You have yourself a Smarty Pants Ring Sling…..so now what??

Well firstly put it in the wash, using a gentle cycle, your normal washing powder and some softener if Bubba is not allergic. Line dry

After hanging out for it to dry, pick your time wisely as to when to try it with baby, after all it is something you are new to and so is your baby, so do it after a nice sleep, or with a full belly (Mumma and Bubba that is!).

You might prefer to practice with a teddy or larger baby to start and get a feel of it yourself.

Ok.

Step 1: place the sling over 1 shoulder with the “Smarty Pants” label facing out and just on your booby. Have the tail of the sling come over to your opposite hip, making sure their are no twists.

Step 2: Grab a fist full of the end of the sling

Step 3: pull through BOTH of the rings

Step 4: bring back the end of the sling through ONE of the rings, this is what enables you to pull and secure the material

Step 5: pull the material through to make it tighter around your body, leave enough space to put your baby in!

Step 5: grab your baby and place them inbetween the sling and you, either on your hip as shown or across your tummy for a younger baby

Step 7: pull the material wide across your baby, making sure it covers their back for full support and sits under their bottom and NOT across the legs, it will dig in.

In order to tighten the sling and have the baby securely against your body pull ofnthe ENTIRE sling tail, pulling through till it is quite firm. In order to get the top of the sling tighter pull on the top of the sling piece only.

Here is a front view of a younger baby across Mumma’s chest.

Be sure when you have finished that the shoulder is WIDE as possible to spread the weight. Be sure that the sling is not digging into baby’s legs.\

Now REMEMBER it takes time and practice, give yourself the opportunity to get to know the sling and after a little time you will be happily carrying your baby and getting things done that need to be done!

Any further questions please get in touch with me!

We now have so much more back yard, I got a bobcat in to remove the stumps and put a few loads of soil down to level out the ground….

NOW! to use the funds (when we sell off the timber that is! Don’t get too excited Sandra!) to renovate another area of the house….I say bathroom!

We have owned 2 houses previous to this one and as much as I do love our Lawrence house, more so it’s location and the town, this house is by far the house of my dreams. It has so much more potential and I feel really connected to it already.

I have always wanted to live in this area of Bundaberg, it’s close to town and the bigger shops on the West side, but it’s tucked away on a wide street with larger then town size blocks.

So when we started looking around for a property I instantly fell in love. And the fact that I can walk Zahara to her school, the school I did majority of my teaching prior to ‘retirement’ makes me feel so very content. Daniel can also ride his bike to work. It’s a lifestyle choice!

So for a tour of our home, and our intentions as to what we have planned to do to make it even more ‘us’

I actually need to update this one as this is ‘in progress’ when my Dad was painting, it’s now all finished!

This is as you enter our home, it’s currently the sewing room, hence the mess! And the kids love to spread their toys out across this room too, it’s the old sunroom.

Our intention is to moove the front door to the middle of the house, so that you enter into the hallway and also allowing us to close off this area and turn it inot Darcy’s room. Therefore having a 4 bedroom and office selling point (NOT! that I am planning on that!)

This is Daniel’s office area, at the moment a Bunnings table! is in use, I am searcing for the ‘right’ table to put in here, I have got my hands on an amazing map of Australia, like the ones that used to be hung in classrooms and am using these colours as a base, and IKEA office furniture I thinks!

From the office is our hallway, how beautiful is this spot! This is where our front door will be eventually and we are hoping to be able to use the leadlighting window in the door, it’s so beautiful!

The first room off the hallway is our bedroom, a beautiful bay window is the main feature in our room, not to mention the high ceilings and cute windows, but they are throughout the house!

At the moment Darcy is sharing our room, he’s WAY too little to be in his own room, thinking he always will be! So considering we have all his belongings and we are still spacious shows the size of the room, love old houses for their space.

In our room we are just needing to paint, especially the wardrobe, one negative I can think of having an older home, the lack of storage.

