The Paper Dolls

I think I've found my favourite children's book.

We have quite a few Julia Donaldson books (she of Gruffalo Fame). One of Poppet's favourite books is Monkey Puzzle. So when I saw one that I hadn't heard of before at the library we checked it out straightaway and took it home.

It's a beautiful story with the message that even when precious things are no longer with us, they can live on in our memories. It's the kind of children's book that will put a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye (Guess How Much I Love You anyone?)

It is about a little girl who makes some paper dolls with her mum and then they go on some adventures, and I won't tell you anymore because I don't want to spoil the ending. And I have a bit of a habit for spoiling endings. I will just say that the last few pages are incredible. Because of the message of this book it would be really good for a child coming to terms with any kind of loss (be it a favourite toy or a grandparent) or at the stage of questioning the circle of life.

I will be buying our own copy to keep I love it so much and it would make a lovely present.

Inspired by the book, we sat down one morning to make some paper dolls. I am not very craft-minded so my first attempt didn't go too well! To make them you need to accordion fold a sheet of paper, draw a doll outline on the front then cut it out. Making sure the dolls arms go right to the edges of the paper on each side to make sure the dolls are 'holding hands'. I only did it on one side the first time which resulted in a couple of twosomes.

I finally got it right and let Poppet unfold it to find the dolls holding hands which she was pretty impressed with. 

Then I blu-tacked the dolls to her desk (to stop them moving around) and gave her some paint to decorate them with. She painted some 'dresses' on them all and we left them to dry till the next day (she used a lot of paint!).

The next day she coloured in one of the twosomes with her felt tips and then we taped them to the painted ones so we had a very pretty six-some. But I never got a chance to take a photo because while I was making dinner this happened. 

Poppet took it upon herself to reenact the book. Oh dear I might have just spoiled the ending.

Poppet: 2yrs 7mos

Little: 10 mos

*Update* 2/10/13  I'm not the only one who loves this book, as I discovered the other day that The Paper Dolls has won a Scottish Children's Book Club Award, and free copies are being given to P1 pupils as part of BookBug. It is a really lovely book.

Holiday Collage

Whenever we go for a walk, we help Poppet pick up 'special' things to take home; things like leaves and shells and flowers (and we ditch the 'treasures' that she hands us that aren't so special, mainly a lot of twigs).

Our local library is running a competition over the summer, asking children to create a collage on the theme of 'A Year Of Natural Scotland'. We had been collecting bits and pieces from our travels and holidays this year, so for Poppet's entry she created a collage from them.

The wild flowers were picked by Poppet and her Grandma on the last evening of our holiday at their island home. The weather was not great for our week's holiday there but on that last evening the sun came out and we had a lovely after dinner walk. My favourites are the orchids and cotton grass. Grandma pressed them for us and brought them to our house on her next visit. Poppet was also given the flower press so hopefully we can have a go at some flower pressing some time soon!

Our other collage bits included postcards from each of our Scottish holiday destinations, Poppet's ferry boarding card, some leaves, shells and wheat ears. We used the sturdy cardboard back to an old scrapbook as the base for the collage. I gave Poppet a pot of glue and a spreader and she was off!

She loved the gluing and was completely absorbed in the task in hand. She spent ages at this activity, covering the bits with glue and deciding where to put them. Some of the things didn't glue so well (the shells and big leaves) so I got out some glue dots and she loved using them. They gave her fine motor skills a really good workout! 

Once all the 'treasures' were glued on Poppet was still on a glueing roll and wasn't ready to stop, I had to take the collage away from her to cries of "little bit more!" as I didn't think the masterpiece would benefit greatly from the addition of some coloured foam shapes (it is a competition after all!).

She was pacified by the prospect of glueing shapes onto a ladybird picture (it has been given two star-shaped 'eyes').

The finished collage!

*Update* Poppet won her category and received a £10 book voucher as her prize!

Its Raining, It's Pouring

Take one torrential downpour, and in the words of Forrest Gump, I am talking big old fat rain here;

Bundle one toddler up in their newly-gifted rainsuit and wellies;

Hand toddler a cup to 'catch some rain for mummy',

Usher toddler out of the door and into the downpour.........

The novelty of being outside during such heavy rainfall transfixed Poppet, she mostly stood very still, staring & listening, enjoying the sensation of the rain landing on her.

The sound of her singing drifted up the garden- she sang "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring" and "Inchy winchy spider". Good choices.

Whenever her hood slipped down I was shouted to come and "put hood up!" but other than that she was happy to wander about in her own little world, singing to herself, knocking off any pools of rain she found on the leaves and jumping in puddles.

