Menard and Sophia had fun with green screen

Visiting Sarah

On Wednesday we went to visit my friend Sarah (Who entirely fails to feature in these photos!) and her lovely family. We've not seen them since last summer and those six months have been the world of difference in the amount of language her lovely daughter has. I love seeing my children with little people, because they are so kind and gentle. Jaiden especially enjoyed using their bricks to make an assortment of different buildings and factories, and little miss enjoyed knocking them all over, when she got the chance! We had a quick run in the drizzle to the park nearby, and all got covered in mud, but it was good to have an outing before we got back in the car. Little miss enjoyed trying on Sophia's boots, and generally bossing us all around! It was a long drive, but totally worth it to see my lovely friend. We first met at university, so it's lovely to be introducing the next generation to each other!

Valentines cupcakes

On Tuesday, Sophia and I went to see our friends Coral, Adele and Olivia to make Valentines cupcakes together. We had a lovely time and they turned out super yummy! I've been fighting with the photos to try to get them in the right order, but they don't want to. So here's a slightly jumbled series of events!

Throw back Thursday - August 2012

 

Because who doesn't want to see these cuties?!

Charity shop sourced dressing up

One of the things I love/hate about the school my children attend, is the opportunites they give the children to be submerced in a particular era or event. They ask the children to dress up according to the topic they have been, or about to study. And then spend the day doing activities connected to that topic. I believe they also often work with portals to the past, who are a company? group? who come in to the school in character and lead the children through activities.

Most of the photos I have here are of Sophia, as she's older, and done more of them! But I thought it might be helpful to share how we have put these outfits together fairly cheaply, and mostly souced from charity shop finds.

Here is the latest outfit we need. It's not totally finished, so here are a couple of work in progress photos.
We started off looking for white dresses or tunics, however the charity shop didn't have anything suitable, but I was not deterred by this. Sophia took a little persuading, but with some more googling, we found some images of 'Egyptian people' wearing colours other than white, and decided that blue might work, with gold. We found this long dress, and I will need to take the shoulder straps up a bit. But it won't need anything fancy, I'll literally fold the strap over and hand sew some stitches. If you really don't want to sew, you could use tape or safety pins.

Next we needed to find something metalic to make the outfit more impressive. We though gold might look better.And with some more rummaging, we found this gold top. I scrunched it up here, for Soph to be able to see what it might look like once cut.

When we got home I cut the bottom half of the top off, then used a giant bowl to get the shape of a curve, and trimmed to make the piece that will go over her shoulders. I don't know what the technical term is! Then the bottom half of the top we put around her waist for a belt, just to see how it will look. There's about twice as much length of top than we need, so I plan to cut it in half and sew, so that she has a belt, and then the other piece we will use to hang down off the belt.

For the sandals, Sophia remembered that she has a pair that she can wear, but we did find a couple of posibilities in the charity shop, that we could have bought if she didn't have any.
Total spend was I think £2 for the dress and £1.50 for the top. And I will add to that maybe an hour of hands on sewing/cutting/thinking.

This white outfit we actually found in the charity shop on the same day, after we had already chosen the blue dress. I bought it for £1, and we passed it on to a friend for her daughter to use for the same event.

This outfit took a lot of time, well, actually it took less time than the one we made for me, which I started off hand sewing, until my lovely sister came to the rescue. Hopefully you can see it's the rainbow fish! Not for a day at work, although my costume was for the end of year party which was under the sea themed! I had lots of fun wearing it. The top Sophia is wearing was bought for 50p from the charity shop. Much of the material for the scales was from clothes that we'd grown out of, or from the charity shop too (I say 'the charity shop', we have a few around here, and we like them all, for different things!)

This outfit was for Roman day at school. The sheet was an amazing find by my mum - that's another handy tip for you - if you know what you're looking for, get your friends and family to keep an eye out for you. I told me mum we needed a white sheet, and she'd found it within days! It's now gone on to be repurposed again, but that's for another post.
The cord was from my mum's string bag, and the sandals and white tshirt we already owned. Total cost for the outfit was I think £2 for the sheet!

