August

August we made the most of sunshine, lots of time spent in the garden, which is producing a nice lot of veg for us.

The girls have been enjoying different art classes put on by our local art centre, M attended a couple of teen classes which she really enjoyed and L attended the younger group, she made a diorama with her favourite animals in it.

The following session she made a penguin puppet with a fish for his supper.

All the years of watching me set up various tuff tray scenes, L now does her own.

We have adopted a new rescue bunny, he's another mini rex, not the best photo of all 3 but its very difficult to get them all together! So going from left to right, here is Lucy, Rosie and Jack.

L has started a nature journal, she has spent ages drawing and decorating various pages.

I know its upside down, I have deleted the original and can't work out how to rotate it the right way but wanted to share it anyway as L spent ages going through her bird books and then drawing all their eggs.

New Pets

The girls have been wanting guinea pigs for a long time, imagine their surprise when their brother comes back from uni with 2 guinea pigs that needed a new home. Meet Rolo and Biscuit, who are enjoying lots of attention and settling in well. The rest of the month has been spent in the garden growing veg, repurposing old duvet cases and cooking lots.

L has started sewing and making a very neat job of it too.

So I have been busy repurposing some an old duvet cover, used the pattern section to make some new hankies and then the plain white part to make some produce bags.

Making homemade cordial and then using the left over orange and lemon peel to infuse some vinegar for cleaning with.

Ginger Cordial

200g root ginger, peeled and broken into large pieces

1 lemon grated rind and juice

600g caster sugar

1.5 litres of water

15g citric acid

Add all the ingredients to a pan, dissolve the sugar on a low heat for 3 to 4 minutes.

Then bring to the boil and simmer for 40 minutes.

Remove from the heat, when cool, strain through a cloth.

Bottle and store in the fridge, I have also frozen some too for later use.

Orange Cordial

3 oranges, juice and zest

500g sugar

600ml water

15 citric acid

Place water, sugar and orange peel in a pan, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove from the heat and add the juice.

Leave to cool, strain and bottle, keep in the fridge.

This seems to be Max's favourite place to hang out and watch the world go by, he rarely leaves the garden, sometimes he sits on the fence but most of the time he likes to watch the world go by. safely from his own garden.

Sorting out left over fabric I made one of L's dolls a dress, I will put it by for her birthday next month.

A good friend of mine came back from holiday with some lovely fabric as a gift for me, made L's favourite dress, the geranium by Made by Rae, must admit it was one of my favourites too.

First harvest from our garden veg patch, hopefully lots more to come throughout the summer.

L and I went on a bug hunts and found not only ladybirds, but ladybirds in the pupae and larvae stage too. 

Introducing Max

There might not be any more human babies here at the moment but we have new fur baby called Max (named by L). At the moment he is at the lets pounce on everything stage, especially toes, so the girls have taken to wearing socks. He isn't causing any damage when pouncing on their toes but it is a bit unnerving so can see why they prefer to wear socks. So knitting is done while Max sleeps or upstairs as the movement of the knitting needle is causing too much interesting for a such a little kitten. He is too little to manage the stairs yet, though he is trying but hindered by no carpet just varnished wood, so a bit slippery and no fabric to get a hold of.

Maybe not the best photo but just loved the way he crashed out, absolutely exhausted after he spent an afternoon playing with visiting friends.

Now those that know L well, will know spending time with her is always fun, she has a great imagination and says what she feels. Today she finished her maths and announced "I've finished my sums Mum and marked them all so you don't have too." I managed a thank you, while trying not to giggle, now working out how to reply to that! Yes she does have a 98% accuracy rate but marking your own work...... A friend did point out that you have to just love her confidence in her own ability :) This followed on from a conversation at the weekend, well it was more of statement form L, having just tidied and cleaned the breakfast bar, L came in cheering and said "Yay that means we are doing science experiments." Honestly I do tidy and clean my breakfast bar daily not just when I am doing science experiments on it. But it does say a lot for L's interests, books, nature and science experiments. So not wanting to disappoint her, I found  out some iron filings, a piece of cardboard and different shaped magnets. Sprinkled the iron filings on the cardboard and used the magnets to draw pictures, I also got her to hold the different types of magnets we had under the cardboard to see the changing in patterns, we used a horseshoe, ring and block magnet.

We've also had more fun exploring motion, ramp building and seeing how far the car went, the speed it went etc depending on how steep the ramp was.

Ok the other part of this experiment was seeing whether you could get the car past the kitten or not!

Still using the same balloon from lasts weeks experiment, I got M and L to build a lego vehicle that could be powered by a balloon. At this stage Max had worn himself out chasing cars and was fast asleep, thankfully as pretty sure kittens and balloons are not a good mix!

Balloon is beginning to loose its elasticity but we still managed to create a hoover craft, using a CD, the push down top of a water bottle and a balloon. Using a glue gun to glue the bottle top to the CD, then carefully stretching the balloon over it, if you get it right, you can blow the balloon up, push the stopper closed, set it down and then open it up and watch it hoover across the table.

 Making the most of the sunshine, finally got up the allotment and we planted out onions and lots of carrot seeds, Admired the apple blossom

 and blueberry flowers.

The redcurrants have lots of fruit on them, so hoping for a good crop this year.

L busy planting out.

We then got very sidetracked as we discovered two slow worms, they were both out on the grass path for ages but was so busy watching them, I didn't think about taking a photo, you can just spot this ones head poking out. We then uncovered another patch and discovered an ants nest, they had made a loads of tunnels just under the matting, so you could see them really clearly, along with their eggs and larva, so L and I spent time watching the ants collect up their young and move them to safer home.

