Boys Spring Fashion at Target {Sponsored}

This post is sponsored by Target Australia.

I'm really excited to be doing some featured posts for Target, and I'm especially excited when it includes being able to head down to their stores and stock up on some much needed clothes for the kidlets!  As the weather is about to start warming up again, (this is my wishful thinking, the weather has been so rainy and cold still) and Spring is upon us, I realised that Ezra was severely lacking in Spring or Summer clothes that still fit him. So, I headed to Target on a mission to find some stylish outfits for him. Finding trendy clothes for boys has always been a bit of a challenge for me, it seems like the stores usually have rows upon rows of gorgeous little girls clothing, but only one or two rows for boys with a very limited selection. It drives me crazy, and then the stuff I find that I really like is usually out of my budget. Ezra is also a pretty typical 2 year old boy, he plays really hard and likes to rough and tumble around, so I need to make sure his clothes are going to be good enough quality to last the season. I was nicely surprised that at Target I found so many awesome options for little boys, not only are they well priced, they are also great quality, so I had a really hard time choosing! In the end, I managed to pick out my favourite 3 outfits (shorts and tops) and an extra pair of shorts all for under $100, I even managed to fit something in for baby Willow under the budget too. He is so prepared for the warm weather now! 

I was also nicely surprised that I had such a cooperative (and can I say really cute) little boy showing off his new clothes! 

  Ahh I love this outfit, its a little dressier and so can be worn to some more 'formal' occasions as well. The red denim shorts are pretty darn cute and a nice change from the traditional blue!

 This is the Road Rebel Shirt and Road Rebel Stretch Denim Jeans. Found HERE and HERE
I love the little camo pocket on this shirt! The shorts still have some 'room to grow' and are adjustable around the waist which is perfect for my skinny kid!

How cool is this shirt, I love the sneaker print? 

There were so many pairs of stylish boardies for boys, I had to get two pairs. The blue ones pictures above and this orange pair with the little triceratops found HERE

 I was given gift cards and payment for this post, but all opinions are my own! I really am a big fan of these toddler clothes!! 

Do you find it difficult finding stylish clothes for toddler boys?

Or do you just get to peruse all the awesome girls clothes?

Karen xx 

DIY Heart Embroidery Wall Hanging

This hearts embroidery is something that I made a while ago, but it is really quite quick and simple to make, it looks great and is a nice homemade crafty embroidery piece to add to your home. So, I thought I would do a little DIY tutorial, which includes how to iron- on transfer embroidery patterns or images onto your fabric. It would go perfectly is a kids bedroom or as a part a collage of prints and pictures on your wall in any room.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

-Embroidery Hoop (I used a 9 inch hoop, but you can scale the pattern to any size you want)

- Un-dyed Calico or white cotton material

- Needle

- Embroidery floss (at least one colour, but you can use all different colours if your prefer)

- Tracing Paper

- Iron on transfer Pencil

- Iron

- A printer to print out the pattern

- Scissors 

optional: Some craft clue to glue down the material to the hoop

HOW YOU DO IT

1. Print off the template from HERE

2. Trace the hearts onto the tracing paper with an iron on transfer pencil (I bought mine from Spotlight) 

3. With the pencil marks facing downwards dry (not steam) iron the pattern onto the calico that is cut to the size to fit in the hoop with about 4-5 cm extra material around the hoop.

4. Put the iron on patterned calico in the hoop stretch so it is nice and tight and then tighten the hoop.

5. The stitch I used for the hearts is the simple back stitch. Which means you are just putting the needle back through the hole that your previous stitch created (see picture). 

6. Once they are all finished trim the material around the edge of the hoop, and glue it down. 

use the hoop to line it up correctly and then remove to iron!

Make sure the pencil is sharp, you don't want these lines too thick!

The back stick, makes it look nice and neat.

Then you are finished and it is ready to hang.
Oh so so easy! But it looks really nice!

Karen xx

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We're building a house: Bricks and Mortar

We got a bit of a shock this week when my parents called us to let us know they did a night time drive by of our block and thought they were looking at the wrong house because a whole wall of bricks had been laid already! So, of course Saturday morning we hurried down to the block ourselves to check out the latest development. It was so great to see all the bricks, window frames, door frames had been delivered. So now, we have a real brick and mortar house in progress!

And, Tan mortar that is, tan mortar which is apparently an upgrade from the standard cream mortar, and for this upgrade we agreed to pay an extra $900. It seems a bit ridiculous, but if you've ever built a house, you would know they charge you through the nose for everything and apparently that is the cost to add the tan olour, and this colour brick colour with the standard cream mortar looked horrid, so we sucked it up and paid the extra money.We chose this brick colour because we really liked how it looked on the display home, it's called Tourmaline, by Brickmakers. I think it looks awesome but it is hard to capture the exact colour in the pictures but its a browny/grey, I definitely like that it is different from the cream or red bricks that seem to be really popular. You won't see them on the front of the house, that will be rendered, but the rest will be open brick.

