This is the kids food table

Juice boxes bricks wrapped with printable Lego dots. The template is here

Lego sweet train made from Duplo track and carriages

Green runner on the table made from bubble wrap painted green to look like a green lego building base. Idea from here

I saw an idea for a lego figure picture with the childs name for each place. The original idea they had taken a photo of a lego man and then added each child’s name. I asked Yme to help with this and he spent hours on the web finding backgrounds and pictures of Lego figures and made each kid a unique place card. The kids loved them and most were taken home. Some to be framed and some I have seen in their friends bedrooms since the party. The bases for the names were all made by Aedhyn

Name place cards

Lego 4 and bottles of Lego blocks, idea from here

Lego Marshmallow heads, made from Marshmallow covered in white cooking chocolate, (I added a bit of yellow food colouring hoping to make it a bit more yellow but it was still quite light) and a gummy sweet top. I then drew the faces on with food grade marker pen. Googled for Lego face expressions and tried to make each one different. Idea from here

Table with printable colouring in pages for the kids to do as they arrived and were waiting for everyone. Downloaded the colouring pages from the lego website here

We hid 40 Lego figures around the living room and party area. Kids had great fun finding them and once all 40 were found the kids came to the table to eat.

We had boxes of Lego and Duplo put for the kids to play with

Yme build a ramp for them to race lego cars down which was a huge success. The idea is from here They build such interesting and individual ‘cars’

Eating time

Opening presents

Lego blocks cake, made a loaf cake and a square cake and used cupcakes for the lego bumps

Lego face cake

Blowing out candles

All in all I think he had a great party

It has been ages since we bogged here. We have added a Pinklet and as such life has been hectic.

But Easter has been a good excuse to get back into doing stuff. Today we made Easter Baskets from recycled milk bottles.

We were reading a book about crocodillians yesterday and it mentioned that they were nocturnal. This lead to a discussion about what nocturnal is. So today we looked up some nocturnal animals and made a poster.

I don’t follow a set curriculum with the Pinklets but for reading I have used this book and find it helpful.

I like the way it teaches groups of sounds, not just basic phonics. They show kids which letters to pronounce and which to blend. Highly recommended. This was our story today

It really needs no more than 15-20 minutes good one on one time.

Rachel loved it from the beginning and even after she took a little tumble, a quick hug from Yme and she was ready to try again. Her face just shows the pure delight as she rides her waves onto the beach. She now goes on her own and moans when we have to leave the beach as she is always in pursuit of the perfect wave. I am told this is a surfers quest. As one who gets no more than my ankles wet I will try understand.

The ever cautious Caleb was less sure about this whole thing. He loved Jacques pulling him. Wouter spent ages coaxing him and together he and Yme helped him catch a few waves but he was not so in love with the whole idea. He compares himself to his sister and get upset that he is not good at it. But to his credit he has been a few times since then and although he likes to sit on the beach on the board where the waves can’t actually get him, he has left Yme help him with a few tiny waves over the weekend.

The day ended with ice-cream at the Purple house which is always a high point for them.

Click to view slideshow.

These are usually done at Christmas and while I did buy the sparkles
I just never got around to doing them during the festive season.

Why i thought today in the middle of a heat wave was a good idea I am not sure. But of course once I had made the offer to the Pinklets I had to go through with it even though it was 30 degrees at 9am

We used this recipe http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/stained-glass-window-cookies/Detail.aspx

Today we made banana bread as I had banana’s in the freezer and they needed to be used as the number was growing, besides André has been helping me with my website so banana bread was sustenance and payment.

He took these photos of the chef in action.