Hospitality

Lily and her grandad hanging out in the tent.

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What child isn't entertained by a tent made out of two dining room chairs and a sheet? Lily loves tents (she actually sleeps in a 'tent', but that is a story for another post and shall be told another time). I'm always having to drag half the dining room furniture into the play room for her. She was gracious enough to ask for her tent today expressly so she could invite her Nanna and Grandad inside. Lily is a very generous hostess and will often offer some of her half chewed biscuits to her guests. I think Mark's mum and dad were spared that particular pleasure on this occasion, for which I'm sure they are grateful!

Nanna in the tent. As usual, Tom moved just as I took the photo. The boy cannot sit still!

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On a completely separate note, my parents and sister arrive tomorrow for a week long visit in anticipation of Tom's birthday next week. I'm really looking forward to seeing them and I know they are looking forward to spending time with the Podlings. There will be much talking, playing, cooking and crafting going on next week, but not, I suspect, much blogging! I will try and catch up with my blog when my family have returned home and I'm feeling lonely!

Butter fingers

These little treats came about by accident as I messed up a recipe this morning. I'd planned to make some millionaire's shortbread (that's the shortbread with caramel and chocolate on top), but I was in a lazy mood and was using the recipe on the side of the tin of condensed milk. This involves crushing 200g of shop-bought shortbread and mixing it in with melted butter, rather than making your own shortbread base. "That's a lot of butter." I thought as I melted the 5 oz of butter required by the recipe. I mixed in my shortbread crumbs, poured it into the centre of my lined tin and watched it ooze towards the edges. Wasn't I supposed to press it flat...this couldn't be right! I looked at the recipe again. It did indeed require 5oz of butter in the caramel. I was only supposed to use 1 oz of butter in the base...oops! I was annoyed with myself for wasting so much butter and nearly a whole pack of shortbread biscuits and decided to try and salvage the situation. I figured that with that much butter, adding a caramel layer would make the treats way too sickly, so I just melted 200g of chocolate and poured it on top of the chilled base. I cut them into small fingers when they were cold. If you like butter, you will like these treats! I think they would also work well with a digestive biscuit base and you could reduce the amount of butter used! The chocolate tends to fall off the top of the biscuit base, but at least I didn't have to waste the ingredients and they are really tasty. However, be warned ladies, these butter fingers will go straight to your hips!

Ice, Ice Baby

This stack of coconut ice is the result of my first foray into sweet making. I've wanted to have a go at sweet making for years and finally treated myself to a sugar thermometer this week. It was a lot of fun and the coconut ice turned out really well. It's absolutely delicious and it ought to be with ONE POUND of sugar in it! That's the downside to sweet making...you know just how much sugar goes into them!

Reasons to love Autumn

Last night: Blackberry picking at sunset

This morning: Blackberry muffins, fresh from the oven, for breakfast

(The lovely sunset photo was taken last night by Mark as the four of us wandered up the lane to our favourite bramble patch)

Cozy coupe

Ever since Tom got his Little Tikes Cozy Coupe for Christmas last year, Lily has been desperately in love with it. She wants it to be hers in the worst way and usually gets quite annoyed when Tom tries to ride in it. Luckily, Tom still prefers his smaller ride on car, so everyone in usually happy. Every so often, though, Tom decides to have a ride in his big car, usually resulting in a minor melt-down from Her Ladyship, who now thinks it is her car. Today, they seemed to reach a compromise. Lily decided that it was okay for Tom to ride in the car as long as she could get in too. The coupe has never been cosier!

Autumn fun

Today is the first official day of autumn, so the Podlings and I had an autumn themed day today. We started off with some gluing, which always goes down well with the Podlings. I drew some freehand leaves on green paper (see below) and gave the Podlings some red, yellow and orange paper to tear (though I ended up tearing it up myself) and some red and yellow glitter. I talked to the Podlings about how the leaves on the trees are green, but in the autumn they change to red, yellow, brown and orange. I then told them we were going to change their green leaves to autumn colours and let them loose with the glue. They had a wonderful time doing this and Lily enjoyed it so much I had to give her a second leaf. I later cut the finished leaves out and glued them on different colour background paper.

Let the sticking commence! I wrote 'leaf' on each picture because I find that Tom only needs to be shown a word once (sometimes a couple of times) and he knows it. He seems to be learning to read the 'see and say' way. Whatever works for the individual child I always say.

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After naptime, the Podlings did some autumn colouring. I printed some leaf pictures I found online and put out some autumn colour pencils for them to use. I cut out their pictures and added them to the autumn display board I've put above their table in the kitchen.

Leaf colouring

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The colder months are all about cinnamon and spices for me, so our next activity was baking some leaf-shaped spice biscuits. Tom got bored and wandered off (he's not into baking), but Lily was there till the end (and beyond...she was 'washing up' for half an hour!). I quickly iced the biscuits while I was getting their tea ready and the results were quickly snatched up for pudding.

Autumn leaf spice biscuits

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After tea, we played with some leaf shapes I had cut out of paper earlier in the day. We pretended to be trees in the autumn and dropped dozens of paper leaves all over the carpet and each other. We also played 'who can find a red/green/orange/yellow leaf', which is good colour practice for Lily (not that she needs it!). We learnt a new autumn song, read some autumn poetry and generally had a fun day.

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We're having a great time doing this and hopefully the Podlings are learning something at the same time. I have some more autumn-themed activities planned for the rest of the week. Hopefully the weather will dry up and we can go out and get some real leaves!

Our autumn display board in the kitchen. There's still space for some of the projects I have planned for later in the week.

The Running Man

Tom has been fascinated by green exit signs for several weeks now. Whenever we go in a building, he looks about for the green sign and excitedly shouts out "It's a running man!" in a loud voice when he sees one (slightly embarrassing when he spotted one in the library!). Tom is so enamoured of them that Mark bought one for him today and we stuck it above the door in his bedroom. At bedtime, we told him we had a surprise for him in his room. He's old enough to know what a surprise is and he went upstairs pretty sharpish!

"A RUNNING MAN!"

His face when he saw the sign was a picture! He is absolutely thrilled with it. "Is it a present for me?" he asked. When we told him that, yes, it was his very own running man to keep, he asked, "Is it my birthday?".

The only downside to the sign is that it now looks like we are renting student accommodation!