An Easy Christmas Craft......{& a free DIY printable}

I've always been one to fully absorb myself into the magical atmosphere that only Christmas can bring each year :) As a child, our Christmas focus was never on materialistic items or money value....it was always about being with family & friends, great food, music, traditions, holidays, summer, savouring, appreciating & celebrating! Now, as an adult...and a Mother, I want to saturate Ella with a true love for Christmas too. Of course, {like all kids....or humans for that fact} she will want this toy & want that piece of clothing etc....and as Parents who like to give & enrich &.....basically spoil....she'll get lots of lovely goodies. BUT.....I want her memories of Christmas to be not just of 1 day of presents.....but a whole month of love, celebrating, involvements & celebration. In December, we will bake & craft & decorate & view lights & admire window displays & sing along at Candlelight Carols Concerts & write to Santa & show thanks & give all that we can...we will surround ourselves with loyal friends, loving family members & positive people in our lives......oh yeah, we will do it all baby!!

Last night I designed 2 simple Christmas bookmark templates for Ella to decorate to give as presents......and thought I'd add them here to my FREE DIY Printables so you can use them for free too!

Simply click here to download them for free. Then print and decorate {we used water paint & glitter}! I then mounted Ella's onto red paper, laminated & added some red ribbon up top through a punched hole ;)

A little bit of {easy} homemade, handmade goodness to do with your littlies this year :)

And the finished product....by the divine Miss Ella:

EASY :) We had fun doing them & I hope you do too!

It's the 1st of December tomorrow.......YAY!!!

Week~A~Boo.......{A peek into our weekEND}

Oh my.....here we are again.....it's Sunday night {10pm} and another week has come to an end & another week is about to begin!! You are probably tired of reading this sentence from me....but where does the time go? How can it possibly be SUNDAY again????

With that out the way :) HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND?

Ours was filled with the usual mixture of fun & chores, the have-to's with the need-to's working perfectly alongside the want-to's & fun-to's! With shopping trips, Doctor trips {asthma has very unwelcomly set up camp in my little Miss's chest again....argh!...thank goodness for today's medicines.....liquid steroids work WONDERS!}, cleaning & baking! Present buying, present wrapping, present giving & wine! Late nights, early mornings, long days & lots of coffee! Sunshine, rain, clouds & warmth! Movie afternoon complete with Tinkerbell's new story & homemade cookies! Lunch with family, many laughs & Grandparent love!......this was a quick-ish rundown of OUR weekEND!! And here's some snaps of some of those captured moments:

{Morning baths.....just because!}

{making fairy wishes in the garden}

{relaxing in the garden.....because it's SPRING}

{Mummy & Ella shadow shots on the beach on a lazy Friday afternoon ~ playing along with Shadow Shots here}

{the view from my parents deck as we enjoyed a Sunday lunch for my Dad's birthday!}

{giving GRAMPY love on his birthday!}

{cuddles with Grandma......just for LOVE}

{and celebrating}

This was a PEEK into my weekEND! And I'd love to have a peek into yours too!! Just blog about it or even just put photos on Facebook from your weekEND & link it back to here!! Add your name to the linky below so other people can have a peek into your weekEND too! Play along...share the love! Have FUN!!! I can't wait to see what you all got up to!

Happy Monday to you all :)

{Week-a-Boo}.....a peek into your weekEND!

~ Father's Day Weekend ~

Hi Lovelies! How was everyone's weekend?

Here in QLD, it was overcast & rainy most of the weekend...which was actually quite nice because it was the perfect excuse to slow down & chill out & ENJOY the days!And to be honest I have felt like crapola all weekend! YES....YET ANOTHER cold/flu has made an unwelcome stay in my sinus & chest....but I refused to let it ruin my weekend and got up to these lovely shenanigans:

Friday night kicked my weekend off with a bang! A night in the city with my Bestie! Dinner @ South Bank, then off to Mamma Mia @ QPAC & finished with Ice Cream @ Cold Rock!! Ahhhh BLISS!!!

Saturday consisted of wearing pyjamas until midday, a visit from my Dad & a shopping trip for groceries & Hubby's Father's Day present :)

Sunday.....was filled with:

Ella drawing portraits of some of her favourite people :)

Ella & her Nanny!

Catching up with beautiful family & having blissful baby cuddles with little Miss Lily {our newest family member.....my niece}

Some Father's Day LOVE!!!

And plenty of giggles & silliness!!

So overall....a lovely balance of work & play, which is such a nice feeling, when looking back on the past 2 days!

What did you get up to on the weekend? I'd love to have a PEEK!

Enter your blog post on the linky below & link your post back to me! ENJOY! And have a great week!

It's here.....another weekend....

What do you have planned this weekend?

We're heading to the hospital tomorrow to meet our gorgeous new little niece Lily!

Yay....baby cuddles :)

ENJOY your weekend!!

It's the WEEKEND.....

We've just come home from a lovely dinner out & I just wanted to pop on to wish you all a very LOVELY weekend!!

ENJOY!!!!!!

{background flower image from here}