My Personal Blog

I started a new blog (used to have one but not using that anymore) for all my crafty projects (mainly knitting) that I'm working on.  So now Andy, Jane and me each have a blog to record our interests and enjoy in years to come.  Pop on over to Ann's Work Basket if you're interested in seeing what's on my needles. :)

Some Randomness

Every night we tell Andy to choose some books to read before bedtime.  One night I got met by this!  Andy's bedtime reading selection... Wishful thinking!!!

We had a lovely family outing strawberry picking.  Andy LOVES strawberries.  It's impossible for him to stop eating it even if he's full so I have to do a spot of daily strawberry consumption monitoring.

And of coarse he spends loads of time with his little sister.  Kissing, hugging, cuddling, kissing, kissing, kissing and just in case I didn't mention it... kissing.  Often poor little Jane is caught between Andy attaching her one cheek and me the other with hundreds of kisses :)

Andy's 4th Birthday Party

We had Andy's party at a indoor play place near to where we live called Kidz PlayZone.  And oh boy was it worth every cent!  The kids had a wonderful time and I didn't have any washing up - win/win situation I would say :)

Andy said he wanted a Tigger theme cause he chose the Winnie the Pooh party room so here's some pics of his Tigger party...

Having fun on the trampoline...

Jumping Castle...

The party room...

Party packs on the table.  Tigger buckets with lids...

The cake!  I ordered the cake from them cause I could hardly manage making the adult platters let alone bake and ice a cake.  It was sooooo delicious!  Andy loved it!

Tucking in.  Each party pack for 2 year olds and up had a 'real' cell phone as the party favor.  It's the case of a real cell phone with all the proper buttons and heavy too but obviously without a working screen.  They had such fun making phone calls.  In fact I had to wait for Andy to finish his conversation on his new cell phone before we could cut the cake.

I made some sweet and savoury platters for the adults table...

All in all we had a wonderful time and I will not be surprised if Andy's 5th birthday party is done in exactly the same way.  Why try improove on something that worked so well, hey!? 

HAPPY 4TH BIRTHDAY MY SWEETHEART!

Farm take-along set

I try to have some 'creative' time for myself once a day so whether it's knitting 5 stitches or sewing a bib at least I keep my creative bug under control :)  Another thing I like to do is to read my favourite blogs once a week (usually on a weekend when I have a free hour or two when Luke takes Andy out and Jane is asleep).  I spotted this lovely project on Frugal Family Fun for a Farm take-along toy and I knew I just HAD TO make it for Andy's ever growing collection of farm animal toys.  I started the project about a month ago and completed it last week.  It was so much fun!  It could easily be done in a day if you have the opportunity of sewing without interruption.  It was so simple.  I just took her photo as a guide and made my own out of felt.  The playmat was hand stitched everything else I did on the sewing machine.

For a bit of a 3D effect to the play mat I stitched this lilly pad out of felt...

Andy took it with to his grandparents on the weekend and him and his cousin had such fun playing farm under the dining room table :)

Jelly Sweets Fun

For our activities today we spent some time in the kitchen. First we made some yummy lemon and poppy seed muffins (inspired by the delicious muffins my sister-in-law made on Monday) ...


Then the pirate made some gummy sweets with jelly (we made half the recipe)...


These came out great. It's like eating jelly but just in a much more fun form. It doesn't show up very nice on the photo but we made butterflies, bears and of course dinosaurs...


T-rex didn't survive very long...

Comments

Some of my blog readers have told me they can't post comments so I went through the settings and changed it from 'registered users only' to 'anyone' so there should be no problems with posting comments now.

I know when Andy is older he will look back on this blog and enjoy all your comments.

Thank you!

Rainbow Rice

This is one of the best activities yet! Yesterday we took 4kgs of rice and divided it into 4 large ziplock bags. We put a generous splash of water into each bag, sealed it and squashed it around so all the rice grains were wet then we added a generous splash of food colouring and mixed it around again until it was well coated.


We then put it on trays to dry over night. I lined the trays with foil in case it got stained but it wasn't necessary cause the rice held the colour very well.


I put the rice into a large plastic container that has a lid so now we can store our rice container and play with it whenever we want.


Of course Andy played with it first thing this morning and the colours stayed separate for about a split second but it looks even prettier when mixed.

I bought a mini rake and spade and funnel for him to play with but be collected all his toy animals and insects and they're all having a great time in the rainbow rice (he's playing with it now as I type). You could also make it into a discovery center and hide things in it for them to dig out and find.