Painting with nature

Yesterday whilst walking through a park to meet Nana, we stopped and collected lots of conkers that had fallen on the ground, so today I decided to use these along with some fir and pine cones, and create a little sensory box for Alyssa.  We took them with us to a local craft cafe that we go to occasionally, which was a little bit calmer than usual for me with just the one, but I still was unable to sit down for longer than five minutes as Alyssa is potty training, and found the toilets fascinating compared to her potty, especially when I flushed it.  I very rarely get to do any of my own crafts at these cafe events, as I am usually wit the children, but I do find just being by creative people can be very inspirational.  The venue had lots of Autumnal things on display, beautiful browns and golds, from bunting to wreaths created from Autumn leaves, and whilst playing with Alyssa and the sensory box, the cafe members started to discuss painting with the fir cones and things which I thought was a great idea.

I found it wonderful watching Alyssa play with the conkers, counting them "1,2,3,4,8" which was amazing to me, as having to always fight for attention with her brother always talking over her, or saying "mummy mummy" all the time, I had never previously realised she could count at all!! I feel like such a bad mum sometimes that she hasn't had as much attention as Arthur had as a first born, but then moments like these tell me she is doing just fine as she is.  Her favourite game was definitely turning it all out then putting it back in the tub again, occasionally counting as she did.

Once we got home I got out some brown, yellow and orange paints, and thinking of marble painting, decided to let Alyssa roll a conker through paint to great a painting.  She didn't quite understand tipping the tub, and did try a few times to just pick the conker up and paint with it instead, but she seemed to enjoy the noise that it made when she did shake it.  Next we tried painting with the fir cone, by rolling the cone in paint then rolling along somer paper, and also a bit of leaf printing with some leaves we found on the way home, the effect was pretty hit and miss but I think she enjoyed getting her hands covered in paint, it seemed such a shame to stop her to have dinner!!

Exploring!

Tipping

Conker painting

Fir cone rolling

Pretty patterns keep appearing 

Leaf printing

RAAAA! Paint, handprints, smoosh MEEEEESSSSS!!

Mixed texture, leaf hand and fir cone

Conker rolling/painting

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Foam Egg decorating

It has been a very tough week this week in the Aj household, we have all one by one succumbed to a Flu type virus, first daddy, then Arthur, then Alyssa then me!  As I write this I am still dosed up on cold/flu capsules and cough medicine, and to top it all off Alyssa received a new tooth, twelve teeth now in total for the little lady, which is very strange for me as Arthur was 14 months when he finally got his first tooth, which we think is why he is such a fussy eater at times!!

So whilst all of this was going on, the activities unfortunately had to go on hold and good old reading, movies, and playing amongst themselves with their toys were the entertainment, until yesterday!  Yesterday for the briefest of moments I felt well enough to organise an activity for them, which was desperately neeeded as daddy was suffering on the couch again and Arthur was becoming increasingly hyper and bored and thus frustrated and acting out. 

I recently bought some foam eggs from a £1 shop for some Easter craft fun, with the possible idea of creating an Easter tree style decoration with them once finished.  So with some ready cut sweet wrapper, my thrifty fave and excuse to eat lots of chocolates at Christmas, and some paints, and bamboo sticks and a cup to hold them, I let the chaos begin! 

Arthur covered one in glue, then said "Tadah! I finished!" I then had to explain it was glue not paint bless him! He then sped through painting the others so quickly that I was glad I only put out six, saving the rest for another day!  Alyssa ended up with a novel way of painting her eggs in the end, she cleverly ended up rolling the egg in her paint!!

They both seemed to really enjoy the opportunity to get creative and messy again after a big break, and so I left them to do some painting after, it soon got very messy, and the table soon got covered in paint as well as the usual hand painting.  Soon it was all cleaned up and tidied away, and mummy needed a nap to recover!!

Starting nice and clean!

Getting a bit over 'eggcited' (sorry!!)

Tongues out, must be concentrating!!

Doing a bit of sticking

"Egg cup!" (Sorry again!!)

Loving the marbling as it drips everywhere!

Beautiful!

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Egg box Daffodils

The final piece of our Mother's day gift, along with our Simnel cake, and our Cards is a lovely bunch of flowers, egg box daffodils to be precise.

The Aj's both seem to really enjoy painting, it really helps Arthur to concentrate and Alyssa just likes to put the paint in her mouth more that on the paper, but also copy her big brother.  I think it also helped that we had a vase of daffodils on the table that Arthur had picked, so we were able to discuss colours such as what colour is the stem/petals.  Alyssa really enjoyed being let loose with a paint brush and part of an egg box,  Arthur was happy to attempt to paint it all over and get his hands covered in paint.  I then cut some rough petal shapes and stems out of a cardboard box, and let them paint those, Arthur wanted to paint more and more but we didn't have enough egg boxes so I then just let them both paint freely for a while as they were enjoying themselves so much.  The whole thing may mot be completely covered in paint, or look very neat, but it was made specially and that's what matters most!

"Need a touch more paint!!"

'Can't quite pick this up!'

"Ah got it!'

Free painting

Beautiful!!

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