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?

prewriting fun

a quieter little Miss yesterday... think she is a bit run down and feeling a little tired from the constant daily grind that has become our busy life... poor thing. Now she knows how I feel ;)


So today we drew, and painted and read books and did a spot of cleaning....
And then I had the request for "homework". Since Jared started school, homework has been a BIg thing in our house. HE LOVES IT! Crazy, I know, considering I had to bribe him to do anything with me but at school hes thriving and loves to be doing all right things, homework being one of them.

So I created Amahli some homework after finding some cool things on Pinterest ( gosh, how boring would my nights be without it!) and she got to work.

The idea behind these flashcards is for the child to copy the pattern or shape on each card and draw it in a box.  I drew her page up into 9 squares so she had a pattern for each square.

You make a pile of the cards, flip one over and try to copy it.
We had some trouble to start with, she instantly said with every one "oh I cant do that!" but with encouragement, she was able to complete them all and went on to fill another two whole pages of symbols and patterns.

Once she has mastered this a bit more, I will change some of the patterns for letters and numbers.

I found it here on pinterest :)

indoor fun

Yet again, two weeks in a row, we have been hit with yet more flooding in our region.
Not quite as severe as the week before, but enough to again cut off parts of Port and cause wide spread damage.
Im not sure how the beaches will ever be the same..... this photo is our version of snow... dirty flying foam!

And so again, we were stuck inside for a weekend. I did take them to the beach for a quick walk but after finding a cow ( or sheep, we arent quite sure) washed up on the beach and  torn in two, we decided to head home.

Now, mostly I am fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda mum. But sometimes I do things REALLY awesomely. Like at christmas and birthdays, I hide half of the booty so that when its crap weather or school holidays or anything like that, we have stuff to do! Its usually all the crafty stuff, and no one has ever really noticed.
But today, when the ferals were reaching their peak, I pulled out the coolest idea ( from jareds birthday two years ago!!)

Make your own jet fighter planes. 4 pack!

And so planes were made and flung around the house for a good hour. ( I hid for part of it but came out a couple of times so as not to get left out ; ))

And then the plan changed to go fly them in the rain! Sure! Go get wet!! And so they did :)


Such fun.... lasted most of the worst of the rainy day, burnt off stored energy, and saved me from the dreaded "Im BORED!"

what are your tricks for rainy days??

floods

Recently, my home town has been subjected to rain. Not a little bit of rain,  not a fair bit of rain, BUT LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS.
So mcu hso, we were declared a national disaster at one point and flooding was extensive and severe.
We were blessed to not be too badly affected, ( manageable flooding, mostly the backyard thankfully)
but our beaches and local  town did not fare as well.

I took the kids to the beach one day last weekend when we had hit day 6 of constant driving rain and this is the sight that we saw.

Huge waves, swollen murky dirty and dangerous seas, and FOAM. It looks cool, its kinda not. Its filthy dirty and very unpredictable.

But we went close enough for long enough to see what it was like.

 

On the way home, I was listening absentmindedly to the radio and it was giving over and over messages of warnings, dangers, flooding, and even two deaths and I quickly shut the radio off.

Jumeirah, from the back of the car, piped up that she wanted to know more. Instinctively I said no, not wanting her to know of the tragedys of life lost, homes ruined, people trapped and stuck, businesses suffering. But then I realised this was a perfect opportunity TO talk about it.
To talk about how to stay safe in this kind of situation. How we could help someone else. What the community will do now. How in the future, if it happens again, what our own plan as a family would be to stay safe and together.

Normally we shy our kids away from things like this. But in talking about it in the time that it was happening, I felt I equipped them more than frightened them. That I gave us all plans on how to stay safe, something they may need someday.

We drove past the beaches for days, noting the signs, the flags, and how they were still crossed over ( sign of a closed beach) and I showed them why it was totally unsafe to be in the water. Jared began to be my reporter on how the water was going down, that the streets were still full of branches and debris, but that shops were again open.

It was a great time of learning that I hope I dont have to do again soon ( the floods I mean, not the learning)

So take the time, right now, to teach, show and impart what you know so your kids can be safe. Dont hide them from all the disasters of the world. Help them to understand and so they in turn know what to do and how to help :)

Im sure Im making better little humans for it :) xx