love it or hate it. it's monday.

style file + giveaway :: she-tea

say hello to she-tea. come on over, lets meet the family...

motherhood :: a delicate blend of green tea, white tea, rooibos and peppermint in honour of laughter, tears, love and inspiration.

love :: a blend of white tea and berries created especially for you.

warrior :: an energising citrus black tea blend for when you need to go forth and conquer.

b*tch is back :: a deliciously decadent blend of caramel, vanilla and black tea to assist you in the retraction of claws.

booze hound :: when you wake up declaring "never again"... but you know you will.

scorned :: a nurturing herbal blend, lovingly combined to give you strength to tear out his beating heart.

virgin :: the perfect blend of white tea, apple and cinnamon to assist you in your endless quest for purity.

top bloke :: a good strong cuppa for a bloody great bloke.

we are really happy about the she-tea family joining our shopping site. there's nothing like a nice blend of uplifting tea to calm and give us strength to carry on. laughter in some cases is the best medicine, and with that in mind, the clever women creator's, jodie and vanessa, of she-tea have combined quirky humour with the health benefits of tea for our consuming pleasure. all of the tea canisters are adorned with prints of jodie's art work, aren't they just brilliant, they have definately brightened up my pantry cupboard!

i love the smart and funny naming so much. would anyone like a cup of the b*itch is back? hehe. they will all make for some fabulous gifts, a tin of motherhood along with a tin of top bloke would be a great pressie for new parents, and each tin is only $19.95, so doesn't break the budget.

to launch the wonderful new tea products into the world of yummy mummies (and delicious daddies), we're going to giveaway a set of 6 tins of tea. the 6 tea's will consist of; warrior, b*tch is back, booze hound, scorned, virgin and dirty hippy. to be in the running to win the set, you just need to leave a lovely comment on this post (feel free to share which tea makes you giggle or want a cup of), along with your email address. my lovely apprentice will help me draw a winner on monday. have fun giggling xx

summer leonie :: you make me proud

being able to stay at home with my first child and watch her grow into a little girl has been an amazing experience. i had summer when i was 30. i always wanted to be a mum since i knew what being a mum was. i am the eldest of 20 cousins, our ages now ranging from 12 months to 32 years, so i have been around babies all of my life. i used to help out whenever i had the chance; changing nappies, feeding the bottles, walking the pram and just playing the mum. it's funny how life pans out, i thought i would be a mum a lot earlier than age 30, 30 seemed such an old age back in my youth days (hehe)! i of course wouldn't have my life any other way, i loved spending my 20's travelling and partying, and i now love being in my 30's raising a daughter and hopefully a couple more children to come.

i sit here this morning, watching the moo (aka froggy, summer bumm and moo moo) riding her pink and purple 3 wheeler plastic bike around the house with dolly and wot wot in the back of the trailer that's attached to the bike, and i smile. this is what i've waited 32 years for!

i have completely gone off the track as to what i was actually going to blog about today, but that's ok. it feels as if since summer turned 2 this month, that she woke up one morning and could all of a sudden talk new words and recognise new things. this week she has blown me away with recognising the colour yellow. we really haven't spent loads of time going through our colours yet, we have colour books here that we occassionally grab out, but we haven't for a while. for a girl that is nearly always dressed in some shade of pink, i was pleasantly suprised that the colour yellow strikes a chord with her. either the colour or the word! as we were driving yesterday, she promptly told me that the car in front of us was yellow. yes, it was, what a clever girl. i almost pulled the car over and gave her the biggest hug and kiss. instead i gave her the biggest compliment which she thought was funny and then started showing off, pointing out a yellow bus, and later on that day, a yellow snake. i love when she learns new things!

iphone italk :: lego photo

keeping in with my lego obsession this week, i recently downloaded the lego photo app. it's a bit cool. you take a new photo or choose an existing one from file and the app transforms the photo into a lego mosaic. touch the screen once you've got your photo up and it will go through different colour combo's. you have to get a nice close up photo for it to work well and so you can recognise what the photo is of, but it would be a load of fun for the kids to play around with. it's a free app too, which is always cool.

