Mandy in Oz

 2011 is Lily's first year at school (prep), so for her birthday we did the unthinkable - we invited her entire class to our home for her 5th birthday!  Now, we decided only 3 weeks out from her birthday that we'd do this, hence the complete silence from me on my usual forums and here on the blog - I've been working like a demon to put this 'Fairy tea party' themed do together (with a little help from the amazing Mr J of course ;)  )  The party was yesterday, and while we are still in clean-up mode, it all went really well!  Lily had a wonderful time with her classmates and family (around half of her class came - that's a lot of 5 and 6 year olds!) and we had loads of positive feedback from parents and kids alike :)  My favourite part of the day was definitely the pinata - I almost split my sides from laughing so hard, it was just adorable!  I over-catered of course (lets face it, it beats the hell out of under-catering), so the fridge is full of party goodies :

But it's finally done! I mentioned in my last blog post that I had a big project on....well, I actually had *two* big projects on. The first one was my commitment, as part of a fantastic swap organised by the lovely Kelly , to make 17 items for a swap. All 18 swap fiends do the same, we send them all into Kelly and receive 17 different items. It's a fabulous idea of course, but I did find it quite challenging for a number of reasons. The first reason being that I find it *very* difficult to do simple :P Anyone who knows me is quite aware of this of course! I'll start out saying 'I'm going to keep this really simple', then start justifying why I 'need' to make things more elaborate and before you know it, I'm doing 17 entirely unique hand-dyed and hand-painted bags, and panicking that I won't be done in time! I'm very pleased to say, however, that I did in fact get them all done, in plenty of time. This is a minor miracle in itsel