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Welcome lovely Kiwi mummy bloggers and those that love to read the posts from our talented bloggers.

As you know this site was established in 2007, being the first blog aggregation site in NZ and we want to continue growing it for our readers, bloggers and our brands.

Love Anna and Michelle xx

The Elijah Syndrome

Posted on Saturday, February 25, 2017

I am suffering from this today. I know I am. So one would think if I knew that I was it would be easy to shake it off. I am trying to.

Elijah Syndrome = Where one experiences a great high in life/ministry, a great break through in ones life…. Where one spends ALL of ones energy that one comes to a screeching halt and spirals down quickly after said high. You spiral down and then you are attacked by the enemy. You down play what has been accomplished, doubt and fear creep in. You just want to curl up and sleep, cry, and eat…possibly all at once. (This is my own definition of course.)

This is me…right now. Just like Elijah ran away and hid when he found out that he was being chased down by Jezebel who was wanting to kill him. After he had killed 400 prophets of Baal and then prophesied and witnessed rain coming after a severe drought, all this among other things. He got depressed, feared, had a pity party and hid. He hid.

Please don’t be mistaken for thinking that I am comparing myself to Elijah, to what he accomplished for the Lord. I am just a mere dot compared to him.

“Ahab told his wife Jezebel what Elijah had done and that he had killed the prophets. 2 She
sent a message to Elijah: “You killed my prophets. Now I’m going to kill you! I pray that the gods will punish me even more severely if I don’t do it by this time tomorrow.”

3 Elijah was afraid when he got her message, and he ran to the town of Beersheba in Judah. He left his servant there, 4 then walked another whole day into the desert. Finally, he came to a large bush and sat down in its shade. He begged the Lord, “I’ve had enough. Just let me die! I’m no better off than my ancestors.” 5 Then he lay down in the shade and fell asleep.” – 1 King 19:1 – 5

You see, Elijah was spent. Emotionally, Spiritually, Physically (look how far he ran and walked) and Mentally. When you are spent you are very much susceptible to what Leena Tankersley calls ‘soul bullies’. And in times like these ‘soul bullies’ come out to play and have a field day. They certainly had a field day with Elijah so much so he was hugely afraid of Jezebel, even though he had just accomplished all that he had done for God….he failed to see and to trust the Lord to help him overcome this particular problem. All he wanted to do was curl up and begging the Lord to let him die.

OK so I am not begging God for that….but I am spent. Today we had the Loving Arms ‘Walk of Fun’ and while it was a great day, and it was certainly fun and we absolutely raised a great amount of money for a worthy cause. I am glad it is over. I have spent hours upon hours, days and days planning and organising this event. Its nearly all I have thought about at night because I can’t sleep. It has got me out of my comfort zone having to ask people and businesses to help, to support or to donate. I hated doing that but I did it. I forced me to talk ‘bras’ with complete strangers (some of them men which was very awkward) and why they were needed. Oh so awkward. I know I certainly haven’t pulled this off on my own. I owe a lot to other people doing things for me but its been tough going. I enjoyed the day immensely, I enjoyed seeing people have a great time, people dressing up, people giving, people laughing, people eating. I LOVED seeing the kids come through the finish line like they had run a marathon. I loved watching people mingle with each other and talking. I LOVED giving out spot prizes to people and seeing their excitement over winning something. I am blessed. I AM so proud of our generous community of people that captured my vision and saw the importance of what we were raising money for. I cannot wait to present the amount to our recipients and just knowing that this will help many a new mother makes it all worth it.

But in all that I am tired. I became very emotional this afternoon and cried. I cry all the time I know this but I cried out of frustration and tiredness. Do you know why? Because I looked in the mirror and saw a fat person, because I know that the scales are showing me unfavorable numbers which means we aren’t on talking terms. I felt so defeated and worthless. Now I know I aren’t obese or even hugely overweight, I know this. But I can do and be better. My doctor told me that I have had seven children and to give myself a break. But my screeching halt, my attack of the ‘soul bullies’ came in the form of a full force, all out war against the way I saw myself and how worthless I am because I can’t lose the 5kg that I want to. The enemy hit me where he knew I would hurt the most. Talk about rude! I went from the huge high to a huge low in a matter of hours. Not cool.

But God whispered to me “Elijah Syndrome”. These words aren’t in the bible anywhere but I knew exactly what He meant. Pray and pray hard. Rest and rest hard. Nurture yourself. Be kind to yourself. So for the next few days I will rest, and nurture myself. I will immerse myself in His Word and surround myself with good people. And I will heal.

I hope that you too will now recognise your ‘soul bullies’ and recognise when they come out to play. Your may be different to mine. Recognise when they come out to play, recognise their voices, their words and deal with them. You are worth it.

“He makes me to lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside the still waters.

