Ditching the Chores and Spending Time with Midge and Roo

We're on day 7 of the Easter school break here in Cornwall and today we have made a record with having 2 consecutive dry days, hooray! We were all beginning to wonder if this would ever happen again! We've been pretty lazy so far this holiday, I haven't had much motivation and I spent the first few days with dry socket pain but the children have been okay. We have seen Great Grandma and our Aunties (one of them being my sister who has now returned back up country boo!) other than that we haven't done very much at all.

Today I got my butt into gear and decided to have a craft day. I thought it would be nice to go for a walk but the children ran and hid when I mentioned this, after 20 minutes I surrendered, made a hot chocolate and then got out the paint, glue, card and various junk that would make a wonderful mess. Here are the wonderful messes (actually a lot of lovely artwork..)

A collection of our artwork from this afternoon

Midge's pasta and paint butterfly 

 Little A's pasta and paint butterfly

 My pasta, paint and sequined heart

Midge and I made pasta jewelry together, that was a lot of fun. She made some for her dolls and I made a rather glittery bracelet for myself. It was all good fun. While we did this, Little A had a tug of war with Peppa Dog and the rugby ball.

 Midge mixing her paint

 My pasta bracelet

Tug of war with the dog

We also did a spot of chalking on the pathway of the garden. Little A drew some pictures on the walls, I drew on the pathway with Midge and they also chalked the veranda whilst they were on a roll!

 Painted toes and chalk hearts

Little A's chalk ant

Later on as dinner cooked I gave in yet again to the cries for cookies, so Midge helped me do some mixing (then went off!) which meant I was alone until A came in and helped me put the mix onto the trays. Midge then returned to help eat the mix with her brother. Standard. They all came out quite nicely actually, the recipe book was pants though, I might blog these and see how everyone else gets on! 

Homemade free from cookies

So that was the day I stuck my finger up to the Mount Everest dish pile, the wet pile of laundry waiting to be hung out, the Holby City catch up and in all honesty, getting out of my pjs. What have you got up to so far this Easter? 

Homemade Lanterns

I've never made homemade lanterns before so thought I'd give it a try with the little ones! It was a rather spontaneous decision to make these, so I'm not going to say I'm absolutely right in the materials I've used, but we used what we could find and we had fun!

I recently acquired a craft box full of fantastic bits and bobs. We dug through it to find all the tissue paper i'd stuffed in a pouch and we selected our favourite colours, which we then set about tearing small pieces from until we had a little pile sat on our table. I popped some PVA glue in an old Haribo container so there was no squabbling over it. The previous night I had washed and removed the stickers from 2 old jam jars so we were ready to go! ( I actually wound some gold jewelry wire around the neck of the jars before the children set about decorating them)

drying before adding the candles

Midge and Little A (with my help- because I couldn't resist!) stuck the tissue paper randomly to their jars and then covered the paper with more PVA so the paper wouldn't rip and come off the jar. It all dried pretty quickly and they stuck some stickers on their jars so they could tell whose was whose. We waited until outside had gotten a bit darker and dull, then we drew the curtains and switched the lights in the playroom off. I was so pleased with the results!

Midges lantern

A quick photo before heading to the playroom!

They work! Naturally not a very clear photo in that light, but you get the idea!

 I had so much fun doing this craft with the little ones and I can't wait to make it again the future, they are both up for it. Why not give it a go yourselves? Perhaps a nice craft to see the New Year in? Speaking of crafts, i'm going to be joining in with Let Them Be Small over 2015 with The Crafting Prompt, a crafting challenge for you and the little ones. Here's the first 4 weeks of crafts. Do visit Sarah's blog to find out more!

Cupcake Mumma