Fun Times :)

From Thursday night to Tuesday evening, Mum and Dad were in Kingscliff, leaving us kids to fend for ourselves :) They went up to help Nana sort through Grandad's tools etc. They didn't take the camera, so I have photos of the activities that the kids did while they were away.
There were chocolate baskets with bark, noughts and crosses, piggy-bookmarks, dressing races, play-dough, gingerbread men, fruit smoothies, Risk, water fights, fun, activity bags (Mum bought fun things such as wooden circus toys, pipe-cleaners, books, notepads, textas, etc, and put them in a brown paper bag for Jord, Rob, Dan, and Lily), lessons, and occasionally movies... just to name a few :P We didn't get photos of everything, because we videoed some of the activities rather than taking photos.


I love this photo! The light spilling in; excited faces; you can imagine what they were talking about: whose biscuits were whose; "mine looks better" etc.


Robert got very involved with Risk... which is usually not a good thing :0

Icing gingerbread biscuits.

I love the way Lily holds her biscuit as she ices it :) She's such a little lady!

Saturday we had hash-browns for breakfast; Michael enjoyed them very much!

Dressing races... Jamie was very serious about the whole process and Rob went rather crazy :P

Fruit smoothie (s).

Michael reading with Lily.

Mum and Dad bought all of us a pair of pyjamas; Michael's, as you can see in this picture, says: " Daddy's little apprentice"... it's very cute :)

Card-board skates

This morning Robert occupied himself by making skates out of card-board.


He used sticky tape to keep the strap on the shoe.


They were a trifle too large, but he managed to go for a few laps around the kitchen bench.


And although they broke after only a little bit of use, Rob was very proud that he "invented" a new style of skates!

Holiday Activities

For the Christmas holidays I have been doing some activities with the two little boys to keep them occupied and out of trouble. We have had a lot of fun playing Numpty, Go Fish, Piggy-in-the-middle, Squiggle drawing, Keep Talking (you can imagine that they didn't have any trouble with that one); and we also made some lovely food such as Shining star biscuits, Festive fudge, and Marshmallow crunch. I do not have any photos of the games we played, as I had to partake in them and therefore wasn't able to take the shots but I did manage to get some of the finished results of the...




Marshmallow Crunch,


and the Festive Fudge.


And also what the pictures on the cards looked like.


Well, these foods were a big hit at our place so I thought I would write out the recipe for the fudge for you to try out, at your own convenience. And perhaps I will be able to write out the recipes for the crunch and biscuits another time!

Festive Fudge
To make about 50 pieces of fudge, you will need:

350g (12oz) icing sugar
75g (3oz) unsalted butter (or nuttelex)
4 teaspoons of milk (or rice/soy)
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence
75g (3oz) pink and white marshmallows
2 tablespoons of sugar sprinkles
a shallow 18cm (7in) square tin, wiped with cooking oil
greaseproof paper

Put the tin on the greaseproof paper. Draw around it and cut out the square. Press the paper into the oiled tin. Use a paper towel to wipe the square with oil.
Sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Make a hollow in the middle of the sugar.
Put the butter, milk and vanilla essence into a small pan. Then, cut the marshmallows in half and add them to the pan. Gently heat the pan. Stir the mixture every now and then with a wooden spoon, until everything has melted.
Pour the mixture into the hollow in the middle of the sugar. Quickly stir it all together, until the mixture is smooth. Pour the mixture into the the tin and push it into the corners. Smooth the top, then sprinkle the sugar sprinkles over it. Press the sprinkles into the fudge with your fingers. When the fudge is cool, chill it in a fridge for two hours.
Loosen the edges of the fudge with a blunt knife. Turn it out onto the a board and remove the greaseproof paper. Turn the fudge over. Cut it into small squares.
Put the fudge in an airtight container. Chill it in the fridge for two more hours.

Keep the fudge in a fridge, in an airtight container, and eat within a week.

Snow Domes

This morning I decided to occupy the little boys by making Snow Domes with them. The idea I got from The Picket Fence .

It was very easy, I simply let them choose their own toys (Rob chose a tree, dinosaur, and a wire post, and Dan chose two small trees, a road sign, a little black bull and a dinosaur) I then glued them to the lid, filled the bottles with water and glitter and screwed the lid on.

As easy as it was, there were a few major problems. One of them being that we had run out of glue sticks for the gun and the little bit that I forced out wasn't enough, so the toys are now floating in the water. Bother!

However, I did get a few photos of them before the toys fell off. I was glad about that :).