birthday cake number 2

Yes, he's a lucky boy. We went out for dinner with friends for his 'actual' 5th birthday and it seemed like the right thing to do to take a cake.

Here's the link. I liked the instructions and thought they were easy and clever way to make an elephant face. I preferred the ears the other way around : )

to make an elephant cake

crumb layer

pre candles : )

a happy kid x

my clever husband

We had a lovely Christmas and we're now looking forward to a week of having 'Dad' at home.

My mum suggested I write this post, to document my husbands 'cleverness' in the garden : ). 

Using old weatherboards he built a planter box in an un-used part of our garden. The bowling club next door to us re-laid their green after the quakes so they gave away the old soil. J must've gone there and back 700 times with his wheelbarrow to fill it with soil.

The garden sits next to the garage and gets lots of sun ( but today it's raining). We have tomatoes, pumpkin and watermelon growing as well as sunflowers and some other flowers he told me about but I've forgotten their names. I love the mini glasshouse he made using some old glass cupboard doors and the planting table he's made from bits we had around.

In the back garden we're growing potatoes ( which were yum for our xmas eve dinner), courgettes, corn, beetroot and onions.

the kids planted the sunflowers

home made mini glasshouse

a wee pumpkin!

love the bumble bees

that greyish spiky leaf is watermelon and the orange flower I'm told is "just good for the garden"

that pink flower is for my garden, he knows  I love the flowery cottage look.

spoon bugs

This idea came from an art programme the kids watch called Mr Maker. There's a segment on the show called minute makes. These spoon bugs are supposed to take that long to make but M and T spent half an hour on this making and painting their bugs.

The instructions were to use clay and cut up cotton buds but we used plaster of paris and cut up pipe cleaners. An air drying clay like Das would be perfect for this.

1. Pour the plaster into the spoons and poke the legs in, 3 each side for bugs (4 each side for spiders!). We found that we had to prop up the spoon a bit to stop the plaster coming out.

2. Let it dry and once dry push the bug out of the spoon.

3. Turn it over to stand on its  legs, paint and add eyes.

I was going to give ours a spray of clear varnish but as soon as they were dry they were taken out into the garden for adventures.

I thought these would also make fun fridge magnets.

M's 6th crafternoon tea

Unicorn, pink, mint and gold theme. They made these unicorn terrariums decorated their party hats, played stick the horn on the unicorn and squealed- A LOT : )

Inspiration-  a ' I have to have it' ceramic unicorn from Typo

wetlands walk

A few Saturdays ago it was a beautiful day in ChCh. While M was at a birthday party I took T for a walk at the Travis Wetlands. There was plenty to see there...

 

lots of pukekos that make fun calling sounds to each other

map reading, I picked this one up from the CCC offices (when I was paying a parking fine!)

he loves maps x

spider nests

swamps with cool red weed growing in them

weeping willow trees swaying in the breeze

 

beautiful scenery

pretty coloured leaves x

 Lots of fun, you should go and walk it : )

pin the tail

Last party post I promise : ) I wanted to show you this easy peasy idea- a pin the tail on the giraffe game. I asked T to choose a picture of a giraffe from a clip art internet search. I love it when they help out like this. We drew little tails, wrote the party kids names on them and put double sided tape on the back. We peeled the backing off the tail and gave it to them just before they were blindfolded and spun for their turn.