It's a wrap!

Trying desperately to finish off all the remaining chores this morning and the bet way to keep these two MonkeyMoos out the way was to set them up making some festive wrapping paper!

Finger paints, some sheets of paper and a marker pen for the details. 

Here's the result- a choir of angels! 

Dotty Pottery

Oh my, it's been a while, hasn't it! I seem to have got caught up in life and housework, and work work, totally neglecting my little blog! So here is a post I had written ages ago, and simply not got round to posting!

 

We painted pottery.   The boys loved it.   It all got broke!   There were tears!   Its a Long story.   So we made another visit to the pottery cafe to paint up some more! Really there isn't much to say about painting pottery. It's paint, paint brushes, cups of water begging to be knocked over and a whole heap of patience! At aged 3 little Monkey-Moo found it tough to understand why the colours he choose didn't look the same when it came out the bottle, but thankfully we got there in the end.                              

To be fair, he choose a rather lovely colour palette. 

There he sat, happily dipping paint bush into the cup of water and plopping large dollops of splodgy paint all over his little truck. 

 

Despite the enthusiasm, asking a 3 year old to paint three coats was expecting a little too much, verging on impossible even. His solution- instruct Mommy to paint wheels and put Red (cause that's my favourite colour mommy ) on the bottom. All the rather more difficult bits to do, naturally! I even added a few small details to finish it off for him, like doors and hub caps. I may even have enjoyed it a little too much!

There was a moment when we thought we had a sulker, as bigger Monkey-Moo had disappointment painted across his face, not being able to find the same pottery to paint as he had done before the "Breakage incident" shhh we are not talking about it! Fortunately, he soon realised he could choose something cooler, smiles returned! Phew!In the end he was super happy about his ferocious shark, look we even got the thumbs up! He was reminded several times to do his three coats of paint, but in the end, those listening ears just weren't doing as they were meant to. So we left him to it.

A week later, and we have the final products, one truck, one shark and a rather dotty egg cup!

And I'm still convinced that I will get them to do an egg cup each the next time!

Just think how wonderful our eggs and soldiers would look with our very own individual hand painted family egg cups! That's what I'm aiming for!

Back to Basics

Sometime we forget that the simplest things, the old fashioned things, are the things that can keep our little Monkey's entertained for hours.

I'd been out shopping back in January on a rare occasion without either of the Monkey's, yes all on my lonesome, it was awesome! (Mommy's you know what it's like, nothing better than a few hours without the incessant questions and jabbering of Monkeys in tow)While I was out I spotted two pairs of scissors, you know the kind that cut in patterned wavy lines- when I was little that meant, zigzags and only zigzags- but here were two that were a little different. I snapped them up, with the thought that at some point I'd need to entertain the Monkeys on a rainy day.

This was that rainy day, I fished out some coloured paper the new scissors, the box of crayons and a glue stick. With my fingers firmly crossed I set it all out on the little table, and prayed it would keep them out of trouble for at least 10 minutes.

Too my utter amazement, it was hours of entertainment. Littlest Monkey was having the time of his life working out how to cut, he littered the floor with hundreds of tiny bits of paper from cutting to his hearts content. 

Monkey-Moo One surprised me with an art work, not quite sure why we needed meteors crashing into the house but he worked quietly away for such a long time trying his hardest to get the shapes cut  just the way he wanted and colouring in all the extra little details.

I'm so pleasantly surprised at how such a simple activity brought them so much joy!

Autumn leaves

Here's a post I started sharing in the Autumn, then Christmas and party planning took over and I totally forgot about it.

It was raining, and had been for days (feeling more like weeks) and the dreary walk home after dropping Monkey One at school was proving very little fun. Then I stopped for a minute and thought, it would be great to make use of those leaves. Monkey-Moo needed no encouragement to partake in this little game.We oooh'ed and ahhh'ed at the different colours, the shapes and sizes.

I was left juggling an umbrella and all the collected leaves. (apparently little Monkeys can only hold two wet leaves at any given time)

We arrived home, rather wet and later than usual, we place the collection out on the table to dry. I had to keep turning them so that both sides dried enough not to mark the paper. And Monkey Two kept a close eye on them through the morning, regularly updating me on which were still wet, or "little bit nearly dry"

A couple hours, cups of tea and school collection later, we got all the crayons out, our sheets of paper ready, and I set about demonstrating how to make leaf rubbings. Monkey-Moo loved it! Bigger Monkey-Moo didn't want to miss out either, and soon joined in.

What a great way to transform our we Autumn Days, and stay (mostly) dry!