This week, we spent as much time as we could in the garden, between downpours 🙂 The girls made some nature bracelets, just using masking tape. You just stick it around their wrist and they can collect leaves and flowers to stick to them. My daughter also decided to start a stone collection and has been taking care of them in a pot. It reminds me of a Shirley Hughes children’s book where a little boy adopts a rock and his mum sews a swim suit and some clothes for it. We haven’t gone that far though 🙂
The girls were very attentive to their little greenhouse plants and they seem to be thriving better than mine. We transplanted them to larger pots and I’m hoping they will grow into full-sized plants 🙂
We visited my parents in their garden and my dad produced a bag of our toys from the nineties 🙂 I hadn’t seen them since then and the girls enjoyed going through them. They found a little sewing machine that used to be mine (but that I don’t remember for some reason) and claimed it and a couple of dolls. The sewing machine has no batteries at the moment and a broken needle but pretending to sew is their new favourite game 🙂 We did a little bit of hand sewing together so they could learn a basic stitch and they both showed a lot of interest in it 🙂 My daughter loves “designing” things on fabric by adding stickers and cutting it into different shapes.
I added some food colouring to water so the girls could make their own perfume (it was a suggestion from my daughter’s preschool.) It started off yellow and I added red to make orange after the girls pointed out it looked like pee 😀 I gave them some flowers, bowls and spoons, etc to mix and pretend to make different scents.
I’ve been using Jack Monroe’s cookery book a lot at the minute. It’s good for making recipes out of nothing 🙂 We made some lemon curd biscuits and marmalade buns (we called them Paddington buns, but one of my daughters still refused to eat them!)
My daughter suggested we have a tea party when they were ready, so she set the table with our “fancy” plates and teacups. The girls had some berry tea and I had some assam tea that came in a surprise box of teas from my parents 🙂 That and Russian Caravan are my favourites so far.
I drew pictures for my daughter to colour in last night, hoping it would inspire her to colour more. (She doesn’t usually have any patience for it.) But it just turned into another scribbling session 🙂
This morning, I made some homemade play doh and set up a kitchen play station at the table. The girls seem to play with play doh for longer than anything else and they made pretend cakes and treats, using a lid as a tray 🙂 Afterwards, we played some Orchard board games. I don’t know why the girls tend to sit much better for them than more drawn out games like Junior Monopoly! Llamas in Pyjamas is a favourite in our house 🙂
As I was filling the kettle to make a cup of tea, I noticed that one of the plants I grew from seed has flowered. I got far too excited about that and it felt like a real achievement. It’s the first time one has ever made it that far 🙂 My courgettes also seem to be doing well and are ready to be repotted now. I’m still determined to create a kitchen garden against all odds.
Sometimes I like having a rainy day inside, lighting candles, listening to Tim Buckley’s Happy Sad. (It’s my rainy day album/ seems to dampen the girls’ hyperactivity a little.) It’s nice to have the contrast of a wet, fresh day (as long as there are sunny days ahead too.)
