Here We Are Together

Today we had a lot of fun pretending to be mad scientists,
& we made these :

There has been a lot of wanting to be a doctor around here recently ,
so we read a bit about what doctors & scientists do and came up with
a little experiment using colours & paper towel shapes.
We learned quite a bit as well,

Where did the yellow go?
Oh! We made green!!

so we thought we would share it here with you.

Mad Scientist Art

You will need:
food colouring
paper towel shapes (we cut out “patients” & butterflies)
little jars

optional:
pipette
funnel
mad scientist safety goggles (we made ours from a cereal box)

How to:

Cut out shapes from paper towels,
mix a bit of food colouring with water.

Let your little scientist mix the colours,
pour them from one jar to another ,
discover how to make completely new colours..
(Please keep in mind that food colouring will stain the skin,
so if you have a doctors appointment or a grandparent visit soon
you might want to wear gloves or at least put some lotion on your little one’s hands.)

Then, when you made a colour you like
you can use your pipette to carefully drop colour onto your shapes,
our simply dip them in or pour the colour right over them.

When you are happy with the way they look just put them onto
some cardboard paper & let them dry.

We will definitely be making more & I think it’s a great activity for a birthday party,
especially in the summer when it can be done outside.

I hope you are having a good day,
we’ll probably spend it outside, it’s lovely & sunny!
What are your plans for the day?

Hello!
I’m still using the internet in our old house, but I should be back by tuesday, so I am hoping to answer your lovely emails then.
Things are going better now that George finally sleeps,

even though he will only sleep in his new favourite spot,
right in front of the big glass doors, always keeping an eye on the birds
(& on Emi, of course..)

Luckily we found a few of our books,
so there has been a lot of reading again, finally.
Next on our list is a lot of crafting, I have been working on a few things &
I can’t wait to show you!

I hope you are having a lovely weekend!
♥

We are just settling into our new home.
We all love it very much, even though this little one
has not slept since we moved in.

While Emily explored the new garden he preferred to stay inside &
very close to Mama.

The garden is our favourite place, & we already spend every moment our there,

looking for little treasures the previous owners left behind.

There is also a lovely huge tree, where two birds are building a nest!

The house is lovely, very nice, big & bright.
We are not quite done moving in all our things,
but we already have our nature table

& our little collection of .. well.. things.

We are still trying to find all of our books,
& once we found them, & a few other things,
I will show you around.

We still don’t have an internet connection at the new place,
so I apologize for slow & short replies to emails.

I hope you all had a lovely weekend!

♥

Because so many of you wanted to know how to dye your own wool or fabric using natural materials, here’s a little tutorial for you. If you have any questions you can email me or leave a comment & I will try my best to reply!

You will need:

Two pots (one preferrably old, as the dye might stain)
Vinegar
Salt
Water
Natural materials (depending on the colour)

Colours:

Yellow Onion skins, Daffodils
Green Grass, pretty much any green leaf
Red Beetroot
( please keep in mind that the intensity of the colour depends on the time your wool or fabric soakes)

I am using basil & thyme today!

How to:

First you need to soak your fabric in some salt & vinegar.
(I usually just throw in two cups of each & it worked fine so far,
I am sure there is some science to it,though.)
To do this just mix salt, vinegar & water , bring it to boil, put your fabric in
& let it boil on very little heat for about an hour.
(for the yarn I skipped that part, as I did not want to boil 100% wool for one hour. I simply mixed the salt & vinegar into the dye & soaked the wool in that.)

While you are doing that you can start to prepare your natural dye, just add your plant material to some water, bring it to boil & let it simmer for 30 mins to an hour,depending on how much material you are using.

If you are using grass or leaves please remember to make sure that noone is living in there, after all it might be someone’s home you are about to throw into boiling water!

When your dye looks dark enough take your fabric out of the vinegar & salt water, wash it under some cold water & then put it into the dye.
You can take out the plant material before you do that, but when I use grass or onion skins I usually don’t bother.

Now you simply let your fabric soak in the dye for as long as you like,
I am very impatient,so I never leave it much longer than 4 or 5 hours, but for a very intense result you can even leave it in there a few days.
Now simply run it under cold water till the water runs clear & hang your fabric up to dry!

I don’t even want to wash this one, it smells delicious!

if you try this,let me know how it turns out!
♥

Today is Anthony’s birthday,
& I really wanted to share with you what Emi made for him.
It’s a little sculpture made out of our homemade clay & a drawing of Daddy that I embroidered onto a piece of linen to make a little wallhanging.

