Our 2011 Advent Calendar

The idea for our calendar came to me when I was in Woolworths buying some birthday gifts and I spotted some Christmas chocolates with a little felt Christmas stocking ornament attached to it.  My mind started working over time and the result was a felt stocking for each day to hold a treat and I strung the lot onto a festive ribbon and mounted it on our lounge wall near our Christmas tree.

Andy wanted to help so he embroidered the two orange stockings with bells cut out of felt and I embroidered his name and the year on it so that we will remember in years to come...

I inserted an eyelet into each stocking to put the ribbon through and decorated each with whatever I created or had on hand...

I made sure it was high enough to be admired but not within reach to be handled LOL!  I've learnt from previous years that treats seem to mysteriously vanish when within reach of certain people :)

So when it's time to receive the daily treat I simply slip the one side off and lower it for collection :)

We are also doing an eBook this year called Truth in the Tinsel. I first heard about this over at one of my favorite blogs Love and Lollipops.  I fell in love with the idea of having scriptures, discussions and an ornament activity laid out for you to do each day!  My husband bought the book for us on the 30th of November when the kids and I were up in the mountains on the annual Homeschool camp (unfortunately he couldn't join us this year due to work commitments) so when I came back on the 3rd of December I printed it out, put each little clue picture in our advent calendar along with the treats and then we played some catch up over Saturday and Sunday.  So now we've started the new week up to date on our Advent calendar and almost up to date with the washing from the camp :)

I will be blogging our Truth in the Tinsel Advent journey.

Lap Harp

Andy loves playing on his lap harp.  It's lovely to hear his natural musical abilities being expressed as he follows the little notes but keep perfect timing even though he doesn't fully understand the timing of different notes yet.  The lap harp comes with handy little music sheets that have the notes underneath the right string so that it makes it very enjoyable and easy for young children with no frustration involved :-)

Yanky Doodle is by far his favourite song to play :-)

As a family that doesn't own a TV (by choice) we appreciate the developing skills and delightful entertainment by candlelight after supper...

Playmat Tutorial And Give Away

Okay, here's the tutorial and giveaway I promised.  Phew, now I remember why I haven't blogged in so long.  To get the housework and washing up to date and the kids playing and happy in order to sit down to blog is no joke. As I type I have Jane breastfeeding and a little hand trying to contribute some text to my blog post :)

Anyway, this tutorial won't be super detailed but hopefully it'll make sense and at the end I'll give the details of the give away.

Cut two circles of fabric (whatever size you want your playmat to be).   I used the kids' little round dinning table as a template.  

Cut a pond out of felt and tack it to the circle of fabric that you will be using for the inside of the playmat. I mounted the area onto a large embroidery hoop to keep things in place and level.  Then use embroidery thread and secure the felt onto the playmat by doing a blanket stitch edging. Please don't think skipping tacking will save you time because in the long run it will cost you time to unpick things when they start going skew.  It only takes a few moments to tack your felt in place SO DO IT!

This is the template I free-handedly cut for the caves.  The felt in the picture is held double with the fold on the left.

Cut as many caves as you want and then TACK it onto your fabric and blanket stitch it down with matching color embroidery thread.

Put the two circles of fabric wrong sides together and stitch it together along the edge with as small a seam allowance as possible.  This is just to keep the two layers together and in place for you to stitch the bias binding on.  Stitch the binding all the way around with matching thread.  Now for the eyelets.  If you don't have a eyelet tool then make button holes on your sewing machine or by hand.  I found a knitting needle the same size as the eyelets make a great hole so you can place the eyelet over the created hole and then press it down with the eyelet tool.

When your eyelets are spaced as desired you can take some cord in a matching color to your fabric and thread it through making a knot on each end so that it doesn't pop back through the eyelets again while in use.

To fold your playmat up, simply pull on the cord and tie a bow.  This is really nice and compact and you can even store your little toy animals inside to save space.

And last but not least, get down on the floor and join in with the fun by playing animals with your kiddos.

Being my first tutorial I hope that made sense!  I got the idea of making this when I saw this blog post at Loving little Sweetpeas linked through this blog post at Love and Lollipops.

Now for the give away...

The last two pictures above shows the playmat I made for the give away.  I will let it run from now till 31 October 2011 by which date I will pull a number up on a random number generator and announce the winner.  All you have to do to enter is leave a comment to this blog post.

Welcome back to me!!! :)

After moving in Feb, not having Internet for too many months and now not having a home pc (cause I managed to break it) I couldn't resist anymore and am doing this blogging in a longer rather more tedious way on the iPad. I'm hoping to get my blogging done on Hubby's laptop in the evening so I'm going to set one evening a week in which I hijack his laptop for an hour or two to get my blogging done.

I'm not going to even start to attempt to catch up on what we've been up to in the last 7 months but I will disclose what my future blogging will hold!

Amongst many other sewing projects I've finished, I sewed a round play mat that folds into a bag for Andy. I got this idea off of a link in a blog post on love and lollipops (a link to love and lollipops can be found in my sidebar). I not only made one for Andy but I took step by step photos cause the blog post I got it from only had a picture not a how-to so I figured it out by myself. But not only am I going do a tutorial I also made an extra one for FUNdamentals' very first give away. I guess it's a sort of welcoming-myself-back-into-the-blogging-world gesture :)

So keep your eyes peeled for a play mat tutorial and give away but don't hold your breath cause I first have to hijack a laptop from my software developer husband which might sound easier than it is ;) LOL!!!

