Clowning around!

I decided to have a bit of fun with a Circus theme, the tin cans from our Tin can plant pots (unfortunately they didn't work very well,  I think next time I should add glue to the paint when painting them!) gave me the idea, when I remembered that they could be used as stilts. So quick hole punch in each side with a hammer and nail, and a bit of string later we have stilts!!

Once that was completed, (in secret!!) I cut some cardboard bow ties for the Aj's to colour in.  Whilst they were busy with that, I put a line of gaffa tape on the floor to represent a tight rope, and gathered a few bits and bobs from the dress up box.  I also grabbed the face paints, apprehensively as Arthur has NEVER had any put on his face, and has previously become freaked out even by the suggestion of a simple tiny bee painted on his face at a fair recently.  I asked him if he wanted a red nose like Mr Tumbles the clown from a tv show he likes, and he very enthusiastically said yes, in fact whilst I left the room to get something else, he started trying to paint his nose by himself.

So faces painted and bow ties at the ready, we 'Rolled up" for some Circus fun, I helped Arthur up on the stilts and helped him balance and walk, which he found great fun.  Then Alyssa insisted on having a go, so I held her feet ant the cans and moved her feet for her. 

The both seemed to be more taken by the tight rope though, especially Arthur when it came to pretending to fall off, we also pretended to be acrobats by me lifting them up onto my feet whilst lying on my back on the floor, Arthur took the opportunity to fly like Superman.  We also had fun with the juggling balls, however none of us were any good at all at that!

Alyssa the clown

Tight rope walking

Balancing on stilts

Double act!!

Follow the fun on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest @twolittleajs

The Green man

With Spring underway, I thought a novel way of entertaining Arthur at the Craft group I go to would be to create a Green man mask with him.  The Group that I go to has a few masks of their own on display which is where I got the idea from. 

To start off all I did was take a paper plate, and cut out eyes and a mouth, and gut lots of leaf shapes, then I just let Arthur go with a glue stick and see what happened.  He really enjoyed himself, and loved holding the mask up over his face and making funny voices to go with it.  Alyssa also found this entertaining to watch and loved holding the mask over her face as well.  I didn't think she would be able to create a proper mask like Arthur so I just gave her a paper plate cut out, with some crayons and some stickers to have a go at. 

I think next time if I do this, I will have different coloured green paper, unfortunately at the time I only had one, and It might be worth having a go with real leaves and twigs collected from a walk one day, to make it a bit more interesting.

Keep up with the fun on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Twitter @twolittleajs

St George's Day 2014

Today is St George's Day in England, legend has it that he was a Knight who bravely killed a dragon to save a princess.  In order to celebrate this, after showing the Aj's various you tube videos portraying the story, we rein-acted the story with their toys.  We also played in the cardboard castle from my previous post Knights and Castles, for a bit of dress up fun. 

We also had visitors coming in the afternoon, so I thought it would be nice if we baked some cakes to offer them, and keeping with the knightly theme I decided to use Arthur's castle baking mould that he has had for a long time, but we haven't used yet. 

Arthur helped me weigh out all the ingredients, he's become very familiar with what is needed to bake cakes, and was counting the eggs and telling me we needed flour and sugar!  I then let Arthur and Alyssa have a go at bashing some chocolate buttons (liberated from an Easter egg!) in order to make chocolate chip buns.  I then made the very silly mistake of letting the two of them loose with the hand mixer! They were being well behaved and Arthur let Alyssa hold it as well, however the angle they held it meant that cake mixture sprayed all over the counter, up the wall, over the cookbook, the kettle... everything!

They then took it in turns to spoon the mixture into the mould, and enjoyed the best part f the baking process, licking the spoon and bowl, it was really hard to tear it away from them they we enjoying it so much.  Unfortunately the cakes didn't come out like they should have, I think I may have tried removing them too early, but they tasted lovely all the same.

Breaking the chocolate

Spraying, I mean mixing!!

Dolloping!

