computer dramas

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I have this lovely message coming up for over an hour tonight...

I dont know what Ive done, but Im hoping that once its had a little rest overnight, it will restore itself to being the helpful little machine Ive come to love... otherwise Im turfing you out computer!!! So I pulling an archive...even though I spent ages writing a post through a throbbing headache *sigh*....

This was art we did an age ago ( like last year) but seeing it again, I think we might do it on Friday!


Yesterdays craft was a fun and easy one, although it was easier still as its one of the ones I prepared last weekend. I get delivered boxes of The Body Shop loveliness at least once or twice a week. And in each box, aside from there being some beautiful smells, there is also a tonne of bubble wrap!


So I tried to think of a way to do bubble printing without it being a complete mess and worked out that if I kept the bubble wrap stiff, it would be easier to paint on and turn over to print..... so last sunday night, I cut cardboard up and covered it with bubble wrap :) Easy :)

Jumeirah was the only taker for this one but the other two will get a chance again on friday.

She covered one side of the bubble wrap in paint

Then flipped it over ( easy to do as it was stiff) and pressed down

Then lifted to reveal a gorgeous bubbly pattern!





She did a whole heap of these.. we both loved the patterns it made.
Good one to use to make wrapping paper. And the best part was, seeing as I sealed the cardboard in so well, I just rinsed them under water and they are good to go again!
If you dont have any bubble wrap on hand, you can buy it from Big W or the post office. We will be using it for more crafts next week.

does it float or sink?

Another dull and dreary day in Port.. luckily it only rained a little bit because this weather is getting a bit ridiculous!!

I read a book to Jazz last night called " who sank the boat?" about a cow, pig, sheep, goat and a mouse who all try to get into boat. It doesnt sink until the mouse tips it over the edge. And so this morning we got to talking about what floats and what sinks and so we set up a simple experiment to test out our theories.

We started by testing out marbles, a tennis ball, matchsticks and paddlepop sticks. We each had a guess about whether it would float or sink before placing it in the water.
Jared thought this was pretty cool, watching in excited anticipation to see which way each thing would go.

Tennis balls float... they also splash everything when you drop them at height. Thanks for discovering that Amahli.

Phones (even rock phones) will never EVER float.

We then tested how many marbles would sink each tray. We talked about how it wasnt the mouse that actually sank the boat but all of them put together sank it. And so we had to guess how many marbles it would take to sink each lid.

The meat tray took the whole jar of marbles! The best thing about this part was when you move the marbles so its even amount on both sides, we couldnt get it to sink. Its only when they were all bunched up together that it sank.




It was such a simple fun sciencey thing to do with great results. He talked all day long about what else would float or sink and then found an activity on ABC kids website that showed him more ways to float and sink things.

All in all it was something fun to do to challenge little brains. That is until Jumeirah came home and wanted to do it all too and then asked me " Mum, if a plane weighs hundreds of kilos and is really heavy, why doesnt it sink??" which is where I told her " Thats a great question! Why dont you google it and find out and then work out a way to teach me??" :)

project 52

Im entering this photo in the Paper Mama's photo competition: your best shot of a child.

I have hundreds of photos of my children and so many of them are the best for various reasons... good lighting, well captured smile.... perfect moment.
I had trouble picking just one, of just one child.

This one of Amahli totally captures the cheeky, heart melting, loving, demanding soul that she is.
She drives me to despair, and then turns and smacks me with a great whopping smoochy kiss and all is forgotten. She will push me to my limits, only for me to find I still have patience and love at the bottom of the barrel. She is adored by her siblings, and adores them in return.
She is a little ray of sunshine.
She is difficult, but she is oh so worth it.

She is loved. Even when shes rotten, I find something of her that I truly cannot find anywhere else, that is totally lovable.

She is one of my greatest blessings.

rainbow cake

Last week, a friend commented that she was incredibly time short and was worrying about how she was going to get everything done for her daughters birthday as well as all the rest of the things she had to do... I (either being really kind or really stupid, probably a bit of both) offered to make her cake.
The request was a "rainbow cake". And so last friday I set to task to make a rainbow cake to end all rainbow cakes :)

I used a packet mix cos I knew it would be super moist ( after all, thats what it said on the box!) but I wanted it to be more than just rainbow on the OUTSIDE, I wanted it on the INSIDE too!
I so armed with a heck of a lot of food colouring and a sense of adventure, my gang and I began.

Firstly, we mixed the batter, broke eggs ( both in the bowl and on the floor) and stirred and stirred. Once the batter was ready we tinted it 5 different colours.

