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Time has flown so fast, I can’t believe it is nearly Christmas once again. We are all organised and are looking forward to a fun filled holiday with hopefully lots of beautiful weather.
My order of buttons arrrived from overseas, and I am really pleased with them, I now have a range of Novelty Buttons and some gorgeous Wooden Flower Buttons which have been proving to be very popular, especially the heart ones pictured below, I will be ordering more of the flower ones after Christmas and a few different designs as well.
I have been listing plenty of new buttons regularly on Trade Me lately, and now will be starting to get some more on here. 2011 is looking set to be an exciting new year, with our collection of buttons growing and we’re also planning on having a regular button stall at one of the local markets.
We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, and wish everybody lots of fun and laughter over the Christmas break.

I am keeping an eye out for the postman excitedly, as I have a shipment of buttons arriving hopefully this week. So any scrapbookers out there keep an eye out, I have some gorgeous wooden flowers, hearts, lady bugs, teddy bears, strawberries, xmas trees, Mickey Mouse, Hello Kitty and lots more exciting buttons coming.
I’ll also be busy this week listing a whole lot more stock that just arrived last week.

I found these lovely old vintage buttons the other day, they had been made into a bracelet, I especially love the cream one it is nice and chunky at 1cm in thickness, also the large light blue one would be a great one for necklace making at 3.5cm in width.

Last weekend we had our first market, unfortunately it was raining off and on, and we kept having to cover our things, one thing I have to get is a gazebo, the first few hours were really slow, but things picked up and made it worth while. It was a great morning even just socialising with the other stall holders. I was looking forward to maybe going back this weekend, but today it is raining again and tomorrow’s forecast doesn’t look much better. I think today is going to be a good day to do some baking for the freezer, and get some more buttons listed. We have our visitors coming from New Zealand next week, so to the weather man, we would like a lovely sunny week please.

Today I have had a good rumage in the wardrobe and found all sorts of vintage buttons, I have taken lots of photos, and will be getting them added to our store within the next couple of days. Time has been taken up lately with the school holidays so there hasn’t been much time to add to the store, but I’m looking forward to seeing what else I can find.
The holidays have been pretty busy and lots of fun, we have been to the movies, spent the day at the aquatic centre, and had lots of play dates with friends, the holidays started off a bit wet, but the weather has improved this week, and the temperature is getting up again.
I have managed to get in lots of reading lately, and have just finished Dave Ramsey’s – The Money Makeover – what a fantastic book, I loved it, if you are wanting to be debt free and in control of your money so that it works for you this is a great book to read, that is full of sensible advice that seems to have helped thousands of people, I have set ourselves a very detailed budget up, and it is working really well. Dave Ramsey also has a Facebook page so I have been reading that daily to keep the motivation going to work towards our next investment goal.

I finally got sick of having the kitchen table all sprawled out with buttons last night, so I’ve gone and got the trestle table out of the garage and now have that in my office, soooo much better, now I can hide all the mess in one room! I’ve been photographing more buttons this morning and have added lots of bags of buttons on Trade Me, click here if you would like to see all my button listings that I have on Trade Me. I will also be adding some more different ones on my store today too.

Look at these gorgeous plastic vintage buttons I have just received – I love them, I have several different colours in them and two different sizes, I haven’t seen these before I thought they were very cute. I have a big lot of buttons that have just arrived, and I am busy trying to get them loaded onto my store, a few more hours in the day would be nice. The weather has been a tad cool lately, so ideal for spending time indoors sorting out buttons. I’ll post some more pictures on here in the next few days of some of the other beautiful buttons I have.

This weekend I had a play with my buttons, and came up with some cute little button notepads, I’m hoping these will be good little sellars at the markets. Also they are a nice size to post for a gift for someone.

Yesterday I had a great day creating some more button crafts, I made some necklaces, earrings, button bookmarks, and some more magnets, it’s the first time I’ve made button earrings and I was really pleased with them. I really wanted to make some more today, but it took me a lot longer than what I thought it would to load them onto my store, and to work out the postage rates.
I have to make more time to blog more often too, I would like to blog at least every second day, I’ve been spending so much time lately reading other peoples blogs on the internet, there are so many good ones out there. The latest one I’m reading is the Eventual Millionaire I also borrowed the $21 Challenge from the library this week, which is a great one for ideas on saving money on the grocery bill, I thought I was pretty good, but there’s always more to be learnt.
Here’s a glimpse of some of the earrings I made yesterday.