More dolloping!

Tasting!

TaDah! Oh!! Not quite right!

How they were meant to look!

St George saving the Princess!

Follow our little adventures on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest @Twolittleajs

Hot cross buns!!

I've been looking forward to doing this with the Aj's as I have never made Hot cross buns before, and I was interested in learning how to create the crosses and what they are made of.  On the morning Alyssa had had a terrible nights sleep, so was still in bed when we started, I decided the best thing to do was to make the dough first thing, then distract them with breakfast and getting dresed for the day whilst they were set aside to rise!

We started of by measuring out the flour and adding the butter, then I got Arthur to 'tickle' the flour to rub the flour and butter together, I also helped with this as well as it's quite hard for him to do. Then we added the other dry products, once he had had a chance to sell the spices.  Then he confidently mixed the wet ingredients into the flour and stirred it all together.  Having an electric scale I thought it would be a good idea to show him the numbers when weighing and get him to look for a five when weighing 50g etc to introduce some number recocnigtion, which he seemed to enjoy!

Once the dough was ready we had to roll the mixture into 8 balls, however Arthur wasn't very good at this as he was too interested in playing and stretching the dough rather than rolling it, but he was having fun so I just rolled all the others till all that was left was his one.

As i've said it was time for breakfast and getting dressed (and mummy to clean up) whilst the dough was rising then I mixed together the paste for the crosses, and helped Arthur squeeze the shapes out using a sandwich bag as a piping bag.  Then it was all down to Arthur to brush with the golden syrup, which I had warmed in the microwave for easier use.  During all this Alyssa was still asleep, in fact she was still asleep when they came out the oven so she missed the whole event.  She did however get to eat one of the buns for breakfast, so I think she planned it that way all along!  They were very very big however compared to the usual shop bought ones, so in future I may make double the amount, or just be greedy and have large ones!!

Adding the spices

"tickling the flour!"

Getting stuck in!

Mixing it all up and getting messy!

Adding the crosses!

We did take a picture of the finished buns, but it seems to have disapeared from the files, but theyy did look and taste great! I promise!


Follow our adventures on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram @twolittleajs

Chocolate fun and a History lesson!

We are very lucky to have a local residents season pass for the Eden project, and for Easter they are having a chocolate festival,  the Aj's learnt lots about the history of chocolate and got to make their own chocolate bar!

First of we walked around the outside of the Biodomes, it's amazing that we have been three times now, and always find something different as little legs can't quite seem to cover the whole place in one day as there is so much to look at.  Tunnels to explore, giant bees made out of recycled materials and metal giants, as well as lots of very pretty plants and flowers, especially as Spring has sprung.

We then went to the Chocolate exhibition, where Arthur tried various strength chocolate from milk to dark, Alyssa had a little taste too.  We also looked at cocoa butter that Arthur enjoyed rubbing in his hands, and held cocoa beans and pods.  Alyssa's favourite part of this exhibition seemed to be the fake chocolate bunnies, she just kept giggling at them for ages bless her!

Then came the exciting bit, making our very own chocolate bar!!  We had a little wait in the queue, but were entertained by samples of chocolate (won me over!!) and a man showing us more cocoa beans and talking about them with us.  Once we got to the front we were given little moulds and some melted white and milk chocolate to do as we wanted with them.  I was very nervous that Arthur would just dig in and try and keep eating the chocolate, but he was very well behaved and spooned it into the mould carefully, whilst Alyssa was being helped by daddy.  It was then time for a bit of lunch in the sun whilst we waited for it all to set. 

Once they ate the chocolate it was off to the Tropical Biome to play the chocolate trading game, we were given six little tokens, that we had to swap two for a bit of gold with a Mayan, then Three and the gold with a Conquistador for a penny, then finally pay that penny to enter a 'coffee shop' where we got a ticket that we traded for some more chocolate!! It was so interesting to learn how valuable chocolate use to be compared to today,  at one point more valuable than gold, and that it use to be an important expensive drink sold only in coffee houses. 