Then, after lining a tray, I poured a colour into the tray, right in the centre. ( I saw this idea for here..her bowl photo is way cooler than mine ) The next colour we poured directly on top of the first colour and so on. Once all 5 colours were poured, we mix up another lot of batter, tinted again, and began to relayer as before.


This is what it looked like all layered up :) Isnt she pretty??!



Once it had cooked and cooled ( and had been extracted by brute force from the tray.... why does this always happen??) we took the top off to make it flat. I was so amazed and pleased at the super bright colours on the inside of this cake!

Whilst I cursed and swore attempted to ice the cake, I had Amahli and Jared sort the smarties out for me ( they arent real smarties cos they dont do bright colours anymore. These were called Beanies) into different sections of plates so we could easily make the rainbow on top of the cake.
After a second attempt at making the icing stick to the cake and not pull all the crumbs of in a mess, I conquered and we were ready to decorate!


Using beanies, we made a gorgeous arc to begin our rainbow. Colours were almost by correct colour (ROYGBIV) and it looked so fantastic when it was done. The finishing touch was to end each side of the rainbow with white mini marshmallows as clouds :)





So cute this cake was :) And luckily for us, we got to eat the left over top piece ourselves!
Anyone else done any cool cake decorating lately??

DIY Mobile phones :)

Yesterday I had all three cherubs at home again... beginnings of conjunctivitis for 1/3 and 3/3 so I didnt risk sending the eldest to school. Mister Middle was crouchy as all heck so a day trip was needed. Thankfully, daddy rang and told me of a cool happening not too far down the road from us so we hopped in the car and headed off.

Lake Cathie ( pronounced cat-eye) is a great place to take kids. Its got a great swimming lake, a park, and lots of places to sit and watch. The lake is walk-across-able ( for adults) and has been a fun place to visit pretty much all year round. My kids jump in the blow up boat and are pulled to the other side, then run across the sand to the beach. Unfortunately, the only thing I dont like about it is the fact that the water is the colour of tea. Along the banks of the lake are lots of teatree trees and the tint the water. Its safe to swim in, but it doesnt look that appealing to me! So, once a year, they open up a channel to the sea to clean it out and fill the lake again. A few months ago we watched the diggers make a huge channel and then spent two weekends in a row swimming through the rapids that had been created between lake and sea. But with all the flooding rain we had last week, the channel closed.
Yesterday, they began the process of opening it again which meant more diggers to watch at the beach!


one girls curls... almost grown back after a hairdresser fun ...

We had a great time watching them, pretending to be them, and running around on the sand. As I sat and watched between diggers and the kids, I could hear Jared having a heated discussion... only no one was talking back to him. I turned to find him mid gesture, and happily ranting on a phone... HUH? Doing a double take I realised that he had found the perfect phone shaped rock!
The girls, seeing this, wanted their own phones and so we found another two phone rocks and all three paced the beach ranting on their phones :)



When we got home, they wanted to decorate their phones, and so I got out paint, and Jumeirah found on the computer, a picture of an iPhone to print out.

Once the rocks were painted, I mod podged over the printed iPhone pic on the other side of the rock and we left them to dry.


Once dry, these phone were a hit all afternoon.... I wish I could have recorded the conversations because it was so funny to hear what I sound like on the phone ... Jumeirah just didnt give them a chance to respond, Jared was all gestures and laughs and Amahli kept yelling " No you cant have anything to eat!" whilst covering the phone with her hand....

Stick Construction

Day 6 of rain.... have we hit your news screens yet?? We have major flooding in our region, luckily for us we live on a kill so its not too bad here but lots of Port and surrounding areas have been evacuated...
Thankfully a watery yellowish orb appeared late this afternoon and will now hopefully stay for a little while so things can dry out!

This morning I needed something new for my ever so slightly stir crazy kids and so I hunted something down from the craft cupboard and turned out with paddlepop sticks, skewers and matchsticks. I thought maybe we could glue them together with hot glue and create some cool masterpieces!


They were relatively keen to give it a go and so we plugged in the glue gun and talked about how hot it would get. They talked about the sticks and what they could make ( well, sort of).
We started with cardboard as a base with skewers sticking it it to give them a start.
Once the glue was hot enough, I asked them to choose the sticks, then glued it, then they stuck it on where they liked.
It took a while for them not to ponder the wonders of the world each time I passed them a loaded glued stick ( it hardens pretty quick so you have to stick it fast) but once we had done a few, they both got the hang of it. I ended up gluing blobs of glue where ever they wanted and they stuck how they chose.