I love the white yarn hair on the sculpture, but my favourite is the
swirly arm coming out of Daddy’s head!
George drew something,too, but I did not take a picture yet.
(Emily tells me it’s a car)

Happy Birthday,Anthony,
we love you all so very much!

ps// I will post a tutorial for the natural dye later today,
I got so many requests it is just easier this way.
I really enjoy receiving your emails, thank you for taking the time
to write,it really means a lot to me.
I will try my best to reply to every one of you,
but it might take a while.

I wish you all a lovely day!
♥

Very few days go by where I don’t look at all the gorgeous handpainted wool that is available from various talented etsy sellers,
but today I just could not wait any longer, so instead of looking at other peoples beautiful yarn I dyed my own.
(If you would like the instructions for making natural dye you can email me or leave me a comment & I will write them down for you. )

I really like how the wool turned out,

but sadly it is not a lot, so I will need to find a project that uses just about half a skein.

As we had a lot of dye left over we also made these:

I am happy with how they turned out & hopefully we will play with them a lot,
use them like playsilks, or on the nature table.

I consider doing this to some of the kids clothes, I think that might look quite nice.
Have you ever dyed anything using natural materials?
Did it turn out like you imagined?

ps// we are moving to our new home on friday, & I am not sure about the internet connection there, so if there is anything you absolutely need to talk to about please do so before the day after tomorrow, so that I can get back to you.
♥

Even though we are celebrating passover ,
we also celebrate easter (& christmas, as you might remember)
so I wanted to wish all of you happy easter, I hope you are having a lovely day.
We had great fun at Nanny & Grandpa’s house, where we played in the garden, danced & picked quite a few flowers.

Even some of those we were not exactly supposed to pick..

(The dress? I made that for her that morning, because she obviously needed a new dress for spring. It’s a simple pillowcase dress, even though it’s not made from a pillowcase.)

What did you do today?
Do you tell your little one about the Easter Bunny ?

♥

With most of our craft supplies already in boxes
it has been even slower than usual around here,
& no matter how much i love classic Paddington , after reading it roughly 400 times today I knew it was time to find something to do.
We have been loving playdough recently, but I wanted an activity that would have some result , so we looked through our kitchen (yes, we often find inspiration in the kitchen!!) , tried a few things & came up with a recipe for clay.

You will need:
4 cups of flour
1 cup of salt
1 1/2 cups of water

How to:
Mix the salt & the water & stir till most of the salt has dissolved,
then stir in the flour & work with the mix till it feels like clay.
That’s pretty much it.
Later just bake it for one hour at 170 °C (that’s 350 °F)

We used some driftwood, some wooden sticks & a bit of water to play around with different ideas , we spent around 2 hours making things, destroying them again & then finally deciding on what we want.

We made a log for our nature table, some mushrooms, some little people,
a mini indoor garden dish & a candle holder.
We then had a lot of fun painting it with watercolours & finishing it with some gloss gel.

Here is our mini garden dish (we will plant some cress in that,i think) & our candle holder.

What was the last thing you created?
Did your little one help?
♥

Today, at Nanny & Grandpa’s house, we looked through a box full of old books that used to be Daddy’s, and we found a few we really like. There was one , though, which I don’t just like, but absolutely adore, so I thought I’d share it with you.

The book we found today is My Little Animal Friends At Home by Gerda Muller.

Those of you who are familiar with the lovely Spring,Summer,Autumn & Winter books from Gerda Muller will definitely recognise this little one:

It is full of lovely stories,
but, even better,
full of gorgeous illustrations.
This is one of my favourites:

The only slight downside is that the boy in the yellow coat now has a name.
But I am sure it won’t stop my little ones from giving him a new name every time we tell his many stories.

I am so sure that this book will be a favourite from now on,
just like all the other Gerda Muller books we have.

What is your little one’s favourite book?
Can you recommend some to us?

I had not been feeling well for a while, so I did what every responsible person would do,
i googled my symptoms.
Of course I was convinced I was going to die.
“Don’t marry again till the children are old enough to stand up for themselves, I don’t want anyone bossing my babies around!” i told Anthony.
He, annoyingly, stayed calm,made an appointment & I saw a doctor yesterday.
(Turns out I am not going to die, it is just Mastitis, I’m taking antibiotics & will hopefully be better soon.)
While we where in the waitingroom my sweet little Georgie took my finger to chew on it, as he likes to do. That’s when I felt it.
a tooth.

My baby has got a tooth.
It was not there in the morning, but by 4pm it was there,
a teeny tiny white little tooth.

They grow up so fast, don’t they?

Today is also our wedding anniversary,
so naturally we spent the day outside with good food
& a lot of chocolate cake

Thank you, Anthony, for being such an amazing husband.
I love you.

How was your day?
When did your children get their first tooth?
(& at what age did it fall out again?)
Have a lovely weekend!
♥