25 Books of December

At the end of November I wrapped up 25 of Mindee's books. Once the 1st of December came around, Mindee opened her first ever present. Each night of December leading up to Christmas Mindee chooses a wrapped book from under the tree and opens it. We sit down as a family in front of the Christmas tree and read the book together. It is such a special time of day that we all look forward to :)
Some people do this and read a book about Christmas each night... I don't know about you but I don't have 25 Christmas books. To make it cheap and easy I just wrapped up books I already had but had not read before. I don't think Mindee is too fussy..... on this matter anyway lol.

Mindee gets to practice opening a present every night, so by the time Christmas is here I'm sure she will have no problem opening her 25 Christmas presents :)

I have decided to wrap all of Mindee's presents in the same wrapping paper... DISNEY :) This way she will not get confused between our presents and hers.. lol hopefully she will just stick to opening her presents and no one else's. 

I think this is a great tradition to keep up every year.. We get our reading in and Mindee gets to open a presents each night. This is something fun and special for our whole family :) You should try it! 

Anna Kate xx

Update on my bootiful baby

Mindee is now 8 months old. She will be 9 months on the 20th of December!! Where has the last 9 months gone??? I have learnt more and grown more and never been more fulfilled in my life then the last 9 months with my Minnie Moo. I remember saying to Daniel a little while ago.. "Why did we wait 2 years to have Mindee, Why didn't we have her when we first got married" hahahahaha. I could have spent the last 2 years with her lol...... But I did love the 2 years I had with my Hubby being 'just us'. I guess it was just perfect timing to have our perfect princess :)

Well long gone are the days of Mindee just laying still on the floor. I am lucky if Mindee sits still for 2 seconds. She is such an active baby who always has to be playing or eating or moving. She literally NEVER STOPS. I have been told that once they start to move they never go back... So I am bracing myself for one active child that I have to chase around everywhere hah!

She is a super duper crawler now and pulls herself up on just about anything including my legs. Here are a few videos of Mindee on the move....

If her knees get too sore from crawling, she has discovered she can crawl on her hand and feet. What a clever chickie :)

We love our days just playing together and having fun, but the best part of Mindee's is when Daddy comes home from work. I have never seen her more excited then when she see's Daniel walk through the front door. Right from the beginning Mindee has been Daddy's little girl. Daniel would read her a book every night when she was in the womb and without fail, every time she heard Daniel's voice she would kick and move like crazy in my belly. Ever since then Mindee has been in love with her Daddy, it is the most beautiful thing.

The talking has begun, with the first word being 'Dada' of course lol. But closely followed by 'Baba' and then seconds later 'Mama'.

I love watching my baby girl grow and develop each day. I am so blessed to have such a good and healthy baby!! I could talk forever about Mindee, but I think that is enough for now :)
Let me leave you with some more recent photos of Mindee.. Sorry if I go overboard..

Thank you to Yazzi from Love Yaz Photography for all of the above photos!! She is such a good photographer.. If you ever need a photo shoot she is the best. 

Here are some of my photos.. 

Well that completes my over load on all things Mindee :) Soon she will be standing and then walking... YAY! Stay tuned for her latest development and adventures :)
Anna Kate xx

My 22nd Birthday

It was my birthday yesterday, the 11th December. I turned 22!! I had my very first birthday with my baby! She made my day that much more special and she didn't even do anything lol.... I just LOOOOVVEEE her.

This is the card I got from my Husband haha! And in the bottom right corner is a picture Mindee drew for me with Daddy's help. I love it!

I can't go without mentioning my amazing Husband.. I promised I would blog about him, so here it is.
The last 4 birthdays with Daniel in my life have been the best of my 22 birthdays. He makes my birthday so special and spoils me rotten like every Husband should!
He makes my day better then I would have planned for myself. For previous birthdays he has taken me kayaking on the Brisbane river, Zorbing (Rolling down a hill in a blow up ball filled with water, SO MUCH FUN!), buffet breakfasts at the Sheraton, overnight stays at the Marriott and Jupiter's Casino, in room professional massages and these are just a few of the things I can remember. And then there are the presents... He goes above and beyond every year. He has always been quite the romantic and knows how to choose the best gifts!
This year he wrapped up a box of fruit loops as my first present... This is my favourite cereal, I can't go a birthday without fruit loops for breakfast haha!

