lumpy bumpy road playdough - teusday treasure

Ok so i like making play dough for my boys its a good busy thing, today i was inspired by one of our favourite books, roadworks by Sally Sutton pictures by Brian Lovelock.

Its a great book for boys but im sure girls would like it too, flynn knows it off by heart. Lots of diggers and noisy sounds, so i made my usual play dough and added some black lentils to to the very dark blue and some linseed's to the yellow. It was fabulous, the more you move the play dough the lentils kind of bounce out at you. It looks like the speckled road in the book and we had a lovely play together making roads, pathways for pedestrians. We put up peg signs and planted pasta flowers. All in all it was a good time.

moments

Fun - Friday Finds

These are Fun! go out and have some fun too!

things we forget

improv everywhere

.random acts of kindness

the fun theory

advent drawing, thinking cap thursday

We made an advent picture this week, We sat down at the table, grandma, myself, Flynn and Eli and we coloured pasted things, put stickers on. We talked about Christmas and the things we were sticking down. We cut up a colouring in Christmas book from last year, some left over stickers and some wrapping paper from Flynn's birthday. It was a really nice family time exercise, and part of the discussion was about what Christmas is like here in cairns for us. Note our picture has Santa in his wintry outfit and then tropical fish swimming around the top. Well that's Christmas in a nut shell for us, its weird being surrounded by images of wintry things when for us its the hottest time of year, we have thunderstorms and rain instead. Some years we even have cyclones for Christmas. Its good to have that conversation with my kids so they understand that whilst they are going to see a lot of images of Christmas for us that's disjointed and really for us Christmas is about summer and heat lots of water play and cranking the airconditioning till it feels like snow.

Once the kids were in bed i put number cards over the picture with blu tac and they can slowly pull them off as December counts down, and we can talk more about our Christmas. Great for learning numbers, concept of days in the month and a great way to learn about there own world.

also its nice to build the excitement towards Christmas

love sassy

10:22 what do i know ? - only human on humpday

Also Flynn has turned into luke skywalker, i am 'dark vader' no point in saying im not,
 because yes you are mummy your a naughty guy

Hey everyone, well in sassy land its 10.22 on Wednesday night, its stinking hot and my husband asks me tonight if its really hot i say yes, he says ill be back soon...grabs his keys and disappears for 20mins. Im thinking nice of him to let me know where hes going. He returns with a large box, inside the box is a whopping great big fan. This fan looks like something you could fly a small aeroplane with, its industrial and my head is screaming, "we don't have any money what the f*^*& have you bought!!!!". He puts it together, looking very pleased with himself, and turns it on. Hmmm fantastic, it sounds like a jet engine, i can't think straight its so loud, hubby "oh yeah babe that is fairly loud huh, but its cool" so this summer i will be cool, slightly windswept looking and deaf. Speak up if you see me soon.

mumma pick me up im sick face. be thankful you can't here the noise

What else is going on in sassy land? snot fevers and a cough a smoker could be proud to claim. The kiddies are sick, im exhausted, i know how the mother koala feels at the zoo with its babies clinging onto her for dear life. My house that normally looks like a bombs gone off in it looks like its been through the blitz, bombed numerous times and its really to hot to fix it. Don't mention the fact that its messy as i may bite your head off, Tortoise can attests to that. While im at it how come the previous owners of this 'interesting' house never put fly screens in? oh yeah probably the same reason they had mirror tiles in the dinning room and green vinyl wallpaper in the office nook. The Flys are planning on caring me away, i suggested we put up the plastic strip curtain thingies they have in the doorways of your corner stores, he was horrified, so looks like im waging war on the flys solo. Do you think i can turn killing flys with a flyswatter into a game for my kids? that idea has potential, course they will probably end up smacking each other and me with them.

As a side effect of my kids sickness, i have been a little grouchy. So i am trying to take some time for myself and let go a bit more, i have been painting in my studio tonight and yesterday. Re working an old shell painting, and doing a frivolous lyrics painting. Yay for art it helps sooth the cranky beast. I have also been making plans to have fun with friends. Is it wrong to be looking forward to boxing day as much or slightly more than Christmas? photo-playdates, crazy get in touch with the inner child playdate, and shopping trip without my kiddies...yes definitely things to look forward to. Now kids you have been issued with a warning, get better soon, or mummies going to lose her mind waiting to do some fun stuff.
brain failing to work any longer, going to crawl into bed. night night hope your having an interesting and snot free week, and if your husband tells you hes just popping out for a bit, for heavens sake ask what for.
love sassy

Snow in the tropics - tuesday treasure

Late again sassy, tsk tsk, well thats what happens when your living in snotsville, coughing grumpy children are wearisome to the mum.

