little boats

We've had a busy day outside today, our girl fell asleep at 3- which is not like her so I found myself having some pretty rare 1-1 time with my little man. He loves Maisy Mouse and earlier in the day he'd seen a story about her making a little boat and floating it in a pond. He asked of we could make a boat so I agreed and we made a tinfoil 'canal' to float it in. I love how in the video you can hear him huffing and puffing trying to blow his wee boat along.

dinosaur garden

My husband is a little bit of a hoarder and had kept the old corner sink we took out of our bathroom. I found a use for it today so the children helped me make them a dinosaur garden. We have pots of succulents everywhere and plenty had little new bits (I'm sure there's a proper name for them) that we picked off and planted. My boy had the idea to add some leaves so the dinosaurs could hide if they wanted to.

interviews

I really enjoy following ( and making) family traditions and as a result, building memories. We have some Christmas and birthday traditions already. One is an album with a photo of the children on their birthdays sitting on my favourite wooden chair. I love seeing how much they've grown over the years and I think it will be special to look back on as adults. Recently I had the idea to interview them every January as a sort of beginning of the new year tradition. I sat down with each of them and explained that I was going to ask them some questions and that they could have as much time as they needed to answer- no rush. They loved it and felt pretty important : ). I've printed them off and glued them into their pre school portfolios. Here's the questions I asked, of course you could adapt it to suit your family.

How old are you? 
What color is your hair?
What color are your eyes?
What's your favorite food?
What's your favorite song?
What's your favorite treat?
What' s your favorite color?
What's your favorite animal?
What's your favorite book?
What's your favorite shop?
What do you like to do with Dad?
What do you like to do with Mum?
What is your favorite TV programme?
What’s your favourite movie?
Who are your friends?
Have you had a favourite holiday?
What's your favorite thing to do outside?
What's your favorite thing to play inside?
What do you want be when you grow up?
Is there a food that you think is yucky?
What are you good at?
What was your favourite Christmas present?
If you could have a wish what would you wish for?

interviews

play dough

Play dough is really popular in our house. I thought I'd share our recipe as it's always come out well and it's an un- cooked version. Just put the dry ingredients in a bowl and then add in the wet ones:

This is enough dough for 2 or 3 children to play with

1 cup of table salt
2 1/2 cups of standard flour
1 1/2 tablespoons of cream of tartar
1/2 cup of oil ( just the cheap stuff!)
food colouring
2 cups of boiling water

Stir, squish, knead and you're done. I store ours in an icecream container in the fridge. I've used 1 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of cornflour when we were short on flour and it still came out well, in fact the cornflour gave it a nice velvety feel so I'll probably do it again. You can add some glitter for 'fancy playdough' as my kids call it.

A teaspoon, just to give you an idea of how much this recipe makes.

chalkboard paint

This is a portrait of me by the way, I look tired!

I LOVE this stuff, I've had to rein myself in a bit to avoid painting blackboards all over the house. The photos for this sum it up really 1) take an old print, mine was $3 from an op shop 2) paint with blackboard paint 3) leave to dry somewhere dust free 4) ask a child to draw a picture 5) hang on wall and enjoy until 6) rub it out and draw another!