'Arthur' the Scarecrow!

Every year the village holds a Scarecrow competition, and weird and wonderful creations pop up all over the village, so this year I decided we would take part for the first time with the help of the  AJ's.
They are usually open to any idea, but to celebrate the Centenary of the First World War this year they are asking for a scarecrow along that theme. 

I decided the easiest thing to do is create a small scarecrow, so I thought the idea of an evacuee would be a good one, esp as I happened to have some small brown clothes and a suitcase easy to hand.  So once they returned from nursery, we started recycling all the shredded paper that we keep for the fire, and stuffing it into carrier bags for waterproofing, before stuffing these inside the clothes.  Alyssa wasn't really interested in helping, but was interested in throwing the paper all over the room!!  We then turned a small old t-shirt of Alyssa's inside out, and used some fabric pens to draw a face, before using some brown wool on the top to create hair. 

Arthur loved 'Arthur' and kept trying to make him dance and play with him, and talking to him, and was very excited to see him put up outside.  I used two bits of wood to create a cross shape and attached ' this to him before hammering it into the ground, then it was time for Arthur to see him all finished and in place, and he was very happy, now to see what the other villagers come up with!

Stuffed body!

Preparing more stuffing!

"He's got legs" (Rubbish ZZ top ref sorry!)

Trying on 'Arthur's' hair

The two Arthur's

Final adustments waterproofed and added!

Wish us luck in the competition!!!! :D

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Carnival fever for Brazil!

With the world cup being in Brazil, I thought it would be fun to bring a bit of Carnival fun to the AJ's.  So I decided that we would have a bit of fun painting and creating fun masks using egg boxes, and then host our own teddy version of Rio carnival complete with some samba and salsa music to dance to.

As the weather is beautifully sunny at the moment, I decided to take advantage of it and paint outside, you also get the added bonus of topping up your vitamin D and having painting that dries super quick!

So I set up some paper and some paints representing the colours of the Brazillian flag, and let them run riot, litterally, at one point they were running over the paper to create footprints!!! Then I let them loose with the egg cartons pre-cut and some glitter!

After that I quickly set up all the teddies, and brought out some beads and outfits to make our carnival, although by this time Alyssa was quite tired and wanted lots of cuddles and Arthur just enjoyed listening to the music and running around doing whatever he wanted.  He did enjoy playing with the masks that were made though!

Painting in the sun!

Decorating the Carnival mask

Drying nicely in the sun!

Brazilian inspired art!

All ready to party!

Teddy Rio Carnival ready!

Getting in the festival spirit!

Looking good!

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D-Day Landings

This Friday marks 70 years since the D-day landings, so I thought I would take this on board as our theme for today, as Friday the AJ's are with Granny and Grandad.  For Christmas from Santa, Arthur received a set of little toy soldiers, which were perfect for today.  Using these and a brown and blue board, I set up a D-day landing small world play. 

Alyssa had great fun mimicking Arthur's movements with the toys and making the same sound effects as him.  They are far to young to go into the ins and outs of the event, so I basically said the set on land were baddies who did naughty things and the people in the water storming the beach, were goodies. 

Whilst they were playing and doing their own little version of events, I put some wartime music on such as Glen Miller and Vera Lynn (however Arthur preferred Glen Miller!) I also found an air raid siren and got them to sit under the table whilst it played, telling them that I told people when to hide and stay safe.  I then made the AJ's a good old corned beef sandwich for lunch, Alyssa did not like it at all and immediately spat it out.  We then made little toy parachutes using old hankies that I use for dusting now, I tied one around a Monkey for Alyssa and one around one of Arthur's knights.  They had great fun thowing them around over and over and watching the chutes fill up with air.

Playing together

"MAN DOWN!!!"

"Their coming!!"

Toy parachute

Parachuting knight!

Making monkey fly!

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Rock Band!!

At the weekend we went to a friends house for a gathering/party and they had live music, Arthur was thrilled by this and loved the opportunity to watch, dance, clap and hog a spare microphone and imitate them. 

So I thought a bit of role play and music fun was in order, after watching a couple of music videos whilst I got some dress up accessories and musical instruments together, I set up a mini stage area using an old red curtain as a back drop, put on some music and let them go!  There were a few scuffles over the drum kit for a while (daddy would be proud as an ex drummer!!) Before Alyssa settled for the guitar and keyboard.

It was great fun letting them mess around, and do what they wanted with the accessories and instruments, there were some pretty interesting outfits, but I didn't manage to get them all on camera as I was having to much fun dancing and playing with them!!  I hope that they are interested in learning an instrument when they are a bit older, I never did, but there is still time,  family project maybe??

