Auction for the Australian flood victims

I'd really like to do something to help the tens of thousands of people who have been affected by the flooding in Australia. It's incredible the amount of devastation these floods have caused and tragic that so many people have lost their homes, possessions, pets and so much more. Worse still is the loss of at least 15 lives in this disaster.

It's not much in the scheme of things but every little bit helps, so I am going to be auctioning off one of my knitted dresses, a gorgeous Kaia Babydoll designed by Rachel Evans, with all proceeds going to the Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal.



A gorgeous wee 6 month size babydoll dress knitted in a lovely soft 100% cotton yarn
from Bendigo Woollen Mills in Australia.



How this auction works:
 1. Bidding will start at $20 (New Zealand).

2. You can place a bid by leaving a comment on this blog post with your bid amount and email address. Please make sure that your bid is higher than the previous bidder.

3. Your bid must be in whole dollar increments.

4. This auction is open to everyone, however $10NZ will be charged for International addresses. Postage is FREE for New Zealand residents.

5. The auction begins NOW and will END at midnight on Monday 24th January 2011.

6. At the close of the auction, I will contact the winner (please make sure your bid comment includes your email address). The winner will pay the winning amount directly into the Premier's Flood Relief Appeal and send me proof of payment via email. Once proof of payment has been received, I will post the Kaia Babydoll dress to you.

7. Thank you for participating and happy bidding!

Recent creative endeavours

I've spent the last few weeks busy making stuff - for Christmas and swaps and just for fun. Here are a few of my endeavours:

Christmas decorations:

6 sets of bells for a swap, 3 red and 3 white

 

I did quite a few stars, but won't bore you with all of them!

A dolly blanket for Tess for Christmas

A cushion for Izzy for Christmas

 The cushion on the left is my latest crochet venture - purely for my own fun!

An order done just before Christmas

 for the same order as above

A dress for Izzy

I think that's it for the last month - much more to come for this year ...

Endings and new beginnings

It's been a while since I last blogged and this may be a bit photo heavy (which is going to take me forever as I'm on dial up speed at the moment, sigh!), so bear with me.

2010 was a year of milestones as it was the year my last baby stopped being a baby, sob, gulp, and my biggest baby turned into a teen, sob, gulp.

Tessa graduated from a cot to a bed,



farewelled daytime nappies (I've just packaged up the last of my cloth nappies to rehome) and started kindy.

 Fin finished his last year of intermediate school and turned 13 - yikes! Fin played soccer last year and had a great year, being the best goalie in his team, and played consistently well, despite some pretty challenging conditions at times!

 Of course, many other things happened in 2010 too - Oliver played for the top soccer team in the year above his age grade and they did really well. Here's him at a tournament in Taupo where his team won the Shield final:

He also played Futsal (a type of indoor soccer) and his team won the championship for the year, and he played indoor soccer and his team came 3rd in the end of season finals. Can you recognise a theme in his activities?!

And Izzy had a great year, both at school and doing the many extracurricular activities she loves, namely netball, soccer, jazz, and ballet as well as participating in the school choir and gardening club. Here's a couple of pics of her at her dance recital on the 18th of December, where she was awarded the ballet trophy for her grade and also received a scholarship for a term's free jazz lessons for this year.

And of course, 2010 was the year of the kittens for us. We lost our precious Charlie Brown in 2009 just before Christmas, so when we had the opportunity to adopt two beautiful wee ginger ninja brothers from the SPCA mid 2010, we jumped at the chance. We named them Eddie (cameo in colour) and Jasper (ginger and slightly fluffier) and they're both beautiful and affectionate wee sweeties. Here's a few pics:

The early days

Curiosity drowned the cat!

That's Jasper and Eddie did the exact same thing about 5 minutes later!!

More recent pics:

Jasper loves cuddles

and Eddie loves baskets!

It's in the bag (well, Eddie is!)

yep, basket again!

while Jasper's just hanging out at home with the family!

Kim's been busy at work this year, with the recession meaning fewer staff but just as much work, so he's been spread pretty thin but survived the year and is now enjoying a break before the onslaught of the new year.

I've also been pretty busy, with constant knitting orders and preparing for Coco Kids first Craft 2.0 in October, which was major for us. We knitted crazily for it and it was very successful and lots of fun. Tessa was worked pretty hard as my number one model for all the test knits and orders I did that were in her size (with Izzy helping out from time to time as well).



This has just been a tiny snippet of our year past, but gives a wee taste of what the year contained for us. 2010 was a good year for us, packed with activity of all kinds. Hopefully 2011 will be just as good - and looks to be twice as busy!