One of "those"days....

Today, we hit the ground running... and its only now, at nearly 9pm that I can breathe out....

Today was the first day back at school. She was keen to go, but it took a monster effort to get us all out of bed and functioning before 8am after almost three weeks of no one serfacing before at least 8 and even then nobdy did much before 9am....
But we made it through the day. Fairly uncrafted, but we did it :)

I have lots planned for my little guy coming up so bear with me till we get back on the wagon..

Yesterday, I had one of "those"moments.. you know the ones. The ones that test you as a parent, that test your ability to stay calm and rational. It wasnt a massively big drama in hindsight but at the time, I was fairly cranky.

I got a call from my mum and talked to her for about 15 minutes. The kids, as per the norm, entertained themselves for that time. Amahli, funnily enough, was entertaining herself.

When I got off the phone, she leapt into my arms with a huge squeezey hug. (Alarm bells started ringing.... this kid is rare with her mum affection) I noticed beside her ear, a long curl was hanging down and ran my fingers down it, wondering why it was like that. The curl came loose into my hands. My first thought was " what has she got?" thinking she was sick... I asked her what happened and her reply was " I cut it".

Looking at one side, it didnt look that bad. Yes, she had taken few curls and cut them. Not too dramatic.

Until I walked into the loungeroom to find this. Somewhere on that head a whole heap of ringlets were missing. Didnt take long to find the bald to the skin patch.

I yelled. LOUDLY. She cried. Jumeirah cried. I cried. And then I hugged them both and told them that although I was mad, I still loved them and to please never cut their hair again.

My little mullet girl :)

I didnt really need to do much more, she knew how bad it looked and she had to tell daddy which she really didnt want to do. Hair will grow. Scissors will find better uses ;)

What do you do with things like this? The " learning my lesson" stunts that kids pull?

Rainbow biscuits

Today heralded the last day of school holidays :(

I wanted to do something fun and outdoorsy but seeing as it's been raining for days we hung around home and worked out something cool to do.

Driving home we saw the most beautiful rainbow and decided to go back to our original holiday list and make Rainbow biscuits. We had planned to make them all holidays but never got a chance so today was perfect!

The idea came from Amandas cookin that I found months ago. We used a different recipe but the same style.

Our recipe was: 100 gr butter
1/2 Sugar
1/2 cup custard powder
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 egg

Mix the butter and sugar to together, then add egg,flour and custard powder. Split the mixture into four sections ( or as many sections as you want colours) Tint each section of mixture. Extra flour may need to be added as ours was pretty sticky. Flour the table to avoid the mixture sticking.

Take a small ball from each section and roll into balls.

Roll balls gently together, and then roll into a long snake. Curl into a snail shape ( yep I can't work out any other way to describe it!)

Bake in the oven for 18 minutes at 180c. To make them really rainbow striped, as you curl it into a snail, roll the dough further.

How beautiful do they look!! And tasted delicious :) and such a perfect activity for a rainy day :)

Good Friday cross craft

I wasnt going to blog tonight.. its Good Friday.
But I wanted to show you an amazing sight I saw tonight, and also the great little craft I did with Jumeirah today. I found this craft at Teachkidsart yesterday and Jumeirah was totally taken by it she wanted to do it too. Its really simple, but so so effective.

We started with a foam sheet ( you can use a foam tray that you get from the fruit shop) and cut out the shape of a cross.

Using foil, we covered the cross but kept the foil really flat and smooth.

I gave Jumeirah a scrapbooking tool used for embossing but you could use a ball point pen or even a pencil for this craft.

Then she drew a pattern which embossed into the foil and foam.

( The pattern is very similar to the Teach kids art example as she really liked the hearts and tree idea). It turned out absolutely beautiful and ist now hung in the kitchen.

I didnt realise something so simple would turn out so eye catching.

Tonight, hubbin called me outside to view the lightning that was caught in a very angry cloud.

He told me to go to the lighthouse so I could go try and get a photo....

Tonight, on Good Friday

The Heavens dared us to try and ignore

the perfect timing

of a party like this :)

Happy Easter.. see you on Tuesday!

short simple easter cross

Easter weekend. The shops are full of people buying up ridiculous amounts of chocolate in the forms of eggs, chickens and bunnies.

Now, it only occurred to me the other day that I totally don't get the link between the Easter Bunny and Easter. Someone said to Jumeirah in the shops last week "I hope the Easter bunny is good to you!", and she turned to me and asked " How is there an Easter bunny in the REAL story, Mum?"
When I spoke to someone from work what they thought, she answered " the bunny is for kids! It's cute and fluffy and a fun time for them!"

