We have had a slow beginning to the new year, spending our days on the Greenway and doing simple activities in the house. I think my only new year’s resolution is to drive myself less and allow more time for relaxation (insofar as it’s possible with two kids in the house!)
I made some coconut granola from a cookery book I love called “Feed Your Family for £20 a Week.” If you replace the oil in the recipe with coconut oil, it entirely changes the flavour, and I find if you melt the coconut oil with the honey, it’s easier to mix it all together. This method is good for using up crystallised honey, that always seems to be lingering in my cupboard in the Winter 🙂 It makes a huge amount, so breakfast is sorted out for about a month each time I make it 🙂
You can find the book here:
The girls have become more interested in colouring, perhaps after seeing me doing some of the adult colouring books I got for Christmas 🙂 I love sitting together at the table, each of us working on our respective colouring page 🙂 It’s something I haven’t made enough time for lately and I’ve remembered over the course of the Christmas holidays how important things like that are for my sanity 🙂 The girls got a game for Christmas called Rush Hour and I think I love it as much as they do. You have to arrange the cars so one of them can get out the exit without lifting any of the cars. It contains beginners and experts cards, so adults can play it too 🙂
Here is the link:
We’ve been catching up on some of our Toucan box crafts. The girls made a modern art canvas using foam dividers and primary colour paints. In the same pack, they got a circle craft activity, where they just had to stick foam circles onto a black background and overlap them to create a design.
We had a mini New Year’s party of three. I got the girls new years hairbands and some pretend “champagne.” We had a meal that consisted of all the girls’ favourite food, ie, party food with no vegetables in sight and crisps, for once an acceptable component of dinner. The girls chose the music and danced and we played board games before bedtime. I’d expected them to stay up later than usual, but they tired themselves out so much they actually requested to go to bed at the usual time 🙂 So, I got a chance to have some prosecco in peace and have a family quiz on Facetime 🙂
On New Years Day, we went for a frosty morning walk to the park and the girls spent most of their time sliding down an icy slope 🙂 My daughter made a list of everything she wanted to do that day and read it to us in the park 🙂 The girls found a tree to climb and sat and had a conversation in it 🙂
When we got home, we made some “fireworks rings.” They were just made out of cut and twisted pipecleaners. They would work better with the tinsel kind, but we didn’t have any. Apparently when you have finished with them, you can dip them in paint and use them to make firework prints on black paper too. The girls helped me to put away the decorations. I always feel like the first of January is the start of a new phase and I feel ready to put away the Christmas things (we have also been looking at them since mid-November :)) I put up my cactus light I got for Christmas and it compensates for the bareness left behind by the missing fairy lights 🙂 I might rearrange things a bit and create new displays to cheer up January.
We worked on some crafts involving watercolour crayons today. The girls had to wet ribbon using a pipette and then dye it with the crayons. The girls also had to dip the crayons in water, add it to strips on watercolour paper and smudge it with more water afterwards. I helped with that part and found it really therapeutic. I might have to do it again as a post-bedtime craft for myself 🙂 When we have finished the next part of the craft, I’ll share the end result 🙂
The Funky Thrifter 