 Finished making another very pink baby cardi this wool has a sparkle running through it, not that I could get the camera to pick it up but have a happy friend so that is what matters.

 Now this little cardi sirdar 1816 is a real favourite of mine, there's very little sewing up as you knit the fronts and backs all in one and the join the sleeves in, so only need to sew the under arm and sleeve seam. The only downside is the amount of stitches needed to cast on to start with.

On a health front, I an an optician appointments the other Friday, they were a bit concerned and referred me to the hospital to have a thorough check out of the back of the eye, they use drops to do this, eye is fine and a huge sigh of relief from me. Fast forward a few hours later, I started to feel very itchy,flushed skin and hives, so took some antihistamines but they didn't seem to stop it. So called out of hours and as I am chatting to them started to feel breathless and voice was starting to become croaky, so they phoned an ambulance which was with me within minutes. Spent several hours in A&E and discovered the major problem with having an allergy to steroids and the treatment of allergic reactions, steroids are normally used, plus the fact I have several medicines I react to so they don't like to give you anything, just in case, which is good in one way but not when you are feeling very nauseous at this stage. Spent the next few days feeling a little bit emotional but will say M was amazing as she was with me at this stage, even though she said later she was really shocked how swollen my neck was, she kept her head, got the kitten out the way and watched out for the ambulance, let the crew in and got her Dad.

Easter

Happy Easter everyone, we've had a lovely but very busy couple of weeks, we joined a friend for a visit to the Living Rainforest, the armadillo was out and about this time, which was great for the children to see. This months Eco Kids magazine has been on plants, lots on meat eating plants, so great for L to see the pitcher plant in real life and I had fun talking about and demonstrating some of the other meat eating plants. At home we spent some time watching some you tube clips on the venus fly trap and sundew as well as reading the rest of the magazine. We've also been reading Enid Blyton's Nature Lover book, monthly nature walks with Uncle Merry, I know I can see the difference in the dead nettles and a true nettle and how animals avoid the dead nettle as they think its a stinging nettle. This week we learnt that the stem of the dead nettle is square not round, luckily we have some in the garden to look at explore the stems and compare carefully to the stinging nettles. Just love the fact that I am learning alongside my children and then we cans share that learning with others.

We were trying to decide if this was the tortoise yawning or will you all please just go away and leave me in peace face, what do you think?

We also finally got to spot the sloth.

We went to the local vocational college last weekend for their open day, looking ahead for M, they do a wide range of sport, out door pursuits, animal management, horticulture, actually a wide selection of vocational courses, set in a lovely rural setting. The classes are small, they don't have a bell ringing for classes, they try and have a calm learning environment. We had a lovely chat to some of the team for learning support and feeling positive that this could very well be the right environment for M, as long as we can get all the support in place and in writing before she starts. For those that didn't know she did try school when she was 11 years old and it went very horribly wrong, she couldn't cope with the sensory overload, the lack of support for her and it sent her into sensory overload daily and her anxiety through the roof. So I really need to get the support in for her before she starts college so we do not have a repeat of school. I am trying not to worry but I am, its so hard at times when you know what support your child needs and how well she can do with the right support but it seems so hard to get it in place for her. Just looking at her drama, she managed a merit in her exams, she had fantastic support from her teacher, he was there just before her exam to run through any questions with her and to go through the results with her at her next lesson. They had lots of mock practises, everything was written down or emailed to her so she knew exactly what was expected of her etc, I am now crossing fingers that we can get the support in place for college. M is looking at performing arts or media studies, performing arts means she gets to use her dance and gymnastics at times, which she loves. Oh and L is ready to sign herself up for animal management course, she's not impressed she has to wait till she is 16 to do it!

L and I have been looking at plant life cycles, she has loved making these paper plate life cycles, she asked for more, so we now have on on sunflowers and turtles too. A nice way to look at and compare the life cycle of different plants and animals.

At some point towards the end of last year I lost my vibrantly flowering erysimum, haven't found any locally and decided to take a risk and buy some unseen on ebay, pleased with them so far, we have Night Skies and Paintbox. They look so pretty and took me a while to decide on which ones, there are loads of delightful colour mixes. My kitchen window sill has been taken over by them,along with kale, broccoli and tomato seedlings and the normal selection of herbs!

Some Easter painting, used the inner of a cardboard roll, cut in 3 and stuck together to make a rabbit out line, L has loved printing the rabbit shapes and creating scenes for them, they are her rabbits Rosie and Lucy.

Wet felting some eggs, they never quiet work out for me but the girls enjoy trying and maybe one day we will get it right. Today the girls had an Easter egg hunt in the garden, L has now hidden 10 little eggs around the house for M to find later, I am wondering how long it will take us to find them all, editing to add that as of bedtime tonight we still have 3 eggs to find and L isn't giving any more clues away. Easter cards made and a visit to grandparents this afternoon.

More recipe trying from Madeline Oliver, these are her falafel burgers, also made the kidney bean burgers, lovely but may need to buy a big food processor, mine is a little one that is great for blending baby food but a bit small to batch make burgers! We are loving sweet potato wedges at the moment the family cannot get enough of them.

 Ocean Waves is of the needles and blocked, now back to the baby knitting, though L has a list of things she would like made as well. Really need to look at my fabric stash and plan some sewing too.