Catching Up

Hopefully will now get back into blogging regularly, have lots of photos and things to share, then the computer dies on us!! Now have it back from being repaired and caught up and all the jobs that need to be done. Recovery from op is going well, loving getting out and having at least a 30 minute walk daily, still doing my physio exercises 4 times a week, its great but been busy as trying to do all those jobs I wasn't able to do before my op.

So going back to before Christmas I offered to have a couple of L's friends for a couple of art and craft sessions, this went so well that they asked to come every week! So more than happy to share my time with enthusiastic children, so in January we started to meet weekly, using the Greek myths as our theme, will share those in another post. Any way back to December we started with the story of Wilson Bentley and how he persevered until he he was able to record the beauty of the snowflakes. We also read Curious About Snow, which has some beautiful pictures of snowflakes and talks about the science behind them, how humidity and air temperature change their shape. The girls made up their own little booklets with some snow facts in then, then had some fun making gingerbread snowflakes to decorate later.

The girls work so well as a team, I can stand back now and let the 3 of them get on with the cooking, other than dealing with the oven, they are fairly self sufficient with their baking.

Mary Azarian who illustrated the Snowflake Bentley book, makes woodcut prints, I don't have the right tools or knowledge for this so we used the florist oasis blocks instead. They girls carved pictures into them, a pencil works really well for a carving tool, then printed on some brown paper I had saved from various deliveries we had to create their own wrapping paper.

Our second session was based around the story of the little fir tree, well two different little fir tree stories, we started the session of with the girls telling us what they knew about fir trees and deciduous trees. Why they loose their leaves in winter, why fir trees don't, the design of the fir tree and how this benefits the tree when it snows lots. We talked about how the little tree wished his life away, was this a good or bad thing? How much did he miss out on by doing this? Do we ever do this and why do we feel that way. In my Christmas sort out I found some wooden fir trees so they set to work painting and decorating their own xmas trees and made some paper plate wreaths.

 

We also made some origami fir trees, the instruction video can be found here

They also made some salt dough decorations to hang on their trees at home, we made them a few years ago with cornflour to give the whiteness to the shapes, using this recipe.

 A little bit of Christmas sewing, a gift for my Aunt, can add she loved it.

I finally finished L's Rosebud jumper, it wasn't the easiest pattern to follow but she loves it and that is what counts.

Polare bear cupcakes made by hubby and L

 and of course homemeade mince pies.