we went to CHEF Christmas party. SO lots of fun and making things, singing carols, [playing, eating – all in no particular order!
Got home late and adjusted SB’s character skirt for her to twirl about in, then had roaring fire and watched some History of Britan [or whatever its called] with Alan Titchmarsh – SB really enjoyed it.
Read some of the cutaway transport book to SB, and then mostly chilled and wrapped a few presents, listened to chtismas songs etc.
Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Cooking, Dance/drama, General, geography, history, photos, socialisation, Stringbean's HE
well, we did quite a lot of hama deeds. SB had to do hers twice, as B ‘helped’ her. The first version was better, and so never mind to the receiver of the gift! I also did 2 hama stars as presents, so will remember to flickr them to Merry’s group. i have now run out of christmas green though.
A bit of general mayhem, and book reading and the BB went to sleep. SB and I had been going to do something fiddley then, but she prefered to get stuck in on the baking, so we made Delias chees and olive scones [where she tipped out approx half the egg, so we made up with milk and it is fine]
and then some choc choc chip cookies for CHEF tomorrow. I didn’t get them out of the oven earlier enough though. I just am no good at cookies – they are either biscuits or soggy. Anyway, they are edible. Bb helped with the end of the cookies, having woken up. She mostly ate the choc chips, but did wodge some of them in. We have been using the great big solid balance scales, which are rather lovely, in oz! SO SB adding, doubling etc like mad all by herself.
We have posted out the early years HE cards at last – sorry everyone. I still have my own cards to do.
bit of relaxing with the yoga DVD, SB definitely getting much better at it, and then more general mayhem. lots of singing carols – i quite liked BB’s jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells my legions [to the bring me back tune - rofl] Bit of ad hoc talking around the chinese calendar from the restaurant, and the years of thing. Chris and I are apparently totally incompatible! I have promised to celebrate the chinese new year.
Dinner and now bath. How does the day go so quickly? we were supposed to be making yoghurt pot bells for the Xmas tree? AH, wailing from upstairs – shall I see what Chris is doing?? [it sounds like SB is saying BB bit her nipple? def one for chris to handle]
Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Cooking, General, literacy, numeracy, SB-PE, Stringbean's HE
well, it is for me OK, as off until thurs after xmas! So, got home from work and huggled the girls with great relief. We got stuck straight in with reading, snuggling and playing together. Lots of drawing – BB loves her etch a sketch, the wacky wigglers are still a huge hit. SB has begun to be more imaginative herself, working out how things might join and what might not work. Both girls are rather sweet at making up imaginative stories with the christmas tree decs in the playroom. Even BB has got the hang of making them kiss and fall asleep. 2 trees may be a frip, but it seem to be money well spent. Straight into Xmas crafts and we made coconut ice. SB and BB – so the mixutres may not be exact! SB is quite able to do it herself, but we still do it together as fun. BB made a huge mess but enjoyed it!
After lunch, we did some making stained glass windows with black paper and tissue paper – glue city! i cut out a snowman shape for BB who stuck bits on it, and then demanded I did it! SB liked the snowman idea, so she did one too.
We read the hannukah section of while the bear sleeps and then watched Disney’s Aladdin, strictly come dancing and Planet Earth ['cos I was steamless at this point!]
i fell asleep, but BB woke me up, so now I have insomnia!!
A lovely first day of the hols though.
Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Cooking, General, history, music
…..and we are far behind. But we do have last years list 
Helen is now off work until Xmas, so much making and baking etc. on the horizon. Carols are on repeat play
Happy Christmas
Posted in Daft Stuff
Well, I am anyway. Perhaps in common with a number of others on this blogring Chrsitmas has snuck up on me. I have a craft cupboard full of good intentions. We do have trees up, and SB has done lots of Xmas cards – even if not posted [first 2 handed out today though] and I am mostly done on pressies. no cooking/baking preparation. House a mess.
I have also been letting the side down with spending so much time at work. 2-3 days a week I don’t make it home in time to see SB, which makes me feel very dislocated from family life.
I have been appraised – and passed. Wait to see how job planning going for next year [AKA how many hours they think they can wrangle out of me for nothing]. I just missed being excellent enough for an excellence award – but a miss is as good as a mile [or something?], so feeling grumpy.