Today was a good day to get more buttons out, now they are all over the table again, this afternoon I managed to get some more necklaces completed, a button bookmark, and finished some button hair clips I had been making. I’ve also got more large buttons to list on my store tonight, and listed some good colourful buttons on Trade Me today, that would be great for scrapbooking.
As I have mentioned before I have been following this website Aspiring Millionaire which I have been really enjoying, today’s discussion is what is your favourite personal finance book and why. I have several favourite books I have read, but one of the best ones would have to be Rich Dad Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki actually I have read most of his books and really liked them all, another one I love is Noel Whittaker’s – Golden Rules of Wealth and one I have recently read is I Can Make You Rich by hypnotist Paul McKenna I have just reserved The Richest Man in Babylon from the library so am really looking forward to picking that up this week.

Today I have had all my buttons out at the table at last, and have managed to put together a few things, I’m looking at having a go at the markets in a month or so, and it’s about time I started putting together a collection. The ribbon I bought yesterday I thought was too wide for my bookmarks, but in actual fact I think it will be just fine, I just need to poke around and see if I have any decent sized buttons first.

Today I went shopping to buy some more ribbon to make some bookmarks, I can’t believe I came home with ribbon that was far too wide, it’s really pretty too, so I might see what I can do with it, otherwise I’ll have to return it, I think I’ll end up going online and buying some. I’ve also picked up some cord to make a couple of necklaces, so looking forward to trying them over the weekend. I’m keen to make some earrings too, but I couldn’t hardly find any earring posts, and the ones I found are not the ones I really wanted, so again I think I’ll have to search the net and see what I can come up with.

Wow, it’s been a very busy couple of weeks, we finally shifted in the weekend, and are loving our new place, it’s so nice having lots of space again. There’s just no time for buttons much at the moment, but in another week or so I will be back into it. I’m looking forward to having the day off tomorrow, and heading out for lunch for my birthday, it’ll be great to have hopefully a relaxing day.
I found an interesting site on the net tonight, it’s a place where you can send postcards around the world to random places, you don’t know where you are going to send one too, until you log in, you then get sent an email which will tell you the address of the person to send it to, I’m quite excited, the first one I have to send is to Finland. I thought it might be fun, as so much is done via email these days, it will be nice to have a bit of fun mail come in the letterbox. Here’s the link if your interested Postcrossing

I decided last night that I needed an ’Idea’s book’, as I have notes all scattered around my desk of things that I want to do and make, so today I found a large journal that I’d had up in the wardrobe for a long time, and decorated it with buttons, I’m pretty pleased with it, if I do say so myself lol, it’s much more appealing now, than just a boring brown, now I can jot away to my hearts content. I haven’t had a chance to make any more button crafts today or add buttons to my store, as I had so many phone calls to make in preparation for our shift this weekend. I did though manage to get lots of baking done ready for the freezer – yum yum, I found a great bulk recipe on the Saving Mum website, so it was nice and quick to make, and the boys were pretty happy when they came home to the smell of freshly baked cookies.
Here’s the recipe if anyone wants to give it a try, it makes nice large biscuits, and only 10 minutes to cook – just too easy!

PREP: 10mins COOK: 10mins (each tray)
Times the ingredients by four and freeze the uncooked dough.
Makes about 35 biscuits. Choose a flavour and add to a batch.

INGREDIENTS
125grams Butter
2/3 cup Sugar
1 Egg
1 teaspoon Vanilla Essence
1¾ cups Self Raising Flour

1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Cream butter and sugar until smooth and light. Mix in the egg and vanilla essence. Add flour and mix well.
2. Split the mixture up into bowls and add individual flavours to each bowl (right). Roll the mixture into logs about 5cm in diameter.
3. Freeze the biscuit dough by double wrapping logs in cling wrap. Or make the biscuits straight away by slicing the rolls into 6mm widths.
4. Place evenly on a baking tray, lined with baking paper and cook for 10 minutes. The tops remain pale, not golden. Let the biscuits cool on the baking tray for 5 minutes before removing.