Here's the rainbow fish again, along side a dinosaur. This gets a mention because it was a Kermit the frog costume that a friend passed on to me for Jaiden. He asked to be a dinosaur for World Book Day, and thus an idea was born. We cut off the feet and sewed them onto the wrists, to serve as claws. We added eyes and teeth to the hood. And opened the back seam, and added in spikes (I'll have to see if I can find a photo of those). I say we, because my lovely mummy helped me with much of the sewing on this one.




Viking day at school. This one was included some fantastic charity shop finds. The main piece was a brown sheet, which I believe I paid £1 for. The belt we also got in a charity shop, probably for 50p or £1. The hat, I was in a charity shop and mentioned I was looking for one or other element of the outfit, and the lady told me she had a Viking hat out back, and sold it to me for 50p. The boots were quite worn, but for £1 I didn't mind too much. I think we actually bought them for her stone age outfit, but I couldn't find a photo of that. For the stone age costume she wore black leggings, a lady's top which was worn inside out to show off the animal print lining, and these boots. All we bought for that outfit was the boots and the ladies top, which was around £1.50

I love this outfit because it came together so well. We had bought the coat for Sophia earlier in the year for £5 and I realised it would be perfect for the outfit. Usually she wears trousers for school uniform, which I knew wouldn't look right for this era. But I found this dress in a charity shop I had popped in feeling somewhat poorly, after a trip to the doctors and pharmacy -  I think it was when I was off last year with a sinous infection and was off work for a couple of days. Anyway, I found this dress and was delighted. I believe it cost about £2 or £2.50.
The suitcase we already owned, and it made a perfect addition to the outfit. Otherwise I was going to sugest she take a sactchel style bag I own. The gas mask box was made from a box covered in some brown paper (I cut up a large envelope we had). And we added some prints out I found from a quick internet search for something like gas mask printables. Socks and shoes she already owned!


(This is my 1212th post, I like that number, so thought it deserved a mention!)

Talking of how grown up my children are..

She's nine, people. Nine! Going on thirty? Or something!
We love this coat we found in the charity shop the other day for £4! Four Quid!
Amazing!

rainbow party photos!

Experimental cooking

For dinner last night we had a random things out the freezer night. I found two 'white fish' fillets and decided to feed them to the kids.
We've made homemade chicken nuggets before so I decided to use a similar method with the fish. We coated them in cornflour (well, barely, I was running out). Then dipped into beaten egg and then into breadcrumbs (just some dry bread ground up in my ninja bullet with the grinding bland). Each child got to get messy and coat their own. Then onto a greased baking tray and into a hot oven and cooked until the breadcrumbs we're golden brown.

The verdict....

Soph - I like it a little bit.
(Mummy - that's better than "I hate it", I'll take that!)

JJ - yeah, good.

Mummy - no fish smell! Result! Would make this again for them (I don't eat fish)

Rainbow party

Can you believe it, Sophia will be 7 on the 7th. This very week! And this blog was going far longer than that too. I apologise for the huge inconsistencies in blogging (for the last two years that seems to be blogging in October and not much else!) and perhaps I'll manage to catch you up a little with our adventures along the way.

To celebrate her birthday we are planning a rainbow party. Now, I don't want to give everything away before hand, more whet your appetite for more updates after the event, and photos, I hope. My phone won't talk nicely to blogger but hopefully I can a device that will!

Cake - there will be multiple layers and there will be smarties. I also hope to experiment with natural food colouring.

Games - I still need to locate some rainbow themed (even just striped colours would be ok) wrapping paper for pass the parcel. I intend to alternate with newspaper because I'm still me thrifty self at heart!
We are also working on a variation of mr bear, your honey's not there. Possibly Mrs rainbow, your gold's not there?

Activities - I have a couple of activities I need to prep for, but which will hopefully let them create fun take home gifts at the end.

Food - I'm planning fruit and veg platters in rainbow stripes, and Bekki has found a wonderful recipe for rainbow biscuits so we might try making them on Tuesday when she comes to see us.

31 days of money saving and stuff - day four

Today (well, it was actually during the August bank holiday weekend) we saw an ice cream van.

Classic quote from Sophia "I'm not going to be an ice cream lady (driving an ice cream van). I'm going to be a normal grown up like you, mummy"
A. No offence intended to those who do drive ice cream vans
B. No idea where she got the idea that I'm a normal grown up.

