Blob monsters

We've done it a hundred times.... Jared never gets tired of it... Blob painting. I gives him such a delighted thrill to watch his blobs of paint turn into butterflies that when he asked to do it AGAIN, I couldnt say no. I tweaked it slightly which made it even more fun.

Instead of butterflies, I told him we were going to create blob monsters. Using black and white paint, and coloured paper, it was basically the same principle ( one spoon per colour of paint, try not to blob it too close the the edges or it comes out and goes everywhere) but hopefully using different colours we would see something different.

And away we went!
Very quickly the kitchen was covered in creations.

Everytime someone opened their painting up, the rest of us stopped to work out what sort of monster it was... was it scary? does it have sharp teeth? Big eyes?? A big nose?

SO much fun :)

After they had done about 15 each ( I kid you not) they encouraged me to do one.
I blobbed like I was told to, folded over, smooshed it around, and opened to reveal.........

A freakin tiger!! It was yelled by 4 excited people all at once. No mistaking, mummy had created a TIGER :)

Looks like Im hooked too :)

copy me castles

Its raining. Its been raining for almost a whole week, I kid you not. This is the craziest,wettest, non-summer summer I think Ive ever had.
The school holidays are almost at an end and life as I knew it is about to change, AGAIN ( why does it keep doing that??). Jared will go to preschool this year, in preparation for school next year, oh heaven help me. So Im holding on to every moment of these holidays as its about to get really busy!


We did an activity earlier this week which was fun and also pretty productive. Now all of you out there that are against things like in sheets and stencils and things that "stiffle creativity", turn away now.
This craft was all about following instructions, and working to plans.
I really enjoyed it :)
I gave all three kids a piece of paper and told them we were going to draw a castle. Jared immediate response was " I cant draw a castle" but I told him he could and I would help him.


I started with " draw me a long rectangle" and Jumeirah and Jared did that.  Amahli was not to be brought into doing this today ( "give me land lots of land in the country that I love.... Dont fence me in...") and did her own interpretation of a castle.


I then instructed the other two to draw another thinner rectangle on either side of the first one. Jumeirah used her own mind to work out what was desired, Jared copied mine a little bit.
We then drew two small rectangles, with two small triangles on top of the big rectangle.

Last we added flags.

I was totally surprised that Jared was absolutely able to do this task, pretty much exactly how I planned it. he was so incredibly proud of himself for creating a castle that we decided to paint them.

I told them to paint it however they liked.

Jumeirahs was a castle at night, Jared just made his colourful. He also added windows and a door to make it look like a real castle.

So would say it was too product focussed, but sometimes its ok to do it. He got such a buzz out of it I would definitely do it again.

fingerprinting

Everyone was asking for something to do this morning, something "painty" and "fun" ( when do I ever not do anything fun, now really??) and so I got out some oil and acrylic pastels that are just about past their ability to be used and found a small tray to use for some finger painting. (to be honest, I didnt really think it through. Oil pastels are INCREDIBLY tricky to get off fingers/walls/ birdcages/ birds/ clothes/ faces).

Instead of doing to normal things for finger painting, I asked them if they wanted to do something a bit more special. Using some heavier paper, we cut out the shape of a heart for Jumeirah and the shape of a butterfly for Amahli ( do I even need to tell you Jared wasnt keen??) and we attached the outlines to a piece of white thicker paper using blue tac. Then, I gave the girls free reign to print fingers all over the centre cut out.

The beauty of an art like this, they can create from a really young age and it still looks amazing when its done. Sometimes little kids art can look beautiful only to a parent ;) But an art like this is a fantastic project to create to give away for birthday presents or for family gifts.

The girls really enjoyed doing this and both wanted to do more.
Once dried, you can peel off the outline and the beautiful fingerprint art are ready to be framed :)
Ill show you the framed results tomorrow :)

fire flies

My kids are OBSESSED with Glo Sticks. We've had glow baths, dark parties ( Im never invited cos the dark freaks me out) and glo wars ( also not invited, it involves whacking each other in the head with them).

