Monday!!!

OH MY GODNESS!!!!! Monday already...and its an inset day! At least none of the other schools here have inset today so I took the kids down to the farm at Lewes...Spring Barn Farm. It was deserted bar about 6 other mums with tiny tots. My lot loved it as they had free rein of everything!!!!!
10 times each on the Zip wire...me included!
1 hour of bouncing on the bouncy pillows.. again me included!
and numerous times down the drop slides.
That AND a tractor ride, stoking the little animals, a sheep race and lots of swings and outdoor slides.
What a day, we all came back utterly exhausted, I am far too tired to upload pics atm and will be hitting the sack as soon as I have typed this.
Will also do an extra post tomorrow!

Castle cake for a boy

About time I posted this from my eldest sons birthday 2 weeks ago now! This was my first attempt at a castle cake and to be honest I am not entirely thrilled with how it turned out, but you live and learn! First I baked some Maderia sponges up. Maderia sponge is so easy to cut without it crumbling all over the joint.

I put the two sponges on top of one another with some of my home-made plum jam from last year! Yummy! Then I used cheap chocolate swiss rolls for the turrets at the corners. I thought that not all the kids would probably like the maderia but most like chocolate! The ready to roll icing was coloured with some of my black food colouring to turn it a grey colour. The icing was put on again it was stuck with my plum jam. You can see a bit poking out in the corner on the picture below.

Please excuse the state of the work surface....I always make such a mess when baking! I Put ice-cream cones on the top of the turrets and covered them in chocolate icing. Chocolate slabs were used on top of the castle.

then I had some writing icing that I used to draw and colour the windows in.

I made my own flags with a cocktail stick and paper and put the candles on the front. Birthday boy loved it...thank goodness.

The princess has decided that she now wants a princess castle for her birthday in a couple of weeks time. Joy. I get to do it again! 

SO Much To Do! Crafting evening.

Yesterday, I invited 4 friends around to come and use up some of my crafting stash....I refuse to buy too much more till I get rid of some, plus husband wants some space in my craft room for his chess bits....
We had a great time, but did not manage to use up too much at all....everyone went home with some bits though. I learnt how to make friendship bands too, never learnt when I was younger. I will have to teach my kids when they are a little older. So, when the alarm went off this morning I was not happy and DID NOT want to get up. The princess jumped up and down on us though and got me out of bed.
She even dragged me to the gym straight after taking the boys to school....I am going to miss her motivation when she starts school in September.
I think I will have to have some different friends around for another crafting session and get rid of some other bits. Ok, writing that down made me send a text to a group of 4 friends to see when they could make! Hopefully they will all come back with a date. A different and cheap mummies night out!

Painting the patio

 Again we had a friend around to play while the boys were at school. As the weather was still ok we decided to do some painting of the patio....I love this, it is so simple and they love 'painting' their funny creations.

I love the 'hair' that my little girl does at the minute...it always stands on end no matter who she is drawing. We talked for a bit about evaporation too when they asked why it disappears. So, we got a little bit of educational science in too! Bonus playdate!

What to do next???

Hand decorated lampshade!

For the Princess's bedroom, I found a fantastic light with glass beads in pinks and purples that she would love, however it was not meant to be....it was on one of the Facebook buying and selling pages and someone beat me to it. Now, I realise that I could easily go to the shops and get one but the price of them!!!!
So....I decided that against my others halfs judgement I would buy one of those round paper lantern type of shades, in white, and get the Princess to decorate it herself.
My first idea was to get her to stick gems and feathers etc to it, but to make it less of a mess I decided to give her 5 shades of pink and green felt tips and let her loose....I think the end result ( from a 3 1/2 year old) is fantastic!!!!

Lego Movie

We went to see the Lego Movie, finally. It has finally gone into the £1 shows area. If we were all to go regular price it would be near-on £50!!!!!! But at £5 and some sweets from Sainsburys its do-able. Thought the opening of the movie was great with the Awesome song , them I thought it got a little complicated for the littles to follow properly. However they all seemed happy with it, so no complaints.
When we got home they all immediately got the Lego out....all of it....Duplo and the regular stuff.

This was the house one of the boys made out of the Duplo....All 3 kids spent about 2 hours building and generally playing with the Lego, really welcome sight. 

Birthday madness!

As i said last week, it was my eldest son's birthday on Saturday and we were having an 8th birthday World Cup Sleepover with 7 of his friends coming and 5 of them staying till the Sunday. THIS is why I did not post on Friday...too much to do!
The cake was not one of my best I will quickly admit but he was more than happy with it.

After he blew the candles out and everyone had a piece, grandad even took a giant bit home, the kids all took some home in their party cups too, we still have at least half left! Luckily today (monday) we have had our monday friends around...8 kids and mums so it quickly disappeared. 

The house was decorated to the max with football England flags everywhere!

A large flag over the fireplace where they were watching the match plus bunting in there.

Flag bunting all down the hallway and in the kitchen at the back and in the garden!!! I even had another giant flag loaned to me and we stuck it out of the upstairs windows outside the front of the house.

The kids loved it, the middle son aged 5 stayed up till 10.30 and was getting right in there with all the big boys! Even the princess stayed up till 10! She was sooo tired bless her, but would not go up till they all came in from the garden.

