Winner of the $5 Dress

Hope you all had a great weekend...we spent the morning at the beach which was just stunning. A good reminder of why we decided to move here :)

Congratulations to Kelly Evans who is the winner of the $5 dress! Her answer definitely struck a chord with me at the moment:

"For Xmas I would like a few extra hours in the day... Extra hours to do the household chores, extra hours to play and entertain my girls, extra time to spend with hubby when the cherubs go to bed, ..an extra half hour in bed.... Now that would be nice !"

Thanks to everyone that entered, I really appreciate it.

Kelly, I'll be in touch.

Want a $5 dress?

I'm getting into the Christmas spirit and giving one lucky person a Millamaloo dress for $5 - which includes regular postage within Australia. It will be a peasant dress (same style as the one in the picture above) and the winner can choose the size from 6months - 10 years. I'll pick the fabric but I promise it will be lovely. You will be able to choose whether it's a Christmas fabric or not.

Want to be in with a chance to win it?

All you have to do is :

1. share a picture from the Millamaloo Christmas Market Night album on Facebook
2. email/message me with what you want for Christmas

The writer of the most creative email (as judged by ME) will get the $5 dress.

You'll need to share/email by 9pm Friday 23rd November 2012 to be in with a chance.

Don't forget my Christmas Market Night is on:

Friday 23 November
from 7pm
on Facebook
www.facebook.com/millamaloo
All you have to do is be the first to type SOLD in the comments box after I announce Start Shopping on the page wall. Feel free to ask me any questions you might have about how it will run etc.

Note : I will choose the winner and no correspondence will be entered into. So please be nice :)
Oh, and I will be able to tell if you've shared the picture too, so no sneakiness ;)
The above picture is one from the Christmas Market Night NOT the dress you will get if you're the winner.

Two days ago I found out that one of my childhood friends has breast cancer. She’s 34 and has two children under the age of three. No doubt the shock of the diagnosis was far more serious for her but I felt like I’d been slapped in the face. Hard. Really hard.

Here I was moaning and feeling sorry for myself because we’ve just moved we’re living in temporary accommodation (which just so happens to be a holiday unit) and I’m anxious about all the new beginnings involved with the move. Then I found out about my friend. As often happens when we hear of dreadful things happening to people we love, our own challenges seem quite pathetic.

How on earth do you process the fact that a friend you had sleep overs with, talked about boys with, partied with and graduated with, is now facing the greatest fight of her life. How can I help her when I live 2000km away? What do I say? I just don’t know. I didn’t want to call her when I found out because I knew it would be a difficult conversation. I called. And fought back tears the whole conversation. Although we were close in school, our paths diverged after we graduated and it’s been a ‘long distance friendship’ ever since. But this friend has always and will always hold a special place in my heart – even if I forget to tell her and she has no idea how much she means to me.

We (or maybe it’s just me) get so caught up in our own lives and the things that directly impact us, that we’re just oblivious to what’s happening in other people’s lives. And it’s not until something so serious, so dreadful and frankly, so frightening, happens to a loved one that we stop and take stock of our own lives. And stop complaining. And stop procrastinating. And start living. Living for TODAY.

 

So while I try to process the idea of my friend going through chemotherapy, losing her breasts and her hair and possibly not getting to see her children grow up, I’m making it my priority to enjoy, or at least stop complaining about, what’s happening in my life. Because seriously, it’s just not that bad is it? If you read this, hopefully it will make you stop and think about all the good you have, like it did for me.

My friend is strong. And I’m sure if anyone can make it through this it will be her. I really hope so.

Introducing.....Millamaloo Littlies!

I know in a previous post I have complained about the difficulty of making dolls but after MANY hours of practise I have almost mastered it (Milla only has about 3 'rejects' now!) and I am so in LOVE with making them. I believe each one has a big personality for such a little doll (they're only about 30cm from head to tippy-toe). And it's so much fun working out what they'll wear and of course...their names!

I know I jump around from one idea to the next a bit, and it's probably a little confusing for everybody, but I do hope that Millamaloo Littlies are here to stay as I have some awesome ideas - ideas that I actually haven't seen anywhere else, so hopefully you haven't either.

We're moving house in 3 weeks but only to temporary accommodation (apparently I'm supposed to pretend we're on holidays for 2-3 months - how the heck can I have a holiday without my sewing machine????). But hopefully once we're settled and I get my dream house that has a sewing room (well, I did say 'dream'), I'll be able to see all my ideas come to life. My little ideas journal is starting to get very full!

So here's some pics of my Littlies so far. They are all adapted from a Dolls and Daydream pattern (Sarah's patterns are brilliant) but I hope you can see all their individual personalities like I can :)

Seth is part of the Collaborate for a Cause charity auction but all the other dolls will be available in a market night as soon as I can make a few more to go with them. I don't want them to be scared and lonely before they go off to their new homes :)

I left my laptop in a shopping trolley

Do you ever have those days that you just wish you could start all over again? Kind of like that awful movie Groundhog Day where if the day hasn’t turned out the way you wanted it to (or in my opinion SHOULD have turned out), you could just hit ‘restart’. Today was most definitely one of those days.