I have 2 vintage chairs and a matching lamp waiting to go into our room when Darcy moves out, they are so so SO lovely!

This picture shows you the sequence of rooms, next to our room is Zahara’s room!

I am not going to show you the full room as I have resided to the fact that it is never going to be a tidy room, she is just so creative and busy that (like her Mumma) when she is crafting, she makes mess and I am happy as long as I can vaccuum, the rest I just look over.

I have worked hard on getting the elements of her room right, and I am happy with how it looks, am just busting now to get a paint brush onto those walls! I am going an off white and a lavender trim, only the picture rail up high to try and get the eye to look up to appreciate the full height of those ceilings!

At the end of the house is our dining room, these window are beautiful but at the moment they open to an enclosed back area ( shown later). I do dream of having these windows replaced with bi-fold doors onto a big timber deck…..a dream that I might make reality, hopefully!

I have a great spot to show my favourite old school desk with a new old sewing machine Daniel actually sourced for me, bless his cotton socks! I have a few of these collected…..need I say more?

The main feature of the central living rooms, apart from the ornate ceilings and DELICIOUS lights are these central fret (is that right?) features, I love them to bits, Daniel always threatens to knock them down, pain in the butt!

This is the lounge room and the big glass sliding door leads to Jarrahson’s room

Our kitchen is a generous size and heaps of cupboards, almost unheard of in older homes. We have decided to eventually polish the floors and I have hopes of putting in a new sink area, too complex to explain, but it will make the dishwasher (installed by my clever Husband and Dad) and *new* oven look less awkard.My little collectables look so much more fitting in older homes, funnily enoug. I have organised them better since this photo was taken, inspired by “The Renovators!”

And this is our funky little pantry, ALWAYS stocked to the max! I did hint to Daniel we could squeeze a small child in this space! He he ah!

Now the bathroom is the top of the list for a makeover, and I won’t explain it all as that’s a post within intself! But we have it all planned, just waiting for our demolision to be complete first for more time to dedicate to it! BUT I am very Very excited to say the least. I will be getting my DREAM bathroom in my dream house, I am so so very lucky.

ARGH it is a special kind of ugly! I have spray painted the mirror silver and it lifted it, but the surrounds are not good at all! I actually call this space “vomit on a plate”, much to my Mum’s discust!

Well that’s the inside of my beautiful home, thanks for touring with me, I will have to share the outside, and of course share the changes along the way! So SO exciting

xx

Jarrahson requested another rocket cake this time so we went with the space theme, not overly popular here in Australia! But still we just added a few simple touches to make it come together.

I simply went to Spotlight and got some star print material and made it the table cloth. We made some other space themed foods, including shortbread biscuits.

The kids had a wonderful time at our newest local park here, hard to believe it was TOTALLY under water in the floods 6 months ago, what a great job the Lions have done, we are certainly thankful!

This is little Miss Macey, we met her and her family when we moved here and were renting a house across the road. I made this outfit for her 1st birthday present, does she not carry it off well!

Darcy boy loved the sunshine and a little bark was digested, YUM! Look at his little shoes, so so cute, THANKS Aunty Sue-Sue.

There was great anticipation around the cake, so very cute to see them all keen!

Overall we had a lovely time and I know Jarrahson felt very loved. Thanks to his special friends and family for helping us create memories.

* I made Jarrahson a birthday outfit his shorts and a sewn number ’3′ on his shirt to make him feel more the birthday boy, the result….a happy chappy and a big sister wanting to create another tradition, age numbers on shirts for birthdays! New Mumma made outfits just aren’t enough now! Cute thing

We have a few Reeves family traditions and we love them, it make us a unique little family and we hope to create memories that will stay with our kids forever. One of those traditions is to hang our birthday banner, the night before the celebration and to hang it here, in our new home was just so very warming and the kids all got so very excited, anticipating what was to come tomorrow!

And how beauiful does it look!