The Bailey's band getting groovy

Jazzy album cover photo??

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Homemade butter!!

After a busy Bank Holiday Monday morning taking the AJ's swimming, usually a very stressful event as Arthur has not been water confident before today, we decided to celebrate the good weather and positive swimming session in typical Bank Holiday style, with a BBQ!!

Once home daddy and Arthur started making bread rolls together, whilst Alyssa all tired out settled down in her cot for a three hour nap!!  We also decided to make our own butter to go with the rolls, as our supermarket at the moment is giving away free cream when you buy strawberries, which we buy for daddy's breakfast, so we thought making butter would be a great fun way to use it!

First we found an empty glass jar and lid to put the cream in, then we worked out muscles even more and shake, shake, shaked!!  After a while the cream thickens up, looking almost like whipped cream, then you shake, shake, shake some more until you here a sloshing sound again as the butter and the buttermilk separate, and that is it!!  We did however add a tiny bit of salt and yellow food colouring to ours before shaking to make it look more butter like.

After that it was time to hit the garden and tidy and prep for the BBQ, before a quick shop for last minute essentials, in the end a very, very busy day for everyone, except Alyssa who slept through most of it!!

SHIMMY SHAKE!! (Excuse the post swim mess im in!!)

Mini shake!

Separating the butter and buttermilk!

Personalised butter

Daddy showing off their risen dough!

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Catterpillars and Butterflies

In nursery this week, they have been looking at bugs and reading 'The very hungry caterpillar', so I thought I would do a bit on the theme of caterpillars and butterflies at home, especially as our butterfly garden is getting a step closer to being completed. 

I started by letting them loose with some paint, Arthur has been saying for the last couple of days that he wanted to do some painting, but knowing the weather was going to turn miserable again I decided to distract him and save it for today (mean mummy!!)  So I put the hungry caterpillar book on the table and gave him some red and green paint.  I was very impressed with Arthur's first painting, he actually resisted just mixing all the colours together to create a brown splodge on the paper, and painted something that, in an abstract way, looked like the hungry caterpillar.  Whilst they had a go painting, I painted some caterpillars of different sizes using my fingertips, a toy cup and a toilet roll tube, hoping to lead by example and encourage some different techniques and some experimenting (plus joining in is always fun!)  Alyssa was very interested and had a go at all of them, but Arthur was happy doing what he was doing.

Once the painting was over a brought out a little butterfly hunt small world play that I had created using some leaves, and some pictures of butterflies from a spotter sheet, as well as a small net to 'catch' them in.  They both enjoyed playing with the net, but soon Alyssa was off doing her own thing and Arthur was asking me to read the book.  Then we played with blankets, crawling along the floor like a catterpillar, then wrapping ourselves up in "Qooons" before we emerged as beautiful butterflies.

For lunch I decided to continue the theme and created a special lunch art piece with the cheese sandwiches cut out and arranged to look like a caterpillar, and half a tomato for a head!

Looking impressive!

Playing with different techniques

Butterfly hunt play

Getting stuck in!

Emerging from 'Qooons'

Being a "Blutterfly!"

Lunch art!

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River fishing!

Today was a lovely sunny day, and after spending the last few inside more than out thanks to earaches and bad coughs and a strange simultaneous vomiting occurrence, how they both ended up being sick at the same time (whilst in separate rooms!!!) I will never know,  so it was finally time to head out doors for some much needed fresh air.

I wanted to take the children to somewhere with a river so we could paddle and fish with some little fishing nets, not really expecting to be able to catch anything, but Arthur was hoping to find and Octopus! Bless him!  So armed with our nets and a picnic lunch we head to Cadover bridge on Dartmoor for a bit of fishing.

Once there I realised it was only really a further ten minute drive to Nanna's, so I asked Arthur if he wanted Nanna to join us, then we went to pick her up, before long we were back at the car par and setting up a riverside picnic.  After we had finished eating it was time to get the kiddies into their swimwear and wellies (to protect from stones) for a paddle and a fish.

We didn't manage to catch anything in our nets apart from stones, but suddenly out of nowhere Arthur excitedly cried out "look a worm!" only for me to look down at my naked feet and find out I was very close to a leech!  We watched it curl right up until it looked like nothing more than a shiny black stone on the riverbed, very clever I would never had noticed it.

Then it was time to dry off and relax with an Ice cream, luckily I didn't get one for myself, so I was free to help with all the "Mummy it's melting!" tidy up licking.

Getting straight in!

Casting the net!

Exploring together on the river bank!

Looking for an Octopus!

Amazing views from our picnic

A shiny black stone?!

EEEK!! A leech!

Ice cream!

Getting a bit messy!

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