garden fun

Big changes are happening in our backyard soon... ones that I am pretty excited about :)
When we first moved in, we made a gorgeous little fairy glen in a small section of our yard. I wasnt sure anything would grow, but surprisingly, it did. We added herbs, tomatoes, beans, carrots and flowers. Everything grew at quite an amazing rate!

The area behind this little patch is huge and was supposed to be used for the trampoline and a play area. But the bark chips arent feet friendly, and we now need a MUCH bigger trampoline... and so after some begging ( on my part) and working out( on hubbins part) we are going to turn this whole area into a veggie patch. Its going to be magnificent :)
Today, Jared wanted to water the current mini patch and so I got him to carefully do that. He is a very funny gardener, he sings and talks to every plant and is such a delight to watch.







He was excited to find a new tomato growing, then picked my tiny not-quite-ready capsicum ( will have to have some lessons on when things are ready to be picked) and drowned my gerbera. *sigh*

But he is beginning to show the same love of being in the garden and helping things to grow. Amahli was thrilled to be allowed to help too :) Although she would have rather watered herself...

Anybody know whats easy to grow?? I want sweet potato, potato, beans, snow peas, carrots and corn.. the fairly standard on our dinner table. Nothing is ready to plant yet, I need to landscape the area a bit first to make it walk throughable but hopefully over the next month or two....stay tuned!

And, whilst I am on all things gardeny and flowery, want to know the best way to take photos of them??
Five things I have learnt:
1) lie down and take it on the plant level. look at the difference in these two photos, one from above, one from ground zero.

2) lightly spray them with water. Its amazing how different a photo can be when you add the sparkly element of water.

3) Get in as close as your camera will let you without going fuzzy. The details in petals,buds, bark or stamen is incredibly detailed and capturing that can make for a great photo.

4)Look for the little things... whilst happy snapping my garden, Jared pulled me away to look at this...
Its a tiny spider web that caught a few of his drops. Totally fascinating.

5) Always look for garden rainbows. Jared helped to make this one for me today..

Once we had finished in the garden, we read this book called "Up, down and around" and talked about what things grow up above the ground and what things grow down below the ground.

Such a great book to help us on our new little garden venture.

I have another one coming called "Grow it, Eat it" so hopefully with that I will be off to a great start!!

Are you in the garden today? Link here to show us all!

playing with shadows :)

Found three lovelies crouched down outside this arvo, totally engrossed by an amazing find..... baby spiders in the drain :) Oh, for a macro lens......




Almost hit my word limit for the day...(apparently women use about 20 000 words a day whilst men only use about 7000. I reckon its double if youre a mum) I reckon I used probably more than 10 000 of these sitting waiting in a Doctors surgery trying to keep three bored children amused with a book, my wallet and a fish tank. I think I mentally used waaay more than this on the woman ( sans children I have to add) who kept throwing filthy looks at the fact that my supposedly sick children were chattering away like happy monkeys. Its not like they were even being naughty or noisy, just rather like... well.... children really! Grrrr......

So heres what we did today :)
Such a gorgeous day here, perfect for shadow play.

We let our shadows touch fingers

Jared hid in mummys shadow and made a "crocodile!" (??)

We jumped on top of shadows

Amahli, (who totally couldnt work out why she couldnt grab hold of it) kissed "shadow duck"

Shadow duck nibbled on shadow Jared

Shadow duck about to peck Amahli

We fed shadow duck shadow carrots ( cos thats what shadow ducks eat dont you know?)

We flew and chased shadow planes

What do you play with your shadows? Anyone else got an pictures to share?

Puzzled/ watercolour painting

Now doesnt this look like fun??? 7 loads of washing to fold... Luckily Greys Anatomy is on...

I got out some puzzles today for my littles. I dont do them enough, probably because I hate missing pieces.. and I have two people that are notorious for hiding them to "find" only to forget where they were hidden... but as they arent that well and need a lot of distracting, I got them out.

This week Amahli has truly amazed me. She is growing up so fast and is doing activities I set out for the bigs and having no trouble at all. I gave her some really simple peg piece puzzles to start with, thinking she'd be here for a minute then give up. She sat and completed this transport puzzle and said " I did it!" quickly follwed by "more?"

I have always done puzzles in stages. First is the simple peg puzzles that have knobs for easy grip for little fingers.

This first stage also has the picture underneath so it can easily be matched.

Second stage is knob puzzles but without the picture underneath. You have to try and work out which shape is the same and try it.



It takes more concentration, more turning pieces around, to get them to fit.With each piece I heard the triumphant " I did it!" She also finished this one without any help and asked "more?"




Next stage is puzzles without the knobs but that have simple slide together pieces ( not as yet interlocking). We have a good one that also has the picture underneath so I can be matched quite easily. This one she was able to match the pieces with the puzzle board but needed a little bit of help to get all the pieces in.

And then she went back and began the first two puzzles again on her own :)

Jared watched Amahli, and followed her "I did it!" with a very mummy sounding " Yes you did!"

He didnt want to do the puzzles at first, but I played the memory game with one of the puzzle which he loved, and he put each piece back after guessing which one was missing. I then took out all the pieces and he told me "harold" ( helicopter) was going to try and do it.