Spotting the Biomes

Exploring Cocoa pods

Giving it a shake!

"Chocolate bunnies!"

"Cocoa butter!" (Expanding foam!!there was real stuff too!)

If only it was real chocolate!

MMMMM!

"Quick before mummy want's a taste!"

Swapping tokens with Mayans

Getting a better view with Daddy

Playing some games

Alyssa's favourite game of the day!!

 Follow the fun on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter @twolittleajs

Butterfly garden and Wrens

It's been a lovely sunny day today, so once the Aj's finished at nursery we all headed out to the field to see how the tunnel house is getting on and think about planting potatoes and onions in the field.  Once we arrived Grandad told us to visit the shed, where he had noticed a Wren had made a nest in some rope hanging on the wall.  It was very interesting to see a nest relatively up close, and interesting to see how they make the most of anything, I never would have thought a rope would make a good place for a nest!

Grandad was busy using the rotivator  to prepare the soil for the potatoes, and Arthur had a go at helping him to push it, but unfortunately the machine soon packed up for an unknown reason, and we were unable to plant.  It was a bit of a disappointment, but Alyssa had been having fun digging around in a little patch of soil, and Arthur soon busied himself with the ever so important task of watering the tunnel house.  It was nice to see that the strawberries are coming along and turning red already, and also the radishes are starting to poke up through.

Once home again we put some compost into some small tubs and sowed the seeds for our butterfly garden, it was lovely to see the Aj's working nicely together, taking turns adding compost, then seeds and finally watering.  All that is left for me to do now is print and laminate some little pictures of butterflies, to stick on lollipops to help the Aj's spot and identify some of the different types, as well as look up different foods that they like so when the time comes we can lay bits on a little tray for them.  We also had a little look at our Bug hotel, but as of yet we have no visitors, I guess it takes a while!

Wren's nest

Rotivating

Radishes looking good!

Dreaming of Strawberries and cream!

Digging away!

Looking thoughtful!

Watering the Strawberries

Potting the compost

Seed sprinkling!

Watering in the seeds

"Your turn Alyssa!"

Just have to wait for them to grow now!

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter @twolittleajs

Veg plots and Potatoes!

After our recent illness, we enjoyed a much needed wonderful four day break with family!  Today was our first day back home, and there was lots of work to do!

Daddy has recently been starting off a load of seeds ready for our vegetable plot area, and it has finally come to the time off planting them out, the Aj's spent the morning 'helping' mummy tidy up and rogue weeds around the garden whilst daddy prepped the plot.  Then once the ground was prepared, and compost laid down it was time to start planting.  First this we did was give Arthur the honor of planting the lonely seed potato we found out the field recently, it may or may not provide potatoes, but it's a bit of fun for Arthur to learn how potatoes grow.

Then we moved onto planting the Sunflowers, one for each of us and granny and grandad in the end, so we are now having a little competition to see who's grows the tallest.  I have memories as a child of growing sunflowers and having the excitement of trying to get them to grow taller than me, so I am looking forward to seeing how Arthur reacts when they really take off! He loved helping make the holes in the ground for daddy, so he could plant them, then gently patted the earth down around them 'Putting them to bed!"

Next it was time to help daddy build a pea stick wig wam for the peas to grow against, Alyssa and Arthur had great fun passing the sticks in a line for daddy, and Arthur had the extra important jobs of holding the string for daddy too!

The only thing we have to do now is make sure Arthur doesn't walk all over the plants, which he has already done once, as he is so use to being able too as there has been nothing in there for so long, and cross our fingers, that something grows and we have a lovely crop!

Who knew this is where potatoes come from!!

Prepped for planting

ready to plant

In it goes "tuck into bed!"

Making holes

Daddy's little helper!

"to me, to you!"

Building a wig wam!

Planting peas!

Bit small still!

Alyssa exploring wood chip

PEAS!!!

 Follow the fun on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter @twolittleajs