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!!!!!!