The boys all stayed in the garden till 10pm as the game did not kick off till 11pm! They had some of the games that I planned, and they played football themselves a lot too, as well as having burgers and hotdogs and birthday cake. Fun was had by all and it was a fairly simple party to organise...not at all as scary as people may think! Just make sure that you have plenty of games ideas and backups. I always find when I dont plan much it is really hard work and they want to be entertained, but if I have a huge list of games ideas, they dont want you to entertain them much and sort themselves out.  Or maybe I am just lucky with my eldest!!!!!!

Dolls Swings

 We had one of the Princess' friends around to play today. The friend is 4 and the Princess is 3 (almost 4). They decided after lots of dressing up that  they wanted to have a dolly tea party in the garden. So, we got the nice soft blanket out and made some 'pink tea' ie squash, and a plate of grapes and biscuits for them to munch on.

Having filled their tummies they wanted something else to do, so I thought we would try to make some swings for their dolls. I have been meaning to do this for a while, so I gathered the bits needed up. At first I thought shoe box lids would make a good swing but it could not be left in a tree at all in case it rained so I went with some plastic cartons, the sort that tomatos come in, and got some string out too.

The containers already had plenty of holes in them so all I had to do was take them outside a find a tree that was the right size for the girls to swing their dolls off, and tie the containers on the tree!

 

These worked quite well and the dolls had fun swinging and spinning around, then they got very daring and went climbing in the tree.

The girls even took the toy cd player out so that they had music at the bottom of the garden too! What a party! I left them to it and just got back inside as the Tesco delivery guy arrived! Lucky I didn't miss him, as you cannot hear the bell from the bottom of the garden...must do something about that!

Birthday time!

It.s that time of year again....first, in June it is my eldests birthday....8 this year!!!! then in July it is the Princess' birthday 4 this year. Last year for my sons 7th birthday we decided to do something a little different with regards to his present....far too many toys in this house....so we got him a tent and pitched it in the garden....needless to say, a den of is own tn the garden, went down a treat.
We left his tent up all summer and he had friends over to play in it, went in it to get away from the younger two etc and was terribly sad when we took it down in October when the weather got just a little too wet!
The neighbours thought we were mad and kept saying we have killed the grass etc, but it quickly grew back. So this last weekend, I got it out and put it up again! Lets kill that grass again!

It is right at the bottom of the garden and not an obvious blue or anything so I think we will have it there for another few months before I take it down again! Eldest was very happy to have his tent back! I did think of putting lots of cushions etc in there to keep out there, but then thought of all the mice that may visit ( we have chickens next door the other side of that hedge!) 

We now have only a few days left to think of something for this years birthday....he cannot tell us what he wants at all....so far I have got him a couple of those Mixel Lego things and some second hand non Lego Lego and a mini digital photo frame keyring! He got a camera from Father Christmas this year so this may encourage him a little more! He has somewhat reverted to loving Lego again too! We have exactly 5 days if we are to get him anything else.

I am also making another cake (not a chess one this year) He has requested a castle cake with an England Flag on top for the first England game of the World Cup (just happens to be on his birthday...hence the party...world cup sleepover the game does not start till1pm!). First it had to be purple but I have convinced him that is to girly and grey it is....in my mind this will be simple....I am beginning to doubt that....more thoughout the week.....

update on the veggie patch

I have not posted for ages about the little mini veggie patch that I started up this year. One of the raised beds is flowers and the other veg. Husband says they should be bigger to have more veg....he did not even want them to begin with!

They seem to have grown more overnight too! The far bed is the flower one with sweet peas to grow up the canes and some random flower seeds that I sprinkled in the mix! There is also a currant bush that I got from the 99p store in town....well I originally got 2 but one seems to be dead!...I suppose I got lucky with the other one. Not sure if its red or black currants though....will have to wait and see. 

In the front bed are runner beans, which the kids all love, as they still believe that they help them to run faster if they eat them all up! Also some Chives...yummy...and lovely flower heads too...and we just planted some carrots too.  I think I agree with hubby and will be building another one next year too. 

I wanted to keep it small and simple for this year though and so put flowers in one so next year beans can go in there....crop rotation and all that.So far we have had NO SLUGS to visit....and waiting to see if the Chives keep the black fly away from the runner beans too.

Paper Chains!

On the second day of the Half term hols the kids got rather bored. For some reason, unknown to me, the middle son said that he suddenly wanted to make some paper chains! So, I got some of my patterned scraps out and cut them all roughly the same size on the paper guillotine, let them have them all along with some sellotape!

As you can see they all got involved and decided to see who could make the longest chain....my eldest won with one about 3 meters long....it literally went all the way down the stairs! He was very proud of it. Kept them all happy and occupied for no money except a bit of paper and tape....for about 1 1/2 hours....FANTASTIC!

One more day! It's an inset day!!!!

Just when you think half-term is over you remember that there is an inset day on Monday...tomorrow. I suppose overall the kids have been good....lots of visits to relatives, an exciting day out yesterday (Saturday) to Brighton pier. It is the first time that they are all over 1m and can therefore go on a few off the rides!

 Daddy took all 3 of them on this one at one point. Very exciting, although the Princess declared that she would not go again as she got rather wet! That lasted about an hour, then she was desperate to go on again. There was also a haunted house ride the boys went on, a traditional merry go round that the Princess went on and various smaller rides too. 

Having caught up with the laundry and ironing today, done a bit of cleaning and gone to a boot fair with my eldest, I think I may surprise them with another day at the seaside tomorrow....maybe in Eastbourne...with a trip to our favourite Ice-cream parlour....Thayers! Yumyumy!