Mindee wants the fruit loops too :) .. But obviously isn't allowed them until she is much older lol

Then I was given my next present, and let me just add that Daniel hates wrapped presents.. He would much rather a present given to him that isn't wrapped.. Weird I know! But he wrapped my presents, it means a lot that he took the time to wrap them for me because he knows I loved opening presents! :)

Before I opened it :)

AFTER!!!

He got me an iPad!! YAY! I knew before my birthday that Daniel had asked some family and friends to put some money towards a present for me. When I opened the iPad I assumed this was the presents that people had put money in to get me... But I was wrong!! Daniel gave me another presents and said this is the one from family and friends...

Before.....

AFTER!!! 

OMG! I got a brand new MacBook Air!!! And this is what I am using to blog from right now :) It was just what I needed. My old Macbook was starting to die on me.. being 5 years old it did me well but I was ready for an upgrade :) I was definitely spoilt this birthday... iPad and Macbook. I am all Hi-Tech now with everything synced between my iPhone, Ipad and MacBook haha. 

Thank you to my Dad, my beautiful sister Rachel and her boyfriend Daniel, my wonderful friends Luke and Bekki and my entire 'In-law' family who gave money to get me my new MacBook, I LOVE IT! :)

On top of all of this my Mum and Step Dad always spoil me rotten too! I always look forward to see what I get from them for my birthday.. and this year they got me a sewing machine!!

Thank you so much to my Mum and Bruce! I absolutely love this present. 

I have already tested my sewing skills and made 2 skirts. Watch this space for more details on my first sewing projects :)

I had a wonderful 22nd birthday, spending the afternoon at South Bank and going out for dinner with my yummy little family :)

Mindee is so active now! She had a blast on the playground at South Bank. Crawling around everywhere and pulling herself up on everything.. She is absolutely adorable. 

So thank you so much to my incredibly scrumptious Husband who gave me the best birthday yet again. I love you more then words can describe. 

Anna Kate xx

Christmas Activities Advent Calendar

This is my activities advent calendar for 2012. I have a different activity for each day of December right up until Christmas Day.

The activities include

- Wrapping Mindee's books for reading each night

- Make a Christmas scent on the stove

- Wrap presents

- Christmas crafts

- Paint Christmas nails

- Take Mindee's Christmas photo's

- Christmas carols night

- Go looking at Christmas lights

- Christmas baking

- Make Gingerbread house

- Make Limoncello

- Go to Christmas concert at church

- Candle lit dinner

- Watch Christmas movies

- Late night Christmas shopping

- Opening a present Christmas Eve

- CHRISTMAS

You could be creative and put any activity in it that you want to achieve during the month of December. I have done a lot more this Christmas already then any other Christmas. It is a fun way to be productive during the busy month of December. 

If you want to make this calendar for yourself all you will need is

- 2 Sheets of cardboard 

- Wrapping Paper (I used the same paper that I wrapped my presents in)

- Decorating string

- Pen

- Glue

Cut the wrapping paper into rectangles and glue them on both sides and the bottom, leave the top unglued so it creates a pocket.

Glue the 25 pockets onto a cardboard sheet positioned how you like.

Cut up the other sheet of cardboard to create inserts that fit into the pockets.

Write the activities and numbers on the inserts and slide them into the pockets.

Decorate.

Hopefully it helps you get productive and organised for Christmas too :)

Anna Kate xx

Christmas Nails

Here is my attempt to paint Christmas nails :) I decided I wanted to go with red and white and this is how they turned out.

I did the base coat in red and let it dry. 

Then dipped a toothpick in white and spread it on top in a diagonal strippey motion.

Its sort of zebra / candy cane / smudged nail polish haha

Anna Kate xx

Mindee's first Christmas

Mindee will be 9 months old on the 20th of December. Just old enough to open her presents on Christmas Morning. YAY!
Christmas is my favourite time of year and I get to introduce the whole experience to my baby girl!

Here are just a few pictures of Mindee's first Christmas this far...

Putting up the Christmas Tree with Daddy. Mindee was a bit unsure about the tree and hesitant to touch  it. (At least I won't have to worry about her pulling everything off the tree) 

Mindee loved the Myer window display in Brisbane City. She got so excited to see the little figures moving around. 

Her first ride on Santa's train... She loved it.