style file :: byog (bring your own gown)

say hello to the exquisite hospital gowns by byog (bring your own gown). having a baby just got even more glamourous! ok, ok, i know what you're thinking, how can labour be glamourous? well these gorgeous gowns may not help with the pain, and might even get thrown accross the room at some stage during that miraculous thing we call labour, but i tell you what, they are about to make life as a new mum (no matter how many times round) that extra bit easier. and have you feeling and looking gorgeous in all of those first photo's!

we have these fab gowns available in 3 prints (as pictured above) and in 2 sizes (s/m and l/xl). each gown comes packaged in it's own reusable bag and has a removable ribbon tie. not only are the gowns stylish and fashionable, but they're also very practical! made from 100% soft cotton, they have snaps all the way down the back for full coverage and down the arms to enable easy access for breast feeding.

but think outside the square here, these are not just for pregnant mummies, they will brighten up any lady's spirits that has to have a hospital stay.

the gowns have made it big overseas with celebrities such as gwen stefani, jessica alba, sarah michelle gellar and tori spelling all doning one.

and then we also have these super funny push out socks, which i think would make an excellent little something to give to your girlfriend when the baby news is announced!

lego :: cooler than ever

recently my brother was reunited with his old lego he had as a kid. he was given a box, a massive box, of lego and instructions and even some of the technics stuff he collected too. as i sat there and watched my brother and his son open up the box of lego, the smiles on their faces were infectious, we all sat down in the middle of the loungeroom and fluffed around pushing pieces of lego around and reminised about what we used to build. i always built a house and would have a car. so very typical female of me, i know! i loved lego as much as my brother did, and still to this day, if i can infuse a bit of lego into my daughter's life, then i will.

when it was time to move on from the nappy bag and into a backpack, i already positively knew which backpack miss summer would be getting. a pink lego one. of course. i love carrying this around and even better (and even though it's pink), so does the dad!

i also had my eye on the cutlery set when i saw it in shop 4 kids and i completely forgot to purchase it for miss summer as part of her birthday presents. i'm thinking i will still get it for her as she actually doesn't have a matching cutlery set yet! am also thinking i might try and grab a cake/jelly/ice mould. how fun would that be? although not sure how icing a lego cake would go! did you play lego? does your child/ren play lego?

iphone italk :: hipstamatic

i thought i would share some fun iphone apps with you as i find them. you may have heard of them and even have them yourself, but hopefully i can bring something new to someone's ilife with my finds! first one off the rank is hipstamatic. it is one seriously cool app, so if it's cool you're after, pull out $1.99 and get yourself this!

so what is a hipstamatic exactly? it was a plastic analog camera from the 80's that had the ability to swap lenses and take multiple film formats. apparently only 200 of these cameras were produced. whether it was a flop back then or not, i have no idea, but good on the iphone for bringing it back!

the mobile phone comes with us everywhere and i'm pretty sure more than half of us whip it out when our mini me's doing something that is just too adorable to not capture in a photo right then and there. getting tricky with your images is so easy with hipstamatic, it does all the creativeness for you. the basic pack gives you 3 lenses and films and 2 flashes to mix and match together. there's lots of vignettes, blurring, saturation and discolourisation when you mix the films and lenses. my favourite combo is the john s lens with the ina's 1969 film. gives me that 'old photo that's been in nan's old photo album for a hundred years' feel, i love it. what do you think?

review this + giveaway :: bugalug

i love it when i open up my mailbox and get greeted with divine products, products like these gorgeous hair accessories from a canadian company called bugalug. as you can see in the above photo, my mini me doesn't have a whole lotta hair happenin just yet, so i was delighted to find that the gorgeous bugalug clips don't slide off her fine hair. and because they don't slide off, means that miss mini me doesn't realise they're in her hair and alas stay in for most of the day! that's one point for mummy with that sneaky trick!

i'm also a bit of a headband lover. i find it so easy to just chuck on a headband of any sort to take a bad hair day into a not so bad hair day. have a look at the cute bugalug headbands, i love them, they are fully adjustable with a clear plastic lock at the back of it and they fit any head, from infant to adult. i think that's another point for mummies!

i have teamed up with the lovely erica from bugalug and together we'd like to give away a little pack consisting of a headband and pony loop, as pictured above. if you would like to score this little pack, you just need to become a fan, or a liker, or whatever we're called these days, of the bugalug facebook page and leave your email address here on the blog, below in a comment. pretty easy stuff for a pretty neat prize! i will have my little apprentice draw a lucky winner out on friday. good luck xx