FLAVOURS
A. Crunchy. Add ½ cup Sultana’s and ¾ cup crushed cornflakes.
B. Coconut. Add 3 tablespoons Coconut.
C. Chocolate Chip. Add ½ cup Chocolate bits.
D. Chocolate Biscuits. Dissolve 2 tablespoons Cocoa, 1 tablespoon Sugar in 2 tablespoons boiling water. Add to mix.
E. Jam Drops. Press finger prints into the centre of each cut biscuit and drop ½ teaspoon Jam onto each.
NOTE: To cook the frozen biscuit dough just slice the frozen rolls into 6mm widths and bake (step 4).

While I was packing up the linen cupboard yesterday, I found these buttons that came over from NZ with us last year, I had completely forgotten I had them, they are made out of plastic and would be quite decorative if used on the right fabric or maybe used for jewellery making. I have a pile of buttons sitting here that I need to list onto my website, but packing is going to take up most of my time this week, once we get sorted at the new house, there will be no stopping me. I managed to pick up a nice large cane basket today, to put the rest of my buttons in, so now at last I am set for storage.

Today the boys and I headed off to watch Marmaduke, it was a great family movie if anyone hasn’t been to see it yet go and see it you won’t be disappointed.
I was going to get stuck into packing some boxes today for our shift, but spent a lot of the day on the internet researching lots of things, I’m going to hold a stall at some of the local markets once we have got settled into our new place, and I came across the book ‘The Handmade Marketplace by Kari Chapin’, if you haven’t read it, it’s a great source of information on selling your crafts, whether it be at the market place or online. Another great page I came across today was a blog about a SAHM who’s challenge is to be a self made millionaire by 2015, this blog really grabbed me and I spent much of the day reading it, I have now written down two pages of goals and ideas, come and check it out here it really is a great read.
In between the movies and researching all day I did manage to buy some more plastic containers to store more buttons in, I have so many ideas of things to make, that I just can’t wait to started.

Yay, next week we are on the move, it has taken us a while to find a new place with a pool, and now we have finally found one, so this week is going to be very busy with packing. The kids are excited, Olie’s bedroom window is one that goes down to the ground, and he his happy because he said he will be able to watch the snakes go past his window (I hope not lol).
Today I found some neat plastic containers on sale to store a lot of my buttons in, I think I will have to go back, as I under estimated how many buttons I have lol. I have been thinking for a while about the best way to store my them, and I think plastic lidded containers and ones with drawers are the way to go.
The boys had their friends around today, and I poured all my red buttons all over the table, they had lots of fun looking through them and finding the ones that they liked. I managed to get them all away, and now I have got a huge amount of colourful buttons spread over the table, along with the button books, scissors, glue and containers, this week I am going to have to get them all packed away, once we shift we should finally be able to eat at the table again, as I will be able to set up a separate table just for my buttons.
Well I’m off back to bed again, I was in bed reading a book – yes on buttons! And had the urge to get up and turn the computer back on to Google something about buttons I had just read about – wow, these things are so addictive.

Today I have been hunting out lots of buttons, and I have found a good stash of cream buttons, that I had forgotten I had, I was really pleased when I found these vintage cream buttons pictured below, as there were 28 of them, and sometimes when I find some nice onces, I might only have a few of them. If you are after white or cream buttons, check them out, as I have added a lot onto the store today. There’s also some more vintage black, pink, and some interesting metal buttons ones too.

Yay the school holidays have begun, I have been so busy lately and haven’t managed to get much more stock onto my store, but I have managed to make a couple more bookmarks today, I’m still waiting for a parcel of buttons to arrive, so hopefully they will be here shortly. It was Olie’s birthday in the weekend, so it’s been a pretty full on weekend, and we’re still looking for a new house, we have found the ideal one, which has a great office for my buttons, so we will have to wait and see if we get it – oh the joys of renting again after living in our own home for nearly 20 years lol.

Here’s another button bookmark I have made today, I’ve also done some more hair clips, I’m really needing to get lots more bright coloured buttons soon, so I can continue making them, I’m always on the lookout, so hopefully I will find some suitable ones soon. I’ve a whole lot of buttons arriving shortly, hopefully the courier person will be knocking on my door with them tomorrrow, I always get excited when a new lot arrive, as I love going through them all.