There she goes.

Our hot air lantern sailing off into the new year.

2010 - the highlights.

So goodbye 2010. Here are my highlights:

1.) On New Years' Day we saw David Tennant regenerate into Matt Smith in Dr Who. Would I still like this programme?, I wondered. Well, yes and have enjoyed watching the new series with the kids for a change. They love it too and thankfully, BBC3 have been showing the whole Tennant saga too for our double enjoyment. The kids got sonic screwdrivers for Christmas and have had a great time zapping everyone and everything with them.

2.) Our holiday in Norfolk gave us the amazing experience of seeing seals in their natural habitat. The boat trip was very cold and wet, but well worth it.
3.) My best friend Lisa is truly a wonderful friend. She came to babysit for us when Hubby and I went to see A-Ha for the final time in Brighton. For her birthday, I took her to the local spa where we enjoyed the sauna, hot tub, pool and picnic... and a really good chat!
4.) This was an impromptu night out for a meal with the little girlies. A lovely evening out, but also the night we learned that the boy next door had died.
5.) This is me outside The Brighton Centre. A fantastic night out with my 4 favourite guys!

I have to go and set off a lantern with Hubby now. Midnight is nearly here.

Happy New Year!

My Montage 12/20/10 at OneTrueMedia.com

Had another go at photo montage. It's good fun. Have a look!

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Holiday fun - indoors and out.

We are all on our holidays now. The snow is back and much more is forecast. Hubby and Henry went out to play in the bright sunshine. Henry enjoyed it much more this time. It all looks very pretty. Hope has a bad cough so we stayed indoors. Honor preferred to stay in and practise converting fractions into mixed numbers and did a reading comprehension which was a true story about a horse called Molly. Molly was badly attacked by a dog and her leg got infected. The vet was going to put her to sleep but instead the leg was amputated and a prosthetic one put in place. The false leg had a shoe with a smiley face fitted onto it so that the horse left a smiley face imprint when she walked. The horse (and owner) then visited schools and hospitals where children and patients had prosthetic limbs, giving them inspiration. Honor enjoyed that piece of work.

Later, we all went to Tescos. It was manic. I think the whole town must have been in there with their overfilled trolleys. We don't have anything for our Christmas dinner yet. I've been saying that I'm not bothered if we just have fish and chips... now if we do get snowed in, that just might happen!

When we got back from shopping, we got out a board game called Pop to the Shops. It helps kids practise money and counting skills. We don't play games often enough and it showed to start with. Lots of squabbling and fidgeting... but I think we had fun in the end.
The winner!

The gift basket

So here is one of the finished gift baskets for Christmas. This one is for Henry's teacher. It contains some homemade soap, homemade chocolate flavoured lip balm (see previous post for how to make it) and a face flannel. This one has Best Teacher on it and was bought at a craft fair.
A little wooden dish is lined with some sparkly, red tissue. You cannot really see it sparkle in the picture. Then we added some rose petal confetti and covered the basket in clingfilm. Hope she likes it!

Homemade lip balm

The children are preparing little gift baskets for Christmas which will contain the little homemade soaps that they have been making, face flannels and today they had a go at making some lip balm to be included. The ingredients they used were:

beeswax pellets (2 tablespoons)

sweet almond oil (4 tablespoons)

chocolate and strawberry flavourings (a few drops)
The beeswax pellets and almond oil were measured out and mixed in small jugs. We used jugs so that the children could work independently of each other and it made pouring the mixture easier. Then I heated the mixture in the microwave for a few minutes until it became completely liquid. The jugs and mixture were very hot at this point so we had to be very careful. Honor added a few drops of strawberry flavour to her mixture and Henry added chocolate to his.
Then they carefully poured the mixture into small pots.
After about 15 mins, the mixture solidified.

I bought the beeswax pellets and flavourings from a specialist company called justasoap online. We originally followed an online recipe that stated using the beeswax and oil at a 50:50 ratio, but the end product turned out a bit too solid. So I melted them all down again this time doubling the proportion of oil and that made them softer and easier to apply.

The reindeer

I had been thinking of taking the family to a local reindeer farm but it doesn't look like we'll get around to it this year. However, yesterday morning I went to Sittingbourne on my own to do a bit of Christmas shopping. In the forum were these amazing reindeer along with Santa Claus himself, on his sleigh.
I had to go home and get the rest of the family who were as excited as I was to see them.
You can just see little baby boo peeping through the fence in her cute poncho.

Awwwwwwwwww! Lurvly!