a creative day at home

We ended up having a creative day at home today. We had planned to meet up with Immi and Sol, (also 7 and 4, plus baby), possibly for a walk, but I had a phonecall just after 11 - Immi had cut her finger making potato prints and was on her way to A&E to get a stitch in it. We didn't go out, half expecting to hear from them, but didnt.

They had already started making cards before I got up but Furg really wanted to go on Little Animals (computer) so I left them to it while I did a bit of clearing up. I decided the only way to get them off it was to get something more interesting out, and I had found the window decoration kit from LIDL under a pile of clutter. So they were quite excited about that, but it had to be a game of two halves as you have to let the outline set for 1-2 hours before the colouring in. So we had lunch in between and they got out the card making stuff they had prepared earlier, and sat happily doing that for quite a while.

making Christmas cards

window decorations

They really got into making the window decorations. It is a bit like pva in a tube, which you peel off when dry, in fact I think I've seen something similar in ELC. The outliners are a bit thicker and black. You just fill in between the outlines with colour. I doesn't really matter if you go over the edges because you can stick them on the window upside down, so even Furg's looked good. Drawing the outlines is a bit trickier, though, so I did some for them to colour in. There were some templates, but some were a bit naff and a bit fiddly to trace. It was easier to draw our own simple shapes like stars. They both managed this, and got quite carried away with some freeform abstract squiggles, which worked ok, too.

this is fun...

colouring in 

Unfortunately, after all that concentration, and not having been out all day, Furg started running round hitting people and being generally a pain for about 2 hours before, during and after tea. It was a shame it was already dark when this started, as I would have taken or sent him outside. O well, you can't get everything right. Forgot to mention that we also made flapjacks at some point today. Ally still wants to sit on my hip a lot of the time. I need a shelf on it.

They were quite proud of their efforts and took them upstairs to put on their bedroom windows. We read the whole set of Red Nose Readers - Furg was definately showing some interest in what things say in the Red books. He got them out and I just read them, like anything else, but in my head I realised this is him beginning to read!

I had to escape to the kitchen, just know, as I was outnumbered in the front room by people watching crap on telly and I couldn't hear myself think. But I know where the chocolate stash is... I then had to move to the living room, or 'day room' to get a signal. It takes me ages to write anything with the telly on and I constantly have to re-read it as it's usually rubbish.

this is me...

You're a punk rock mommy! DIY is probably your
motto, because you're a punk mama at heart.
Your kids are getting your independent spirit
and guts, and learning to solve problems
themselves. You love it when they show their
independence, even when it's breaking your
heart.


What kind of a freaky mother are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

woolly...bowling...mashed potato

Right now down to the real business of blogging...but can I remember what I was going to say? can I bobbins? What kind of a headf**k was that, anyway?

This morning we went ten pin bowling with some other HE'ers- didn't know them, but they were a friendly bunch. I just saw it on the list of organised activities and I have been desperate for something a bit more organised and physical for Jem, especially. It was a spur of the moment thing as I just noticed it was on last night and thought, haven't we got to open up the Halifax meeting? can we make it? yeah, of course: its only 1/2 an hour from Bradford to Halifax, right? and it is supposed to finish 1/2 and hour before I have to be in HX, OK? so, I turn up 45 minutes late, but fortunately someone else has done it. Wishy-washy, woolly thinking, I know, but what can you expect from someones who's head is full of mashed potato?

Anyway, the bowling. Jem scored 63, which I can't totally understand, but I think she did pretty well to hit the things at all. I only had one go and managed to gracfully step and roll, as I have seen on The Simpsons, but managed to hit zilch. And, no, I didn't meet a Jaques (like Marge did). Furgs was happy to use a rolly thing that you roll the ball down, aimed in the right direction, which was pretty good, as lifting the balls is difficult enough, he almost got his toes once.

I think they were pretty bewildered by the whole experience, to tell you the truth (can that be abbriviated?). I mean I just whisked them out of the house with only the merest suggestion of breakfast- a few croissants chucked hastily in their direction and we were off on an adventure. It always feels like an adventure when we go more than a few miles, to a city, even. They just would never have that experience if they were at school. Or, they didn't, before. But afterwards they said they enjoyed it. Jem wrote it, along with a list of other dates in an A4 notebook, with a funky cover, that I got from the pound shop. This is a bit like my Journal that I keep and stick things in. She seems to have abandoned her scrapbook, in favour of this, more grown-up approach.