Another tradition is to all look through the birthday cake books and have the birthday person choose their cake. Mumma crosses her fingers for an easy one! It was so warming to look through the book and discuss the ones we have done and for what occassion. Jarrahson made his decision excitedly and off to sleep for the kids.

The next morning I woke to Jarrahson throwing the cook books in my face wanting to cook his cake! Lucky it was his birthday! And he’s cute!

Dadda went to work at 6am so we decided to wait to the afternoon to give our presents, but when Dadda popped back home on his way from a seminar Jarrashon was so excited to open a present from Grangy (Granny) and Poppy!

Thanks!!

After school drop off we got busy creating the requested cake, it was so much fun and J was so very excited, I love how exciting these things are to a 3 year old!

We went out for a birthday lunch and a crown was fit to wear…..a new tradition we are starting, I am making each child a crown on their birthdays, starting with Jarrahson.

Dadda came home from work early and we went up to the donut shop for afternoon treat with Zahara being able to share it with us, we let the kids choose anything they wanted YUCK!! They chose exactly what I would say no to!

Even Darcy got to celebrate!

For dinner we had family over and OH! the presents, our children have no needs, lucky kids!
A John Deere (of course!) cooking utensils, gardening tools and a wooden train set from Mumma, Dadda, Sister and Bubba! Lucky man

Then it was cake time……the BIG moment, and how happy was the little man with the outcome! Not sure of it was the cake or the ‘rocket fire’ he was more impressed with!

To our beautiful little Brother, thank you so much for being the delicious little man you are. Thank you for being part of our lives and for the laughs you bring to our family,

We all love you dearly

xxxxx

We rounded off the week with an afternoon visit to my very beautiful friends house and our Zahara had the most free-spirited time, it was beautiful to see and share.
On the weekend Dadda had to work on and off at the local airport (random!) so we worked around this with friend visits and as I said Zahara had a holiday wish list which included a visit to the local Lavender farm, cute little pumpkin!

Both R and J (my BIL and SIL) are so very special to us and have a wonderful love for our children that we are so thankful for. SO when baby Jude was born it was like my own sister was having her first baby, I was so thrilled!

We travelled down to the Gold Coast to visit them and have a look and sniff of little Jude.

It was so lovely to be there with them celebrating the miracle of Jude and the love of becoming a family. We also got to catch up with Granny and Poppy who made the trip north to see us, thanks!!! We all miss them terribly so it was so great to have some time together in the park.

love this little man, I so see Zahara in his features and Darcy in his colouring, my heart just melted!

Let me just say it was the bestest fun ever, and I am so very excited!

I have to just say how much we are in love with our new pad, it’s just so beautiful and a really great family home. This weekend we are planning on installing the dishwasher (sigh of relief!) and new blinds, not to mention a number of other jobs we are so very excited about getting into!

We have been away the last 4 days visiting Daniel’s beautiful sister and BIL as my cousin was getting married on the coast. My SIL and BIL are expecting their 1st precious baby in 3 weeks and to say we are all excited is an understatement. They are going to be the best parents, if they are even half as good as what they are at being an Aunty and Uncle they will be super!

My SIL was so very generous and got almost our entire family (17 0f the possible 23 of us!) tickets to Movie World through her work. The kids were thrilled! As were Mumma and Dadda! We had the best time and once again Aunty and Uncle of the year came through and watched our 3 kids so Daniel and I could go on some adult sized rides, it was a BLAST! Something I know Zahara will remember forever.

So to share some photos also of our wedding outfits. The wedding was beautiful and so much fun! It’s so refreshing to see simple, pure, innocent love. The love we all dream and desire to have! I got a great thrill out of sewing for the kids, I made Z’s dress, Darcy’s pants with cuffs and pockets! and Jarrahson’s pants with suspenders, so so so cute! My dress is courtousy of my sister who has style and told me right down to my shoes what to wear, even doing my hair for me (tar Dude!!)!