Today's creative endeavours

First, the annual egg tree. This year's is a bit lopsided, but it relies heavily on our ability to find a suitable branch, and this was the best we could find. It's decorated with a variety of eggs - some made and some bought - and some smaller hanging ornaments of an Easterish nature. We usually make at least a couple of eggs to add to it each year - we might do blown eggs this year - maybe if I can find some white eggs...

And then, there was brioche. Chocolate brioche. Sarah made these from her cookbook - they are a little heavy, but this might be because she used regular flour instead of bread flour (I pretty much let her get on with it, except some help kneading). They tasted pretty nice, though!

There was also sewing, of course, but that's over on the sewing blog...

End of a glorious week of sun

We've had a wonderful week of astonishing weather here - not going to last any longer, unfortunately - today the kids spent a large part of the day outside playing with friends in the front gardens and riding bikes, scooters, etc on the pavements and in the road. Olivia and her friend Eliza made elaborate paper kites, which they tested in the park and Sarah and I had a trip to the garden centre to find some colourful annuals which will tolerate the drop in temperatures and sunshine we are bound to develop any day now (i.e. pansies and primroses).

We tidied up the front garden and thre some flowers in some of the pots (you can't really see any in this photo, though). Just recently our neighbours have had their front garden paved for a driveway, and in the process, have put up a new fence to replace the horrid old one, and removed all the rather awful shrubs/conifer tree along the line between the two gardens. They are putting beds along both sides of the drive, so will plant some more appropriate, more attractive vegetation there, but it looks a bit bare at the moment - still, looks a bit nicer than what was there before. I am NOT an avid gardener, by any means, but I don't mind putting some plants in pots now and again...

Alex's Gardenland

This is a school project this term - to draw a plan for a garden, build a model and then write about how you built it (we have yet to do that stage). This is the model, obviously. Some help was given, not a huge amount - I helped quite a bit with the shed - and quite a bit of suggestion and direction was given, but amazingly, a lot of this is his work. I have a 6 year old who can make a model like this but can't write his name without backwards letters! Guess that shows you where his interests lie...

Ceramics day

My mother often brings fun things with her for the kids to do - this time was no exception. She bought some very inexpensive paints (closing out sale) and some little ceramic figures, and this afternoon the kids painted the figures. the ones above are Alex's - I understand he had some help with the eyes and someone helped do the outline of the white tummy on the penguin, but most of the work is his.

The girls worked entirely on their own, though advice was given and colour consultation and so on. These three are Olivia's...



... and these three are Sarah's. I particularly like the shell on the turtle.