Vanilla Sponge Cake Playdough

Play dough ingredients

We have a proper kitchen again! It has been quite a while let me tell you. But all the upheaval has made us appreciate all the more our lovely fully-functioning kitchen and our lives have gotten about 100 times easier these past couple of weeks as our house turns back from building site to a home. The girls have especially delighted in their regained freedom and have been tearing the place up. Little had been growing so very frustrated at not being allowed to explore all those dangerous and interesting looking tools that were lying around and wanted to be wherever the action was. She has been like a different little girl since being allowed to explore her surroundings again. And Poppet was a case in point as to why too much TV is not good for little ones! The tantrums we had when we switched it off were quite spectacular. It took a couple of days for her to stop asking for us to put a DVD on but now she doesn't even ask and has even napped in the afternoon a few times which she hasn't done in a long time. She's been asking instead to do 'painting' or 'make a cake'- apparently it has been Little's birthday a lot.

So this week we have been in the kitchen baking lots as we (I!) have missed this particular activity. Vanilla sponge cakes are one of our favourites because they are so easy. On Friday Poppet asked for play dough so I thought we would try for some vanilla-scented cake mixture type play dough. To make it I added in some vanilla extract and a touch of yellow food colouring at the kneading stage. It made the most wonderful sweet smelling dough. Play dough is lovely and tactile when played with while still warm and the girls were very keen to get stuck in. Poppet was curious as to the scent "mum what that smell like?" I was looking around for some bits and bobs to add to the play dough play and Poppet was helping me - she went into a drawer and picked out some food picks and I got some candles and cake cases which are always popular with playdough play.  Poppet got some lovely new wooden play dough utensils for her birthday so we used them too.

Little loved sticking the food picks and candles into her playdough and trying to roll it out and stamp shapes into it. She just tries to copy anything she sees her big sister do. Poppet made imprints in hers and rolled them up to make 'sausages' which were then put into cake cases and allocated to family members according to size.

It was 20 whole minutes before the inevitable happened and Little ate a piece. Poppet alerted me to the fact, looking at her sister disdainfully but with a certain amount of admiration. She had swallowed it and everything by the time I got to her but really did not enjoy the taste (salty!) so I hope that she will have learnt her lesson. I was a bit worried about the salt content so gave her a cup of water and she certainly seemed really thirsty!  I have been trying to encourage her to smell playdough not eat it so she now does an exaggerated smelling action whenever she sees it.

Poppet: 3yrs 2mos

Little: 17 mos

A Little Garden Update on a Rainy Afternoon

All of the girls' toys, games and art & craft supplies have been packed away and dust-sheeted up as the extension has been broken through to join onto the existing house now (this equates to a whole lot of dust and rubble!). We have been setting up camp in the imaginatively named 'TV room', which is a small room downstairs where we have our TV that is unaffected by the building work (apart from the fact that it has been crammed full with displaced stuff from the rest of the house).

My lifeline has been the TV. We have been watching far too many DVDs than is healthy, trying to keep the girls out of the way from the building work going on in the house - I've watched Cinderella, Anastasia, Tangled and Swan Lake (just terrible) enough to last me a lifetime. Poppet has rather enjoyed this lifestyle and I think I will have to wean her off DVD's slowly!

We get out most days for some fresh air and to stretch our legs as the girls have dancing classes and toddler groups on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and on our days off we go to the library, the shops or the park. I don't drive so we walk everywhere (well me and Poppet do, Little goes in her pushchair). 

Today we hadn't been outside at all; we had to stay in in the morning to help Uncle Mike while he got the heating in the extension up and running (house is now all toasty thank you Uncle Mike). In the afternoon, Little was napping and Poppet was requesting yet another DVD. Our garden has been out of bounds for a while because of the building work but I decided to take Poppet out to explore all the changes. It was windy and raining but Poppet has been given a lovely new cosy waterproof all-in-one from Grandma, just perfect for our wet and wild weather!

We managed to make our way to the back garden after navigating around the scaffolding; Poppet was most disturbed by the 'broken' steps and general mess - "we better go inside mum". But we persevered!

We hadn't seen the back of the house since the brickwork and roof went up on the extension - it looked so big! 

Pea seedlings have survived the winter

We checked on our little winter veg plot - and were very excited to see a row of little pea seedlings just poking up through the soil. Our garlic has all grown too, I'm  really looking forward to our garlic harvest in the summer and seeing if it tastes any better than shop bought.

Our garlic is getting big!

Poppet checked her 3 purple broccoli plants, (except she called them pink broccolis until I reminded her they were going to be purple) - she declared them to be 'not ready yet', and was also disappointed to find no strawberries on her plants. After our short but fresh trip outdoors we felt a lot better.

Poppet: 3 yrs

Little 16mos (as ever, napping - I promise to do a Little post shortly!)

Dinovember

"What's going on?"

For the last week and a bit something strange has been going on at night.

"What's that?!"

We wake in the morning to find our dinosaurs have been up to mischief!

We were a bit late to the party with dinovember but as soon as I heard about it I knew we wanted to join in with the fun!

"It's a happy birthday!"

For those that are in the dark, dinovember was started by a mum and dad who wanted to encourage a sense of wonder and mystery in their children. You can read more about it here. I hope it creates some fun memories for the girls and sparks their imaginations a bit!

"Uh-oh. Dinosaurs made a mess mum"

The first couple of days Poppet was just mildly amused by the dinosaur's antics. But soon she started looking forward to seeing what they had got up to in the night, and gently cautioning them before she went to bed - "don't be naughty".

Me: Is that those naughty dinosaurs again?
Poppet: No, them nice mama

I think her favourite one was when the dinosaurs made fairy cakes! Dada was still telling them off for making a mess with the flour, but Poppet admonished him 'No dada you have to say thank you". And we had fairy cakes for breakfast, which she loved!

Dino Doctors!

Little's reaction was the same every day, she would just growl at them. 

"It's a fruit-stealing dinosaur convoy!" (not Poppet's actual words)

A detail shot

"Look, dinosaurs tidy up!"

"'They dettin married!"

"Mum come see!"

On Friday morning we got up and the dinosaurs were nowhere to be found! Poppet thought maybe they had gone to sleep. But as the sun came up she happened to be looking out the window at the building work and spotted some dinosaurs making an escape attempt!

"What dinosaurs doin?"

I loved how the girls would often elaborate on the dinosaur scene they found each morning and use it as a basis for their play; we had a day of wedding play 'I detting married mum", a day playing with the train set, a day playing with all their toy vehicles (and eating satsumas!), a teaparty that lasted an entire day.... it was lovely to see. Poppet was very keen to help me clean the bathroom after the dinosaurs had messed it up. She even started to try and do it by herself, and seemed almost disappointed in the dinosaurs' behaviour!

The dinosaurs in general have been getting lots of attention since we started; Poppet has been playing with them lots, even feeding them - they have really become her favourite toys of the minute! Which is good timing for us as we got her a beautiful dinosaur dress for Christmas from the amazing Sewing Circus. She will love it even more now!

So now Dinovember has come to an end, and I am a little bit glad because as fun as it was I was running out of dinosaur scenes! I don't know about Poppet's but my creativity and imagination was certainly exercised a bit these last couple of weeks!

Poppet: 2yrs 10mos

Little: 1yr 2mos