Since the day was so glorious, we decided to do some painting outside. Amahli has been walking around with paintbrushes for the last few days saying "now? paint?" so I figured I would ler her today.
Simple Water colour painting today, seeing as they have been enjoying making their own creations rather than mummy-directed ones lately. I put out 4 colours of food colouring and 4 different thickness of brushes so they could experiment. Amahli was straight in.

"Ooh"ing and "Aahh"ing over each brush stroke she really got into it.

And then she REALLY "got into it". I turned for half a second (yup thats all it takes) to put her first painting aside and give her another piece of paper, when she did this. So now whilst I am still Avatar green from yesterday, she is now a shocking shade of pink. :)


My, arent we pretty.

Jared came over and sat down once Amahli and the paint had been removed. He told me he was going to paint something. And so he set to work.

His stage of painting is to only use one colour at a time on a page. Jumeirah did this for ages, only really using more than one colour if I asked her to. Jared also paints like this as he doesnt like to mix the colours as often it looks "messy". He did finally paint with a few colours on one page but he was very careful not to let the colours mix or touch too much.

Today he carefully did these amazing works.

A car (which, for probably only the second time, I can actually see it!)

A face (I can see this one too!)



I am also being really good and not directing him in his art. Hes much better at creating than I am anyway :)

Amahlis completed masterpiece

pastel drawing/ goop

Body art, wet chalk style :)

Rainy and grey today... all my loves arent well with coughs and colds and general splutterings in all directions. So it was a quiet day with lots of cuddles and a touch of tv :)

Whilst Jared was happily perched watching Thomas, Amahli went hunting in the craft cupboard and pulled out the pastels that Jared has drawn with yesterday.

I LOVE pastels. Creamy and smooth, the colours are vibrant and fun :) They have long been a favourite in our house although I havent really let Amahli use them because they are also incredibly smudgy and messy. And she attracts mess like nothing I've ever seen.....

But today, I was feeling cruisy and so I let her use them.

Until now, she as scribbled in a random way, enjoying the feel of the crayon or pencil ran across a page, experimenting with using each hand, learning how to hold and control pencils or crayons, rather than creating an actual picture. This is a really important part of learning to draw and using drawing implements and I have enjoyed watching her experiment with them. But today, for the first time, she was focused on the page and what she was drawing.

I watched as she amazed herself at the picture appearing,( stifling the need to giggle every time she pulled a surprised face) each colour contributing to her picture.




When finished, I asked her about her creation. She responded " a bainbow!" ( rainbow).
Proud little girl, proud mumma :)



Being an insidey day, I thought that they would enjoy doing something different. I found some cornflour and set to making Goop. Another of my favourite things, goop was one of the first things I made on Prac at my first preschool centre, about 16 years ago ( wow I'm old!). I used it for tactile play, sensory play for a vision impaired child, cooking play for weeks for a funny group of 5 yr olds, and a heck of a lot of mixing/adding/pouring/measuring play.
What I didnt think of was it is a VERY tactile experience and messy looking. None of mine would go near it. I even tinted it a lovely lurid green and got stuck into it myself, they watched with faces of disgust. Jared humoured me and stuck a finger in but wanted to wash it straight away. Amahli, who is normally pretty keen, decided it was a bit too much for her too. And so, whilst they played in the sandpit I set up in the undercover outdoor area, I played in Goop :)





Quite an amusing thing, trying to take photos whilst one hand is covered in strange green goop. Its such an interesting mixture, its a liquid and a solid. You can roll it into a ball, only to let it go and have it ooze through your fingers. And its incredibly soothing to play in.








On a slight improvement, both little ones were fascinated with me tipping the container of goop and letting it run down to the other end. It looks like waves at the beach, and is quite mesmerizing. Jared even went so far as to tip it back and forward himself.

I'll get them in it yet :)
And I am now a lovely Avatar green....
v

making car tracks: practising those cutting skills

The weekend saw us at the Laurieton Lantern Festival. We havent ever been to one of these before, and we were all a bit excited!

Laurieton is a fairly quiet coastal town, about half an hour from where we live. I have only been there a handful of times. I wasnt really sure what to expect but the bigs and me set off anyway on our night time adventure. (littlest miss and daddy arent really well so they stayed home).

I am not a fan of driving at night, but after only getting semi lost once, we made it and found somewhere to park. Unfortunately, I didnt notice the large amount of mud we parked in, and when I tried to reverse it, the wheels spun quite happily. Around and around and around. Big Miss burst into tears saying we'd be here forever, but luckily for me, some men came and helped us out. I really felt like such a girl but what else could I do? Anyways, after getting our car back out, and completely covering these nice men in nice pants with lovely mud, we headed down to the waterfront to wait for the lanterns.




And wow! They didnt dissapoint!






We had a great time cheering and waving in the complete darkness :)


Last week, Jared found a pair of scissors down the back of the lounge ( yes its a great place to keep them, dont you think?? NOT) and asked to do some cutting. I gave him some black paper to begin with. Instead of snipping around the edges as he loves to do though, I drew a line down the centre and encouraged him to cut along that so we could make a road. He was quite happy to do this and did really well.



He actually enjoyed this buit so much be asked me for another line to cut along :)

I gave him a yellow pastel to draw the lines on, then we stuck it down. We found some car stickers to stick on the road as well. He got a blue pastel and decided to make some "water" and stuck boats in the middle.

Wouldnt this be a nice drive around the lake?? Except for the large amount of police cars, it looks like the perfect Sunday drive :)