Snack Ideas

Snacking is essential for kids.  I found that the only time Andy gets really irritated or moody is when he's hungry (just like us adults do) so I thought I'd share my way of dealing with snack times.  This also came in especially handy with the addition of Jane to our family because inevitably Andy would ask for a snack when I'm putting Jane to sleep or nursing her.  Every morning I prepare his 'snack box' while I prepare breakfast (either raw rolled oats with fresh fruit, nuts and yogurt or cooked oats with milk and honey or fruit salad with yogurt or homemade whole wheat pancakes are a few of our breakfast choices, both my husband and I agree that sugary cereals don't enter this house!!!)

I use my Tuperware cake holder which is perfect because he can lift the lid on and off by himself and it keeps the food covered and fresher as well as keeping flies out. 

I base it on 80% variety fresh fruits, some protein (nuts, cheese, biltong etc.) and a little carb.  I keep the starchy foods to a minimum because his set meals contain a lot of this e.g. oats for breakfast, homemade bread for lunch and pasta, rice etc. for supper.

So here's a few examples...

Full cream yogurt, homemade bread with cheese, banana, plum, grapes...

Grapes, cling peach, rough oat cakes, cheddar cheese, droewors (dried sausage)...

Cling peach, apple, grapes, sliced mango, carrot sticks, biltong, droewors...

This snack was just a quick morning snack cause we were going out for the day.  Banana, naartjie, ants on a log (celery, peanut butter, raisins)...

Here is a fun breakfast we made one morning.  Cut a circle out of a slice of bread with a glass, put the bread into a pan and fry an egg in the hole, also toast the circle piece of bread from the center on the side.  I sauted some mushrooms to go with it and Andy spread his own tomato sauce on...

 

The key to a peaceful home is to be prepared!

We're moving!

I was hoping to get more blogging done this year but it looks like that'll have to happen once we've settled into our new place.  My husband and I have been thinking of moving closer to his work for quite some time now becauce he spends far too much time traveling everyday.  Our area of choice has been Pinelands from the start as it's an easy distance to his work and my parents and granny lives there :)

So a few weeks ago we went to view a place, liked it very much and now we're moving at the end of Feb.  Needless to say my days have been filled with decluttering, sorting, packing, cleaning etc.

We're very excited cause we'll be a 5 minute walk away from my parents' house, a 10 minute drive away from Andy's cousin and best friend, Jude, who is the same age as Andy, and we're right across the street from all the shops and the library!!!  So instead of having to buckle the kids up into the car and try entertain them both on the journey I can take the pram and be at the library in probably under 2 minutes!

I have a ton of stuff to blog about but no time to do it in so once we're settled in I'm hoping to have a bit more time to start recording once again what we are doing for homeschool.

Until then...

xxx

'Digesting' 2011

I am not going to attempt making excuses for not blogging in the past month because we all know 'life' happens, and sometimes in such abundance that time for blogging is non existent.  My husband was on leave for more than a month so life has been a busy whirl of outings, holidays, cooking gorgeous food, eating gorgeous food and spending loads of time with the family.  We started off our holidays with going to the annual homeschool camp for three days and then two weeks later we went camping again for a week.  Christmas day I spent at home cuddling Jane who had an awful tummy virus and the boys spent Christmas by my husbands family.  We had a gorgeous Sea Side holiday at Paternoster in early January and it was by far one of the best holidays ever!!!

Andy experienced his first time eating crayfish.  He really enjoyed it, especially getting the meat out of the legs...

So our school year has officially started as of last week. My husband is back at work and our lives are back to the normal routines.  We started by decluttering and tidying Andy's room so that it's neat and stream lined for clear thinking and fun times.  In between doing this we've started studying the human body and Andy is fascinated.  I find he's at such a nice age now where he can start understanding and appreciating the way the human body works.  This morning he chose fresh fruits for breakfast and when he ate a nectarine the skin was a bit sour.  Usually he would eat the flesh and leave the skin but he asked me "Mommy, is the skin healthy?".  I explained to him that all parts of the fruit contains nutrients and without another word he ate all the skin and flesh and continued eating his other fruit.  I find it so beautiful because we've been studying the digestive system and he's been very fascinated with the journey food takes through our bodies and the way our bodies use what it needs out of the foods we eat.  He's been very conscious of making healthy decisions  about the foods he eats with the only help from me being the answers to his questions whether the food is healthy or not.  I believe this is the foundation to a healthy lifestyle and food choices for his childhood and adult life.  We have such a HUGE responsibility because what we instill in them now as children makes a huge impact whether they will make healthy choices or not for the rest of their lives!!!  Here is the book I bought which has been such a great tool in teaching Andy about the body...

In the next few blog posts I would like to share a glimpse into our weekly homeschool activities and subjects and a few other things that I've been thinking of blogging about but never got the time to sit down and do it :-)


Happy learning! And remember, have FUN!