Anna Kate xx

Christmas Traditions

Since my first christmas as a married women I convinced Daniel to do 25 presents each for Christmas! 1 for every day of December until Christmas...except we open them all on Christmas Day! I love opening lots of presents (25 to be exact) and I also love watching Daniel open his 25 presents. Don't think we spend thousands of dollars on Christmas presents.. because some of the presents are small things like undies, socks, and chocolates/lollies. Although we do get a bit carried away and spend more then we probably should... haha.. Oh well, you only get to do it once a year!

This year I am super excited because Mindee gets to open her 25 presents too! I think it is a great tradition for our family to have. I can't wait until I have a tribe of 10 kids  kids opening their 25 presents on Christmas Morning.

It was soo easy to find Mindees 25 presents.. there is soo much out there that you can buy for little girls.  Keep and eye out for a later post on a list of presents that I got Daniel and Mindee.

Another tradition that we do as a family is open 1 presents on Christmas Eve. We just can't wait until the morning and we have 25 presents.. so thought we could spare 1 for Christmas Eve. It also gets us even more excited for Christmas Morning.

Christmas Morning with Daniel my sister Sheree. Look at the pile of rubbish and wrapping paper on the couch!

Anna Kate xx

CAKES CAKES CAKES

I love to bake.. It is one of my favourite things to do... I more so like to decorate cakes and make them look pretty then actually cook them lol. So don't be surprised when I tell you I sometimes use packet mix and then add the finished touches myself :/
Anyway.. No one knows unless you tell them haha.

Here is a cake I made for Daniel, my Husband for his birthday.
He loves his music and playing guitar so I thought it was an appropriate cake for him :)

What you need to make this guitar cake -

Cardboard
Scissors
Pencil
Guitar shape that you want to use
2 rectangle sponge cakes
Butter icing
Food colouring
Licorice strips
Smarties
Raspberry jelly lollies

I used one of Daniel's guitars and traced around the outside to get the shape I wanted, then I cut it out of the cardboard. (I made the guitar smaller then a life size one)
Then arrange the cardboard cut outs so they fit on top of the sponge cakes and start cutting the cake around the edge of the shapes.
Use the butter icing to stick the sponge cake shapes together to look like a guitar.
Then cover the rest of the cake with your desired coloured icing.
To make it look more realistic I used white icing to mark the frets on the neck of the guitar, added smarties, raspberry jellies and licorice. (All eatable!! YUM YUM!)

Try it! It tasted good and looked great. My Husband was impressed with his guitar cake.


This next cake was a little more tricky to make. I made this one for my sister in laws 12th birthday. She loves converse shoes, so I made her a converse shoe cake haha!

I had to carve the cake into the shape that I wanted. I did two different shapes, the front and back of the shoe. To make it stand up properly I had to use tooth picks for stability lol. Although it wasn't the most professional way of doing it, I think it still turned out alright. :)

What you will need to make this cake -

Sponge cake
Fondant
Food colouring

Then it just takes patients and perseverance to mould the cake and fondant into the shapes that you want. :)

Anna Kate xx

We're Back

Hello to my blogging world! (You!) :)

We have gotten back from our road trip/holiday to Maitland and I am finally back into the blogging world! Yay! I have only been blogging for a very short time... BUT... I was really missing reading everyones blogs and posting my own. I couldn't wait to get back into the swings of things.. soo here I am :)

Mindee was such a good 'road tripping' baby haha. But seriously.... She did so well to be stuck in her car seat for 10 hours.
We left at 9:30am and drove until Mindee was ready for her next feed at 12pm. We stopped and all had lunch for 30 minutes and then kept going. At 4pm we stopped for Mindee to feed again, only for 15 minutes this time. Then I fed Min her solids at 5:30pm while we were driving (This was a bit of a mission)... And by 7:30pm we had arrived in Maitland, NSW!!! Yipee! :) Mindee was fed again and put straight into bed.
In our 10 hour drive, we only stopped twice and just drove the rest of the time.. Mindee did soo well! I was a bit worried of how it could have turned out having a 6 month old baby stuck in the car for that long haha.. But my little princess surprises me everyday with how good she is. :)

She just played happily in her car seat :)

We drove down to Sydney one of the days and did a little shopping. I love Sydney! 

And when it was time to sleep.... She would sleep! Yay!

Having fun in Maitland. 

            Anna Kate xx