Hello? Is anyone still there?

It is true. I have been a very very bad blogger as of late. I should definitely get a stern talking to. What is so hilariously ironic is I have probably been doing more creating in the past few weeks then I have in a long long lonnnnnnngggg time. By my count I have made:
13 little girls aprons
8 bridesmaids skirts
13 fascinators
5 neckties
1 engagement session
1 bridal session
1 wedding video
and one star wars tote bag for a little boy who is so excited for school.
Along with all this I have been plotting and working and staying up WAY to late and am excited that I am pretty close to revealing the new and MUCH improved Sewing In No Mans Land. Don't worry it will still be based around crafting (heavy on the sewing side) with all my patterns being free and downloadable (thanks to my Dad who bought me a sweet scanner for my 30 birthday) but now they will be better organized, faster to download etc. I also have one last surprise up my sleeve that I hope ya'll will like. But for right now I have to get back to that thing that has consumed my life for the past few weeks (other then being a currently singel preggy mommy constantly moving house) and that would be this gorgeous girl:

and her fabulous wedding. So, really quick, funny story about the bridal session I did with her. I have being DYING to do a photo shoot in a fabulous orchard but have never been able to find one. I see them in pics all over the place and finally after some serious internet scouring I figured it out. What we didn't count on was the overwhelming number of deer that would be wandering about. Well, apparently my lil 'sis has a fear of deer and just about died when a good 25 of them started stampeding towards us.

I thought they were amazing and was SUPER bummed I wasn't doing some sort of themed shoot of Evie in a red riding hood outfit HA! Bink (as I call her) was standing still as a statue, completely petrified. I will have to share the pic after the wedding. Don't want to give too much of a sneak peak just in case by some twist of randomness her fiance reads this blog... long shot but you never know :)

Celebrating and the BIG project

I hope you all have had as lovely a Fourth of July as we did!

We were able to swell with patriotism along side some of our old neighbors

and the wonderful family we were staying with.

and literally SHOVE yummy food into our mouths

The twins in the Cul de Sac had motorized Vespas.

Evie wanted to make sure Lola obeyed all helmet laws.

She was absolutely convinced this was the correct way to wear a helmet

We are lucky to have neighbors who own a party planning company so they go *wild* when it comes to fireworks. .

We got into our perspective positions

Finn apparently likes his space

When the fireworks started Finn freaked out with excitement

While Lola started crying and Evie rushed to comfort her.

Since the American Independence day is my favorite holiday it was a lovely way to spend the last evening with Daddy before he headed back to Timor

I am currently up to my elbows in various projects. One in particular is REALLY big and I am pretty excited to share. This weekend it is going to be completely tackled and I am hoping to share pics the beginning of the week. Ohhh I am so excited! Enjoy your weekend!

Wild Thing

Evie has never had a haircut. Yeah. She will be two next month and we have never cut her hair. When we moved here to Timor she was only 4 months old.

The only trip we have taken off the island to a place that had a salon was in Italy and at that point she didn't have enough hair to cut :)

I have been asked how I get her hair in braids, or piggy tails etc. and it is honestly because if I do not put her hair in some sort of "tie" she goes around looking like the shaggy dog (in a super cute little girl way)

With going on our big family vacation in two weeks I thought it was high time she get a hair cut (that, and her dad asking pretty much everyday when I will cut her hair and Che Che actually jumping and clapping when I mentioned it ha!).

Now the problem is, how in the world do you cut little girls hair? I don't mean myself by any means, we are taking her to the one Australian who cuts hair even though I must admit I will be paying more then I will EVER pay for a child's hair cut ughhh.

What I mean is she has such thin, uneven hair with a cow lick that comes all the way from the back of her head. Do any of you have any advice? Fun websites with cute suggestions on it?

I am so nervous about it I feel kinda silly. But as cute as she is:

This hair has got to be tamed! Because when you see this wild thing coming at you from behind the cozy coupe,

you get a little scared ha! Thanks for any suggestions, oh and Evie would thank you too, that is when she is done running me over with the coupe.

Sailing Away....

I took the entire weekend off for Mothers Day so if you are waiting for an email I promise I will get on it :) Hope yours was absolutely lovely and filled with glittered covered cards from your kiddos!