Ok so my Flynn has been saying that it will be christmas when it snows, poor child has no idea that it really will never snow here. Christmas will be 30 something degrees celcius that about 86 in farenheit. With some christmas's past having 90% humidity....yuk hot and sticky basically were living in warm soup. On tv he has seen that christmas and snow go hand in hand...."grandma, it will be christmas time when its snowing and santa hohoho man will come with presents!"
His heart is set on snow, so i have been thinking about how i could manufacture some snow for him. Whatching a grown up movie, 'i don't know how she does it' this week and seeing the snow fluttering down gave me a nice and easy idea - A Snowy Sticky Contact picture!!

So i Cut the sheet of contact in half, saving one bit for the top. I ripped up lots of white paper into tiny peices, i got out some cotton woll balls and musten't forget the glitter! So you place on peice of cantact on the table, take the paper off it and sprinkle your ripped up paper so it falls like snow, then we took our cotton balls and made little mounds in the corners, to look like snow setteling on the window sill. Then he glittered. Then very carefully i placed the other bit of contact over the top and flynn pressed it together so it stuck well.




Then i put it on his window...magic..he sat back and contemplated his snow. Im going to assume that meant he liked it, hes not as forthcoming with enthusiasm when hes got the flu.
love sassy

moments

what to do with toilet rolls - friday finds

I have been collecting toilet rolls for a bit and was wondering what to do with them, i went browsing online and these are just some of the awesome ideas i found. I think I'm going to need even more toilet rolls, perhaps its just as well Flynn is extremely generous with paper when hes going to the loo.

wiggly dragon 

Christmas lanterns

owls

chritmas decoration

home for tiny seeds

diy bonbons

pillow box

rockets

moon dough - thinking cap thursday

I'm stealing a friends recipe its fantastic, Its called moon dough, although it reminds me more of sand, or scone mixture when your rubbing in the butter. Check out the post on Alicia's 365 moments of Gratitude. We made this today with plain flour and baby oil and a bit of green glitter, it smells really nice! First Flynn popped some stones in it, and then stomped his dino through it, then drove his cars in it. I clumped together a mountain and he smashed his cars into it, He crumbled some through a cardboard tube. Then after a food interval, called Flynn into my flower garden and we picked a few things, we then made a garden in the moon dough with a road for the cars to drive down, a bridge for the dinosaurs to cross so they could eat the flowers. All in all its great stuff, i put it into an ice cream container and we will play with it again tomorrow. Cheap and fun, my kinda play.

So what is he learning when he plays with moon dough? Its all the same sorts of skills as play dough, they learn about touch, this dough is crumbly and yet it moulds together. Like play dough its a tranquil and soothing activity, where they tend to concentrate really well. Admittedly Flynn really wanted company to play with it today but i can see that just the age hes at. Its a great medium for story telling too. So thanks Alicia we really like it x x love sassy

linked on its playtime & tgif linky party &
 

10 things - only human on humpday

10 things about me  - you might not know

1. I refuse to drive an automatic car. I enjoy driving, it took me a long time to bother getting my licence, i was 25, i had a patient partner who was a good taxi driver. I was great at public transport, but when we moved back to our home town driving is really the only option. I like manual cars because i am a control freak and they make twisty road so much more fun, we have a few of them in these parts.

2. My birthday falls on the longest night of the year. (in Australia anyway)

3. I confess i am a ranter, i have this invisible button and once pushed i will explode a load of rant.
my children and hubby love pushing this button and seeing mummy go into nuclear overdrive. Kaboom, "oh my god if you don't blah blah then mummy's going to have an aneurysm, i swear I'm just asking for a little bit of help with blah, focus on what I'm saying here, are you listening, oh whats the point no ones every listening I'm just talking to myself again, like a crazy mad woman, man i hope the neighbours are out because the way you lot are making me today, if there listening they are never going to have babies. have you done blah yet, no, are you for real, here just give it to me ill do it...again, its like you all think I'm super woman" kinda the gist of it.
So please stand back and pop on your safety vests when the rant button is pushed or you may get caught in the cross fire as I'm bringing up little ranters who are starting to rant back. You should know too that my ranting doesn't bother them most of the time they really just tune out, put up their invisible umbrellas and repel the flying rants.