So, we made it to the HX meet. There weren't may people there, but it was OK. One girl was a similar age to Jem, who tried to recreate a bowling alley using long skipping ropes and cones. Bless. They dragged some mats out of a previously locked cupboard, saying, "this is going to be a proper gym." The most fun they had all afternoon was when the grown-ups tried to put the mats away and they kept running about trying to stop them by standing on them.

On Saturday they went to a birthday party, with a space theme. I had to quickly run something up from what I could find in the house for Furgs to dress up in. (See spaceman, below.)

thankyou

What am I doing? talking to an inanimate entity. Now I want to back it all up. just in case.

Here We Go again

Now look what's happened! where the f**k's my blog, blogger, I know you've got it.

spacman 

silly bloggers

so, its letting me post now, but still looks funny. Maybe the 2 were unrelated. Maybe one of the children has messed with the template...surely not?

paranoia

I had a dream, (or more of a waking nightmare) that blogger was down- permanently and my blog was lost forever... Then I came back and my blog has gone all funny and it wont let me post. So I'm not hoping too much about his one.

caberet heaven

November Gigs
Went to see Caberet Heaven at the Trades Club last night. It was F*****G BRILLIANT, for want of a beter word, especially the Hillbilly Idols, who do bluegrass versions of old punk favourites, which suddenly become a rootsy country song, like your dancing away to 'ever fallen in love with somone' or 'teenage kicks' and you suddenly realise you're actually dancing to 'you are my sunshine' or 'home on the range', and all you can do is laugh... and I wasn't even pissed...

Need an early night tonight

Need an early night tonight, I think, as still a bit dozy after having to rush out to take car for MOT. (May fail as windscreen has a chip in it, which has been 'fixed' by autoglass, but is still too big.) Still doing things like trying to put the teapot lid on the coffee pot. Maybe that coffee'll sort me out, maybe if I have another. Just thought I'd quietly sit and do this now, while having my lunch, and while Ally was asleep. I did ask Maeve and Pete (the teenagers) not to wake him up, but they are not capable of being that careful or considerate, so I am now feeding him, but I don't think he'll go back off now.

I had to go out so quickly this morning, as someone had turned my alarm off, I had to just put Ally in a vintage-style knitted suit on top of his nightclothes, but this was much amired by the fleamarket stallholders on the way to playgroup. I thought I'd managed to avoid getting roped into making anything else for the playgoup's Advent Fair, by not going again to the craftmaking Tuesdays. Don't get me wrong, I love making things, but when you have 3 children with you and you are trying to keep them all occupied its difficult to concentrate and anyway, I just haven't got the headspace ATM. So today, I managed to rope myself in to making some Waldorf Dolls, as someone there had been looking at them in Myriad and said they were 30 to 100 pounds, and I said I had been known to make them a lot cheaper than that and showed them one I had made for playgroup, so now they want one for 'name the doll'. Maybe I will just give them this one and charge for any more that I make. I'm fed up with doing things for nothing, not because I begrudge it, I just dont think my skills are valued in the same way as eg. when one of the dads made a sanpit or a fence I'm sure they were paid for it.

Had a look on ebay last night as I was inspired to try and sell some stuff. Turns out to be a bit of a faff and you have to pay just to advertise. I'll have see. I just had to move 44 mails into a sepeate folder as I signed up for Home ed UK list and didnt realise yahoo mail doesnt automatially sort mails for you, unless you pay! I joined the list to try and find out more about the Children Bill - its so hard to find out about it - I havent heard anything in the news.

Crawling up the walls again

...this morning. Sometimes I just don't know what to do. I found out about some play centres, or 'soft play areas,' as they are called here, but I just couldn't face it alone, and chickened out. I have visions of miserable childminders shouting, or ignoring, at kids. I think I must have had some bad experiences in the past, or have generally got a bit agarophobic lately.

So I phoned my friend Josie, who couln't come to the phone as she was 'doing her lessons', which kind of made me feel worse about not 'doing' any education. I'm still finding my feet. Must order that book, Free Range Education, to get some inspiration. I'm trying not to beat myself up about them going on the computer, as I think its OK in small doses. The problem I have is keeping it in small doses.

