Our Advent Activity Calendar

Last year the girls were given a beautiful advent calendar handmade by Auntie Titi, the kind where a little pocket is stitched on for each day and you can fill it with whatever you choose. Last year we filled it up with Elizabeth Shaw Mint Crisp Dark Chocolates (this is what I had in our advent calendar when I was young so to me they are the only and best advent calendar chocolates).

This year however the girls were lucky enough to receive not one, not two, but three chocolate calendars as well as a lovely picture one, so we decided to fill up the fabric one with little envelopes suggesting activities we could do together during Advent instead. I had good intentions to do this before the 1st of December but time ran away from me so actually only got round to doing it last night. So we started our Advent activity calendar today, on the 4th December.

I sat and brainstormed 24 activities (three of which we had already done to count for the first three days that we missed!) and here are the activities I came up with:

Make Christmas tree biscuits

Create a stable for our Nativity scene

Make a pomander

Read the Nativity story together

Write a letter to Santa

Make Christmas hot chocolate

Make some Christmas playdough

Decorate the Christmas cake

Make mince pies

Sing carols together

Make a Christmas table centrepiece

Make a paper wreath

Watch a Christmas movie together

Buy and read a new Christmas book

Make snowflakes

Decorate the jars of Christmas Chutney to give as gifts
Buy/make gifts for mummy, daddy etc...

Make a Christmas tree decoration (I included this activity three times)

Go and see a pantomime

Make a wreath for the door (already done)

Decorate the tree (already done)

Make some snow dough (already done, and oh what a disaster!)

I wrote the activities on little pieces of card that I then folded up to form little envelopes; stickers wouldn't hold them closed so I tied them up with little ribbons. I also numbered them on the back so I would know what they were, and the night before I can check the next day's activity and switch them about if I need to.

Today's activity was to make a Christmas Tree decoration, and we made cute little walnut babies for our tree that I will hopefully post about soon, as Poppet loved making them!

Poppet: 2ys 10mos

Little: 1yr 2mos

Extension Progress

We are currently in the process of extending our house to make an open plan kitchen-diner downstairs, and a third bedroom upstairs - it's going to make a massive difference to our living space and I am so excited to see it come together!

We are very lucky that our project manager/building contractor is none other than Grandad which is great for us because it means the girls get to see their Grandad lots and 'help' out with the building work, but not so great because he gets through a hell of a lot of gingernuts.

Poppet loves keeping an eye on the building developments and knows that "Dandad's making a house for mummy". 

Grandad lives 2.5 hours away so when he is working on our house he stays with us too. He has to fit our extension around other work commitments he has, so he comes here for a bit, then is away for a bit... When he is here he works from morning to night to get things done.

So here are some pictures of what has been done so far :

First came the digger to dig out the foundations. Then Grandad and Daddy had to fill the trenches with wheel barrow after wheel barrow of concrete. In the cold and rain. It looked like very hard work! You know, from where I was watching, through the window, with the heating on and a cup of tea in my hand.

Then two very efficient bricklayers came and completed the foundation brickwork in one day.

Poppet did work site inspections regularly to make sure things were being done right. Grandad tried to explain to her that this would be the new kitchen but she looked dubious.

The girls' love when something gets delivered and watch in fascination as the lorry unloads.

Telling off Grandad

One day Poppet was shocked to discover that Grandad had made a hole above the back door and told him off - "Grandad you made a hole. You shouldn't do that. That's naughty". She was very concerned about his reckless hole-making behaviour and every time we heard loud building work she would gasp "Dandad's making a hole!".

But I think he made up for it later in the day when he put up some walls, however Poppet still wanted more - "Tan you make a roof? With sticks?". She is a very demanding customer!

Grandad delivered the next day with a roof made of sticks. As long as the big bad wolf doesn't come by we should be fine.

Poppet had a go at marking the chipboard

The new kitchen!

Before, during and after

And that is where we are up to just now! Next time Grandad comes he is bringing Uncle Mike as well, so we will need to find out what his favourite biscuit is!

DIY Wreath

Assorted shrubbery from Grandad

This was my first ever attempt at making a wreath for Christmas and I am so pleased with how well it turned out! It cost me exactly nothing to make; everything was either lying around our house or garden (well most of it was from Nana and Grandad's garden!) and hopefully will make our home look nice and Christmassy when I eventually figure out how to hang it on the front door. 

Grandad arrived bearing gifts of conifer, holly and some shrub with red berries, and he had also knocked up a wreath base using some insulation tubing - I have still to turn this into a wreath but plan to do so shortly as I have loads of greenery still to use.

Our two wreath bases: insulation tubing on left and coat hanger & hanging basket liner on right

Poppet had already seen a picture of a wreath in a Christmas story book we had been reading her and asked "What's that?" so she had a rough idea of what they looked like but she liked seeing one appear before her eyes! I started off by bending a wire coat hanger into a circle with Poppet's help, leaving the hook intact so we could use it to hang the wreath up when it was finished. I had an old hanging basket liner that I tore roughly into three pieces and then wrapped around the coat hanger, securing it on by wrapping twine round it.

Together we then attached bits of conifer all the way round the wreath, just by pushing the end under a bit of the twine. We kept doing this until we had quite a good layer of conifer built up, Poppet was really good at this bit!

