Merry New Year

Happy New Year if I haven’t said it already. Yes, that just about sums it up. I want you all to have a year that is both new and happy 🙂 and just like last year, that’s what I hope for myself too.

Christmas has come and gone and was as good as we hoped. The week leading up to Christmas saw both Ben and I (ok mainly Ben) up to our eyes in flat pack instructions and Allen keys. We bought Oscar a KidKraft Kitchen as his main present, which took two full evenings to assemble and my mum gave him a book case that took at least an hour of Christmas Eve. But it was all appreciated by the little guy, who loves his kitchen (he’s taken to microwaving Thomas the Tank Engine poor old chap) and being able to access his books easily.

Flat pack to the max! But how gorgeous is this KidKraft play kitchen? It’s nicer than my actual kitchen!

As we weren’t visiting family over Christmas, they’d all managed to get the boys presents to us before hand. What a very lucky young man!

As, we did the year before, we went out for lunch on Christmas Day. Unfortunately it wasn’t the roaring success it was in 2013, which was a real shame. Our booking was for 2.30pm but we didn’t get our main course until 5pm! Thankfully Oscar was an absolute trooper and sat, in a high chair, for nigh on three hours without any real complaining. I was so proud of him. However it has made me think next Christmas I want more control over said dinner, as I can’t guarantee he’d cope so well every year. Short of moving house or building a giant extension in the next twelve months, the issue of not having anywhere to sit to eat at home will remain, so a bit more lateral thinking may be required. Hmmm, watch this space!

Clever mama keeping some gifts back to entertain the boy at the table. If I do say so myself 😉

Boxing Day was really the triumph of the holiday. We literally did nothing and it was superb. We stayed in our Christmas jammas all day, watched TV, played with our toys (if you follow me on social media you may have heard I got an iPad for Christmas. Oh, you didn’t hear? Well I GOT AN IPAD FOR CHRISTMAS!!!!!) and ate enough cheese and chocolate to put us into a lactose induced coma. It was bliss.

Pyjamas and playing. Superb.

All in all it was a lovely festive break. Ben was at home for nigh on two weeks, which the boy took full advantage of. Daddy’s such a softie compared to mama and many a time the boy simply took Ben by the hand and dragged him upstairs to play in the bedrooms. We also took advantage of Ben being home more to transition the boy from a cot to a bed. I know at 2 years 9 months we’re pretty late to this particular party, but I wanted to make sure Oscar was really really ready for it and besides he’d never manage to climb out of the cot so why change it 😉 . We had to slightly rearrange home room to fit in the new bookcase so took the opportunity to remove the cot bars, just from one side to begin with. We left him in his grobag for the first few nights, but he coped so well we decided to buy him a single duvet (turning it sideways and tucking it right under the mattress) and proper pillow. I still can’t get over how easily he’s taken to it. It didn’t upset him in the slightest and he’s slept brilliantly. What a star!

Reading bedtime stories in his big boy bed

New Year was as uneventful as the year before, but I know we weren’t the only ones staying in. That’s what having small children does for you I suppose. I cooked steaks and we drank prosecco at midnight. Gone are the days of me running in to the street at midnight, shouting my drunken head off. At least for now!

So a New Year, what does it hold? I remember being so thoroughly pumped for 2014, more excited than I’ve ever been. 2015 has me feeling more cautious. I can feel this is going to be a year of big changes (I don’t know why I feel this I just do!) I feel a need for things to happen. Does that make sense. Less excited more purposeful. Older? Wiser perhaps. I want to feel I’m doing the best by everyone. I also want to enjoy life, learn and grow. Not much then 😉

I hope you had the Christmas you wanted for yourself and your loved ones and 2015 is everything it can and will be.

Cheers!

 

 

Silky Smooth Dough

OK, I know this looks like I’m writing a crafting/messy play series and I promise this wasn’t the intention. If I’d been more organised I guess I could have done. Ahh well, next time!?

So next in the line of crafty activities I’ve been doing with Oscar involves a different kind of play dough, that had been recommended recently by several friends. This one was even easier to prepare that the Easy Playdough I made recently. This one has two ingredients: cornflour and hair conditioner. I know right!!?

I don’t use hair conditioner myself (what? I don’t regularly use moisturiser either – it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just I never remember to), so bought the cheapest bottle I could find at our local supermarket. I plumped  for a pale green one, with a minty fragrance. I thought this would add a nice sensory touch to the dough. Which it did, although it did leave me with a craving for Soft Mints all day!

I mixed one cup of conditioner with two cups of cornflour. I didn’t use colouring this time, but you could!                       Mix and knead. Simples!

This dough is quite a different texture to the flour based ones. Its a smoother consistency once kneaded but dries quickly. A quick knead though and you’re back to silky smoothness.

Smooth!

