Eczema remedies - and a giveaway!!

Now some of you that know me may have heard me talk about the amazing Eczema creams that I have been trialling with Jack. Well I can now tell you a bit more about them. For those of you that know Jack IRL - will know that his legs were totally covered in Eczema, so bad that he used to scratch till he bleed most nights. I had tried everything in the way of creams - most offered some relief for a short time and then stopped working. I tried double rinsing all our washes, i tried not having baths everyday, tried oils etc in the bath. but nothing worked... til now.
BEFORE

After a week of using the cream his legs were pretty much healed up. There was a bit of scarring that took a bit longer to deal with. BUT his skin felt smooth - not bumpy, red, scaly and dry. We now only use this when he gets a bit itchy.
AFTER:

Check out the website
I have 3 tubs of this cream to give out to 3 lucky people.
For 1 entry - follow my blog and leave a message saying you are following
for another entry leave me a message telling me why you would like to try this cream and check out www.sodeenaturals.com and tell me what other product you would like to try

They are currently doing a great shipping deal of $15 to NZ no matter how much you buy - so gather all your friends together and try them out.

Last day at Kindy

Last weekend we celebrated the 5th birthday of the big sproglet. He had a few rough days leading up to it with nerves about going to school but once the birthday was here he was very excited. He woke up with a spring in his step for his last day at Kindy. We had a very special party at kindy with a playdoh cake that they make specially for their last day at Kindy and we made a rainbow cake to take to kindy to share with his friends.
I used this tutorial The teachers at kindy had put together a slide show of photos of his time at kindy which was lovely to see.Stay tuned for the pirate party post

Look what arrived

in my mail box.....
These ones are for a skirt for me

These ones are for the peek a boo bags for Jack's hot wheels stuff and his marble run stuff.
This one is for some girls dresses
And these ones -well i just liked them and it's so hard to find nice boy prints I thought they'd be nice for pockets on some pants etc.

First fruits of 2011

This afternoon Steve dug up the rest of the potato crop which was awesome a whole supermarket bag full. Last crop before on Christmas Eve was 2 shopping bags full and 14.8 kgs worth.
And On the sewing front I have sewn up a few wee bits for Jack lately. between his birthday in November and Christmas he has lots of new toys that need a storage spot in his room so I found this tutorial and made him one of these for his dinosaurs. I plan on making a few more yet.



He also requested a Dinosaur tee shirt so last night while he was sleeping I whipped up this one
What do you think?? He loves the rainbow dinosaur.

January's project list

I seem to be on a roll at the moment with my sewing - might have something to do with the fact that it's school holidays so i therefore don't have any work. Although I DO need to get into some planning very soon...
However I seem to be zooming through my project list this month so i thought I'd post it to keep myself accountable.

-Finish at least 10 Ruby dresses for markets
-Finish 10 singlets for markets
-Finish 3 peek a boo bags for Jack's toys
-sew some covers for Jack's big Euro cushions
-Finish 20 Rain ponchos for Jack's Kindy
-sew a Lego mat for Jack (although may not be till next month depending on fabric availabilty)

Notice that the operative word is Finish (might indicate that I "may" have a whole load of UFO's (Unfinished Objects- for those not up with sewing terms).
I must say I'm not doing to badly so far either
have finished
4 Ruby dresses another 2 just waiting for binding
5 singlets just waiting to be printed or appliqued
1 Peek a boo bag
also a dinosaur T shirt for Jack ("might" have been something to do with a bit of bribery and corruption to get the boy to go to bed without calling out)
Stay tuned for some pics when the camera battery is charged

Some highlights of the Christmas holidays so far

Friends, family and good food always make for an awesome Christmas time. We had a pretty relaxed Christmas Day. And by relaxed I mean really relaxed - well enough for me to fall asleep on the couch in the afternoon only to be shot in the eye by my darling son with his new water pistol. And his answer was "Daddy told me to". He's learning really quickly about shifting blame.
Christmas Day involved a very excited 4 year old running down the hallway checking the tree then running back to our room to very loudly exclaim that Santa had left lots of presents under the tree.
I asked him if perhaps he had seen the huge sack on the end of his bed as he jumped up out of it, and so off he ran again to find it..... the rest of the day consisted of opening pressies, church, eating, water fight, sleeping on the couch (well me anyway) and then eating some more.
It was a lovely sunny day amongst a week of not so flash weather that caused floods around the country.


We had Steve's parents here for Christmas day which was lovely. We had managed to have an early christmas with my Family in Dunedin due to a sad occasion which was the death of my grandfather. We traveled down to his funeral and had an early christmas with everyone the night before the funeral. It was lovely to have a Christmas with all my family together despite the circumstances. Here's some pics from the Dunedin Christmas....

The boys all dressed up ready to go to the funeral.

Well here's the rest of our holiday in photos
Puzzleworld

Kids fishing day out - Jack's first Salmon

Steam and crafts

mmmm crafts. With crafts in the title - I had to go... plus it was a long weekend so was a good excuse to do something. So last Monday we all piled in the car and drove down to pleasant point to go on the steam train. "me go on train" Jack said the whole way. Which kinda wore a bit thin after about half an hour. The train was the old Fairlie Flyer and it has been so well looked after. It steamed into the station with a big puff of Steam that billowed up and sat just under the ceiling of the station. We got on and Jack was soooo excited. The carriages were lovely inside with beautiful big leather seats. There was a bit of a queue getting on so we missed out on getting one of the private carriages so we sat in a public one - but managed to get our own wee private one on the way back.
Jack was very impressed when the train let off a big puff and a toot toot.
We got to the other end and looked around the crafts stalls and bought some devine chocolate brownie Fudge. mmmm Fudge. Jack played with the Alpacas and went on the jigger and the wee play train and we looked through another train. we also had a wee look at the railcar which we were going to try and go for a ride on - but always seemed to be full.
So Jack spent the rest of the day shouting "All aboard, toot toot".

Waitaki power station 75th Anniversary

Last weekend was Labour Weekend so we packed up the car and a picnic and headed to Kurow to go through the Waitaki power station. They had a free open day because it was their 75th anniversary. It was a really cool experience. It 's hard to believe the stuff that the construction workers that built it went through. Although as Steve points out it was during the great depression and they were probably the lucky ones, because at least they had jobs. Some of the conditions that they worked in were horrendous. You wouldn't even dream of building a dam with a pick and shovel these days.
Here are some pics from our day ( it was a lovely day although a tad windy)

One Toilet Trained 2 year old and a whole lotta nappies

Well on Sunday afternoon Jack decided it was time to use the potty - despite us trying every month since Christmas to get him on the potty. he had a couple of accidents on Sunday but by Monday he had it sussed, no accidents, went to Preschool on Tuesday - no accidents. I was amazed that it happened so quickly. People had told me that they will do it quicker when they are ready, which is apparently quite true. This morning he woke with a dry nappy even. I wasn't planning on thinking about training him at night at least until we can wean him off that huge drink of milk he has right before bed :-) Anyway I had to go out on Thursday and was a little nervous taking him out as he was happy to use the potty but not so keen on the toilet, so I whipped up a pee pad for the car seat on Wednesday night in anticipation.


And Jack went to Gran's while I went and bought an all important Wiggles seat for the toilet. With that sussed he is now using the toilet as long as he gets to sit on Murray lol.

So I guess I get I get a couple of weeks off washing nappies until the baby arrives.
And on that note I have been busy sewing nappies for the baby. I am trying fitteds and covers and pockets this time

3 fitteds

2 Covers

2 OSFA Pockets