The builders seem to be moving pretty quick, so who knows what will happen by next week!!

Karen xx

{I have a fortnightly newsletter now, an easy way to get updated with posts, reviews, competitions and all the rest. Click HERE to subscribe}

 

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Half a World Away

This morning as we waved goodbye to Grandma & Grandpa, I decided that I wasn't going to let my children move to another country and live there with their kids, it's just way too hard! Well, in some ways I wish I could decide that for them, but I know they are their own people and really I just want them to be loved and happy and fulfilled in their life, no matter where they live. But, for entirely selfish reasons, I never want them to move away. I want them to live close to me forever, surely that isn't too much to ask!

Joel's parents are heading to the airport to fly back to the USA after a quick two week visit with us. We live about as far away from Pennsylvania as you can get. Three flights and 30 plus hours of travelling, it is not an easy feat for them to visit. The last time they saw Ezra he was only four months old, now he is a hustling, bustling two year old. Ezra loved every minute of their visit, he constantly had someone to play with and he took full advantage of it. He bonded with them immediately, he had so much fun everyday and really thrived in their company. His vocabulary also expanded so much and I really feel as though he developed so much in their company. But now as he lays in bed asleep, he still doesn't understand that they aren't coming back tomorrow, he isn't going to find them in the downstairs bedroom when he runs in to check. I know he will be sad, and that he can't comprehend why they are gone or why they can't come back.

I can't even imagine how hard it is for them to say Goodbye. I know they are so thankful for the time they have had with us and the kids, but getting to know their grandchildren must make it even harder to be away. I wish we could make a trip over to visit, but with the house build and having to pay full price for Ezra's ticket too, I just don't see it being viable in the near future. I wish so bad that international travel was easier and cheaper!

For now, we will do what we can to keep their relationship and bond strong. I'm grateful for things like Skype and social media, it means they can still talk face to face to their Grandchildren, but still, it doesn't quite measure up to a real hug.

This picture says it all.

Do you have parents or grandparents or kids overseas? How do you deal with the distance?

Karen xx

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Yellow Dandy Now Has a Newsletter

Recently I have developed an appreciation for Email Newsletters. They are such a great way to stay connected with your favourite blogs and websites. Instead of getting bombarded with emails from every post, or missing posts altogether, you get one email that is jammed full of all the best things that have been happening, so you never miss anything you may be interested in.

Because of this, I decided to jump on the bloggy newsletter bandwagon and start offering my very own, brand spanking new Yellow Dandy Fortnightly (Bi-weekly) Newsletter that will be delivered right to your email inbox. 

But of course, there is no point having a Newsletter if I have nobody to send it to.  So, if you want to receive my newsletter (and of course I would love you to) just click the link below and type your email in the form, click subscribe, and soon you will receive the very first ever Yellow Dandy newsletter. The newsletters will contain the latest posts, news, subscriber only competitions and some awesome things that I haven't even thought of yet! 

SUBSCRIBE

Wow, so easy! Thank you to everyone who signed up, I can't wait to get my first newsletter out to you! If you don't want to subscribe to the newsletter that is cool too I guess. But here are some other ways to follow along and stay connected:

FACEBOOK: Head Here and LIKE Yellow Dandy on Facebook

RSS: You can follow on programs like FEEDLY & BLOGLOVIN that way all of your

favourite 

blogs are all in the same place! 

EMAIL: You can sign up via email (its in the column on the side) and that way every post

gets delivered to your inbox.

My Nighttime Selective Hearing

I've heard of kids having selective hearing, and I know plenty of Dads who have selective hearing. Particularly during Football season or in the middle of the night, but right now I am experiencing Mum selective hearing and it is so strange to me. Apparently I have suddenly developed night time selective hearing with my children, and I do not hear Ezra cry, I just sleep right through it.

This selective hearing hasn't just happened once, but multiple time now. I wake up in the morning after my night of getting up a couple of times to feed Willow when she cries, only to discover that there had been a whole other kind of drama in our house that I had slept through and was blissfully unaware of. Joel will look at me with bewilderment and disbelief the next morning that I didn't hear Ezra screaming really loudly in our bedroom right next to me at 1am. One night Joel got up multiple times to Ezra crying in his bed or because he wandered into our room and I didnt hear a thing, when I woke in the morning I was completely clueless. This has happened several time now since Willow was born, but I still wake to the smallest whimper from baby Willow, and of course, Joel doesn't hear her at all.