I found something on Pinterest last week that showed someone painting with the liquid inside and with a bit more searching ( pinterest is like that) I found something I KNEW they would love....

I cut off the top of three glo sticks and flicked the liquid inside three glass jars. They were involved in a foxy party ( again, I have no idea, Im really not included!) and I told them to quickly get ready, I had something to show them :)

And hiding behind my back was..........

Fireflies.

Now, Ive never seen a real firefly, we dont have them in Port Macquarie ( are they even in Australia?)

but the gasps and delight that came from these beautiful kids was so funny I struggled to keep a straight face.
Jumeirah eyes got even wider when she saw this photo...... I tried to get her to hold it but she moved but its given the effect of tiny things flying inside. ( yeah I totally meant to do that)

 I told them I had found them in the garden, and that we had to be careful with them. We sat in the dark whilst Jumeirah chatted to them and made up stories about them. They glowed well for about an hour and then started to fade. I had a wonderful time, working with my lovely camera and trying to capture this cute little project :)

Its something I plan to do again..... I love creating wonder and magic whilst they still will believe in it :)

Anybody got real fireflies???

Letters to JJ

The tiny toes I showed you last week belong to a precious new nephew of mine, Jack. He was born last week and has some very cute cousins who are simply besotted with him.
Before he was born, I helped to organise a baby shower for my sister in law. Something simple with some lovely friends and some fun games.

We had a great afternoon spoiling this first time mum to be.
One of the activities I had set up for the guests to do was something I called " Letters for you".
I placed an empty jar on the main table and beside it laid some pens and blue paper ( we knew he was going to be a boy). Each guest was asked at the start of the party to think about something they would like to write to the baby, to be placed in the jar until he was born, and then read with mummy once they were happily settled at home.

( I havent been able to post about it until now as it was going to be a surprise :))


The guests got busy and soon the jar had some lovely looking letters ready to be given to mum-to-be.
When I got home I asked my three if they wanted to do something too. We had taken to calling the baby "JJ" ( Jared Junior in the extended form, and no I didnt name him, Jared did)

Each of my gorgeous littles created a special letter for this baby they had never met, but already loved.

I folded them all up and added them to the jar.

I hope he enjoys reading these letters of love, all written before we even knew him :)

rock candy and patience

Anyone who knows me knows I lack patience. And thats putting it mildly. I love to know, I love to know NOW. If its going to happen, it needs to happen TODAY, or even yesterday would be preferable.

So when Jumeirah told me she would love to make Rock Candy but it does take a week and we "have to leave it ALONE!" I wasnt sure I was going to be able to do that.
To make rock candy we needed a jar, food coluring a heck of a lot of sugar. I followed the recipe ( Im not giving you the one we used, it didnt work. That could be my fault)

We made it to the exact recipe and got the jars ready, At first, we used bamboo sticks rolled in sugar.

On Day 2 when nothing had happened ( see I told ya it could have been my fault), I changed it all over to use pipe cleaner sticks, cos that apparently works better. Most sites tell you you should see something happen by now.

 Unfortunately by Day 4 still nothing had happened, so my sweetest 7 yr old told me not to worry, we would try again.... So it hasnt worked so far but we are determined!! Anyone actually done this and had it work??
The other thing Ive had to wait hard for actually did happen this week ( and thus the reason for lack of blog the last few days). My sister in law had her first baby :)

He took his sweet time, was induced last Tuesday and finally arrived in the very early hours of Sunday morning. But within 3 hours, I had 155 phoos of him :)

I cant show you much as yet ( until I get permission to) but here are some sweet baby toes that were so worth waiting for :)

What are you waiting for??

rainbow biscuits

Yesterday, Jumeirah had a friend over for a play. They both wanted to cook something and Jumeirah had been looking through my blog for ideas ( !) ( I have to laugh at that... like my blog is the greatest for all things cooking! HA!) and found the rainbow biscuits we did sometime last year.
Recipe can be found here

They both really wanted to make them and so we did.