To celebrate Mothers day my friend Jeanne organized a sailing trip! I was really excited because this was something I had wanted to do for a while but you have to do it in a big group otherwise it is insanely expensive. The fun group of us from over 8 countries (always love how diverse the group is) set sail at 3:30 in the afternoon.

I wish I had gotten a pic of our sail boat, it was gorgeous. But being panicky about having my camera I double freezer ziplock bagged it in my carry on and couldn't get it out fast enough. I figured the ziplock bags would give me the five seconds necessary to throw myself overboard after my bag if it went in. But here I am pushing my belly out as a joke at the front of the boat (Aft? Stern?), my friend Krista told me I needed to look pregnant, check.

We sailed through Dili harbor and out around the Christ statue

They served little Hors d'oeuvre (spelled the French way-- I gotta learn sometime!) along the way and we brought lots of yummy drinks and the conversation was fantastic! Plus I had fun listening in on some of my friends speaking French. Didn't understand a word but it made my ears excited for Paris.

krista, steve, jeanne, toby

Once we got to back beach we stopped so we could snorkel. This is a great spot, but unfortunately the sight on land was pretty sad.

We have no idea why but they were slashing and burning the mountain side.

Usually they only do this in areas they are going to farm and Back Beach is definitely not that place, so we don't really know what was up. But it was cool watching the "Bombedaros" fight it.

Some people stayed and relaxed on the boat but Chris and I jumped in. The water was gorgeous and so clear but to be honest I spent the majority of my time trying to tell myself not to think about crocs.

I tried to stay close to Jeanne's hubby Silas since he had a spear gun ha! I was a bit worried about how we were going to get back on the ship since we had simply flung ourselves over the side, but when it was time to go a ladder magically appeared :)

This was the little "dingy" that was pulled behind us and used in case any of us were taken off by the current while snorkeling, which was actually very strong. I was tempted to ask if I could sit back in it on the way back in, it sounded fun to be tugged.

But I am glad I didn't though because I would have missed the most amazing sunset. It started out just sort of getting dark

and I was a little bummed thinking we weren't going to get any color. So for a while I took some other random pictures since I didn't think I would get a good sunset shot. You know of totally weird things like a pile of rope

and lots and lots of the sails

None of which turned out all that great. Then my friends hubby said "Kelly do you not want any of the sunset?" I sat up and BAM! This was what I saw:

So of course I nearly killed myself running to the front of the boat to get a better shot

These are straight out of the camera (I have no clue how to edit a sunset anyway). The colors were amazing!!! After enjoying the sunset we sailed slowly back to port in the dark. It was soooo relaxing sitting back and talking while the boat swayed. I told Chris I think we should retire to a yacht. He told me that there is an old saying that the two happiest days of a boat owners life are the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it. I guess that is a no :) It was a lovely mothers day gift though.... even if it didn't involve the munchkins, just us two.

6 week ticker

We are down to 6 weeks more of living in Timor. I cannot believe how fast the time is flying. Unfortunately this means being crazy buys trying to get everything ready. We won't see the majority of our "stuff" until we arrive in Paris next year so it is odd trying to decide what is essential (sewing machine, serger etc) and what can wait (bottles of sand collected from various beaches). I also have to admit that I have been pouting a bit this weekend. I don't know if you watched, but this Friday there was a little wedding in Britain. I was really excited to watch with several of my girl friends all decked out in fascinators and fancy dresses. I had made, and planned on blogging about the dress I made that was based on this pattern from Burda Style:

Click on above link for more pictures and for the pattern

I made mine out of this cool (but tricky to sew) tier died chiffon. I was planning on making different sleeves so that I didn't have to wear a shirt under but I just ran out of time and had to go with the pattern. I loved how flowy and light it was. After shoveled myself full of cucumber sandwiches and queen cakes I sat back to watch the event. We were then joined by some more of our friends. One in particular is a big tease. I mean literally she teases relentlessly. I am pretty used to being teased about sewing and crafting etc. I actually make a concerted effort not to talk about the sewing blog because it usually means getting teased. I know it is always in good fun but it can get old you know? Anywho the teasing about my dress (aka why would I make a "maid marion dress") coupled with teasing about not being a morning person, coupled with being told I don't have a life because I knew who one of the news castors was, ended up getting to me and I went home and had to whine to the hubby about it. As my Dad says I "cut off my nose to spite my face" and refused to take pictures of the dress and stayed away from my sewing machine all weekend. Ohhhhh I showed her right? No. I was just being silly. I am sure a second thought wasn't given to me after leaving the party and I let myself focus on it all weekend. It is funny how many times I have to learn this lesson. Now I am sorry I wasted an entire weekend and instead of making the several projects I was excited for I only made temporary dinning room chair covers to keep them clean until we move (BORING! Ha!)