SO onto better things. BB is weaned, and failry happily. A couple of feeds snuck at Barbara’s but none other now for a month. Kind of sad and kind of happy, but def right! She is a total cutie, and talks beautiful toddler talk, and has wierd dancing shuffle runs and mooch walks that she does to show her mood – saying OTay as she goes off to do something. Still very edible.
SB has been reading more, and enjoying a number of books from the library – including a good transport Xray book, and ocean book and archaeoloogy book. should have done another story in while the bear sleeps tonight, but she preferred the xray transport as a bedtime story! She’s enjoyed watching robin Hood as well as various of the David Attenborough natural history DVD’s. I need to spend more time with her, as I also miss our reading and craft sessions. She had her dancing thing last before week – which I did manage to get back for [terrible temporary camera!]
today we went to Merry’s. I am glad she lives relatively close, and we really should see each other more – maybe when I am made redundant or summat… instant disappearance of SB with the older girls. Fran tried to encourage them to put on a show, but SB and Amelie weren’t being very thespian! They then all disappeared off pretty much for the whole day. SB did look gorgeous in Fran’s skating outfit though. BB and Josie mostly played together – though BB did terrorize her a bit – she is obviously getting a nasty habit of face scratching – not often, last infact with R at Barbara’s. mostly over a Dora laptop though!
Merry and I gossiped a lot, Looked forward to Melrose and did a bit of fimo – Merry made a very beautiful statuette and I did some fiddly angels that fell apart in backing and made me stroppy! The bordeaux red in the classic range is a perfect angel colour. Merry intervention and they are now hanging on our Xmas tree! [they look rather brill actually on the tree, the white one looks best, we used superglue with no ill effects]
oh, Chris went out and did his usual timewarp thing, but did return with camera. Didn’t get the paper i asked him too though! oh we got SB’s mug back, and it looks lovely [from that painting place] and SB’s choice of colours works really well.
Anyway, thanks Merry for a lovely day. Everyone should have a fimo angel or 2 on their tree, and listening to carols is good for lifting the mood! [as well as spending the day with friends]. I am now going to watch telly and make a few angels. I am sure I have bought this colour, so will search it out!
Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Dance/drama, General, history, literacy, Out and About, socialisation, Stringbean's HE
woohoo! will blog about lovely day at merrys making fimo angels when the girls are in bed!
Posted in General
We got given this by a friend of Little Nanny’s (Helen’s Nanny), as they didn’t want it anymore.
I love it, I could never go and buy such a wonderful piece of Christmas tackyness, but every time I see it it makes me smile.? Though I don’t get the butterflies.
It needs video, a photo would never do it justice
[vimeo]123156[/vimeo]
Posted in Daft Stuff, video
Just realised that there was a draft I started last Monday morning, but never really any further than that blogging last week….. Mostly after the disaster that was the week before with BB being ill, it was nice to be back to normal, though I think it has taken a while for BB to get back to her normal sleep patterns. It’s slightly awkward at the moment though as she finds it hard to get through the day without nap (yesterday, she fell asleep while we were reading on the sofa at 4.30 and didn’t go to sleep until we went to bed.) Even if I get her to take nap earlier in the day she still takes awhile to get to sleep at night. If you wake her up in the middle of her daytime nap to stop her sleeping to long then she is just grumpy for about an hour until she wakes up properly.
The girls spent ages this morning putting glitter onto the cards they had made with Helen last week. Well, SB mostly, BB spent ages spreading glue over the sheets of newspaper. (BTW, those upside down squeezing ketchup bottles make good PVA bottles). This seemed to take up much of the morning. Other than that, in the afternoon, spent a good while on the sofa with SB reading and looking through one of those cutaway type books about modes of transport. So much talk about motorbikes, engines, the Orient Express, ships, why the Titanic sunk
In between there has been lots of playing – esp. the animals and the toy shop stuff, though there do tend to be arguments over the till, they are both playing together very nicely a lot of the time now, and SB has spent ages playing with various decorations from the playroom Xmas tree, standing by the tree whilst long impenetrable stories are enacted
Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, geography, science, Stringbean
