Continuing on from my last post, on New Year’s Eve we went to my parents’ house, so the girls and I made some treats to take with us 🙂 I found a recipe in a magazine for a German tradition – meringue mushrooms. We just made little meringues in the shape of mushroom cups and stalks and attached them with melted chocolate, dusting them with cocoa powder 🙂 They went down well.
On our way there, we stopped at Rowallane. We picked up one of the trails and the girls looked out for the signposts. We had a long walk and a cheeseboard picnic while we were there. We spotted the first snowdrops of the year. I always think of them as a sign of new things to come 🙂 After that, I think we almost walked the entire grounds 🙂 The girls were excited to find an outdoor game. Some of the pieces of it were missing, so they made up one of their own using the pieces 🙂 One of the signposts said to help the animals build some small shelters, so the girls worked on building some miniature houses out of twigs and leaves 🙂 Another asked them to help to rake the leaves, so they found a branch each and used them as rakes 🙂 We called into the playground and the girls went on what they could. (It was quite wet and slippery.) Afterwards, we met my dad at the cafe and he got us some hot chocolate/gingerbread latte 🙂 We had another walk and stopped to see the yellow holly 🙂 The girls were excited to find a little play area in the main building. They had a pretend picnic at the little table.
After New Year’s, we made some more crafts from the girls’ art box. They made suncatchers using colourful acetate and little frames. They made some more collages with the leftover materials too 🙂
We had another trip to the transport museum to see the trains with their lights for the last time 🙂 The colouring area was still there, so the girls did some more Christmas-themed colouring. We explored all the buses, trains and trams. The girls seem to be most fascinated by the pretend horses at the minute. After a quick snack outside, we went to the Land, Sea and Sky gallery. The girls loved playing in the little ticket office and tea room. They went on the green screen tractor again and then left reviews to say that it was their favourite thing in the museum 🙂
We finished the Christmas holidays with some colouring together. The girls got some colouring sheets for Christmas that roll out and stick to the table and they enjoyed working on those. We used the last craft from their art box too. We had to (I had to!) cut out lots of paper squares and they had to draw around objects and then fill the spaces with the squares to make collages. I made one too and found it quite therapeutic. Our art session was interrupted by the arrival of snow. The girls rushed outside to play in it with their umbrellas. Sadly, it didn’t lie, but we still enjoyed watching it from inside in the warmth 🙂
The Funky Thrifter 