They measured out all the ingredients, mixed, stirred, combined and worked together to form the dough, which for some reason was no where near as sticky as last time and looked a lot nicer too!
They added the food colouring and combined it well and then set to task of outdoing each other in their creations ( as only 7yr old girls can do :) )

We had snails, flowers, rainbows, swirls and love hearts. I baked them for about 15 minutes and they were ready :)

Tasting just delicious, these little delights dissapeared in a matter of minutes. I told Jumeirah we might make some more next week and deliver them around the neighbourhood.




SO easy and fun :)

Rice paper rolls

Today marked the first "official" school holiday day with daddy back at work :) Of course that meant that every craft thing Jumeirah was given for Christmas she wanted to do today, but I managed to hide a few things so it will last the four weeks she still has left!

One thing I wanted to do with them today was to make rice paper rolls, or Viatnamese Spring rolls. I made these a million years ago with a preschool group and have always wanted to do it with my kids.
So with all the things ready to go, we began.

I got Jumeirah to thinly slice all the beans, carrots and snow peas whilst Amahli helped with getting the rice paper ready and the glass noodles.

Once everything was cut up, it was simply a matter of placing a sheet of rice paper in the warm water for 30 seconds and then loading them up!

Jumeirah really got the hang of making these but I wasnt sure if she would be keen to eat it.

Amahli was keen to help, Jared was more keen to play cars ( what is it with this boy??) but happily tried it.
Jumeirah absolutely loved them and ate about 5. I had included ham as well so it became lunch. Amahli was ok with them but them did tend to fall apart but she was happy to still eat them.

I will thrilled to find something new that could be added to a lunch box or to be taken to the beach and it was also something they could pretty much do themselves :)

Healthy, easy and well recieved. Gotta be happy with that :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Wow that was a break longer than expected!!!

I had all intentions of coming back last week, but with daddy still at home ( goes back to work tomorrow) we kinda chilled out and just didnt do a whole heap so I figured I would enjoy the time while it lasted :)

How was all your christmas/new years?? Did you miss me??

I spent Christmas with my family this year for the first time in a long time. My folks are finally retired from the Middle East so it was great to spend Christmas with them.

Some of us were still coping with being lethargic after being sick ( I caught something at the last moment, of course) but we still had a ball. My kids were totally awestruck by the Christmas windows in the city and the HUGE christmas tree and at one point Jumeirah even said " I wished we still lived here!" but away from the pretty lights and hustle and bustle, we spent this afternoon at the beach ( which took us less than 10 minutes to get to) and I realised that this is a perfect corner of the world for us right now :)

We did get to go to one park though, that I loved for many reasons, but the biggest one was it was a huge flash back to about 6 1/2 years ago... this is a photo of Jumeirah and I, in a tree at Fagan park, Dural. It was before I got myself together and became the mum I am today.



I was a new mum, one who thought it would be a piece of cake, but found it so very different to what I imagined. I wish I could go back and hug that self and let her know it would all be ok :) 

This is that mum ( and now much bigger girl!) now :)




Still a mum learning, but one who loves this job more than anything Ive ever done.

The thing that this photo also makes me realise another sad truth.... I still hide behind my kids in photos. THIS year ( yes I have started every year for the last 10 years like this) I am getting rid of the excess baggage... from the mind and from the body.

Its a big year for our little family... new jobs, a new baby in the family ( I cant even tell you how excited I am to be an Aunty again!! Hopefully soon...) and new prospects for me too :)
I still will be at home with two cherubs for most of the week, Jared will start preschool this week for two days so its just me and the monkey for those two days, so I still aim to enlighten you with cool crafts and things. Maybe not everyday, but you'll cope with that :)

Id love to see your blogs too, if you have one!