Friday, May 29, 2015

Coffee cup cozy

Hello everyone!

As some of you may know I'm originally from Portugal. However what you may have not realized is how interwoven Portuguese culture is with coffee. After all Portugal was responsible for introducing coffee production to Brasil. You are very welcome! One of our greatest poets, Fernando Pessoa, has a bronze statue outside his favourite coffee shop: A Brasileira where he regularly drank espressos, arguably the nation's favourite drink.

Big man, small cup

Recently I have developed a new addiction. Going to the petrol station near the house and buying a cappuccino from a Costa machine and a chocolate muffin. Not particularly healthy I know, but darn tasty!

This is why I decided to make a cup cozy, something I've never done before. It was the perfect little project to do in an hour or so while taking a break from my main WIP. I dug mine and my mum's shared yarn stash and found this lovely bright green.


As soon as I started working with it it reminded me of this dude:


Mike from Monsters inc.!

So I decided to try and base the cozy around him. His most distinguishable feature is the big round eye so I decided to make his eye. It didn't quite work...


But after already making most of the cozy I decided to not quit and go ahead anyway. To be honest I wanted to see what it looked like all together...


It is far from perfect and I doubt you would have understood what it was supposed to be if I hadn't told you but hey, I actually quite enjoyed making him! I may even try and figure out how to do a Sully one. There is something incredibly satisfying about completing a project in one sitting. 

That is enough from me for today. What are some of your favourite things to do in one sitting? Don't forget to say hi in the comments and I hope you all have a brilliant weekend!

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Wreck This Journal

Hello everyone!

Last year I found out about Wreck This Journal and Keri Smith. For those of you who have never heard of it, Wreck This Journal is a sort of interactive book. I know, there I go again talking about interactive books, this time though it isn't a futuristic idea and it does actually exist.

Keri Smith is an author and illustrator and she came up with this concept of a book that you create. Each page has a prompt and you have full liberty to do as you wish and interpret the prompt however your heart desires. It is brilliant for people like me that wish to be more creative than what they actually are.


I obviously had to go and buy one and I had tonnes of fun with it. Unfortunately I can't show you any pictures because I threw it away when we moved to save space and all the photos were on my phone which I broke back in January! I have been missing it so Dan bought me the "everywhere" edition which is smaller and is tailored to be completed outside.

I've only had it a couple of weeks so haven't done much. Here's it so far:

Done by my sister Marta. She got the dogs to lick food off the page.

Done by me but not quite finished yet.

Done by my sister Vera.

I've also chosen three pages to do next and I will update you once they are done. The pages are:




I'd definitely recommend the "Wreck This Journal" for a bit of fun and to get some creative juices flowing. In fact all of Keri Smith books are a lot of fun. If you just want to see what other people have created there are tonnes of photos on Pinterest and also a few Youtubers have uploaded videos of themselves doing their journals.

So that is it from me for this post! I hope you've enjoyed reading and don't forget to say hi in the comments!

Monday, May 25, 2015

Current crochet project

Hello everyone!

If you keep following my blog you will soon find out that I am a big fan of crochet. There is something quite satisfying about picking up some wool and turn it into something entirely different. I am no pro but I am capable of doing most crochet techniques and enjoy working on projects.

My current project is a granny square blanket to use in the pram when out and about. Normally I would jump at the chance of buying wool for a project but this time I decided to use what I already had since this month I'm starting a pretty intensive savings scheme.



Because I decided to only use wool I already had this meant that I had to be pretty flexible with colour schemes. I started by using some Stylecraft Special DK in pomegranate and some beige/grey merino I had. I quickly realized that it wasn't going to be enough even for the small blanket so added some Stylecraft Special DK in Aster (not 100% sure that's the name as I've lost the label).



Now I'm about halfway done and fast running out so will probably be adding one or more colours which I haven't quite decided yet. I'm actually really enjoying this random colour co ordination and can't wait to see what it will look like when finished! I'll keep you guys posted!

That's enough from me. Thanks for reading and don't forget to say hi in the comments!

Friday, May 22, 2015

Netflix addiction of the month


Hi, my name is Claudia and I'm addicted to Netflix.

O.K, it may be a bit over the top to call myself an addict but I do spend an ungodly amount of time on Netflix. Although I do enjoy watching the odd movie on there, my favorite genre is the documentaries.

I'm a big fan of Louis Theroux and his series exploring American subcultures. I have however watched every single episode of every series as well as the standalone documentaries. So I needed to find something else.

Enters "Unplanned America".


This is a series where three Australian friends travel through America and explore the subcultures. The only fault I find with it is the length of each episode. They cover one topic per episode but split it into two sub-topics which are both covered in a 20 minute episode. While the topics are always quite interesting the short episode running time means they don't go into much detail which really is a shame.