By lunchtime I had had enough and decided to put the bikes in the car and go to the park, picking up some sandwiches on the way. (There is a park within walking distance, but you can't ride a bike on it, unless your'e into off-roading, and anyway, at 1000ft above sea level it takes a braver soul than I to venture there at this time of year.) This turned out to be a really good idea, as we all got the fresh air and exercise we needed and we also bumped into a few friends. So Jem had a few mates to play with, (Furgs was happy playing with a stick) and I managed to have some grown-up conversations. Someone who I don't know very well, but who obviously felt obliged to come over as they were the only other people in the park at the time, told me their litle boy, nearly 4, had started school and she wasn't really happy about it but it was the only option for her. When I mentioned home ed she said, most emphatically, that this wasn't an option for her as she wasn't that sort of person. I decided not to continue on the subject and just smiled and nodded. The other conversations were better, if a little bit interspersed with "no, don't eat that", "don't hurt the doggy", every few seconds: Ally is of a difficult age to take to a park, but I put up with him crawling around in mud, picking up ring-pulls, etc, as, on balance it was quite a good experience.

So I didn't mind it when they went on the computer while I was making the tea. It looks like most of it was on BBC schools, The Magic Key and Primary French. Its a shame they don't do German as well, as Jem has a German (Montessori)teacher and is learning the the language. Maybe this could be something for Grandma to buy. I think I would prefer a computer language program to a video, well, I definately would, if you can get them.

Anyway, time for a bit of bonding with dd no.1...

I hate mondays

...Because I'm still recovering from the weekend. Not the wild nights out (doesn't happen), or excess of children (no difference), but the fact that I try to take it a bit easy and not do absolutely everything that needs doing in the house. So, on Monday, I find things like used baby wipes stuck firmly to the bathroom floor; the whole house is in a mess as I haven't been constantly tidying up after *people* and I haven't got the will to do it now. Also, I have invariably had a row the day before, as two days is obviously too long for two 'civillised' adults to spend in the same house. I didn't get the rubbish out in time this morning, which is always a bad start to the week. I just had a bath, along with a few plastic animals that I couln't be bothered to remove. I took two bottles in to wash my hair and one was full of water and the other was empty. I also found an entire family bar of pears soap, which had been left under the shower curtain and had turned into a congealed white blob. I had two small visitors whilst in the bath, one giving me a synopsis of "The Two Bad Mice", which is quite an appropriate story for the way today has gone...

Last night I was looking on papersnowflake.com for some interesting snowflake designs, when they both abandoned the paper cutting in favour of playing on the computer. (Shucks! Foiled again!) I did find that quite annoying, but tried to remain calm about it as it was nearly bedtime and tomorrow was going to be different. But as soon as Furgs came down this morning he went straight to the computer and turner it on. I just find it annoying as he gets frustrated and needs someone to help him, but if I do then Ally comes in bashing the keyboard with his hand or grabbing the mouse. He ended up doing some Letterland workbooks, which was quite successful, and I managed to remain calm throughout. I tried to find some worksheets for Jem to do at the same time, but couldn't so she did some our-montessori maths on the computer, which was quite good, and she could understand it as it is the same as what she has been doing at the Montessori School (only with real equipment, which I havent got).

We didn't go to the HE meeting, as Jem didn't want to. She has never quite forgiven it for not actually being a gym, as in the council-run one we used to go to which has closed down, which had all sorts of equipment to swing, bounce, jump and generally have a good time on. I tried to find out about some gym classes, but they sound a bit formal and structured, (and at 9.15 on Saturday morning!) and finally reallised that what she really wants is one of those play centres (which I hate, because they make me feel claustrophobic and as if I'm going to die from plastic poisoning or piped music, not to mention the junk food). But there may be one that's not too bad, that takes over 5's, that isn't too far. But I think I would have to go with someone else or I would find it too depressing.

So the afternoon was spent with them both, or taking it in turns, on the computer (I give up), on The Little Animals Activity Centre (BBC) and Seussville.com, where we did manage to find some print and play things, too. While I was getting my scrapbook up to date I found some gold and silver pens I had bought really cheap on the market and they loved having a go with those. Then Furgs decided to make a computer out of a pizza box, which he got quite into so I cut him some little squares for keys, which he stuck on. I had saved the pizza box to make a pizza fraction game, but found another one for this. I got the idea from somthing I saw in a catalogue, but couldn't quite see what it was like, so I just made it up. I just cut out circles (with a picture of pizza on) and cut them into various fractions. I got 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6 and 1/8, I thought you could do adding fractions or just recognising them, and then I realised you could make it into a dice game. I'm sure it's been done, but I don't always look for instructions first, as this can take ages, and I was quite happy quietly cutting up bits of cardboard after tea, anyway.