I did however want to share some cute pictures I snagged of some locals at the Governors Palace. I was driving away after taking pictures of a friend receiving a medal from the President when I saw this stroller packed full of little kiddos

I swerved over and hoped out and asked if I could take a picture. The "care takers" aka older siblings thought this was hilarious

Then they hauled what I thought was a little baby out of the back of the stroller and told me to take a picture of her. She was actually a little person (is that the PC term still? I never feel like I am using the correct term and don't want to offend anyone). She was so cute and sweet and really excited to see her picture. 

When we were all done they loaded back up their stroller and headed down the insanely busy street, there are no side walks/ cross walks in Timor so I watched in fear as they ran comicazi across the street. I get lost sometimes in a "daydream" about what their lives must be like. Where they are going, what they will eat that day etc. It is like when I was little and would look up at planes and create an entire story for a person on the plane. Hopefully they got where ever they were going safely and had a big dinner that night. I won't lie that I am pretty excited to go back to the order and cleanliness of the states, but I will miss the constant reminders of how blessed we are. I hope your weekend was a fabulous one!

ups & downs and all arounds

(Warning: Lots of my short falls as a parent are discussed in this post, please judge me gently ha!)
Well friends, we are still here in Singapore. Boo hoo. We were planning on leaving bright and early this morning so I could have some snuggly time with Evie and Sawyer by this afternoon but Finn's tummy had other plans. The Doctors believe his root problem is an allergy to UHT milk combined with all the fun buggies in the water (how oh how do you stop kids from drinking bath water?) and trying to digest the Malarone which is preventing him from contracting malaria. Poor little guy. When you put it that way I feel pretty bad for all his little body has been battling and that I "ignored" it for this long. They say he is really no worse for wear though and will have righted himself in no time after returning to the states in two months. So the upside is that we know what is wrong and can address it. The down side is we are here for three more days, which is actually a really silly downside since our room looks like this:

And I have been watching American Idol while in the bathtub:

Hotel arrangements are stipulated by the embassy and I just have to say, they treat us medivaced families pretty darn great! The thing is, being with one cutie non-stop for seven days can make one pretty homesick for adult conversation and the humor of their other children. It has been fabulous spending some one on one with our middle child who, I truly feel, often gets over looked (partially due to his incredibly easy going personality) but oh my goodness I don't know if I can hear much more Star Wars talk without going bonkers :) Usually Finn is jabbering away to Sawyer who is equally engrossed in the conversation. Last night while he was swimming I actually had to put my head in my lap and count to ten before reengaging in a conversation about whether General Grievous (the bad guy in the Star Wars cartoon) was actually a robot or a human. 

Thankfully we have been all around the city and seen some amazing sites. I cannot wait to share some of the pictures. Last night we headed to the mall and went to the top floor (the malls here are crazy huge). I stepped off the escalator and when I looked up from making sure Finn wasn't getting sucked under I was looking directly at an amazing fabric boutique. Hilariously enough I almost started crying. It has been 18 months since I have seen a fabric store like this. From floor to ceiling it was stocked with every Amy Butler, Anne Marie Horner and Cath Kidston print known to man, even those they have long since stopped printing. The lady welcomed me by saying: "Welcome to our lovely store" I seriously almost hugged her. I had just purchased Finn a General Grievous light saber so he was great and sat while I perused for a good half hour. When I finally pulled a bolt out and flipped it on its end I again almost cried: $28 dollars a meter!!!!!!! Aw man! I was so bummed. I had literally come up with a huge long list of things I was going to make in that half hour and  bam! They all went out the window. I'm not crazy right? $28 dollars is just way to much to pay for a meter of fabric that isn't some awesome vintage lace from France or something ha! Anywhoo, I am toying with the idea of going back and getting a fat quarter of a out of print Amy Butler for a special project I am working on for Lil' Blue Boo. I can't wait to share it with you! Hope you are having a fabulous week hopefully free from Star Wars conversations!