Our Baby Girl...

Lucy.. this photo was taken when she was a few minutes old. her first cuddle with her dad.

Lucy now...

Hi Everyone well its been a very busy month for me i gave birth to my beautiful daughter Lucy Rose on the 19th March she was born at 35 weeks. We live in a small rural town so we had a mad dash by ambulance to the closest hospital it was a bumpy fast ride and a very quick birth, Lucy was born healthy and a good weight and after 5 days we were allowed to go home. She has put on a great amount of weight now and is thriving, it's exhausting being a mum again at the age of 47 but i am loving every minute.

Bye for now...

Making Girly Soap

Hi everyone, 

I'm getting close to having my baby just 5 weeks left to go i have already had a false start which ended up with me spending a few days in hospital i was given pills to strengthen baby's lungs and pills to stop my labour and after 4 days everything stopped and i was able to go home and rest up.

My family has been quite strict with me taking over all the housework, cooking all meals and demanding that i rest and put my feet up which is something i hate doing as i can never manage to sit still for more than a few minutes at a time, i guess i am just an active relaxer.

But sitting down doing nothing and being completely and utterly bored has given me a lot of time to think, knit, sew, read and all the other things that i never stop to do and wont have the time to do once the baby gets here, i have also been thinking a lot more about soap making since i made my baby soap.

So with nothing but time on my hands and bored out of my mind i decided to make some soap with a friend, he always loves making soap with me and prefers to make natural soaps to the pretty and girly soaps i enjoy making. I decided we were going to do something different and make and pipe bars of girly soap and this is the result of our soap making adventure.

Having not made pretty and girly soaps for a long time means that i don't have the soap making supplies i used to,but we were pretty resourceful and found a single icing nozzle, of course we didn't have any piping bags so had to improvise and use sandwich bags instead, it was a little messy and not that easy to pipe with but i loved the end result, it turns out that my friend is a natural when it comes to what he calls the girly stuff...i only had to help the smallest bit, the soap he piped is so beautifully done and looks so elegant he did so well considering all he used was sandwich bags.

I have very few soaps colours as i gave most of my things when i gave up soap making but the few colours we were able to find looked amazing.

I only had a handful of fragrances but he chose a lovely light one that matched his choice of colours for these bars.

We cut the bars today as i was dying to see the end result as that is my favourite part of making soap, he wasn't that enthusiastic as he thought the soaps wouldn't look good but they look fantastic..i will try and get some photos taken of these as soon as i can so you can see the end result of all his hard work. 

Now he wants to try is hand at making more of these so called girly bars which i think is a brilliant idea.... He has just got to come up with a name for his new bars....Bye for now

Baby Soap & Laundry Soap

Laundry Soap

Baby Soap

Hi, I hope you all had a lovely break over New Year...

In the last few months i have had a complete life change.

A few months ago i moved again to a new town to start over once more and now at the age of 47 i am expecting my 4th child, this baby has come as a huge surprise to me and my adult children, my oldest just turned 28 and got married a few weeks ago and my youngest is 22 so there is a large gap in between.

It's odd how people react to my pregnancy, I have had to endure negative remarks from health care professionals and complete strangers who seem to feel the need to tell me that i am to old to have a baby, others just want to stare at my tummy, but i refuse to let it get me down, i am nearing 31 weeks now and my baby is healthy and growing well and that is all i care about.

I have slowly been putting together the things i need for baby, i have been very lucky as my mother knits the most beautiful baby clothes in wool that she hand dyes herself the colours are divine, so i now have a collection of the nicest baby jackets, singlets, socks a beautiful blanket and other items.

I hardly ever buy anything new as i am big on upcycling and reusing when possible so i brought a lovely second hand baby cot and several other used baby items secondhand from thrift shops.

I also love natural handmade products this way you know exactly what is going onto your skin and hair, in our house nearly all our skin care and cleaning products we make ourselves, this includes makeup to shampoo and household cleaners i also wanted my baby to be using mild and gentle handmade items on her skin so i made a batch of baby soap which is still curing, this soap is based on a recipe i have used time and time again as it is a recipe that is beautifully mild and very gentle on the most sensitive of skins, i chose the following ingredients for this recipe

Cocoa Butter

Shea Butter

Coconut Oil

Olive Oil

Rice Bran Oil

This soap will be very mild and gentle for my baby as it  has a 5 % superfat and it will have a long cure time to so it will be soft, soothing and almost creamy on my baby's delicate skin, it has no added fragrance just a pure and delicious natural soap smell.

I also made a laundry soap that i will be grating up with a little added washing soda to turn into a laundry powder to use to wash her clothes in, i will also be keeping a few bars whole and rubbing directly into stained clothes as needed i would add a little vinegar as a rinse.

I chose very basic ingredients for this soap and didn't superfat at all, plus it will also have a long cure time i like this recipe because it is unscented and cleans clothes beautifully the ingredients i used are...

Coconut Oil

Rice Bran Oil

Olive Oil

I have also made some baby powder which is also great for sensitive skin it contains only 2 ingredients bentonite clay and arrowroot powder and works really well.

I made a batch of soothing balm too, this stuff is used in our house for everything from sunburn to cracked lips it contains beeswax, infused oils and organic butters its divine and i will be using it on my baby as a bum balm.  

I think i have the skin care and cleaning products covered for now so later in the week i want to do a little sewing as i want to sew a nappy bag and some burp clothes and re vamp some blankets into cot blankets.

Bye for now.