Oh look. My photos are in black and white today. Of course I meant that to happen! Hubby has just checked the settings on my phone for me. I never knew it could do that. I was a little nervous that I had sabotaged it while trying to wash it this morning. The baby had had her grubby mitts on it and it was smeared with food, so I had to clean it. These photos show that I have done a little painting today. Here are the cupboard and inner door frame before....

and after. Not a dramatic difference and harder to see in black and white, but I used ivory gloss to try and smarten things up a bit.

I did the radiator, too.

Ta, daaaaaaa!!!!

My hyacinths are in bloom - look even better in colour!

Now. This was the strategy I employed to get the kids to concentrate on their Kumon. We been focusing on developing concentration. I gave them both an egg cup with 10 chocolate buttons in. Every time they stopped focussing on their work I took out one of their buttons and put it in the middle egg cup. This worked very well with Honor. Henry, however, lost 2 buttons and then the end of the world came and Daddy eventually had to physically remove him from the room just to give Honor a fighting chance. (I was trying to feed the baby when all this was going on, too!)

But I was pleased with Honor's response. And after Henry had calmed down and eaten his dinner he got another chance, on his own, to earn them back.

Just sitting here by the log burner watching the X-Factor final with a glass of wine. I think it must be one of the closest finals as the last 3, Olly, Stacey and Joe are all brilliant singers and seem nice, likeable people too. I've tried voting for Joe and Olly but only got through on Olly's line. I think he did the best performances tonight anyway but still think Joe is a worthy winner.

This morning we went to the church xmas fayre. I was disappointed not to get my wreath so looks like I'll be making my own (a la Kirstie Allsop!). Honor won a pretty little blue and white cup and saucer in the tombola which I've put on my dresser!

And this evening the children were up for awards at the Kumon ceremony. It was quite fascinating. the first recipient was a young boy in his last year of primary school (so about 10 or 11 years old). He is on a higher level than the instructor herself who admitted she can't actually help him with the maths but just encourage him in his learning, He has already taken his maths GCSE!!! Brilliant. Very well done to him. And well done Honor and Henry who received bronze medals. Henry is actually ranked as 456 in his age group in the UK.

Ok. Here comes the result. Going through to tomorrow's final is....OLLY!!!! And.....Joe!!!!

Day off.

Today was an INSET day at school and hubby had arranged to have the day off. After catching up on a load of maths Kumon homework we headed down to Manston to visit the museums by the airport. Unfortunately the Manston museum was closed (only open at weekends). But we were still able to look around the Spitfire museum, which was free! The kids LOVED it. I knew Henry would. He is very familiar with all that World War stuff from the Indiana Jones films. But even Honor got really excited about it. She has studied a bit about it all at school. It's a lovely little museum with a 1940's style cafe where we had a cup of tea and watched the planes taking off. It also has a gift shop. Henry bought a noisy plane and Honor bought a book about Anne Frank. We'll definitely go back again when the other museum is open and spend a bit longer.

So after lunch we had to decide where to go next. I thought of heading into Margate with the idea of either visiting the museum there or the Shell Grotto. But Margate was a dismal place. We drove around for ages NOT finding the Grotto. Then we parked to check out the tourist information centre and museum, but both were closed. We did come across a lovely playground on the seafront, heading out of Margate towards Cliftonville which had a huge, wooden Viking Ship to play on and all sorts of great play equipment. The older two played there for half an hour and then we decided to head back to Birchington for a break at Jungle Jims - one of those indoor play barns. Not really the kind of thing I was looking to do, but the kids had a great time, and... in the car park we saw a caravan for sale which hubby is interested in.

I'm back now and baby is having her nap while the others have gone to their Kumon class. Honor has been doing maths for just over a year as she lacks confidence in this. But she wanted to do English too so she starts this today. She thinks it's going to be easy. She is quite advanced for her age in English but Kumon is all about accuracy which Honor tends to be lazy about. So she might be surprised to find she gets more wrong than she thought. Well, we'll see.