So its doesn't sound like they were two bad mice, after all. Maybe it was just me. I just felt a bit demorallised with the whole thing earlier. Maybe I've been putting myself under too much pressure to do lots of wonderful creative things, and I don't always have the energy or inspiration. And I was starting to feel the dread of Christmas. They were quite giddy and hyper just before bed, but that's hardly surprising since we hadn't even been out of the house all day. Looks like I'll belooking in the yellow pages under play centers tomorrow...

Snowflake Pattern Templates

Snowflake Pattern Templates

new blog

I've just made a new recipe blog!

This afternoon...

we were so busy sledging...

we were late for ballet... 

...but it hadn't started

...point those toes!

...we brought a friend home

I'm drying my nail varnish.

A Play

fairies and dragon 

computer games

We had a computer incident yesterday. We were out in the garage looking for some table legs for a table that I was giving to Maeve's Dad, who has just been offered a council flat. (O, great. Now we'll never get rid of him). After a while, Furgs got a bit bored and wandered back in the house. It didn't seem like much later when I heard him shout me, but it didn't sound that urgent. When I got back inside he said the computer had been smoking and he had turned it off. I panicked for a minute, thinking it was my computer, but it turned out to be daddy's (o, that's alright then), and he mentioned that he had been trying to put a different flat bit in it (memory) but that had absolutely nothing to do with it smoking!!! We later on agreed that it is not very safe to have a computer without a case just sitting around in the house.

Now that's playing on a computer! (But not a very good idea)

lanterns

Lanterns: Start with a strip of black thin card (7"x20"), which you cut out holes in whatever shape, eg. circles, diamonds, hearts. Stick coloured tissue or cellophane (they used waxed tissue paper) over the hole on the back and you can add further decoations, eg, sequins, drawing on the front. Staple into a cylinder shape. Draw round this circle onto a piece of sturdy card, onto which you add flaps, before cutting out. Selotape together. Add loop of string to top and attatch to a stick. Stick a tea light to the centre of base with sticky tape.

lanterns

gingerbread house with added icing, sweeties and coconut. 

lantern festival

This is one on the reasons my children go part time to a Montessori School. Last night it was the lantern festival. They have all been busy making lanterns and on the night they sang (in German), whilst processing around the outside of the school, which is just a large house. Afterwards we all shared food which we had brought. The gingerbread house we made went down very well!

lantern festival

more sledging

I know you may not want to see any more pictures of snow, but I couldn't keep them off it this morning. So, for the record...

...one advantage to having a sloping garden

"I'm too poorly to go to ballet"!! 

sledgng in pyjamas! 

drawing in snow: 'the sun' (drawing and photo by Furgs)

Snow has fallen... 

...softly fallen 

Learning from nature: scraping snow with icicle 

Can we go home now? (this is a 2-piece outfit knitted by my mother from a 1950's pattern)

the cherry hat

You know when you make a pompom and you haven't got the stamina to wind enough wool onto it and it ends up a bit disappointingly sparse? Well the pompom on The Cherry Hat had the opposite problem. It was too dense. It was too heavy. It was so full of wool that it wanted to fall right off that cherry little hat. The pompom was what gave the cherry hat its name. It was very big and very round and very red and very fat.

The name cherry hat was given by the little boy who wore it. It was made my his mummy to the replace the original cherry hat that his grandma had made, and had fallen off in a carpark in Manchester. It was made by his mummy to go with the jumper with a red zip which she had designed to keep him warm at a cheaper price than the one in the Boden catalogue. But that little boy didn't like the new cherry hat. It was too big and the cherry was to big. So it got put away or the summer, along with the jumper with the red zip. The next winter, when it snowed, the little boy's mummy got out the cherry hat and decided it was time to sort it out. So instead of making a new cherry hat she made it smaller, by sewing a little seam inside it. And, as for the cherry, she pulled out loads of strands of wool, which made it a bit unstable, so she had to find the bit that held it together and pull that up really tight, and knot it. And then she trimmed it until it was nice and fluffy and sewed it on extra tightly, so that it didn't want to fall right off the cherry hat any more.

And did that little boy want to wear that brand new fixed cherry hat when he went out in the first snow of winter? No, he just put his hood up.

And did his little brother want to wear it? Will he wear a hat at all?

cherry hat