She dutifully returned with a rather pathetic amount of rain collected in her cup, and was inordinately proud of it. I felt a bit cruel at this point as her little hands were freezing so she got dried off with a warm towel and a mug of hot chocolate for her trouble.

She must have enjoyed it though as a couple of days later the heavens opened again and she responded with a "Rain jacket on?"

Toddler Garden Update

Poppet's garden has really flourished since we first planted it back in April.

She has been harvesting the fruits of her labour as things have come into bloom; it has grown into a lovely little spot for her to explore and play with her fairies in ( I finally got some on sale in ELC).

She loves finding her miniature strawberries but we have to keep telling her to wait till they turn red.....if she finds any especially small ones she takes them to Little.

Her greenhouse seedlings have mostly all died in assorted ways - the only five survivors are three pumpkin plants which are now flowering in the veg plot and two pea plants looking very pathetic in her garden that I doubt will come to much.

Her sunflower tunnel has grown loads. This was a couple of weeks ago and they are even bigger now and nearly flowering. One side is a lot higher than the other and I should probably have thinned the seedlings out a bit but it is getting there. Pretty soon they will be high enough to bend together and create a tunnel (it will probably be more of a crawl-through tunnel rather than a walk-through one).

Rain collects in the centre of the lupins and in little puddles in the folds of the broccoli leaves, and she loves finding these little reservoirs of water, using them as drinks and bathes for Fairy and Mr Rabbit.

The fuchsia flowers are 'princesses' apparently, and she likes picking off big, fat ones and tiny little ones and making little fuchsia flower families. Or pulling off the buds and picking the petals open to find the 'princess' inside. She has yet to discover the satisfying enjoyment that comes from popping the buds!

Her sweetcorn looks great, I think it may be ready to harvest but I am not sure, if anyone could tell me that would be good?! She seems quite curious about it and I'm not sure she entirely believes there is sweetcorn in there. Corn on the cob is one of her favourite foods so she is really going to love it when we can pick it.

The annual flowers we sowed a few weeks ago have shot up although are also a victim of overcrowding. They are now flowering and attracting bees and other insects to Poppet's garden. There are also loads of centipedes that live under them that she likes to look at as they scurry away. No insects have taken on our upturned flower pot as a home though!

Poppet: 2yrs 6mos

Little: 10 mos

#TheCharcoalChallenge

We took part in MoneySupermarket's #The Charcoal Challenge and were given £50 to throw the ultimate summer barbecue on a budget!  

We organised a get together at my mum and dad's house because they have an ace barbecue so we could spend time with our lovely family as they don't live close by.

On our guest list was Poppet and Littles' Grandad, Nana, Aunty Anna, Uncle Mike, Aunty Jenny, Uncle Peter, (Great) Uncle Ian, (Great) Aunty Christina, and second cousin Adam. Along with Mama and Dada it made 10 adults and 3 little ones. A Great Grandad was also meant to be there but wasn't well enough to leave the carehome in the end and was missed.

This is how we spent our money in order to make it stretch:

• £20 on burgers and sausages from our local butchers, (12 steak & onion burgers and 18 pork sausages).
• £5 on two family size bottles of Coca-Cola and one of Fanta, and two bags of lemons to make lemonade.
• £3 on paper plates, cups and napkins
• £19 on rolls, tomatoes, peppers, new potatoes, corn on the cobs, onions, mushrooms, a lettuce, a mutipack of crisps, cheesy nibbles, chilli couscous, halloumi, bananas and chocolate buttons and marshmallows.
• £3 on a 'Princess' ball (this was Poppet's choice!)

I made a big jugful of lemonade with Poppet's help, we are refining our recipe now and it tastes pretty good, roughly following the recipe at the bottom of this page. On this occasion we made it sourer than usual especially for Grandad, but left out a bowlful of sugar for those that wanted it sweeter. Aunty Anna bravely faced her fear of using knives despite her recent trip to A&E after a run-in with a quiche, and was my chief vegetable-chopper. Grandad displayed his barbecue skills that have been perfected over the last 30 or so years, even though he did forget the cardinal rule of always having a water bottle on hand. But he is 53 now so memory lapses are to be expected (only joking dad, there was some impressive barbecuing going on).

Most of the barbecue was spent 'ahhing' at the cuteness that was Poppet and Adam. Born only 6 months apart but living quite far away from one another they only get to meet up every few months. But when they do they are so sweet together, hopefully this is the foundation of a lovely friendship! They chat away to each other but no one else really knows what they are saying. Poppet really likes to stare at him and gently 'boss' him around.