3

He restores my soul;” – Ps 23:2-3a

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Beauty and the Beast Retelling, with Japanese Accents

Posted on Saturday, February 25, 2017

Barefoot on the Wind, Zoë Marriott
This lists as Book 2 in a series, but the pair run in tandem to each other (same world – yes, same story or characters – no) and this reads perfectly as a stand-alone companion (not sequel). Barefoot is set in pastoral Japan, Marriott’s retelling of the Beauty and the Beast is reminiscent of Uprooted (but is not so dark or heavy). Also:

One thing it does very well is create an immediate sense of immersion in the world.
It’s compelling and the plotting is tight. If anything, it may be a little too neat, but I think it works for this sub-genre.
The scene imagery is enchanting. The story is still fairly dark but this is lightened by the presence of hope and idealism. The Japanese setting is present in more than a token way (in dress, food and abode descriptions, as well as some familial cultural tendencies) but does not saturate the pages in a way that would at all slow down, challenge or overwhelm a younger reader.
The main character is likable. The characters generally are well-constructed and different from each other.
No humour that I can recall, predominantly a dramatic narrative.
No sex or swearing, and not really even steaminess . Some violence and scary ideas.
One neg: It felt overdone on emotions and thematic elements; the main characters mental incantations and thought processes stated the obvious and verged on melodramatic, as a result. I thought it might just be a patch of it, but it continued throughout the book and it was something I came to sort of shake my head at and keep reading. Feelings and responses to things were frequently stated and restated instead of shown, as though an effort to generate atmosphere had won out over all other devices and become transparent and louder than it should be.
The ethical reasoning (stated explicitly) for the community and historical characters sometimes felt like a stretch but I don’t think it diminished the story.

Overall: I think Marriott’s tasteful retelling injects some much-needed diversity into the YA mainstream. It didn’t wow me, but it was enjoyable to read and certainly didn’t offend me or have me filing it as “Not for my girls.” I’d be happy for them to read this at around 14 years of age (with the disclaimer it’s scary).

Review copy received from Walker. Continue reading →

{Sewn} Isabelle’s Art Deco Dress

Posted on Friday, February 24, 2017

Here in the beautiful Hawke’s Bay of New Zealand we celebrate an annual ‘Art Deco’ festival. This festival commemorating the 1931 Napier Earthquake in which 256 people lost their lives, and many of the damaged buildings were rebuilt in accordance with the distinctive ‘Art Deco’ style of the time – thus giving Napier a real Deco flavour that still lives on today.

The festival is a pretty big event in our community with a lot of people travelling to attend and many people dressing up. Our kids’ school does a dress up day too, and when I spotted this fabric in my local fabric store (Spotlight) I decided to sew Isabelle a dress!

At some point during this blog post I had planned to make a hilarious joke about how I’d painstakingly stitched every sequin on, but unfortunately I’ve already revealed that I bought it like this from Spotlight, so that joke won’t fly! In fact, the whole sewing process was rather pain free – I just used my old staple, the Blank Tank pattern from Melly Sews, with a few modifications – the obviously one being that I lengthened it to be a dress and I also lined it with a soft grey marle cotton/lycra knit blend (because the back of the sequin fabric would have been a little itchy if left exposed against the skin.) Because I was sewing with sequined fabric (my first time), I used special needles called ‘sharps’ as recommended by my fabric store and a small zig zag stitch due to the stretchiness of the fabric.

The only trouble I encountered during the sew was trying to get my mind about how to line it and still be able to turn it in the right way. As the original pattern isn’t lined I had to work it out for myself and in the end I put the call out for advice in a couple of facebook sewing groups I belong to. From there the ‘Burrito roll method’ was suggested (as demonstrated by ) , but in the end I followed which gave the same end result. (All in all it was a very quick sew and I probably spent more time trying to get my head around this issue rather than anything else.)

Honestly, how gorgeous is this girl!? She shines with or with out sequins!

To complete the look, Isabelle and Pipi both made the flapper style headbands (with some assistance from me.) We just used stretchy black lace that I already had in my stash and tied it at the back and the girls attached the feathers and plastic jewels with the hot glue gun. They are big fans of the glue gun!

I would have got some photos of them making them, but I was too busy supervising two eager girls dealing with hot glue, so that didn’t happen!

Pipi, never one to be left out, decided she needed some photos as well – she’s not in full costume, but you get the picture… and I think these pics reflect her personality rather well!

No words!

I’ve been on a bit of a sewing kick recently, with heaps of things I want to sew (once I finish custom orders of course – nearly there!) … and also with a couple of unblogged projects/ works in progress that I hope to share with you soon!

Do you have any projects on the go/ in the pipeline?

Jen x

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Category Archives: Uncategorized

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{Sewn} Isabelle’s Art Deco Dress

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