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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Feather fun and toddler calming!

Last week Arthur had an accident in the kitchen, The electric hob was turned off, but still hot and he touched it, burning his palm. He was very lucky that it was his right hand, being left handed, and is still able to do the majority of things, including colouring and drawing whilst his right hand is bandaged up.  

Today I thought it would be great fun to play with feathers and a large pom pom, inspired by Arthur's recent accident.  Whilst he was inconsolable whilst I held his hand under the tap, I started to calm him down with our 'balloon blowing' technique, where I get him to pretend to blow up a balloon, which helps him focus on taking a few deep breaths and calm him a bit.  Sometimes though he tells me he doesn't want to blow up a balloon, so I have been thinking of other ways to get him to do the same.   Whilst on the way to hospital, when he was unreachable in the back of the car still clearly upset, I managed to convince him to try and blow trees over, and when in the hospital blow signs/people/whatever we could see over. 

So today I thought I would try and give him some fun blowing feathers and pom poms across the table, then hopefully in future I can tell him to pretend to blow feathers etc instead if he refuses the balloon.  Both the Aj's blowing the feathers around, Alyssa did keep grabbing and throwing the feathers instead, but was in hysterics every time one came near her.  Then I tried a bit of pom pom 'football', making a little goal with my fingers and getting Arthur to try and blow the pom pom through it.  It was so cute when he made a tiny little goal with one hand and said to Alyssa "you get it in goal?!" trying to include her, she however was having great fun just throwing it in any direction.  So next time I need to calm Arthur down, hopefully I can get him to pretend to blow a feather across the table, or a pom pom into a goal!

Deeeeep breath!!

OOOHH! soft!

Preparing to blow!

I did it!!

Pom pom blowing!

Should I tell her to let go first??

YEAY!!

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Were going on a Gruffalo Hunt!

We decided to celebrate a rare extra family day together of a bank holiday Monday, with a Gruffalo hunt.  To celebrate the 15 year anniversary of the book, there are events taking place all over the country, and we thought today would be a lovely day to take the Aj's to Haldon forest park for theirs day, as we like to try new places and explore different surroundings. 

So after we had packed a lunch, and the other typical items needed for a day out with the kids, all but the kitchen sink etc etc, as well as Arthur's adventure back pack binoculars and other exploring essentials, we headed out for an hour long drive across beautiful moorland.  The scenery was beautiful, and Alyssa soon fell asleep in the car, so Arthur and I spotted cows and sheep and we talked about other points of interest we could see, until we had obviously bored him too much as he fell asleep too, which turned out to be very lucky for us in the end.

We arrived at Haldon Forest to find it rammed, we were expecting a little bit busy as it was a bank holiday, but this was like the whole of the South West of England had had the same idea, we drove round and round the car park willing a space to appear, and being beaten by the car in front multiple times, as well as a number of incidents where friends physically blocked spaces whilst phoning directions for friends.  Soon Arthur woke, excitedly asking "are we here?' and we had no place to park, and had to give up!  How do you explain to a toddler that we have sat in a car for over an hour for nothing, and no Gruffalo hunting is going to happen??

Then daddy said we would go to another forest on the way home, so we told Arthur we hadn't reached the forest yet!  We soon arrived at Stover country park and first thing to do was fill our bellies with our pack lunch, Arthur excitedly said he was having lunch with a gruffalo.  Then we started on our walk, telling Arthur that we may not see a Gruffalo but we will look really hard, whilst secretly thinking what are we going to do?  But with a bit of imagination, and almost expert knowledge of the book, we soon ended up having the best Gruffalo hunt ever. 

We started off explaining to Arthur that we needed to look for signs of the Gruffalo, like foot prints in the mud, broken branches where he had walked past, and signs of food.  Within minutes of starting we had found broken bits of pine cones on a bench and I told Arthur they were remains of the Gruffalo's lunch,  then we spotted broken branches, and strange prints in the mud.  We soon arrived by a lake, and a sign said there were snakes in the habitat, so I told Arthur, this was the lake where the mouse was meeting the Gruffalo and we searched for the snakes logpile house, which we found.  We also went on an tree top walkway and spotted a tree top house for owl.  Other things we found were underground houses for fox and mouse, a nut casing were mouse had enjoyed his nut.  We also found the Gruffalo's home, but he was out, and a large pool of water were he had his baths. 

Alyssa loved stomping through the woods and squelching through the mud, and really enjoyed looking at the river and learning to say it "Wiwa," as well as spotting Ducks and saying "wack wack!"  She also liked wearing the binoculars and looking through them, but mainly just the opportunity to get out and about and go for a walk, she walked for miles bless her, just like Arthur at her age, which is worrying as it means I will have two small people who never seem to get tired!!!  So a bit of imagination and quick thinking saved the day, I have to say that the most memorable part of it was when Arthur got stuck in some mud, and daddy had to rescue him, and when he pulled him up, his welly stayed behind.  