 It started at 1am when some stupid fool in our street decided to turn in our (extremely short) driveway then reversed into the telephone pole on the other side of the street. I leaped out of bed like an Olympic highjumper fearful that said fool had hit our garage door (trust me this is a MASSIVE issue, the last time one of our neighbours did it, we had to use a makeshift security system on the door (a very high tech block of wood)  for 2 months until it got fixed). After performing a deft Mrs Mangle, I took note of the license plate just in case and dragged myself back to bed. (On a side note, who on earth gets picked up by their friends at 1am? He’s in his late teens but still!)

I then spent the next hour trying to organise the next day in my head. Things to fit in – gym, drop kids at daycare, sort out the Weight Watchers stuff that I joined that night so I actually knew what I was allowed to eat for the day (yep, that’s a whole other story), figure out when/how to pick up my laptop from work which I’d left there the day before, finish 5 skirts that I’m sewing, organise someone to collaborate with for the Collaborate for a Cause auction, fit in a day’s work – oh and did I mention that my husband wants to bid at an auction for a house on Saturday and we have NOTHING organised? Crazy times.

Needless to say there wasn’t much sleep happening so I crawled out of bed in the dark at 5.15am and took myself off to the gym. Excellent. Yay for me. Got home, chaos. I love my husband but I think he kind of freaks out at the thought of having to get two kids ready in the morning by himself (the poor love).

Eventually got the kids off to daycare only to realise when I opened their backpacks that I’d forgotten to pack some of their lunch, sigh. Went into work to pick up the hero of my story, my laptop and then went to Coles to get some Weetbix because apparently I’d been derelict in my shopping duties and there were none left (as I was rudely informed upon my return from the gym).

 

On my way home and I get a call from one of the girls at work to say that some lady had just called her to say that she’d found a laptop in a shopping trolley that may or may not belong to someone named ‘Nicola’. She’d found me through an email I’d printed and put in the laptop case that had my colleague’s details on it. I might just have to fess up here that at this point I still had not realised that I’d lost the darned thing. So fortunately I saved myself the panic attack that would normally have occurred. So another trip in the car (with the Weight Watchers ice-creams melting in the back) to pick up the laptop from Coles. And I was set. Oh no hang on, I still had to go back to daycare to take the lunches in that I’d forgotten earlier. By 11.30am I’d finally had some breakfast and a shower and was sitting down to work. Not exactly the epitome of efficiency.

All day I just kept thinking “How freakin’ stupid can one person be, leaving a laptop in a shopping trolley – AND NOT EVEN NOTICE THAT IT WAS MISSING?” I even pushed the trolley into the trolley bay and didn’t notice the glaringly obvious black bag against the tarnished and chewing gum covered silver of the trolley. Groan.

Needless to say this long weekend will be long on work and not on weekend for me as I attempt to catch up. Double groan. But at least there's heaps of Weetbix!

Blimmin’ laptop in a shopping trolley. Stop. Rewind please.

Creation of a Doll (or The Monkey on my Back for the Past 3 Months)

Okay so a few months back I discovered the handmade stuffed doll phenomenon. I fell in love with them IMMEDIATELY and IMMEDIATELY bought two dolls from lovely Facebook businesses (Butterflybelle Boutique and Handmade & Heartfelt). Santa actually delivered these dolls to my daughter for Christmas and they've been named Daisy and Sam. I'd post pictures of them but they've seen too much love since Christmas so just wouldn't do their creators justice.

Anyhoo, in my usual obsessive fashion (according to hubby anyway), I immediately embarked on making my own stuffed doll. How hard could it be? Really? Well apparently pretty darned hard. I found the pattern I wanted (Bit of Whimsy Dolls) and set about making a doll for my daughter and her little best friend.

They actually turned out okay, only a few little mistakes. But then I got adventurous and went into production mode - and started making four dolls at one time. Bear in mind I started this just after Christmas and it is now pushing towards the end of February - and I have FINALLY finished all four of them. Here they are:

They don't look so bad now that they're all dressed and accessorised but cripes it was a long and tedious road to get there (please just ignore the crooked arms on the last one!). I will be making more of these dolls (after the emotional scars from these ones heal) - I have to because I've bought so many supplies when I was super excited about making them! Think I might try the Dolls & Daydreams pattern next though. She gives lots more tips and hints on how to actually put the darned things together.

The biggest lesson I've learned from making these dolls? That the ones you buy from other people are worth EVERY cent you pay!!

Note : Here are my favourite handmade doll sites that I've found so far : Cook You Some Noodles, My Tiny Wardrobe, Butterflybelle Boutique and Sisters in Life Dolls.

Have you made any dolls? What are your favourite makers or patterns?