized for a baby, but I just used a thicker wool and larger needle size (5mm), added two extra stitches to the front and back (so CO 84 instead of 80) and it worked out perfectly. The finished vest measures 33cm lengthwise and 30cm across.

There is something about the vest that makes Yashar's little round tummy look so cute!

Yashar weekly photo: Still loving bath time!

I'm bringing back the 'Yashar weekly photo'. Yay! So...now that the weather is warming up Yashar is enjoying his long bath times again -(remember this?). Only now he gets to control the shower head (a very important job) Oh and he can splash waaay bigger now!

On being a mother...

Sometimes I find it hard to believe - not only did I have a baby, but now he's not a baby anymore, he's a little boy! This is him at 3 weeks old. So small, so fragile. At sixteen months, he has really started to become so much more independent, running around at the park, throwing himself face first down the slide, learning new words everyday, wanting to be able to put his shoes on himself...

Something that is often in the back of my mind is whether I am doing a good job as a mother...and what on earth does that mean? I think that people are often quick to judge mothers (and fathers), to jump to the conclusion that if a child is behaving in a certain way that then the mother must being doing something wrong, that if a child is crying then the mother must be doing something wrong and so on.

I also know that mothers can be so hard on themselves. I know I can be. I often feel guilty for wanting time to myself even though part of me knows that this is important. And then there are those times when Yashar starts screaming in the supermarket, or tries to hit me in the head with a toy or snatches pencils away from other kids at playgroup and, even though I know these things are 'normal' for this age, I wonder, am I doing something wrong, could I be doing something better?

So what is a 'good' mother?? Of course there are the basics - Yashar is fed, safe and generally healthy. But then more difficult questions emerge. Am I providing him with enough opportunities to develop and learn, and is he learning the right things, does he get enough attention from me and his Baba, am I strict enough, am I too strict, does he need more structure and organisation to his days, am I too 'go with the flow', is he having enough fun!? When is enough enough? And what about me?!

Everyone has their own way of dealing with it, there own style of parenting. But it's also so valuable to learn from other people's experiences. So, for you, where is the right balance? What do you think makes a good mother? What was it about your own mother that you are thankful for?

I would love to hear from you all.

Making a Kusudama

As soon as I saw this on Folding Trees I knew it was my next project! You can find the tutorial on how to make the kusudama here (part 1)and here (part 2).

I used this pretty wrapping paper that you might remember from my little paper hand project. It worked really well for the kusudama because the back of the paper is a darker blue colour which you can see in the centre of each flower.

The tutorial doesn't specify what type of glue to use but you need something fast drying because you need to hold the paper in place until the glue dries. I used superglue, which was great because it dried so quickly but not so great for breathing in fumes :( and then there was the time I stuck my fingers together, um, make that three times. Argh!

In the tutorial beads are used to tie on the bottom. Instead I used some wooden buttons - you can see how I tied them on -just threaded the string through two of the holes and tied a knot above and below each button.

This project took a little while but was perfect for doing on the way to and from my mother-in-law's (much safer than knitting in the car!) and while we were sitting around there on Sunday (because just sitting around doing nothing much tends to drive me slightly insane!).

Got a spare 3.3 million?

Last night we went out for a quick walk just as the light was fading. We headed to a little parcel of vacant land that we spied about a month ago. It's in a quiet little area close to where we live at the moment.

The light at this time is so beautiful.

We talked to a couple of locals and found out that the land belongs to the government but the land adjoining with four rundown (and badly built in the first place) houses on it is for sale...a cool 3.3 million Turkish Lira (very roughly 3 Million Australian dollars or 2 million US dollars).

Sure the places look pretty ramshackle (and apparently there is a condition on the land that you are only allowed to 'restore' them)

But the views!
At the moment we're just going to keep on dreaming!

In the spirit of 'free-ness'...

I thought I would continue the theme of free things with a link to this great project called 'Feed Your Soul: the free art project'. The project is being organised by IndieFixx and has some cute little prints ready to download and many more in the works.

My favourites so far are this one by Mandy Sutcliff (from Belle and Boo)



And this one by Jessica Rose


I had a look at the upcoming schedule and am also looking forward to the contribution by Ryan Berkley (Berkley Illustration).

Yay! Free art!