Pinterest Love + Handy Tips...

I know I'm supposed to be working but Pinterest always sucks me in during a break and and I can easily lose half an hour - or more -  browsing the clever/beautiful/funny/creative/useful and just plain pretty things on there,  re-pinning and promising myself I'll come back to it later.  It definitely helped me plan and execute the little one's birthday party, and has given me tons of ideas to implement for Christmas - if I get around to it this year!!

The other thing I'm loving on there are the helpful tips peeps are pinning, you know, like how to clean your baking trays & get stains out of carpets naturally... I'm particularly loving this one and have been wanting to try it for some time now, but haven't had any need for spring onions in my cooking. Did you know you could re-grow your spring onions by placing the root ends in a glass of water?

image from here

From Homemade Serenity:

The next time you have green onions, don't throw away the white ends. Simply submerge them in a glass of water and place them in a sunny window. Your onions will begin to grow almost immediately and can be harvested almost indefinitely. We just use kitchen scissors to cut what we need for meals. I periodically empty out the water, rinse the roots off and give them fresh water.

Party Time!

Hello poor neglected blog!  It has certainly been awhile, but as it happens, when things start getting out of control busy, blogging is always the first wheel to fall off...

We're now on the homeward stretch towards the end of the year and it can't come soon enough as far as the sewing is concerned.  I usually love this time of year, but must admit to feeling quite burnt out with all the sewing at IndigoElephant HQ.  Keeping three shops stocked, considering how labour intensive my products are to make, is really taking a toll, and I'm just plain tired.  Add to that two little boys who are full of beans and I'm one exhausted mumma!!

Last week I took a couple of 'days off' from sewing to organise what was supposed to be a small party for our baby's third birthday.  It was a small party in terms of invited guests, but all the inspiration out in web-land gave me far too many options and ideas for his chosen theme of Angry Birds.  

The cake.

The lolly bags.

The games...

The cake was a labour of love and the main thing is that the birthday boy loved it!  The lolly bags were super easy to make using a template I found online. And for games we played some Pin The Beak On The Bird and a lifesize Angry Birds game using boxes to make the towers for the pigs and some cheap bouncy balls with the same templates as the lolly bags glued on for faces.  There was no slingshot involved, they just threw the balls at the pigs and tried to knock as much down as possible, it worked surprisingly well and kept the kids occupied for quite some time!  The best part was at the end of the day, when Mr IE asked birthday boy what his favourite part of the day was, and he replied with "playing the games at my party"!