refreshed chair

We worked on the chair today. The kids had such fun! Hubby took Kiki swimming so that we could get on and paint without her help :)


It was tricky to get them to paint with the grain of the wood, eventually I settled on just going over it quickly while they were upstairs washing their hands.

After going through my material bag I decided on this colour but soon changed my mind as it looked a little insipid

So changed it to this! Much better I think!

The chair's colour is much richer in real life so I took this picture in the light. It shows the colour a little better.

It will need to be varnished now...

beloved fishtank!

About 6 weeks ago my mom gave us a fish tank complete with filter and heater! Its funny how you just don't know what will work in the family, the hamsters have been pretty much ignored, but the fish tank...is the best thing ever!
We have a chair (the refreshed chair) permanently facing the tank where the kids and hubby sit and watch the fish, I often find hubby sitting there eating his breakfast or catching up on his emails. I have to admit we have lost quite a few and have put it down to a learning experience (on hubby's part :D ).

We started off with tetra neons - lots of them but now there are only two left. We got a bout of white spot which they obviously don't handle too well.

The first Mollys we got were a fat black female and a thin white male. One morning we woke up to find a skinny black molly and a very fat white molly. The female had babies and the male ate almost all of them. We managed to save a few and one survives in the nursery to this day. The black molly, named Emily, unfortunatley died so poor Casper is lonely so we are hoping that this baby (yet unnamed) will make it into adulthood.

The guppies came next. Apparently you have to get 2 females for every male because they bug the girls so much that it is best to get more females just to give them a break (possibly the same reason some women go for polygamy I am thinking :)) Guppies have live births of around 30-40 babies, we have had at least one batch, we put them in the nursery(as seen above) but they were so small that they escaped and got eaten.

And here (above) is our latest addition - a gourami.

Below are two catfish.

school room

Here are some pictures of our school/dining/everything room. It is rarely tidy and I am running out of places to put everything.

Our weather tree! We put on a different colour leaf everyday. Yellow = sunny, blue = rain, white = snow, purple = cloudy.

Our nature table. I have to find a new place for it since we have got the fish tank.

And here is the room as it stands today, unaltered and untidy.

sorting shells

I am always trying to find ways to entertain the younger two while the older two are doing their main lessons.

And we have found that sorting shells keeps them busy for a while...until the shells start getting flung over the place.

flower poems

It is my great Aunt's birthday on Monday and the children wanted to send her a picture. They had just pressed some flowers so we founds some plant related poems and they produced these...

Unfortunately, after they made the pictures I realised that she would never get to see them unless I posted them on here. My aunt, you see, lives in Australia and they are VERY strict about any kind of foreign plant material getting into the country.

So Tante Gerry these are for you Happy Birthday!

stickers!

Googs (3yrs) is REALLY into stickers at the moment and having used up our entire stock he has moved onto next best thing, his brothers old eye patches. There are 3 boxes of eye patches on that page! It is really thick in the middle :o)

puppet theatre

The new school year starts in September so I thought that a puppet theatre would make a good project. Little bit of woodworking, some painting, set design, puppet making and play writing all rolled into one project!

So I went and got some MDF...

The main piece is 4 foot by 4 foot and the two side pieces are 2 foot by 4 foot. There is also a thinner piece for the shelf which is 3 foot by 9 inches.

Next job was to get myself some power tools! These were lent to me by one of our neighbours.

And here is the window!

The children were so excited once this was cut out because it seemed more real to them.

Next job was to buy paint. We went a bit overboard with this and bought enough paint for an entire room! My excuse was that there was a deal on and besides we did restrain ourselves. I mean between me and the four children we could have come home with A LOT more!

Just need to paint it now....

Oh and just to show that all that paint won't go to waste, I am trying to find things around the house to 'refresh'. Here is an old chair that the kids and I sanded all ready for painting...

boo's bag

After a few failed attempts at felting we have finally got it right! I think that the problem was that we were being too stingey with the fleece. So we started carding the white fleece and laying it out in a rectangular shape until it was about 4 inches thick (sorry that there are no pics of the stages, we were just too involved!) then Boo, with a little help from Googs and Kiki, placed the coloured fleece over the top. We then got the washing up liquid out, lots of hot water and the bubble wrap and started rubbing it, rolling it and bashing it for around 20 minutes. It was then rinsed and left to dry.

Once the fleece was dried we trimmed it just a little as we wanted to keep that kind of warped shape. Blanket stick round the edge and some fun buttons were added. Oh and the two buttons at the top (big orange and big purple) are the only functional buttons - the others are purely there for decoration.

The handle was knitted and then lightly felted. We decided to add it to the back of the bag because it seemed to fit the best. The only thing left to do now is add a lining as it is still a little bit furry inside :o)

banana bread

It seems fitting that my first post should be about banana bread. I love this recipe - no WE love this recipe. I always make one and a half. Well, one big one and one small one. The small one is to eat straight out of the oven when the flavours haven't developed because noone can wait for them to cool down.

A little over done I know but still delicious....yummm

And then of course there is all the licking of the bowl