Star Wars fans........R2D2 secret storage box

I saw these little guys on Filth Wizardry  and just knew my boys would love them.

All made from stuff we have stashed around the place: toilet rolls, half of a couple of plastic eggs, popsicle sticks, old jar lids and a printable from the Filth Wizardry site.

Now, my boys don't really want to be bothered with all the tiny little details, they just want to get their guys made and in use.

So, if you want to see R2D2 in all his detailed glory, do hop on over to Filth Wizardry and see what they've made over there.

The tops pop off to make the storage area, just right for keeping all those small treasures safe.

Not that my boys really need more places to keep their junk treasure....

Keep the kids busy with a potion lab

I came across this idea on some cool blog (that I now can't find or remember) and thought my kids would love it. 

A potion lab, just the thing for a bit of magic, or maybe some scientific experimentation if you prefer.

I saved up any plastic containers I came across for a couple of weeks, then on a sunny but cold Saturday morning away we went. We did this in that time of year when Saturday Auskick had finished but cricket had not yet begun, so Saturdays belonged entirely to us for just a little while. For better or worse.

Many containers, a funnel, food colouring and water. 

Easy. 

The boys even managed to refrain from dumping/throwing/pouring the water over each other for most of the time. We did end up with a fair amount of mess and the colours all blended to a nice murky brown of course but my little magician and scientist loved it.

Meet (the) Eggbert(s)

When your family eats as many eggs as we do, you can end up with a lot of egg shells.

When you have two small boys, as we do, you need to come up with activities for those freezing, grey days of winter when they're bouncing off the walls.

Enter, the eggshells.

Ok, this was not my genius, I saw it somewhere on the blogosphere, but aren't they cute?

Hello Eggbert 1, Eggbert 2, Eggbert 3 and Eggbert 4.

Yes, we got creative with names, didn't we?

To make your own hairy little guys, save some shells from good old boiled eggs.

Place a cotton ball in the bottom of each shell and drip water on it till the cotton wool is fairly damp, but there's no extra water pooled around it.

Add sprout seeds.

We used................er can't remember. Cress and radish maybe?

Keep the cotton wool damp and in a lightish place, like a kitchen windowsill and your little baldies will have a fine crop in no time.

Then you can give them a haircut and eat the trimmings if you so desire.

(My boys did not desire, they left them to dry out and eventually let me consign all Eggberts to the worm farm. Er, I mean Eggbert heaven.)

Around the traps

Just a quick funny while I think of it...

Master 4 (nearly 5) is obsessed with traps. 

Trapping people - bad guys mostly.

I blame the watching of Scooby Doo reruns.

So following are a couple of simple-to-rig-up-in-the-house traps:

This one's the old rabbit under a box type trap. 

Very effective for capturing soldiers who have come to investigate the roll of sticky tape that's been left for bait. 

(You work with what you've got, right?)

 

And here we have poor Spiderman, about to be hoisted unsuspectingly towards the ceiling.

 

Prior to making these traps, I commented on how fun it was to be making booby traps. 

Mr 4 said "but can't we make leg traps mummy?"

Uh, poor kid....... 

Latest from my beloved Thermomix

Ok, I've decided to keep my blog mostly as is, there is just too much out there and I know most of it I'll get sick of shortly after I've changed it. I'm a bit of a Plain Jane when it comes to decorating. If you could see my house, ALL of the wall decorations are pics from the kids. So before that, it was just a tad bare. From a trained photographer, that is dismal I know...to be remedied one day in the distant future.....along with actually shooting more than happy snaps again....But for now, it's clouds and I need to shoot me a header pic.

I digress.

Now check out this drool worthy bowl of yum...

Oh my, was it good??

Well, the kids and I ate it straight from the thermomix bowl, despite the fact there is a dirty great sharp four pronged blade in the bottom of the bowl, if that tells you anything, feral mother that I am.

And yes, I made them use spoons so no one lost any digits.

I found this recipe on Quirky Cooking labeled Berry Foam, but the name does not do it justice. Foam reminds me of something scummy on the seashore and Mr 4 asked if he could paint with it in the shower.

He's thinking of, uh, shaving foam..

Which I cover the shower base in and tint blue to get a bit of relief from Mr 4's never ending energy and questioning on a rainy day. Thanks to my older sis, mother of three that she is for that idea.