Probably something that would suit older kids more but they did enjoy something different. Next time we might add more things to it like fabric, ribbon or other fancys to make it more decorative :)

No blog tomorrow, I have a mission of a day with Jumeirahs dance concert at school, then to make a cake for a friends daughters birthday, then the school pick up run, swimming lessons, fly home and cook tea, then off to work!! PHEW! Im tired just thinking about it :)

Happy weekend!!

Window painting and marble ramps

Day 4 ( or is it 5??) of rain... and this is no ordinary rain.. this is thump the life outta ya grass/washing/anything left outside kinda rain. I have always said to my mum " It rains the ocean in Port" and currently Im waiting for the octopus to fall for the sky. Seriously!

So it was yet another day indoors and a day to keep my littles happy.
To start with, I set up Amahli with some simple, window painting ( can you see a theme here with the simple stuff? Really, they are so much happier when they can just enjoy a craft rather than it being so complex that I am carrying on for them to do it longer cos it took so long to set up!) where I stuck 6 A4 sheets of paper in two sections, one for her, one for him.

I gave her water colour paint ( made from food colouring) and tiny brushes. Each container of paint had a sponge in the bottom to soak up most of the liquid so to save us from spills ( we are doing this on carpet) and it also prevents drips from paint pot to page.
Tiny brushes encouraged finer detail to work, and it would also take her longer to fill up her pages :)






Jared hid in his room until he realised it wasnt messy, then came to paint too. Starting with spots he told me he'd finished after 30 seconds. I told him "ok" and went back to concentrating on praising Amahlis efforts. He watched for a bit, then decided he wasnt quite finished and continued to paint, which I encouraged. He then had a go at painting his name which he was very pleased about and ended up staying here for about 25 minutes!


Wonders will never cease.



Amahli showing me where she had painting "fire".



Later in the morning, I needed something fun for them to do whilst I began a new project for Jared. Hes desperate for an over the shoulder bag and I never have any time to do it so I thought if I could set them up with something busy, I could have maybe, 15 minutes?? Maybe???

So we dragged an old pool noodle, cut it in half long ways, pinned it together with skewers, and made a cool marble run. We have done this before but somehow the noodle went missing ( possibly thrown out by a husband who may have mistaken it for rubbish. Hhmmm) but it was a favourite then and it was a favourite today too.





I gave them each about 20 marbles to race down the track and into the box. I was quickly told " good bye Mum, you can clean now" which was que to run to my craft room for a few minutes. I got about 40 minutes in total... bag will be finished tomorrow :)

memory cards

Its a public holiday here today, to celebrate the Queen :)

Which means daddy and Jumeirah got a bonus day off :) Unfortunately we are on day 4 of constant rain ( no really, its getting ridiculous) so we havent really done a whole lot but play inside and relax..
I went a bit crazy this arvo and braved the darkening weather (with my camera, I might add, which was a tad dumb but oh so fun) and took these shots in between running for cover in the rocks and getting stranded in the middle of nowhere trying to not panic about the rising high tide....

Totally worth it ;)





Last week I did an activity for Jared which totally amazed both him and me. I wanted to make him some dinosaur cards to play snap or memory with but he was totally not wanting Dinosaurs and wanted Pirates instead ( ahh such a short lived love that one) and so we made a set of pirate cards.
I made them with clip art from Lettering Delights. Its a great website that I have been surprised how much I use it. ( yes I am kinda affiliated with them, but not really. It just is a really cool site cos I use it for card making and scrapping too. They dont know Im using them tonight in this blog). So we chose which pics we wanted and then made them into cards using my trusty laminator ( dont leave home without one!) and some white cardstock.

Sitting down, I really wondered how long this game would last. The cards had taken a good half an hour to make and laminate and he was thrilled the help the entire process. I had the funny feeling once he saw the game he wasnt going to be interested. But, I set it up, explained the way it was played and we began to play.
I only set up eight cards ( four pairs) for the first round and he absolutely flogged me. Without any help at all. Ok, so I totally underestimated you again, buddy. Second round we used the whole pack of cards ( 12 pairs) and he nailed me again. Third round I won, but he helped me. Seriously, this kid has an awesome memory! I was really surprised as he hasnt really ever shown this. The best part was he was SO proud of himself. I think he surprised himself at being able to beat me and knowing I wasnt cheating to make that happen.

I was really a very proud mumma and we played for over an hour with the little, simple home made cards.

I plan to make a few more sets for some friends this week, have you made yourself a set??


(and if you want to see a but more of my clickin love, I have now created a Karina Baker Photography page on facebook :). Id love some more likes over there!)