Princess castle cake

I cant believe my first born has turned 4!  Those years seem to have disappeared in a wink!

I like to attempt the girls birthday cakes and this year I had a request for a princess castle cake.
After some research I came up with a plan of how to create this cake.
I used an 8inch maderia cake and used swiss rolls to create the turrets. To finish off the pointy spires I used waffle ice cream cones.
I was reasonably pleased with the finished cake and glad to say Abigail and her friends loved it! The finishing touch for her Princess party. :)

Puppet Theatre

Abigail loves puppets and has started to enjoy making up her up puppet shows. She has a great imagination so i though id harness this by making her her own puppet theatre.
I looked at buying one but found most were large wooden ones. As beautiful as they are, they were very large and bulky to store.
With this in mind I came across someone who made doorway theatres to sell. These wer stunning but well above my price range. I thought I would try to have a bash at making one myself.
Its not as elaborate but does the job and im sure Abigail will love it.
It has a tension rod across the top to secure it to any doorway without the need of any permanent fixings.
Making my own also meant I was able to adapt it to add some little pockets at the back to hold puppets between shows.

I also made a few extra puppets to add to her ever growing collection of both finger and hand puppets.

Update -

Abigail received her Puppet theatre for her birthday and im pleased to say its been a huge hit!  She loves it and we have all watched many of her puppet shows. Its been popular with lots of our visiting friends and even Daddy has been spotted having a play too!

Personalised Canvas bags.

The time has come for Abigail to leave preschool and head for Big school! <sniff, sniff>

We wanted to make something for the teachers that wasn't too expensive or complicated as there were 6 staff to make for. In the end we chose to decorate canvas bags.
We picked them up for £1 each at Hobbycraft and also bought our fabric paint there too for £2.99.
As the preschool is called Bumble bee's we decided to go with the bees on the bag too.  For this we used Abigail's thumbprints in yellow.  I then added the details with a thin black brush.

We added the names of the staff too by printing them out using a nice front from the computer and using them as a template to paint them neatly.

The end result was quite pleasing. We added a small box of chocs to each bag and they were ready to go. The teachers were really pleased with their bags and we received many nice comments.

Groombridge place

We decided to have a family day out for my Birthday and headed off to Groombridge place. Its a beautiful place with massive gardens and various different things for the children to see. 

The girls loved exploring and seeing the beautiful Black Swans.

 Whilst there we were lucky enough to see a Bird of Prey show. We saw amazing birds and it was quite an experience to see a massive Bald Eagle swooping low just over your head.  

Groombridge is also home to many free roaming peacocks and a Zeedonk which is a rare cross between a Donkey and a Zebra.

Swimming

Quick little proud Mummy boast :)

Very proud of Abigail with her swimming. She has just gained her stage 2 swimming badge. The national average age for this is 5-6 yrs so at almost 4 she's doing very well.
At last weeks lesson she even managed to swim (unaided) a whole width of the pool which is 7meters! My little fish!  :)

Girls hairstlyes

Getting better now at the french plaits! Ive got more confident doing them and have even moved on to double french plaits.
Double half plaits.

Iv'e started getting even more adventurous now and attempted some Bow hair styles. They looked fab but need to invest in some kind of gel or something to help hold Abigail's flyaway locks in place! 

Fire Station Open day

Living just up the road from the fire Station, we took full advantage of their open day.
We wandered down to admire the large engines and meet the firemen. Whilst there we got to watch a demonstration of a road traffic accident. They used various bits of there equipment to cut the roof off of car to safely remove the trapped driver. The girls really enjoyed this and it led to some interesting questions! (ie What colour socks do fireman wear?)  I also used it as a little reminder of how important it is to be wearing your seatbelt in the car.


 The girls were allowed to climb inside the engine and have a look at the equipment which was very interesting too. 

Water play

A favourite activity with the girls is Water play. Finally we got some dry days so after clearing the water tray of rain water we got out playing again.

We used food colouring to colour the water adding abit more interest and also added some glitter too.
Lots of pouring and splashing. I added different sized bottles and encourage lots of talk about quantities and capacities. Ie which size bottle will hold the most?
I also introduced a new item to the tray. A pipette. I picked theses up really cheaply from Ebay. A pack of 10 was only a few pounds.
This was great fun and is also very good for the pincher grip, which helps with pen control for writing.

Snow play

Woohoo. We had some snow!
This as the first time Lucy had really experienced the snow as last year she was too little diddy to realise what the white stuff was.  Thankfully she loved it and they had great fun building snowmen and having sledge rides.

 Even the wild animals and Jurassic dinosaurs got to enjoy the snow when we bought some indoors to play with.

Chocolate hearts

With Fathers day fast approaching what better thing for the girls to make for Daddy but his favourite thing...Chocolate!
We melted some chocolate into heart shaped silicon tins. Once the chocolate had cooled abit so not to burn the girls I let them decorate the tops of the hearts with different sweets etc.
They chose mini marshmallows, mini choc balls and sprinkles. We then popped them into the fridge to cool and set.

The girls really enjoyed letting their creativity out making these for Daddy. We made them pretty buy wrapping them in cellophane gift bags and tying it with gift ribbon. Daddy loved his chocolate hearts.

Hand print cards

Theres nothing the Grandparents like better than homemade cards from the children so not to disappoint we got busy making Grandad's 60th birthday card.
We decided on this Elephant card as it could incorporate both of the girls handprints on the one card. Abigail's hands are getting bigger now so we will soon need bigger cards or to come up with some different ideas to handprints!

Im pleased to say that Grandad loved his card.