Yesterday, it hit me just how much bread is consumed in our house 🙂 I had made several kinds of breads over the last week, and with my kids in the house all the time, it disappears overnight 🙂 So, I began my day with coffee and bread dough-prepping. I enjoy the slow process of making bread by hand and I find the kneading cathartic. It’s satisfying, seeing the end product that has spent most of the day rising on your kitchen counter, and the smell of bread baking makes any house more homely.
After some time in the sunshine, we watched a video about watercolours. It was as much for me as the girls 🙂 I like the idea of starting a new project – mind you, I have no idea when I’d slot it in between snack-serving, washing dishes and writing 🙂 It was a live session on Facebook and the lady showed different techniques 🙂 I enjoyed sitting at the table with the girls with all of us trying them out together. Usually I don’t sit down and paint too – I’m just the distributer and the cleaner 🙂 But it was nice to sit and play with paint with them at a leisurely pace.
We made a sensory beach out of an old sweets tub. We didn’t have any sand, so I made some cloud dough using flour and oil. I tried adding some yellow food colouring to make it look more sand-like, but it clumped a little, so I’d suggest leaving it out 🙂 The girls enjoyed filling the beach with shells we had collected on trips to the beach ages ago. We added some plastic spoons and cups to use as buckets and spades. The girls wanted to make a rockpool too, so we filled a separate tub with water and shells. My daughter added a “boat” – a tiny twig wrapped in tape. The LOL babies were chosen as the pool paddlers 🙂 It was later converted into an ice cream shop and the sand was dispersed all over the garden, so the miniature beach is no more 🙂
When our bread was cooked, my kids descended on it like vultures 🙂 I’m at a loss as to how to keep up with the requests for snacks and keep the cupboard stocked 
For dinner, I improvised with some leftover chicken and made a white sauce. I wrapped it in pastry to make little chicken pies. It seems to be one of the few meals my kids eat without complaint, especially when served with chips 🙂
This morning, I filled the girls’ water table with warm, bubbly water and it kept them entertained a lot longer than usual 🙂 They were making pretend snow by throwing it around, and the good thing about bubbles is their ability to dissolve into nothing, so no clean-up was involved.
My friend had shared a post about Easter painting with pegs and pom poms (thanks Kirsty!) so I tried it with the girls. It was really easy – we just lifted the pom poms with a peg and dipped it in poster paints. We started off with using it to print with, and the girls ended up using it as a giant paintbrush instead. I just drew a few outlines for them to print within – an Easter egg, bunny and chick.
We spent a lot of time in the garden and my neighbour kindly gave me some honeysuckle as a lovely present 🙂
I also spent an hour cutting circles out of a cereal box to use as a building game for the girls. I just drew around an egg cup, cut the shapes out, cut four slots into each piece, and then you can slot them together to try and build mini structures. I found it quite hard to do, but they proved useful during a tired moment with the girls. It gave them something to play with they watched a Julia Donaldson story time video 🙂
Since I’m in the mood to bake, I made some more tortillas, as I plan to use them at dinner time for chicken fajitas. We are quickly running out of flour and I’m going to have to get inventive with recipes over the next few days. One thing you can do in a moment’s boredom is to take inventory of what you already have in the house and figure out what recipes can be made out of them. You can use the supercook app if you’re running out of ideas 🙂
Now, I’m allowing TV and snack time while I get some tranquility in the garden to write, drink a homemade latte, eat orange cake and remain hopeful that the questions will relent until dinner time 🙂
The Funky Thrifter 