Our menu included burgers and sausages in rolls with caramelised onions, barbecued vegetable and halloumi kebabs, chilli couscous, salad, new potatoes and corn on the cob. The sausages and vegetables were marinated in a homemade BBQ sauce that I got from More Than Toast. For pudding we had barbecued marshmallows and barbecued bananas with chocolate buttons. Below are some scenes of food enjoyment:

Aunty Anna also brought along a pear and cardamom cake that she made especially for the occasion and it was delicious:

The food went down well apart from Grandad still doesn't "see the point of couscous" and Uncle Mike forgot the kebab sticks but the veg and halloumi still tasted good so he was forgiven!

We attempted to involve the little ones in the stuffing-of-the-bananas-with-chocolate-buttons before they were wrapped in tinfoil and put on the barbecue, but most of the buttons did not make it as far as the bananas.

Little slept for most of the barbecue but made an appearance toward the end and got some Nana cuddles. She looked most displeased that we hadn't saved her a burger.

Poppet: 2yrs 6mos

Little: 9mos

When Life Gives You Playdough Lemons

I've been going through a bit of a homemade lemonade phase recently, it's the perfect drink for this scorching hot weather we've been having - ice cold, refreshing, sweet, sour and just a tiny bit salty. I'm addicted. And Poppet has been avidly watching me squeeze lemon after lemon in our lemon squeezer, pleading to have a go. Helping me pour it through the sieve. Picking out stray pips. Mixing in the sugar. She loves the whole process (and the end result even more!). 

To let her have a go at making it herself without running the risk of squirting herself in the eye with lemon juice (been there, done that), I set up an invitation to play using playdough lemons and my lemonade making equipment. We scented the playdough using lemon essence so it releases a lovely lemony smell as you play with it.

We made a batch of 4 minute no-cook playdough together using this recipe, adding yellow food colouring and lemon essence to the boiling water. And adding more food colouring and lemon essence at the kneading stage too as it wasn't quite lemony enough. It would have been good to add some lemon zest to it as well but I didn't think of it at the time.  It was particularly good playdough, really soft and mouldable. If you haven't tried making playdough yet I would urge you to give it a go, it's 100 times better than the shop bought stuff. Although the colours sometimes aren't as vivid, you can play about with scents and textures which makes it more than worth it.

I moulded it into lemon-like shapes and put them into a bowl along with a real lemon so she would get the idea. I also put other lemonade-making paraphernalia on the tray - juicers, a jug, cups, straws, a little sieve and a knife. 

First she tried to cut the real lemon but soon transferred her attention to the playdough ones and got into the swing of it. She loved the lemon squeezer and the playdough was so soft it oozed out in long strands really easily. This was a good activity for strengthening up her hand muscles which helps get them ready for pencil control later on. This is a really great post on all the benefits of playing with playdough.

She loved cutting up all the lemons and then squishing them through the squeezer, collecting the long strands in her jug to make her 'lemonade'.

She also liked pressing the lemon halves into the lemon juicer and seeing the imprints it left behind on the playdough. Afterwards she had some more fun with making imprints using her magnetic letter set, pressing the numbers in and then picking them out again to see the shape they left behind.

A Day out at Pitmedden Garden

On Sunday we took an impromptu trip to nearby Pitmedden Garden, picking up a picnic lunch en-route (courtesy of Nana!). We love exploring our nearby parks and gardens because they are a great cheap day out and Poppet loves the wide open spaces and new environments to explore. On this occasion we decided to sign up for National Trust for Scotland membership for the whole family for £5.75 a month. I thought this was great value considering that parking alone is normally a couple of pounds and it gives us free access to over 1000 properties ranging from castles and gardens to nature reserves and museums. We are really looking forward to some great kiddie-friendly days out!

We had our lunch on a picnic bench and then took a lovely shaded walk through the woodland together before splitting up into two groups - Nana, Little and I went to the tearoom for a cream tea while Dada and Poppet went on an adventure!

Poppet was so excited to go off with just her daddy and do some exploring. From what I can gather they went searching for monkeys in the trees, collected pinecones, took some wheat from a field, played Poohsticks, and probably other things that they are not telling me because they were dangerous and I wouldn't approve.

Meanwhile me and my mum enjoyed a lovely cream tea with Little (who was supposed to be sleeping but didn't oblige us).

We had a wander through their Museum of Farming Life and Poppet particularly liked the old farmhouse that you could look round, especially the bedroom upstairs that the whole family slept in - apparently this was "mummy and daddy's bed, my bed, and Little's bed". I do love these recreated rooms to have a nosy in!

We managed a quick walk through the walled gardens but the girls were getting antsy for their nap so we had to make a quick getaway. We will definitely be returning for a proper look round and get there much earlier this time. I love the sound of their herb garden and all the apple trees. On the last Sunday in September they hold harvest celebrations where you can buy fruits harvested from the gardens so I would definitely like to visit again then!

Poppet: 2yrs 6 mos

Little 9 mos