The best thing about this dough is the stretch you get from it! Due to the non-Newtonian properties of the cornflour (can you tell we have a nerd in the house?) it can be both soft and hard at the same time. The boy played with it for ages, burying Thomas the Tank Engine in it, then pulling the train back slowly to see how far he could stretch the dough.

Poor old Thomas!

Like I said, a craving for chewy soft mints!

A real sensory experience

As far as it could stretch

It looks wet….

… but it’s crumbly at the same time

Despite it’s silky, smooth appearance, this dough is actually very crumbly, meaning it was also much more messy than regular dough. Had I realised this beforehand I would have let him play with this in the kitchen on the tiles, not in the lounge on the carpet! That said, it cleaned up with a damp cloth and a hoover, so it wasn’t all bad. The only thing I would say is I wouldn’t give this to babies or children with a penchant for putting everything in their mouths. Hair conditioner is really not something you’d want them to chow down on.

So , yes it was pretty messy, but clean up was easy enough. It wasn’t my fave, but the boy loved it and at the end of the day that’s what matters when it comes to messy play.

I need some more ideas of things to do now. Something less about the end product and more about the process. Any ideas would be greatly received. And before you ask I’m think I’m going to save Ooblek for the garden months! Well, wouldn’t you?

You crafty thing….

Despite only using it it for the past six months, Pinterest and I have had something of a bumpy relationship. I avoided it for so long because I worried that, once I jumped in I wouldn’t find my way back out! To be honest I have had moments like that, but all in all I have found it to be a great resource. I don’t tend to pore over it, looking at interiors I would never be able to replicate, and homes so tidy I’d be scared to breathe in them. Doing that tends to make me feel a tiny bit miserable. So instead I tend to use it to find ideas for specific projects, like when we redecorated our room, and the Pretzel Pumpkins I made at Halloween. Just lately I’ve been trying to be a bit braver when it comes to crafting with Oscar. I wrote recently about how he’s started to really enjoy play dough, so last week, with the rain pouring down and me without a car, I decided to pull my finger out and try some ideas for entertaining toddlers with cabin fever.

The first thing I tried was home made Moon Sand (using this post from the wonderful frugalfun4boys.com) and I can’t tell you how easy it was or how successful it was. To make it I emptied one can of shaving foam in to my maslin pan and mixed in a few drops of blue food colouring in until it was evenly distributed. Then I mixed in one box of cornflour a bit at a time to make sure it was all mixed thoroughly. The end result was the texture of damp sand and smelt like my Grandad (I’d forgotten he used to use Gillette Sensitive until I squirted it out!).

I then dumped the whole lot into a cheap underbed storage box (wide and deep), covered the kitchen floor with a plastic dust sheet (I had no idea how messy this stuff might get, so thought I better play it safe), put a few of Oscar’s toys in it and called him over. I couldn’t believe I’d managed to prep and set up a craft in such a short space of time and with the boy in the next room!

He was a little cautious at first

Then he realised he could bury things in it

His favourite game was driving the car into the drift of moon sand. I think he was re-enacting the episode where Thomas (the Tank Engine to those not in the know!) gets suck in the snow!

We played together and when I tried to leave him, he came and got me and sat me back down – most unusual for the boy!

We had a great time together. He listened when I asked him to keep the stuff in the box and I loved making little sandcastles with him

He’d fill the ‘bucket’ and I’d press it down. He’d then shout Ready, GO! and I’d turn it out

His favourite thing to do was to pick up the ‘sandcastle’ and crumble it back down.

This stuff was amazing. Let’s forget for a moment that I got the recipe from Pinterest and it actually worked for me (Yay!), he absolutely loved playing with it. The sand stayed pretty much in the box and what did get on our hands, clothes and the floor came off so easily (I patted myself on the back for the bright colouring – it meant I could see it to clear it up!). It was easy to assemble, the ingredients were easy to get hold of and cheap. But the best bit was it is reusable. After we finished with it, I shook as much off the toys as possible and pored the sand into a smaller airtight container (you could leave it in the box you used to be fair, it was just easier for me to store it in a smaller container). Then on Sunday we set it all up again and Daddy got to have a play with it too!

Second time round he had just as much fun. As did Daddy!

Buoyed by my success with the moon sand I decided to have another crack at my own playdough, with a recipe I’d been given by our local Children’s Centre.

I didn’t use glycerine in mine and I coloured it red. I would say 1 minute was probably enough in the microwave for me, but your machines may vary so start with a short burst and keep checking it. It came out a treat. Wow! I can do crafting after all and the boy loved it!

I was so proud! Really pliable and not at all the colour of surgical stockings

Not sure Percy was so thrilled about the set up though! Looks to me like Toby is smirking in the background! Don’t worry Toby, your time will come!

I think I just need to be a bit braver when it comes to crafts (and mess). I’ve been looking into making my own paint and I found an awesome post of how to get any stain out of children’s clothes. I just need to find a good, reasonably priced craft supplier. Where do you guys get PVA and glitter from? I miss Woolworths!