4. I don't eat meat, yes I'm a veggie, i like eating vegetables, there are a lot more foods out in the world besides meat. Sadly when people discover I'm a veggie they like to interrogate my choice of being a non meat eater and they like to know exactly what i will and wont eat. I don't get why people are that interested in my diet but i guess they are fascinated in my reasoning. It is fairly simple i couldn't kill animals to eat them & most importantly it made me very sick when younger so i gave it up. I have never looked back, i don't miss meat at all. It is no longer trendy to be a vegetarian thankfully so at least people have stopped thinking I'm doing it to be cool. I get a lot of people ask how do i live with someone who eats meat, my husband  is lucky i can cook meat and whilst i use more frying pans than most people, no one pot wonders in this house. It works fine, my kids eat meat with gusto and as yet they haven't noticed that I'm eating something slightly different. A friend who is also a veggie told her kids that not everyone likes to eat tomatoes, mummy doesn't like to eat meat, and they are cool with that. If you discover someone you know is a vegetarian, what ever you do, don't try to convert them back to eating meat, its rude and its nothing we haven't herd a thousand times.

5. I can roll my tongue, this is a genetic thing you either can or you cant.

6. I re-read books that i love again and again and again, some of my fave books have been read 5 or 6 times. My Hubby thinks this is a bit odd but i love reading, and even if i know the ending i still enjoy the ride. Mostly its the classics but there is a few modern books in this mix too. Once i find an author i like i search out every book they have written and read until i overdose and need to give them a break for a while, but generally a year or two later i re-visit the favourite one. I even read some of my childhood books, like Anne of green gables and some of Roald Dahl stuff. Bookworm i am!

7.  I have been a donkey voter, have you?

8. I like to mimic voices, as in different accents. If i listen to a particular accent for any length of time with not too much practise I'm able to sound a lot like it. This is a family thing and most of my family members are great mimics. Very useful when learning languages.

9. I had my baby boys via c section. and one day i will probably write a post on why, but not today.

pink hair was really fun, lots of strangers would comment on it for good and bad.
People even crossed the street to avoid me a few times! Its amazing how looks influence people.

10. I have an extremely low boredom threshold when it comes to my hair, i have been many many colours, chopped it very very short, grown it so many times only to chop again, streaked, foiled, straightened as its naturally curly. Fringe, no fringe, currently with fringe. Thankfully my husband seems to enjoy the different versions of me so that's ok. I've never had blue hair, maybe i could get some little clip in streaks for my Christmas stocking, must buy myself a stocking for that matter!

now you all know too much about me ill say see you soon, love sassy

christmas paper - tuesday treasure (a day late)

Its time for us to post some overseas Christmas goodies and we need some paper, so Flynn and i got busy today with some rollers and blue paint. I know that chrissy paper is cheap, but i think presents to loved ones wrapped in home made paper is a more thoughtful way to give gifts. Also it gives Flynn and opportunity to paint on really big bits of paper and that's always fun. It also makes the lead up to christmas that much more exciting for kids if they are involved in all the steps of gift giving. Flynn has been subjected to many christmas shopping trips lately as i madly try to get it done before the shops get to catastrophic. So he has helped choose presents, now he gets to make the paper, he will also be making cards and i may even employ his elfish little hands to manage the sticky tape at wrapping time. He will have a good understanding this way of the joy of gift giving, and i hope too that he will see christmas is about giving to loved ones not just about what hes getting.

ok so how did we make our christmas paper? We had some paper from flynn's daddy that he no longer needed, we got some silver paint and some blue paint, some little sponge rollers and i cut out some stencils. very basic stencils. I cut out a snowman and a snowflake and this was ok, but i cut them out of paper, big mistake they started to break and rip after the 3rd rollering. I then cut some stars out of a empty cat bikkie box and this worked fantastic. I cut one really big star, flynn really liked this one, and a few small stars. The biggest difference i noticed was he struggled with the first stencils because he was rollering around them, needed lots of help. But with the star stencils he was rollering the inside shape the star itself and this clicked with him so much better, interesting that the negative positive aspect would make a difference but at nearly four i can understand its easier to see what your doing. We quickly filled up two big pieces of paper, the silver paint was not bold enough so we combined the blue with it to get a shiny blue paint. I think the paper has worked out rather pretty, i think the key to stencil paper is to keep the stencils simple.

If your having trouble with the drawing up of a stencil you can always print a basic star from the computer, or just let loose and remember that your kids are very forgiving and will love whatever you do! my stars are a bit wonky x x

sassy

linked on mommy club wednesday linky & Its Playtime & tgif linky party & fun stuff fridays

moments

did you know alpaca's could wink?

the young peacocks were a bit confused and displayed hopefully  to the guinea fowl

christmas is approaching this is whats flowering in the tropics, very festive, makes up for lack of snow

linked on wordless wednesday