Beautiful Biscuits... well, sort of

 

 

One morning late last week I asked my son what he'd like to do and he replied that he'd like to make biscuits. I took down two of my favourite Woman's Weekly cookbooks and told him he could choose the biscuits we'd make.

We had fun with the cookie cutters and hundreds and thousands! (they didn't taste too bad either!)

Clay Play

 

 

Squeezing, rolling, twisting, cutting, sculpting...

I try to make the most of each day with my children but every stay-at-home parent is guilty of occasionally hoping the day goes by quickly (sadly). I find our days are best spent when I invest time in my kids - play with them- the washing can wait!

If we are not out and about I like to think up little projects to do with my toddler while my baby has her morning sleep. He loves making things be it a painting, a sculpture (thank you Mister Maker), a cake, a meal, a herb garden. He even just likes watching me sometimes like when I sew.

Last week at the mall I remembered that I'd had a thought about buying some clay and so I ducked in to Riot Art & Craft (which I discovered has another good website when I arrived home). For about $13 I brought home a big 1kg block.

I particularly wanted to use it reinforce our son's fine motor skills but also for his own exploration.

From my years of teaching Kindergarten I know how important (essential) it is to have a plan (even when there's only one child!) So I had a little hunt around and found this fantastic and simple article by about clay play for toddlers and Pre-schoolers. 

I like the idea of fairly open-ended activities. You can see that my son used a bunch of 'things' to manipulate the clay. I only wished that I had given him more 'natural' things  (not just the usual play dough tools). There's always next time!

I do believe in 'skilling up' children. By teaching children to use tools safely (under your supervision) for example, a butter knife, you are teaching the skills necessary for life thus empowering independent little beings.  It could be easy to make these everyday objects scary but I would suggest that children can learn from you not to fear them but to use them confidently and responsibly.

For the record he dressed himself. Who am I to tell him he's not wearing his top properly? As far as he's concerned he is (and he's only been dressing himself a week or so)

I was pleased that my son's final product did include the few seedpods I'd given him to use. He told me they were "eyes." I might have had some clay play of my own.

Sources of Inspiration

 

 

After almost three years of intermittent reading (i.e. two or three full books, half-read articles and a stack of Good Weekend and Spectrum's that serves to prove you don't read as much when you have children. It gets a cull every 6 months or so not because I have been skimming through them but because they threaten to take over the lounge room).

Been reading a bit of frankie lately. I like the mix of creativity, a tad bit of retro shopping, personal stories and crafty ideas.

The ballerinas are a project I will attempt at some point: redecorating old cork coasters with favourite illustrations (or as I think I might do - favourite magazine clippings.)

I am AIMING to get to the Finders Keepers market in early December too - an Indi craft market.

Olive View

About 7 years ago my two lovely brothers-in-law gave me two olive plants and they finally look as though they are fruiting. I know the lovelies need to be transplanted out of their pots but I guess they must be a little bit happy.

Christmas Craft

 

 

 

  

 

This is the beginning of my Christmasy projects. This weekend I got all inspired to sew again and it was partly to do with a few things:

@ A comment my husband had made "You love sewing. You are so happy when you sew!"

@ frankie. I even indulged yesterday evening by telling my husband "I'm just going to run a bath for myself." It was the kids' dinner time and he knew that was code for "Can you please make dinner for the kids while I have some 'me' time?" I lay there, submerged, reading frankie.

@ Xmas. I do love an excuse to make and buy some interesting things but I do hate the commercialism. Mum gave me a bag of Christmas fabric scraps not long ago. I remembered that I have a Xmas tree decoration that my mum made when I was a baby. She traced my hand, dyed some fabric (using onion skin dye) then cut two templates of my hand. She then sewed them together, stuffed them and added a little ribbon to hang on the tree. 

@ That there, Xmas, is no better an excuse than to MAKE & SEW. 

I had some painted hand prints and footprints from my children from a few months ago so I used these to make my templates. 

* Trace the hand prints and footprints onto calico, cut those out then trace around those on Christmasy style fabric (keeping to the original print as much as possible.) 

 

* Cut out two identical sized pieces of fabric and sew the footprint and hand print to them. 

* Sew them together inside out leaving a small gap to squeeze stuffing in and to attach the ribbon.

