Lemonade scones

Argh! I know! its been waay too long!!

Im sorry. I really dont have much of an excuse except life is just. so.busy!

But with school holidays now only a week away for us here, I thought Id get some of the cool things we've been doing lately up so you will have some great things to do!


A few weeks ago, someone somewhere posted something ( I know, Im really helpful with that bit) about Lemonade Scones. Ppft, really?? How would that work?? But with Amahli begging me to cook something, I googled and found a recipe and thought Id give it a go :)


Oh. My. These simple little bites of not alot are absolutely AMAZING.

And heres how you make em ;)


Ingredients:

1 cup of Lemonade ( dont think it matters what type)

1 cup of cream

3 cups Self Raising Flour

milk to brush top

How to:

Now, the recipe for me said heat the oven to 220 degrees, but for my fan forced oven it was WAY too hot. Mine is now set to about 170c ( about the same for a cake or slice) and thats perfect.

put flour in a bowl, add cream and lemonade. Stir till only just combined ( dont over stir)

 




Tip out that sweet smelling lump of gloop onto a floured board and combine. ( this helped with my playdough withdrawals today.... so therapeutic!)

Once all combined, you can roll it out till its semi flat. mine looks fairly "rustic" but I dont care.
You can then cut out circles with a cutter ( although my cutter is in the playdough so I just cut mine into rectangles)  or shape how you like.

Then, brush each scone with milk ( and seeing as I had no brush either due to painting I just used my fingers and milk. I told you they were rustic) and place on a lined baking tray.

Pop into the oven for about 10-15 minutes and prepare to be amazed.......



YUM!!!

Slather with jam, butter and cream and youre welcome :)

Or better still... find a neighbouring park and take a picnic!!

a gift for a friend

Lately Ive struggled with writing for this little blog of mine... not because Im out of ideas or haven't done anything cool with my kids lately, I just get to the end of the day and Im exhausted... and I guess after writing for three years I feel a bit like Im at the end of an amazing journey :)

But then, we do something REALLY cool, or someone mentions that I should blog about it, or someone comments I haven't written in awhile, and then Im sitting here writing again :)

SO!

Yesterday one of the most wonderful people Ive had the chance to have in my life had a birthday yesterday.. actually she got engaged as well so it was  a pretty epic day all round!
But before I knew she was getting engaged, I wanted to make something for her that would let her know how loved she was :)

I bought 6 old milk bottle jars from a local home wares shop. Im absolutely in love with it, even though Ive never really been into things like that before... maybe Im getting old ;)

After buying the jars, Amahli and I bought packets of Skittles, white roses and food colouring.

Once we were home, we separated the colours and filled the front jars with layers of colour.
Then we put the ends of the roses in cups with food colouring in the bottom. I wanted to split the stems so Id be able to put them in a couple of different colours but they were thin stemmed so each rose was only going to be one colour.
We used, red, blue and green.


Leave them sit over night and the next day.....

Voila!!!


Gorgeous colours, bright and happy. Such a perfect gift for a friend, or a hospital beside, or a welcome home, or a a new baby gift.. possibilities are endless!

how to make the best of a monday :)

Jeepers.

How did that happen?? One minute I have a million plans for the two week school holidays and suddenly we are back at school!!
We had a great school holidays.. huge appologies to those who were waiting for posts for things to do...


Anyway, we are back on the school/preschool/madness horse and Im struggling to find balance again... or is it still?
Anyway, Monday dawned yesterday and I knew I had to make it work for me.
Amahli hits me every Monday morning with "what adventure can we have today Mum?" and  I have struggled to find cool stuff for her to do. Through the holidays though, it hit me that we are nearly half way through the year and she is off to school next year so its time to spend some time together!

I had a tonne of washing ( no, seriously. I had 99% of everybody cupboard contents on the floor of the laundry.....not a fun sight) to  fold, and also a delivery to do plus she wanted something fun AND a bike ride so I had my work cut out for me......

But we pulled it off :)

Starting with my delivery, it just happened to be on the North Shore which involved a car ferry trip across the water. My kids love this thing! So that was my first double tick, something fun as well as something I HAD to do.
Next stop was the Koala hospital, something shes been asking me to do for ages. We are so lucky to have this great place to visit, lots of koalas to see and a really beautiful spot to visit. for some reason I was joined by a friendly unicorn for most of this visit... ;)

On arriving home I had the unpleasant job of folding. I HATE this job with such passion. It takes forever, its so boring and relatively pointless and so time consuming. Today I was not going to let it beat me. Dragging all the loads out side to the front lawn on a big blanket, I also grabbed Amahlis bike and helmet. She looked at me with such surprise at being allowed to ride on the road and happily rode around for nearly two hours whilst I folded clothes... soaking in Vitamin D, watching a happy girl, the folding didn't seem nearly so bad :)
After finishing, we put all folded piles inside, grabbed the dog and headed for a walk :)

A really well balanced, fun day :) It just takes some extra thinking to make it work, but its so worth it.

cool paint activity

We are on school holidays and I LOVE IT!
We've been busy here, we have some friends from Sydney and so we've been to the beach, strawberry picking and hanging out :)

Ive also got some plans for crafty things over the holidays but we haven't had a chance to really do much yet! So this is something I did with Amahli last week.

