Halloween out the way...bring on Christmas!

I took the children round to friend's last night for a Halloween party. They had a great time (despite Emily being on the brink of illness, she is in bed with a fever today). Here they are all dressed up and ready to go.

[caption id="attachment_746" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Spooooky!"][/caption]

Isaac was a the witch's cat by the way - he didn't like having the hood up!) I realised all was not well with Emily when she burst into tears over marshallow toasting (!) but she refused to go home until the end, by which time she was feeling quite poorly, poor thing.

We had lots of trick-or-treaters and I had to put a sign on the door in the end as we ran out of treats!

So yes, with both the children's birthdays in the week before Christmas things are usually a tad busy round here. Not this year though, oh no. I will remain cool, calm and organised this year and not still be wrapping presents on Christmas Eve. I have my battle plan (tweaked from SimpleMom) and so far have stuck to it.  We have ordered our cards and have the address labels ready to print, bought (and wrapped) some presents and I have started making some gifts too so I am feeling pretty good. Need to start on the baking this week and stock up the freezer!

Winter Festivals

We are having fun following Bella Dia's Christmas Book and Activity Advent. There are loads of people sharing great Christmas/Festival ideas around blogland at the moment. I've been keeping a note in my google reader "shared items" of some and eventually hope to fill a notebook so that come next year i will have everything at my fingertips and will be etreeeemly organised....yeah right.

We've also started the Christmas baking...






..by making mincemeat...



...and mince pies...but mysteriously there don't seem to be any left photos of them.

We've been doing some Spring type activities the past week. We made some Spring Cookies using the cookie cutters I got from Lakeland.

I relaxed my normal rules (tyrant that i am) and let them go mad decorating the finished biscuits - colour and all! They had *so* much fun and I felt rather guilty when i realised that this is the first baking session like this that I have included Isaac in (Normally I wait until he's napping).

As you can see from his face (just- forgot the flash!) he had the best time.

The finished biscuits

I also made some Hot Cross Buns, never tried before, they were yummy but the Chiddlers didn't agree so Mick and I ate them all.

We've been spending a LOT of time in the garden sowing seeds and tiding things up. It's looking a lot better and lovely to be enjoying it again as last year the builders took it over so we didn't get much use out of it.

Emily made her own Lenten garden from the All Year Round book

It's surprisingly awkward to photograph and do it justice but she did a good job!

Here's E's Chinese New Year dragon - finally!
We continued the festival theme throughout the week with Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. I never realised why it was called Shrove Tuesday before! We made pancakes of course, E did the batter and i did the cooking/flipping. Discovered Isaac didn't like them so Emily and I had LOADS :o) She did some fab writing, i posted it on her blog - like the picture of me - and yes it is supposed to read "products" not "pancakes" but i didn't have the heart to tell her.

Excitement on Thursday as our Bead Merrily order arrived (Thanks Merry!) We got the European flags kit. Didn't get a chance to start any though as we had the mad rush that is ballet.

Mum and Dad arrived last night so I nipped out this morning to get my hair done, a rare occasion!

Friday was spent doing all manner of birthday things for Mick's birthday on Saturday. We made a cake, half of which slid off my super non stick cooling rack onto the floor :o/ So after I discovered we'd used the last of the eggs, and been to the supermarket for more, we made another. Emily spent much of the afternoon painting a nice picture for daddy and Isaac did Isaac stuff - which is making lots of mess and playing with cars, trucks, diggers.....

Saturday we went up town and Mick took Emily into the museum to make a flapping bird, which gave me and hour to mooch while Isaac slept. I didn't realise that the museum did a children's activity every week so we'll try an make more use of it in future. She had a lovely time. A quick trip to the library to pick up some books on water (which Emily wants to explore - nice and broad!) Then it was home for tea and cake.

Emily went to a friend's house yesterday, an impromptu visit, so previous plans to go to the woods were shelved and Mick got on with some painting in the new laundry room. Mum and Dad are coming down next weekend so we are hoping to get some of the units fitted in there then - finally!

Today there has been a fair amount of Education City played and quite a lot of stuff to do with Chinese New Year. We are on lists 6 and 7 of her HFW and she is doing really well with them. We also covered history in the form of Britannia and revised "ai" words.

I'm off babysitting tonight but will try and post photos later.

We went to the library yesterday morning with friends and came back with bookbags full to overflow. Isaac got his very own ticket which means we can now take out a grand total of 30 books :o) We also got DVD's (as I was in an unusually generous mood), "Bob Fix-It" for Isaac and Jungle Book 2 for Emily. She was actually hoping for Cars, but you know what half term is like, so she got JB2 in desparation i think!

Emily wanted to do something "Valentines" for Daddy so we made a pretty box from here (thanks June, some lovely things there). She made the Celtic heart box and wrote little messages on the hearts to go inside and he was delighted with it.

I don't actually know where today went, don't seem to have done much. Emily made her "Hands up for Home Ed" hands and Isaac had a go too. Looking back i swear most of the day was spent feeding Isaac, one way or another. You just can't seem to fill that boy up. I'm not used to having a child that is constantly hungry!

oh, yes and i signed up to Education City - see side bar for code.