I'll put the recipe here, as I changed it just a smidge from that which Jo on Quirky Cooking made, and she found it on a forum and changed it just a smidge from the original. (If you want a picture of how this recipe should be presented, please check out Quirky Cooking, Jo is much more civilised than I)

Berry Foam

• Whiz about 80 grams of rapadura on speed 9 for 20 seconds:

• Add 300-400 grams of frozen berries or other frozen fruit chopped up. Whiz for 30 secs, speed 9. (I found I had to insert the spatula and help it along as per making sorbet)

• Insert the butterfly, add 2 egg whites and 2 teaspoons of orange juice and whip for 3 mins on speed 4.

Done!

But none left now...

Another hot day...

The only thing to do on a hot day is sit in a bucket of water with an icypole.

Then squint for the photo because you put your sunglasses in the bucket.

Then poop in the bucket.

Then watch while mum tips the whole poopy mess into the toilet.

And flushes it.

Including the sunglasses.

Whoops.

Setting up the Christmas Crib

We have a very basic Christmas Crib
(is it called that here, that's what we called it growing up in Kiwiland...)
and it consists of just a few figures that remain from a much larger set.

So the kids and I made a couple of new ones:

This snazzy looking guy is Joseph



And this bright little fellow is the Drummer Boy



Er, without his arms and his drum, which was to be made from a gum nut. Master 4 who was doing the artistic direction (hence the multicoloured punk hair and green leopard duds) does NOT want pipe cleaner arms or a drum. So it will be.

They will soon join the existing crew, see below:



Mary is on the right and Amahl on the left has been standing in for Joseph.



And sometimes they are visited by some other random lady with her baby, her puppy and her pet tiger cub. And a lego knight drops by occasionally too.

Mary and Amahl were made by my mum many years ago and are the perfect solution to crib figures for small children. I think we'll make some new ones every year, as happened when we were kids.

Hmmm, who to make next?
I have a faceless body on my work table awaiting a personality.....

The value of playdough

I went to my 4 year old's kinder AGM last night....yahoo I hear you say and yes, you'd be right. (I also brought my knitting so it wasn't all bad.)

But one thing I do remember the kinder teacher talking about was the value of playdough. As in it's value as a play material, rather than it's monetary value of course.

She said you could take a cranky, out of sorts, having a bad day child, sit them down at the playdough table and after a short while they'd be happily rolling and squishing.
According to her, playdough is somewhat undervalued by today's parents and many children don't have any in their homes.

You're kidding, right?

Tell me you had playdough at home growing up. Tell me your KIDS have playdough at home right now.

Playdough is an essential part of child hood.........if only so you can roll it into small balls and fire them at your brother.

However, I had my very own cranky, out of sorts, having a bad day, got out of the wrong side of bed, mummy never lets me do ANYTHING I want four year old very recently.

After trying to entice him out of his foul mood by the offer of making new playdough and being soundly rebuffed, I made it with his lil bro instead. Only to find after a very short while Mr 4 could not resist getting out the muffin pans along with lil bro and making a batch of cupcakes, just like mummy.

He thawed out remarkably

And was even happy to pose while pretending to eat one


Whereas this little guy actually DID eat one...



My sis has a no-cook playdough recipe on her blog here.

The one I generally use though is this:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
1 tablespoon oil
2 teaspoons cream of tartar

Throw it all in a pot, mix and stir over a medium heat till cooked.
Takes about 5-7 minutes and works every time.
Store in an airproof container or in a plastic bag with all the air squished out.

A blue kind of day

This was one of those days when I just had to get them outside, and it was cold enough that we needed an activity rather than just aimless footling around which can be so fun on a more mild day.

So I chose finger paint. The request was for blue, so blue it was.

It was a bit of a finger paint disaster actually, if you want to lowdown on how NOT to make finger paint I've written it up here.

The backyard is still blue and I'm still picking the remaining blue bits out of bubs hair, when he sits still long enough for me to do so.

Roll on summer days, I'm ready for some heat! Then I'll let them finger paint nekkid and just shave their heads afterwards.

You can't see me....

Who needs toys when you've got a laundry hamper?

My lil guy is going through a phase of sitting in things.

The laundry hamper, buckets, shoe boxes, frypans, the potato heads plastic tub, any and all random cardboard boxes.

And he will sit on his brother whenever his brother lies on the floor. 

Actually it's more like a body slam than a sit, just as well H is the robust type.

Are all boys as physical and LOUD as mine? 

Is it just boys or are girls the same way? 
I admit to heaving an enormous sigh of relief when my two are in bed asleep, it gives my head a chance to stop ringing from the constant onslaught of noise and activity.

So a quiet game of hiding in the laundry hamper is very welcome.

How to make a robot from old computer parts

My four year old, H, is on a sudden robot kick.