I realised late last week that I hadn't been doing as much with Amahli for a whole heap of reasons... been really busy, lots of things on, preschool excursions, STUFF! But we were home for a day last week and she was "bored" and I realised I hadn't been actually sitting with her and doing anything for awhile. So I grabbed the pastels and began a crafty arty activity I did moons ago with Jumeirah that I knew she'd love.

Colour all over the page with pastels, all colours, all over. Make sure there is no white paper showing.

Paint over the coloured page with black paint.
Using a stick ( end of a pencil, skewer, matchstick, paddlepop stick, fork) and draw in the black paint.
Colours start coming through! its really pretty, you can make fireworks, whatever! If you aren't happy with your drawing, just paint over with black paint and start again :)

Amahli did lots of swirls. For her it wasn't about the end picture, it was pure enjoyment and seeing the colours appear :)

Its a simple idea but can be done with such a broad age group.
Why not give it a go!

more pre writing ideas

Get right into the pre writing tasks for Amahli at the moment and shes loving it :)

It takes me a bit more to prepare it and to get my brain into the right gear but its good for her and its fun, plus its really getting her ready for reading and writing, as well as recognising words and their forms.

Todays cool idea Ive seen and done before with Jumeirah but realised I hadnt done it with this little miss.
All it requires is their name on a piece of paper ( you can write it to save time but mine is printed and laminated so I can use it for other things) and some playdough ( again, you can buy a tub of the gunk or you can make your own awesome stuff)


Get the child to have a look at the letters of their name on the paper. Ask them to make each letter out of dough. They may need a hand to get started, maybe to make the first log to shape, but once they start, it takes off :)

You can give them other words of they want to do more, talk to them about the letters they are forming, let them hear you say the name of the letter and then what it sounds like. This activity is also really good for strengthening muscles in the fingers, so needed for pencil holding and control.

happy easter!! easter hat :)

Happy Easter!


I had some requests to show the final product of Jareds Easter Hat parade hat :)

He had such fun making it, he helped with the design, luckily it was fairly simple and easy to make, I was still tired from making the superheroes costumes!!

So we went with a simple cardboard base as grass and have some painted eggs hiding in the grass. Was easy to make, and he got right into painting the eggs... with some foil, green cardboard and paint we were done in less than half an hour :) Now thats my kind of easter hat ;)

superheroes

Recently I have had a run of making costumes for my kids... from spiders for the Nursery Rhyme parade for Jared, to now making easter hat parade costumes.. I kinda enjoy it, the challenge, the pressure and finally, the result :)

The most recent was a party they had all been invited to.. a Superhero party. Jared was set on being spiderman with a costume he had been given ( YES! thats ONE less!!), Amahli decided she was going to be Foxy Rainbow Girl ( I dont know either... shes creative, that one!) and after some encouragement from daddy ( who made awesome suggestions but then couldnt find the costume thus leaving me to make it...hmmm) Jumeirah decided to be Supergirl. Sure I totally have time to whip that up for you!! not... *sigh*. But I knew she would love it, so I had to at least give it a go :)


Im not going to tell you that this was a piece of cake... or that I didnt swear at least 100  times at it... or that it took me an entire day to make ( stupid stupid ideas!!) but by the afternoon, just before school pickup, I had a costume laid out on her bed :)


And this is how she rocked it :)

And only with a day to spare! Until I realised....

STUPID MUMMY GOT THE DATE OF THE PARTY WRONG.  I was a week out. So I had a week more to curse the outfit... but it meant that I also had three superheroes dressed a week too early... so I did what any sensible photo lovin mum would do...  I shot them ;)

Jared was SO keen to pose for me for the first time ever. I had a vision in my head ( does that ever work though really?) and took a whole heap of shots of him... didnt quite come out how I would have liked but here is his superhero shot post processing... he loves it :) Going to enlarge it to put on his wall.

The girls shots arent done yet.

But the whole process made me realise that as a mum, I push myself hard for them. I dont think I would have done this for me, but they were worth the effort.

What crazy things have done for your kids? or if you dont have kids, what have you done for someone else you wouldnt have done for YOU?