Plaits

Aunty Irene did Maddison's hair in plaits last night and she wanted it done again this morning. I like it - glad she sat still long enough for me to do it! :-)

I gave her a little task to do today ... colour in some images so I can make some kids cards! :-) She was very happy to oblige.

Now I have a rainbow coloured stash of coloured in stamped images ready to cut out and create with! :-)

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Thanks for visiting.

Today ...

Maddison and I did some baking this morning. I found this box of Dora cupcake mix in the marked down section of the supermarket because it had a damaged box. There was nothing wrong with the contents and it was priced RM2.99 down from RM14.99! Bargain I thought! So I got it and put away for the holidays :-) I have never ever purchased a cake pre-mix before so it was interesting for me. They tasted okay - wouldn't have said it was a vanilla flavour though, more a buttery taste. Kids gobbled them up pretty quick though! Oh and the mixture was for 12 cupcakes, but we only got 8 pretty average sized ones (smaller than my standard size ones!). Easy for kids to do though I must say.

Mixing the batter. (Excuse the little princess's sunburnt face!) ;-)
Carefully carrying to the oven.
Watching them bake.
Decorating ... the fun part! There was a fair bit of finger licking and eating of sprinkles going on (I just pretended not to notice hehee).
Yum Yum!
Samuel ate his from the bottom and left the icing to last.
In the afternoon we made a dolls house out of a cardboard box! I got a book from the library called "Welcome Home, Mouse", it's about an elephant who kicked his ball and squashed a mouse house. So he made a surprise new one from a cardboard box and other recycled things :-) Maddison really liked the story and after we read it she wanted a pet mouse (if you please!) so she could make it a house. I told her I could help make a house, but it certainly wouldn't be for a mouse!

Scrapbook paper comes in very handy for lots of things (especially stuff I've had for ages!). And here's another reason to collect different sized doillies hehee, they make good mats for dolls houses! :-)
We found some plastic dolls furniture in one of the toy boxes so she's quite happy with it at the moment, but I suspect she will want to make a bed, table and chairs etc. like in the story!
Last weekend Lyndon showed the kids a video on YouTube about a guy making donuts at home and baking them in the oven rather than frying them. I can't find the link now to show you, but I did tell him I didn't think he was being very fair showing them that and then heading away for the week, because I knew they would ask to bake them! Sure enough, as we passed a Dunkin' Donuts shop on the way home tonight from spelling tuition Aaron asked if we could make donuts tomorrow since it's a holiday!!!! Thanks Daddy! ;-)

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Good job I wrote the recipe down I suppose!!

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I suspect that donuts will feature on the menu at some stage tomorrow!! (Wish me luck hehee)

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Thanks for visiting.

Mini Album Class

I am teaching a mini album class at Scrap-n-Crop on Saturday afternoon, 28th April if you are interested :-) You can check out the details of the class here and here.

We'll also play about with a small portion of my mega stamp collection and be using distress inks to do some distress resist techniques. :-)

And as usual with Scrap-n-Crop kits there's heaps to choose from so I made another album in a boy colour ... so don't be put off if you don't have girls ... there's plenty in the kit to make something for boys as well :-)

Would love to see you on the 28th if you can come.

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Thanks for visiting.

Back home again ...

Just a couple more pics of our holiday. Time at the pool ... Aaron doing his usual warm up after being in the pool for a while :-)

Samuel hogging Daddy's drink! "Peeze, Peeze, Peeze"!!
Ahhh, that hits the spot! Guzzle guzzle guzzle!
We left midday Friday and headed for home. Samuel went to sleep about half an hour after we started. Maddison was feeling a bit sick, but managed to go to sleep which was good.
Then we hit a really heavy rain storm.
The temperature dropped 11 degs!
An hour later it was back up 12 degs! Crazy.
Today Aaron and I have been working on a school project. He had to make a pond and include the five layers of a pond, a food chain and a life cycle. Finally it's finished! Good job I have a big stamp collection heheee ;-) It came in VERY handy I must say (so did my hot glue gun!). The life cycle was of the frog, and the food chain goes like this ... sun, duck weed, grasshopper, muskrat, cobra, eagle. :-)

I've had a request to update the photos on this. So last Sunday I took some photos of the kids ... here's one of Maddison! I think she's been copying the girls at school with their poses hehee
I will have to try again tomorrow :-)

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Thanks for visiting.

On Holiday ...

School holidays this week, so while the little fella is sleeping (sideways in our bed!), I will do an overdue blog update!

Lyndon had booked us in for a holiday in Phuket, but on Saturday (after doing all the bookings) he realized that Aaron and Maddison’s passports had less than 6 months in them. So that was a bit frustrating for him (that’s being polite hehee). He managed to reschedule that holiday for later in the year, and then decided we could go to Penang for this week of the holidays. So that’s where we are now. We left after lunch on Monday and things started out VERY slowly … you can see in the photo the time is 2.37pm and according to the GPS we would arrive at our destination at 4.20am doing 14km an hour!! Thankfully it didn’t take us that long! We arrived about 6.30pm, so was good timing for dinner and bed for the kids!

On Tuesday after breakfast we went for a walk up the beach (which of course resulted in wet sandy clothes!).

I called a halt to the walk and got the kids into their togs and we went back to the beach to build sandcastles.

Samuel basically just ran about and kept running into the sea and several times tripped and went head first into the water … yep I laughed! :-) I was there to pull him out each time, but he did look so funny! Because he was wet he had a lovely sandy bottom!

Lyndon bought some Thai coconuts to drink.

Love the way Samuel bends over to drink!

Then we hosed the kids down and they swam in the pool for a while. We had lunch by the pool and then I took Samuel up for a sleep while the others went for another walk, swim, play.

Dinner that night we walked down to a local café. There’s lots of different types of food you can order, so you go and order what you fancy and tell them your table number and they bring it to you.

Lyndon and I had Chinese.

The kids shared a pizza.

Maddison had some trouble with the length of the cheese! ;-)
Samuel guzzled a freshly squeezed apple juice then played with the ice cubes when he thought no one was watching!!

This morning we went to the Penang Butterfly Farm. We had a tour and the kids got to see things that you wouldn’t see just going around by yourself. Maddison is pretty brave at touching and holding different creatures. Here she’s holding a caterpillar.

Stroking a millipede.

Super excited because this butterfly landed on her dress.

Aaron decided to be brave as well and held a branch with a scorpion on it.

And of course Maddison too :-)

A gecko – he got a big fright though when it moved up his arm! He didn’t like that much hehee

Samuel just ran wild and kept heading to the fish pond!! He was determined to get in there … no idea why because the fish were enormous! He would have been eaten!!!

At the end of the tour the kids were given a container with a newly hatched butterfly to release. Aaron’s flew out and landed on his shorts.

Maddison’s needed a bit of coaxing to come out.
Then it was time for an ice-cream!

Heading back home tomorrow. Thanks for visiting.