Not the sort of robot you can make from cardboard boxes and tinfoil and bottle caps and pipe cleaners which we already have, but the REAL robot sort. The sort that talks and walks, or preferably flies. This came about after reading Wendels' Workshop, a kids book about an industrious little mouse character who is an inventor, and of course, he invents robots.

If you want to check out the Wendel story being read in a plummy British accent, feel free to watch the clip below....






Or if you don't want to be spoken to as if you are a 3 year old, you can see the book here.


I quickly made the obsession worse by looking up robots on Youtube which has all sorts of walking, flying, soccer playing, wrestling, violin playing robots. So H is under the impression that robots are the easiest thing in the world to make and can we go out and buy parts and make one tomorrow please?

Crikey.

You don't want to burst their enthusiastic/mummy-daddy can do anything attitude but......

So hubby comes up with idea of making a scrapheap robot, as Wendel does, but the only scrapheap we have is a pile of old computers that are waiting to be taken to a recycling depot.

No problem, H is suddenly all fired up again, yeah, yeah a scrapheap robot!

A good scrounge reveals all sorts of appropriate bits and a glue gun holds it all together. Yes, a glue gun. No it doesn't walk and talk, although once a battery is found for the fan, I mean the lethal spinning limb severer, that is positioned on his right arm it should spin lethally (not really) and in that excitement the walking, talking and flying requirements seem to have been put aside.

This guy is seriously cool. He even has teeth!

And he was made by Dad, aka hubby, so he's even cooler.

Carpentry for the kids

I had an inspired idea a few days ago, or at least what passes for an inspired idea in my kid-centred world....

(Why was it inspired...because it was another FREE activity....my favourite sort!)

My boys love hammers and nails.

These things are hanging round after our ongoing but nearly finished house renovation, but as my hubby is not into carpentry (or renovating, actually) we don't have anything convenient to hammer aforementioned nails into.

So I rang round a few hardware stores asking about free wood off cuts and was invited round to a local Home Timber and Hardware store to have a scrounge. 
Bunnings Warehouse, it turns out are involved in a recycling program to "give something back to the environment" (their words) so kudos to them, but no good for me.

So the boys and I gathered up a few armfuls of scraps, raced home and dragged out the hammers, nails and the erm, felt pens. Not sure how those ended up in the mix, but it all made for a very engaging afternoon.

Tomorrow we might get the paints out for a bit of wood decorating, although I need to be in the right mood for that, as it invariably involves painted children and clothing as well as whatever object was designated to receive a coat....

Having fun on a rainy day

How much fun is a rainy day?
Well, if you give up the notion of curling up under a blanket with a good book and a hot drink, which of course if you have young kids is not at ALL possible, you can rediscover your love of puddles.

Or at least stand close by while the kids rediscover theirs, hehehe

Oh yeah, gotta love a Melbourne winter, sigh....

This cold grey weather leaves me flat sometimes...

I'm a bit uninspired at the moment so lucky you, you get the kids instead...


Two small boys and a dripping tap = endless entertainment.

Yes, we're on water restrictions, the tap was dripping sloooowly and not all day.....I can never let them run under the sprinkler but a dripping tap for a while in the backyard? 

That I will do. I'll take shorter showers to make it up...

My little gardener, isn't he angelic?
 
This was right before he threw down the trowel and went in with both hands and tried to eat it. 

Well didn't try to eat it, did eat it.

Paint and buckets of water on the driveway.
 
Can you tell I'm all for cheap entertainment? 

Even if it does take a lot more cleaning up...

The little tacker in his new beanie.

He was so proud of it, he wouldn't take it off for the whole day. 

Yes I bought it, no I didn't sew it. I know, bad mummy.

And the big fella in a rare, un-cheesey smile.



Ok, I'm done with trying to inspire myself for the evening. 

The kitchen's a mess, the dishes need doing, the nappies need to go in the washer, but I'm going to crawl into my electric blanketed bed and read.

And thaw out. 

Ahh, heaven....

Plan toy pirate ship - toy libraries rock!

Managed to nab this groovy wooden pirate ship at the toy library today...

It's another Plan toy, and I am in love with their stuff! The toy library has asked for suggestions for new items, as they have some funds to spend.......so of course I suggested MY favourite toys. Oh well, the kids do love them too, so they will benefit, not just me, haha!

I thought the rescue set and the fire engine. The toy library already have the tree house, the airport and an Eqyptian pyramid. Another great one I'd love for my boys is this plan toys dollhouse. I know hubby would not go for it though, he's a bit stick-in-the-mud about supposed 'girls toys' for boys. I could always get it for me though, right??