Prepared for adventure

Inspecting the remains of the Gruffalo's lunch

Snake spotting

The lake

Snake's log pile house

Owls tree top house

Alyssa the adventurer

Mouse's underground house

The Gruffalo knocked a tree over!

Arthur found a nut and the nut looked good!

Gruffalo's house

Arthur being a stick in the mud!!

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Wookie Cookies!!

As some of you may or may not know from reading these posts, we are a Star Wars family!! I am a late comer, after being introduced to Star Wars really more when I met my husband, the children however  have no choice in wearing Star Wars t-shirts and playing with Star Wars toys!  So on May 4th (Star Wars day!) I thought it would be fitting to make some Wookie Cookies.

Normal people on a Sunday tend to have a lie in, unfortunately in this particular house lie ins don't really exist, so by 615am I was bleary eyed making some coffee to start my day, and warming up the morning milk for the Aj's.  With three hours to go until I had to leave for work and already hyper children, how this is possible I will never know, I decided that it would be best to amuse them making the cookies before I went to work, with the bonus that I could also take one to work with me. 

The recipe makes quite a few, and we are attempting to not eat so many biscuits etc at the moment, so I decided to half the mixture, which I thought would be great to talk through with Arthur,  half of two eggs is one egg etc etc.  However whenever I do this something always goes wrong and I always forget to halve at least one item, this time it was the eggs, although I didn't realise this until I ate one and it tasted mainly of Egg!! I must remember to write out a separate recipe if I decide to do this again.

 The children enjoyed taking in turns mixing the ingredients, which is always nice to see, and drawing in the flour they had knocked all over the side.  Then whilst the cookies were in the oven, Arthur helped me make the mixture for pancakes for breakfast as he'd asked for them specially, I could always continue the theme and say they were Death Star pancakes, unfortunately though I am never very good at getting small round pancakes.  Daddy did well whilst I was at work though and make 'Pizza the hut' toast pizzas for lunch, he was very dissapointed that Arthur didn't want to watch any Star Wars though!
 

Drawing in flour

Sharing the job of mixing

Alyssa has a solo go

Cake mixture for breakfast??? Why not!!

Wookie Cookies!!

Pizza the Hutt

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Bluebells and wild garlic!

After we spent a very busy morning sorting the kids bedroom and wardrobes whilst they played with toys downstairs, it was time to stretch our legs, get a breathe of fresh air and head out for a family walk.  We headed to one of our favourite walking places Cotehele , but this time we decided to walk towards the mill instead of up to the house, a change is as good as a rest so they say!

Once we entered the woodlands, we were greeted by beautiful sea of blue and pink from the wonderful Spring bluebells and Campions.  And a little further on we were greeted by the smell of wild garlic growing by the riverside.  We headed towards the mill, but decided to take the fork to the right heading towards the Weir rather than to the mill, Arthur enjoyed tramping on the bridge saying "Who's that trip trapping over my bridge?"  Once we were at the Weir there were three paths to choose from, the way we came, a small hill, and a bigger hill.... Stu was pushing Alyssa in the pram as we were planning on a long walk to burn off some of Arthur's excess energy, so we decided to take the biggest hill route!

Whilst walking up the hill Daddy found some Goosegrass ad put some on Arthur and Alyssa, then Arthur pretended to be a green man monster, before running up to Daddy and sticking it in his back.  By this time we were well on our way back to the house, we we found a field full of wild Garlic, with all the beautiful white flowers blossoming.  We also found lots of Dandelion clocks and blew then, which both the Aj's greatly enjoyed, although my hayfever didn't!!

We soon reached the house, there we some beautiful sites to see as we made our way down through the gardens including the Dove cote, and a sea of pink where petals had fallen on the floor, which Arthur thought was very pretty.  Then it was all a gloriously easy walk down hill, Arthur practically ran the whole way, which is scary as we had been walking an hour nearly.  We even had a woman comment at how she had passed us in the car by the house, and was suprised we had reached the bottom, as quickly as she did in the car!  Soon we were home and settled with a nice hot chocolate (and marshmallows!! Mustn't forget the marshmallows!!) before our regular, if we are home to do it, Saturday Night Movie Night.  Never quite as calm and cuddly as we picture it, dreams of snuggling and carrying sleepy children up to bed are usually replaced with STILL hyper children, lots of wriggling and climbing all over each other, and lots of "What's happening?" "Where's so and so?" "What's he doing??"  One day.....one day!!!

Bonny Blue Bluebells!

The Weir

Field of Garlic

Dandelion clock blowing

Green man monsteer (hence the 'monster' face!!)

Attacking Daddy!!

Having a go with Goosegrass!

The pink sea of petals!

The dove cote!

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