Despite that I am really enjoying the series. It's one of those shows that you can watch while doing something else, in my case feeding the baby or failing to get her to sleep, and still keep up with what's happening. And the Australian accents are always a plus too!

I've also just found out that the show has a website (www.unplannedamerica.com) where you can find blog posts of about their american adventure. Season 1 is up on Netflix and they are currently filming season 2 and 3 so hopefully there will be more to watch soon!

Anyway that is it from me for now, I need to go find a new show to obsess over! Thank you for reading and don't forget  to say hi in the comments!

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Book of the month


 Hello everyone!

So this month I actually managed to read a couple of books even though I thought with the arrival of my little monster I wouldn't have time to read ever again. A bit dramatic, I know... Anyway my dad actually recommended this book to me, "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson and I'm quite glad he did.

Diamond Age is a postcyberpunk novel first published in 1996. If like me you didn't know what postcyberpunk meant, here is what Wikipedia has to say about it: "typical postcyberpunk stories continue the focus on social implications within a post-third industrial-era society, such as ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information and cybernetic augmentation of the human body". 

The story is mainly focused on Nell and her Young Lady's Illustrated Primer an interactive book of sorts that teaches its owner through the method of story telling. The novel also focuses on themes of education, social class, ethnicity and artificial intelligence. While there are lots of reasons why this book is awesome and I would recommend it to everyone, what I really want to talk about is the Primer.

Nell, the main protagonist, is a child from an under privileged family that one day comes across a rare copy of the Primer. To start off with Nell couldn't read or write but this interactive book adapts to her educational needs and begins to teach the young child how to read and write. Through the course of the story the Primer teaches Nell everything she  would learn at school and more. In fact, the Primer's way of teaching through storytelling is so effective that by the end  of the book Nell is just as educated as the rich children of the land.

Now, you may be thinking that although far fetched, this "Primer" would revolutionize the way children learn and would even possibly be a way of educating children in the developing world. Well you wouldn't be wrong. In fact there is actually a fund set up to try and create something similar called "Global Learning Xprize".

Global Learning Xprize has set a challenge: "develop new learning solutions to empower children and communities around the world". They are hosting a $15 million competition that challenges teams from around the world to develop open source scalable software solution that will enable children in developing countries to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic. This competition launched last September and currently it is still open for teams to sign up. As you can imagine this is a pretty exciting prospect that I will be keeping a close eye on!

So to recap on my ramblings. I really enjoyed reading this book and would highly recommend it. It is full of crazy futuristic ideas that may actually be tangible within the next few years. It's a fantastical book full of crazy technology like mechanical horses and matter compilers. Once I finished reading I actually read one of Stephenson's earlier books, "Zodiac" which is completely different, I thought for a bit that there may have been two authors with the same name! He's an amazing writer with a crazy imagination that everyone should check out!

That is my rambling done for today! Thanks for reading and don't forget to say hi in the comments!

Monday, May 18, 2015

Baby Ema - 1 month update



Ema was one month old on Saturday. It's crazy how fast time goes! Seems like it was only last week I was terrified going into hospital to be induced.

Just a few hours old

This past month has been a huge learning curve and I definitely would not have been able to cope without Dan and my family. All of us are completely in love with  her and she knows it! In the past month she has gone from a tiny newborn that wasn't even sure how to sneeze to a baby that smiles at every white wall and is constantly trying to chat away.

  
Now, I have to admit that I'm still slightly terrified of bath time. I've only actually bathed her myself a couple of times myself and leave my mum to do it most times.  We found out she loves bath time so long as she isn't on her back but is instead leaning over your arm like in the picture above. She also becomes fascinated by the bubbles and splashing. All quite adorable really...

Like most babies Ema found her crying voice pretty quickly. Her vice is laptime. Because there are so many of us around to give her attention she has gotten used to spending her awake time on someone's lap either drifting off or making faces. If I put her down and she's in a mood she'll cry but as soon as I move the blanket and start to pick her up, her face lights up and she starts smiling and making faces.


As for night time we have been co sleeping. It started off mainly because of my laziness and it was just easier to leave her asleep next to me after a feed instead of moving her and having her wake up again. However we rather like it. I am aware that quite a lot of people are against this practice but there are also tonnes of people for it. At the end of the day t hey are only little for a short  time and won't want to cuddle for ever so I may as well take advantage now!


So that is my Ema update for the month. In a couple of weeks we have a G.P check up and I'm dying to see how much weight she has put since birth (she was 3.3kg) and we also have our first vaccination which I'm dreading a bit in case she is uncomfortable.

That is it from me for now. I hope you enjoy reading my adventures into motherhood as much as I enjoy writing it. Thank you for reading and don't forget to say hi in the comments!