For me, Easter is so far from cute and fluffy it made me squirm. For me, it's about a man, an amazing man who'd done some amazing things, who was then accused of lying about who He was, and then crucified for it, and then rose to prove it was true. ( in a nutshell ;) )

It's a really tough thing to grasp as an adult, I can't imagine how a child takes all that in.

Today, I did something with Amahli ( Jumeirah has something great to do tomorrow, Jareds cool Easter activity comes on Sunday :)) that would begin to allow her to understand a bit more about Easter.


While Jumeirah was doing her egg shell craft ( we broke the shells we dyed the other day into little pieces so she could do some mosaic art with them) Amahli wanted to collage too. Mum sent the kids some cute Easter glitter (compete with egg, chicks and bunny shapes) and so I set up a simple collage on a cross shape. With her and her sister sitting beside her, we talked about what the glitter shapes were about.

The hollow Easter egg represents the empty tomb, the chick means new life. We talked about the Cross as well, to which Amahli commented "Jesus would be sad" so she seemed to get that it was a pretty sad time. It's still some fairly big concepts for a 2 yr old, let alone a 6 yr old but it's a building block, and it's something they'll get more as they get older.
Amahli had a great time gluing and sticking lots of shapes to her cross :)

Its simple, easy activities like this that open lots of possibilities for chats.

I hope its something that sticks ;)

simple egg biscuits

This week is just flying past with visits from a gorgeous friend from sydney and another gorgeous one from Wingham... its made for a fun and busy week that I wish would just slow down!

Easter craft yesterday before my little friend left again for home was something really simple that pretty much any age can do from about 12 months to whatever! most kids will find something fun to do with this one. Arrowroot biscuits are the perfect egg shape and are easy to deocrate.
Now, you can be healthy and use a cheese spread and sultanas to decorate but I went for the sugar overload and made pink icing and mini marshmallows :)

The easiest way to contain really small kids in the activity is to strap them into a high chair. Its means the mess is contained but it also helps them to stay in one place with this activity. Give each child their own biscuit, younger children can have theirs pre spread with icing. Give each child a handful of their own marshmallows ( saves arguement) and allow them to decorate as they please. Pretty obviously, the littles are going to eat them as they stick, but they are using fine motor control to pick up tiny marshmallows so its good for working on those skills if no actual decorating gets done :)

Jared just wanted to see how many he could get on one biscuit...

Amahli was all colour co ordinated....

Jumeirah made faces :)

Older children tend to make patterns ( and in my house, faces!) and enjoy using sprinkles and other deocrations to complete this. Today I was going for simple simple so this was enough.

When they are done, pop them in the fridge for about half an hour so the icing can become firm.
Or eat them straight away if you cant wait ;)

Here are some of the beautiful moments I had with this precious little one and my gang on the beach :)

Egg dyeing

The last few days have been SO JAMMED PACKED full of cool things that I truly couldnt even stop my heading from spinning last night to actually sit and construct a blog. So I didnt :) I went to bed.

This morning, I got up and went for a 15km bike ride so I am almost ready to crash out again now but thought I should probably post something of the coolness we have been doing here lately... I have been blessed to spend some time with a friend Ive had through a life time and her family these last few days.
Its been a blur of beachy fun, strawberry pickin, crafty bits, playing, laughing and lots and lots of photos.

I think I will sleep for weeks when the laughter dies down :) I

n a lull that happened briefly today, I got out a beautiful Easter craft that Jumeirah and I did last year, Egg dyeing. I had made a Zuchinni slice last week and very cleverly blew the eggs out rather than crack them ( seemed like a good idea at the time... its freakin ridiculously hard and hurts your cheeks for days) and so I had 5 to work with this morning.

All three kids were keen to decorate their own eggs and then dye them. Eggs have to be held really carefully so they dont crack but all of them knew just how to hold them so they could draw too.

Once drawn on ( we used pastels), each egg was placed in his own dye bath. They dont take long to colour up, only needing to be turned once or twice to completely colour the each. Each egg is then placed in a tea cup to dry and drain. They turned out beautifully and my lovely children were so proud of themselves, wanting to show the neighbours their eggs.

I did mine with sticky tape for a different effect. If you want more, have a look at last years efforts :)

Amahlis wasnt quite dry...

Unfortunately, we will crack them later in the week for another craft we did last year, egg shell mosaics :)