* Turned them in the right way and filled them with hobby fill stuffing. 

* Carefully place the two ends of a short piece of ribbon (20cm) inside the gap and machine sew the gap closed (remembering to sew those raw edges inside.)

These may seem like a dud pressie for a child but give a few years I think they'll enjoy getting them out each year and comparing them to how big their hands and feet are. 

** The second decoration I made is much neater because I sewed the hand print and footprint on using the machine BEFORE I sewed the two pieces stuffed it. (I hand-sewed my daughter's so it's not nearly as neat.)

Todays Lunch

I had a delightful High Tea with a girlfriend recently and that is where I was reminded about the humble cucumber sandwich. They were a tad too garlicy so I had a thought yesterday - replace the garlic with chopped garlic chives (of which we have plenty in our garden!)

These ones were delicious!

An update from our garden...

Our garden about two weeks ago....

Whimsical Wings

My son has decided he loves the wings I made. This afternoon he flew around our yard asking if I could sing the Giggle and Hoot Lullaby Song.

Jump down. Turn around.

I visited a garage sale while I was down the south coast (Yes. I know. Restrained. Only one garage sale!). I bought this box of cottons. I know I really don't need them (thanks to my grandmother) but I couldn't resist. Some of them are those beautiful wooden reels.

I also picked up an old wooden rule in inches. It has brass hinges. I do love it.

Happy hydrangeas!

Citrus...

My parent's garden houses a few healthy citrus plants: lemons, ruby red grapefruit & tangerines. The ruby reds are delicious  - especially with a nip of vodka/gin and filled with mineral water & some ice. Oh - I do love Spring!

Lost & Found!

Yesterday my parents had just alighted an empty train in Sydney when another new passenger discovered a wallet on a seat nearby. The boy didn't want anything to do with it so my mother took care of the wallet- knowing that if she handed it in to authorities they wouldn't necessarily have the time or impetus to follow it up and return it to it's rightful owner. The wallet held a few bankcards, a large sum of cash and a foreign driver's license.

When my parents arrived at our place last night I'd already done a white pages search and called the 3 people with the same surname as the bankcard. One was a family is Brisbane. One was a mother in North Sydney who hadn't travelled on the train in years and one was her son, of the same name, that hadn't lost his wallet but whose father had those same initials but had passed away some years ago. We came to the conclusion that it belonged to none of these people.

My mum then discovered a piece of paper with an address and a phone number on it. We called this number and the names were not familiar to the gentleman who answered. Hmmm....

So that gentleman was the only link we had although we did think of another couple of options:

* Visit our local branch where either of the bankcards came from and ask them to call the cardholder (as they couldn't probably give us his number), or
* Contact the other two numbers we found inside the wallet.

As you can tell- we were desperate to get this back to the owner before he began cancelling cards!

The gentleman we called did put us in touch with another gentleman of a similar name (it was a long Indian name that was on the bankcards). Still no luck- so we called him back and I gave him another of the names inside the wallet - on the driver's license.

About 15 minutes later he called me back. "I know who it is madam! The man will call you now! He is a Hindu priest from Sydney!"We were getting somewhere!

Well- when the 'owner' called I asked for some identifying cards that I might find, is DOB (that was on his license) and anything else that might identify him. He directed me to a Hindi prayer card toward the back of the wallet. Bingo! This was his wallet.

He directed me to open his wallet, remove the cash (well over $150) and keep it. I told him I'd do no such thing. So this morning we packaged it up and sent it off in a registered parcel to the temple where the owner is the priest.

Apparently, according to the gentleman who helped us, we will have long lives. Now that's a blessing!

As my mother used to say "I'd rather be poor and honest... (rather than rich and dishonest)."

A lesson in light...

Yesterday evening, before my husband dived into the pile of work he's had building up, he gave me a little lesson in photography.

I know the basics so I could definitely use some tuition. So my husband got out his Nikonus which is the perfect camera to fiddle with as you can actually see everything happening down the lense i.e. the aperture changing etc,.

I am not promising big changes and I'll have to get exceptionally quick at snapping pics with my two little ones but with a better understanding of aperture, depth of field, and a little more about focus and auto settings I might be able to improve my pics....

We'll see!

... and all around me.

When you water the garden you also water the weeds