Cat and Eilir Day 5

 

My mum came up trumps again by baking us a traditional Christmas cake and covering it with marzipan ready for icing.

I put together the royal icing mix and started the whisking - it needs a full five minutes or more, so called Eilir down towards the end (knowing he would get bored otherwise). He got right into using the whisk, making patterns in the icing and dripping it off the beaters back into the bowl (with lots of toilet humour references).

I must have been a bit out with the quantities because the icing wasn't as stiff as it should be, but we dolloped it on regardless (with it running off the sides creating a pleasing melting ice effect).

I had bought coloured icing to decorate play-dough modelling style. Adeola's boys may have a thing about reindeer this year, but for Eilir it seems to be penguins! He started with the first penguin, while I made a tree. I suggested a water pool, which Eilir took over and then completed with the head of a swimming penguin popping out of the water. Eilir was pleased with inventing a technique for the eyes (putting some white icing on the end of a skewer and pushing it in to the black icing and then pulling it out to leave a black central hole with white outline).

We kept returning to it to add finishing touches (originally the penguins didn't have beaks or feet!), and finished it off eventually with Christmas hats and a sprinkling of pink shiny sugar to give it an icy effect. It's now far too good to eat!

Silver and girls Day 5

Reindeer Purse

For this one, Nim had a craft kit given to her.  I decided to use it for this project as all the component parts can be brought from places like Hobbycraft or The Works, as well as Asda & Tesco!  I really liked this one as it came with double sided tape, which is far less messier than using glue and made the process go much quicker.

Nim sewed the two halves together using a basic over stitch and some nylon cord.  She then threaded some plastic pony beads onto the cord for decoration.  Next we assembled the facial features and stuck them into place, building up the Reindeer and voila!

Johana and T Day 5

After decorating our xmas tree, T decided he wanted to make his own decoration.  True to the 'I want to do things my way' philosophy he was born with, chose to ignore all suggestions and do this with pipe-cleaners and a post it note.  Not very traditional I know, but befitting the higgledy piggeltiness of our skip found xmas tree, complete with last years cardboard decorations, made from cat food boxes and beheaded wooden rocking horse!

Adeola and boys Day 5

I’ve seen at least 2 artists recently sharing drawing with their children and coming up with some amazing images… um…

I think I’m a little stressed out. The boys are fantastic though and our Santa and reindeer drawing was slightly therapeutic for me. Babi insists that our Rudolph is a duck though, by excitedly saying “quack, quack” every time he was colouring that area. 

Lo did the legs, antlers, ears and tail. Roti did the snow, a yellow star, some mark-making and most of the colouring. Babi did amazing mark-making too and lots of colouring... in small areas...  

Note to self – don’t draw with graphite on paper and then colour-in if you don’t want grey smudges everywhere!

Steph and G Day 5

 

Bulbs in festive pots for family pressies.
We have done this previously for 12 days, but I feel disappointed if spring begins and we've no bulbs coming up, we planted quite a few in the garden, amazed at the number and juiciness of the worms abounding, we had to filter them out of the compost for our indoor versions, and if we are honest, G was more interested in playing with the worms then carrying on with the planting, she reckoned they were making numeral shapes, so to test them we put them on the spot with a few times table questions, they weren't as reliable as a calculator but did have a decent success rate for invertebrates.  We used outdoor paint on our cardboard containers to hopefully give them the strength and waterproofness to make it through to flowers, then G decorated with some enamel paints and carefully made drainage holes with an old screwdriver, another of the best bits.