I was surprised at how long she was able to concentrate on it, I didn't need to try and keep her interested she just wanted to help.

After the conifer we had a search around the garden to see what other greenery we could turn up, and came back with some rosemary sprigs that we tucked into the wreath as well. Poppet kept coming back with little sprigs of weeds saying 'Here's some thyme!' (a herb she knows well because she has some in her garden) but I managed to avoid having to put any weeds into the wreath!

Wreath in progress

I then started adding pieces of holly and red berries and this is where the swearing started as I kept spiking myself on the holly. Understandably Poppet was from this point onwards reluctant to help attach the greenery and preferred to have a more background role just observing "Watch the spiky bit mum!"

I had sprayed our pine cones gold and scented them with cinnamon oil so Poppet loved taking them out the bag and sniffing them. We tied a few pine cones to the wreath as a finishing touch and declared it "all done!"

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

Bird Cakes

I got the things out to make these but then was distracted by a phonecall and by the time I was done I found Poppet had already begun without me. I found her trying to use the lard as a glue to stick pieces of twine onto the yoghurt pots. So yeah there was quite a bit of lard smeared about the place and over Poppet so it wasn't the best start to the morning!

Poppet playing with the lard

Is lard meant to smell horrible -or had I left it out the fridge too long? Either way it was a really yucky thing to work with and I don't think I want to buy it again. The birds will just have to make do with shop bought birdcakes in the future -not that they are even going near the bird cakes we lovingly made!

We followed the instructions on the RSPB website. We basically just squelched together birdseed and lard, it was pretty easy. Poppet got really stuck in and didn't seem bothered by the disgusting smell.

We then packed it into yoghurt pots. We had pre-threaded these with twine - I made a hole in the bottom of the pots and then Poppet tried hard to thread the twine through, but it was pretty difficult so I fed the twine through until it was just poking out, and then she would grab hold of it and pull it through.

We put it into the fridge to chill until the next day and then went out into the garden to find places to hang them. Which was surprisingly difficult as our garden has no trees in it. We hung a few on an old bird table, and the rest on the washing line poles and shed.

I have yet to see a single bird eat from one of our cakes.

Poppet: 2yrs 10mos

Little: 1yr 1mos

An Autumn Gardening Update

The foundations of our old second greenhouse (that has now gone on to a new owner) have been turned into a raised bed, giving us a lovely new vegetable plot to fill.

A bit of research online told me that garlic was the ideal crop for November sowing and we managed to pick up a bag at our local garden centre. This is my first time growing garlic but from what I read it is pretty simple so I am looking forward to when we can harvest it next June! Poppet loves the job of unpeeling the garlic and splitting up the cloves whenever I am cooking so I knew she would enjoy helping plant them too. I also found that you can plant early varieties of peas now for a June harvest, so ordered a packet of 'Douche Provence' online (we couldn't find any in the gardening centre).

It was a momentous morning as Poppet finally managed to get all her fingers in the correct bits of her gardening gloves! She couldn't actually do anything with the gloves on but that is besides the point.

It was quite a windy day so this is Poppet getting a bit worried about the the wind, but after some reassurance she was happy to continue.

I dug the trench and Poppet dropped the peas in, then 'put them to bed' by covering them over with soil with her trowel.

I got carried away and also picked up these spring cabbage plant seedlings at the garden centre so we put a row of them in there as well. I'm not sure if they will survive our icy weather recently, maybe I should have covered them with something!

So that summarises our morning gardening! We didn't even need to water everything as it rained all afternoon for us. 

Loose Part Play: Dried Oranges, Pinecones & Coasters

The girls love having new play ingredients to use in their kitchen, and these loose parts fitted the bill perfectly. I originally made these intending them to become a christmas table centrepiece and wreath and so I didn't really want them played with and damaged. But Poppet must have really liked the dried orange slices as I would keep finding them missing from the bowl, and usually fed to her dinosaurs. She is being very attentive to her dinosaurs as of late, perhaps due to Dinovember that we are currently participating in! (blog post to follow!)

We collected our pine cone collection from the garden and laid them out on a baking tray. They were mostly all closed up, but after an hour or so on a very low heat in the oven they all opened up and are happily now free from all insects which is always good. I sliced up a couple of oranges into 1cm pieces and laid them out on a wire rack (apparently better than a baking tray as it helps prevent them sticking) and baked them at the same time until they had all dried out.

After a couple of days of Poppet stealing the orange slices I gave in and set up an invitation to play using them. I went for a natural theme with a wooden placemat, wood-effect coasters, a bowl of dried oranges and a bowl of pinecones (I was sticking to the Magic Three Formula of loose part play).

My pictures of them playing with them were mostly blurred so I only have one here, but I can vouch that those oranges got a lot of playtime! They did not touch the pinecones at all (have had some up on the windowsill all month so these are no novelty) but the orange slices were cooked, and served up, and cooked, and served up, time and time again. The coasters became little serving platters that Poppet would arrange the oranges on and then hand out to me, or to her little sister.

I will give you one guess as to what Little did with the oranges! Even Poppet had a little experimental nibble. I have now managed to rescue all of my precious oranges slices and have them up out of the way until we can try our hand at making some decorations in the not too distant future!

Poppet: 2yrs 10mos

Little: 1yr 1mos