Anyway, we looked at the ice cream van, we admired the picture on the back and the tune it played, and we all agreed (Soph, JJ and I) that we didn't want to buy an ice cream cos we had lollies in our freezer at home. And that was that, no arguments, no complaints (and actually, by the time we got inside, they'd forgotten all about ice cream and didn't even remember to ask for lollies. I also forgot, so it wasn't an intention omission!)
I threw in the comment "we've got lollies in our freezer and they cost less than buying them at the ice cream van" and they both nodded agreement.

I guess I have two points/tips here.
First,  you don't have to do the big spend big treat every time. Don't get me wrong, sure, we've bought from an ice cream van, but as a general rule we don't. I buy cheap lollies or ice pops and we eat those and spend significantly less money

Second, it's ok to tell the kids "no, because that costs a lot of money" or "no, a different option is better value". I could rant about this for ages, and I'm not saying I'm totally right, but I'm so aware of living in an age of entitlement, where kids get everything they want, at the expense of other things. I think it's ok to say no, and explain its for financial reasons. It doesn't have to be all doom and gloom, but it can be in a way that teaches value of money,  (not, woe is me, we can't afford that. But look, if we go for this option, it's cheaper/we save money, and we still feel satisfied)

Where we are

Life in our house is noisy. Soph is five now, obsessed with school and writing and cutting and drawing and generally covering six million pieces of paper in mostly unintelligible scribbles. Actually, to be fair to her, they are becoming more comprehensible, as she puts her knowledge of phonics and blends to piece together words and sentences, although she hasn't really mastered the art of putting spaces inbetween words.

JJ is all boy, climbing, running, jumping and generally doing all the things you never even thought of banning them from doing, until he had done them. He's three, and goes to the school nursery at soph's school, he's ever so proud that he has a big boy uniform to wear too.

I am still being a stay at home mummy. Enjoying my time with the kids (mostly!) but also my time without them - oh how I love my time in the morning without them, although it gets rapidly filled with all the usual mummy stuff, volunteering in soph's class, and church stuff.

M is still around too, working all the crazy shifts his job throws at him, meaning sometimes the kids and I have to do weekends without him, but other times we have to put up with him around the place for several days on end. We mostly survive both. He's also really getting involved in church stuff, which is great, as that's exactly why we moved here about 14 months ago.

We've settled in well, more than well, and really enjoying being a part of this community.

When I'm grown up... A peek at the world of adults from Sophie's viewpoint

The other day we had some biscuits and I let each of the children have one. Sophie asked for another, and I told her no. This caused her to become distraught with frustration and anger (not an unusual occurrence round here at the moment, unfortunately). She was so cross that I would deny her a second biscuit.   She finally choked out "when I'm a grown up, I'm going to go to the shop and buy all the chocolate biscuits and eat them all myself and not share with you".  There was a pause, and then she added, " but mummy, you will take me so I know how to get to the shop, won't you?"

Sophia's Peppa Pig Birthday Cake

Before piped features

With features (excuse the shadow, it's funny light in my kitchen)

With candles

Soph blowing out candles will come later, cos Menard took those

melts my heart to see this

Soph

"Sophie, do you want crumpets for lunch?"
Sophie looks at crumpets...
"those aren't trumpets, they're drums"

heard just now...
"I'm dressing up to look like Jesus"

Beach fun

My babies

Soph Feeds Goats!

We went with a friend and her daughter to a local 'garden centre' which also has an animal area. 

('garden centre' cos it seemed to sell anything and everything)

The girls had a fantastic time feeding goats 

(food available for 20p a handful from a little machine)

And JJ missed all most of the fun by being fast asleep. 

Chicken photographed especially for Bren

Horsie horsie don't you stop

Riding nappy packet horses!

Cake Pops

A lovely lady called Hazel (who happens to be the mum of Danielle, who has the honourary title of auntie to my kids) has a new venture in cake, and we all know how much I like cake.

I haven't actually tried any of her cake pops yet (hint hint), but my children have, and judging from their enthusiasm, it was good!

Go check out her facebook page and like it, and then come back and see my kids enjoying her work!

Here are some pics of them enjoying the amazing cake pops she sent them for Easter...

 Soph excited about a parcel with her name on it!

 "Look mummy, it's Peppa Pig"

 It went in his mouth all at once! (It was a hot air balloon)

"Yum!"