What is happening? Is my Mummy brain so tuned into my baby girl that it just blocks everything else out to let me get some rest? I heard every noise from Ezra in the middle of the night right up until Willow was born. I used to get up to Ezra in the night and Joel was the one blissfully unaware, but it seems that now the roles have reversed, I'm so glad he hears Ezra or we would be in trouble! In some ways it amazes me at how well our family unit works in the middle of the night, and none of it was deliberate.

So, has this ever happened to you too?

Karen xx

Because it is Tuesday, I'm linking up with Jess for #IBOT

 

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Slow Cooked Chicken Cacciatore

I am all about the utilising the slow cooker at the moment. The couple of hours before dinner around here are fairly chaotic, it is the most difficult time of the day and if I don't have backup then there is no way that any meals are getting cooked... enter slow cooker. It seriously is such a game changer, how nice it is not to have to worry about dinner at the end of the day right!! So here is a really easy one that took me about 10-15 minutes to throw in the slow-cooker and because there isn't any hot heat or open flames I have not problem putting it all together with the baby in the ergo or wrap.

It doesn't really look that pretty, but the fact that it is so easy and tasty makes up for it!

We didn't put Kalamata olives in this time, but I highly recommend that you add them, because it was certainly missing them.

Ingredients:

1 Leek

2-3 cloves of garlic

2 chicken breasts

2 large handfuls of chopped mushrooms

2 cans of diced tomatoes

1 1/2 cups of white wine

1 cube chicken stock crumbled

1 tablespoon Oregano

1 teaspoon Onion powder

You basically chop up the veggies, throw everything in the slow cooker and then cook on low 6-8 hours and break apart the chicken within the dish with a spoon and then serve with rice.

Karen xx

 

 

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We Have A Pad!

 

We have a PAD!

Finally it feels like this house building project is making some headway. Now I can actually picture what our house will look like on our block. It is so nice to be able to see our house take shape and although I know there is still such a long way to go having the pad down is really exciting!

I'm looking forward to documenting the process here, not in excruciatingly boring detail don't worry, I won't get into too many nitty gritty details. There have been too many so far to document, including big arguments with the builder. It's at times like these I'm so glad my husband works in the construction industry and isn't afraid to be very, very vocal and demanding about what needs to happen. He also went over the plans with a fine tooth comb, which I'm so grateful for, because that is something I do not have the patience and eye for detail for, and he picked up a handful of mistakes that would have been very costly and annoying later on.

But that is all behind us now, I'm sure there will be more problems to navigate, it is house building after all. But today we are celebrating!! We have a PAD!!!

Karen xx

Do you have any building advice for us? I'd love to hear it!!

 

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Father's Day Gift Ideas

So, if you're like me and only have small children who are unable to purchase presents for Father's Day, you are the one with the responsibility to get something for your partner on the wee ones behalf. Yes, I could just do the finger painting and breakfast in bed, but like I've mentioned before, I really like buying presents. so I've come up with a bit of a list. Some things Joel already has, so they are tried and true, he loves them, so I figure other guys like him would probably like them too! Other things are just stuff that I like, or wish I could him!

Jumper: this Critical Slide Society Jumper is awesome. Point Break is such an epic movie, and who doesn't love Swayze, I would borrow it all the time if I bought this for Joel!
Whiskey: I really enjoy researching and buying Joel a nice bottle of single malt scotch! I know he loves it, and so I continue to get them for him to help build up his collection. He likes the peaty, smokey stuff from the Isle of Islay so I often try to find a new one of those he hasn't tried. The Dalmore about isn't a smokey one, but it is really good, and as a bonus the bottle looks awesome.
Vans: Well you just can't got past a good pair of vans. Self explanatory really.
Watch: These Wewood wooden watches are so lovely!

Book: The Internet is a playground. Joel was given this book as a birthday present by friends of ours, and it is hilarious. We often sit down in the evenings and he reads excerpts out to me and we end up rolling around laughing and almost peeing our pants. If your spouse needs some laughter in their life, this is the gift to buy.
Poster: If you don't know who Ron Swanson is you are missing out! Watch some Parks and Recreations and have a laugh at the manliest man on TV! Best Character Ever!!! If you do know him, then this quote is the perfect gift for the drab cubical wall!
Hat: It seems that hats with prints for guys are coming back in a bit way. It seems quite 80's, but in a cooler way! At first I wasn't sure about it, especially the florals for men, but now I'm really liking them, I love this bird print!
Knives: knives? You ask. Yes, for whittling of course. You know the carving of wood. It is one of those crafts that a secretly wish would become popular again. Craft for men supposedly isn't cool, (unless you're Mr X Stitch) but this is a craft that is particularly manly! You could get a how to book to go along with them like this one here
It seems like I'm organised here, but watch me leave it all to the last minute like usual.
Karen xx

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