Sophiia's Birthday Dressing Gown

It was recently my niece's third birthday and I decided I wanted to make her something, before she gets too old to think stuff her Aunty makes is cool and starts to think its super lame. 

There are so many options of things to make for little girls - but I decided to make something useful and sew her a dressing gown.

Recently I have been thinking a lot about sewing sleep wear, I'm not sure why. I guess its usually because I wear the same nighties for YEARS at a time, until the literally fall apart. I thought it would be nice to make some decent sleepwear, so when I came across "And Sew to Bed" when I was browsing shops one lunchtime I decided to treat myself.

I still haven't made myself anything from the book - but it included a few patterns for kids so I picked the "boys" dressing gown pattern for Sophiia. There was one dressing gown pattern for boys and one for girls - but the girls pattern was just wasn't right for Sophiia - it was so delicate and not really something I thought would suit a three year old!

I wanted to show you all a great picture of the dressing gown - but there aren't any three year olds around here to model it for me. I thought I could use a soft toy to model it, then I realised the biggest soft toy I have is Kuromi and she's really more of a pillow than a soft toy.

But as I didn't have any other "models" in the apartment - Kuromi was my model for the day. Here's the dressing gown in "action" - its not perfect, but you all get the idea.

It has a hood - which I think is pretty adorable. All dressing gowns should have hoods! 

The fabric is a simple fleece with paw prints and look - I sewed on some pockets!

This was a fun little project to make and I really hope Sophiia likes it. 

I hope you all had a great weekend and thanks for all your kind words in regard to the earthquake - we are safe and well and crossing our fingers that Fridays big quake will be the last big quake for a very long time.

Gifts from Asialand

Here's some recent gifts I've recieved from some of my lovely friends in asialand!

First of all here's some lovely things my friend Lisa bought me when she came to visit.

This cute big bow hairband - I have a lot of skull accessories, but this is my first skull headband. I really love it.

Next up is this kissing giraffe bracelet - this is my new favourite accessory. Super cute. Finally is this little Kuromi soap! I have had it for a while now but I just can't bring myself to use it. Although the wee Kuromi inside is actually a pencil topper so it won't melt away.

Next up are some goodies my friend Dani send me from Korea. A while back I sent her some Easter Eggs and she sent me some Hello Kitty cosmetics in return.

Here's my new Hello Kitty handcream and sparkly Hello Kitty eyeshadow. You can even see the inprint of kitty in the eyeshadow compact if you look carefully.

She also sent me a whole bunch of "service" items - basically in Korea when you buy cosmetics you get "service" which means you get a whole bunch of free samples when you buy something. Its pretty rad - I really miss it. Customer service in Korea is SO much better than here in New Zealand. I guess that's what happens when you have a big population and loads of competition. Finally - here's a portrait of me drawn by Dani - Super Kawaii.

Keep Me Warm Swap

I've been doing a few swaps on Craftster lately - including a "Keep Me Warm" swap. For this swap the requirements were to send some kind of hot drink, a hot drink accessory and some kind of accessory to keep warm.


First up - some ice cream sauce (it is summer in New Zealand after all), a tin of hot chocolate, homemade marshmallows, milkshake mix and sea salt chocolate.



Next up is a little mug cozy - with my favourite Sanrio character on it - Kuromi. It's really cute and well made.I also recieved a Kuromi hat - it's kind of silly and crazy but I like it a lot!Finally a cute little skull headband.

I've finally returned to Korea!

After an eight day holiday that included visiting three countries - Rich and I are finally home!

We visited Vietnam (Hanoi and Halong Bay), Hong Kong and made a day trip to Macau. It was a lot of fun but also very tiring. You know the old saying, I think I need a holiday to recover from my holiday.

I have so many pictures to post and stories to tell, but for now, I will leave you with a picture of a Kuromi cake (in case you don't know, Kuromi is my favourite character in the Hello Kitty "universe") I saw in a bakery in Hong Kong.
In other news it's now officially less than ONE MONTH until we leave Korea which is pretty crazy. The last year has gone so quickly. We have now started packing up our apartment and will soon buy our tickets for Taipei - we're due there mid September, some very busy times ahead.