Birthday artwork

This week saw the arrival of Daddy's 40th birthday, so this formed the centre of our artwork. The boys were very taken with this modern art project over at the frugal family fun blog and wanted to do something similar for their birthday cards. Gman used a bottle top to print his circles, though he wanted his in a slightly more uniform pattern as can be seen below. (Gman's is the one on the right)


Waif used our trusty star shaped cookie cutter, which has been invaluable in more than one art project in the past. They printed onto white card and then left this to dry before colouring the shapes with different coloured paints, creating areas where the colours mixed (very educational!)


These were then used for birthday cards, and they looked lovely and colourful. Waif went on to add some glitter to his, which kind of spoiled it a bit for me but he is a bit of a glitter fiend :-)

Inspired by their creativity, I decided to have a go at making a birthday card too. Before starting out on home-educating, I would never have considered myself an arty crafty type, so this is all quite new and exciting still. Here's the card I made, with a seasonally inspired felt pumpkin on the front:

Birthday artwork

This week saw the arrival of Daddy's 40th birthday, so this formed the centre of our artwork. The boys were very taken with this modern art project over at the frugal family fun blog and wanted to do something similar for their birthday cards. Gman used a bottle top to print his circles, though he wanted his in a slightly more uniform pattern as can be seen below. (Gman's is the one on the right)


Waif used our trusty star shaped cookie cutter, which has been invaluable in more than one art project in the past. They printed onto white card and then left this to dry before colouring the shapes with different coloured paints, creating areas where the colours mixed (very educational!)


These were then used for birthday cards, and they looked lovely and colourful. Waif went on to add some glitter to his, which kind of spoiled it a bit for me but he is a bit of a glitter fiend :-)

Inspired by their creativity, I decided to have a go at making a birthday card too. Before starting out on home-educating, I would never have considered myself an arty crafty type, so this is all quite new and exciting still. Here's the card I made, with a seasonally inspired felt pumpkin on the front:

Book Sharing Monday - Two Monsters

It's not been easy deciding which book to share for my first Book Sharing Monday post, but I have settled on "Two Monsters" by David McKee because it has been a favourite of first Gman's and then Waif's, and it's a fun book for adults to read aloud too.

The story tells the tale of two monsters who live on opposite sides of a mountain. One evening, at sunset, they argue about whether it is day departing or night arriving, and start to trade insults and throw rocks. Over the course of the next day, they throw so many rocks that there is nothing left of the mountain , at which point they can see that they were both right - day departs as night arrives - and settle down to watch the sunset together.


One of the highlights of the book for my boys has been the extraordinarily colourful and humorous insults - our favourite is "You're a pathetic, addlebrained, smelly, lily-livered custard tart!"- you've got to love David McKee and I'm sure we'll be sharing more of his books on Mondays to come.

Book Sharing Monday - Two Monsters

It's not been easy deciding which book to share for my first Book Sharing Monday post, but I have settled on "Two Monsters" by David McKee because it has been a favourite of first Gman's and then Waif's, and it's a fun book for adults to read aloud too.

The story tells the tale of two monsters who live on opposite sides of a mountain. One evening, at sunset, they argue about whether it is day departing or night arriving, and start to trade insults and throw rocks. Over the course of the next day, they throw so many rocks that there is nothing left of the mountain , at which point they can see that they were both right - day departs as night arrives - and settle down to watch the sunset together.


One of the highlights of the book for my boys has been the extraordinarily colourful and humorous insults - our favourite is "You're a pathetic, addlebrained, smelly, lily-livered custard tart!"- you've got to love David McKee and I'm sure we'll be sharing more of his books on Mondays to come.

Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Last Thursday saw the arrival of my Suma order, which included six jars of peanut butter so couldn't resist making these cupcakes! Today was joined only by Waif in this, as Gman was far too busy making the arrangements for his latest Lego animation, which is going to involve storm troopers searching the galaxy for suitable Christmas presents for Darth Vader :-)

Anyway, here's the cakes and rather yummy they are too:



Gluten Free/Casein Free Peanut Butter Cupcakes

50g dairy free margarine (we like Vitalite in our house)
200g light brown soft sugar
1 large egg
1tsp vanilla extract
90ml rice milk
125g crunchy peanut butter
150g gluten free plain flour (we used Doves Farm brand for this)
1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1. Preheat oven to 150C/Gas Mark 2. Line bun trays with 18 paper cases.
2. Melt the margarine, let it cool down a bit. With electric whisk, mix together the marg and sugar (you could do this by hand with a wooden spoon, but it's not as exciting ;-)) Add egg and keep beating. Stir in the vanilla extract, rice milk & peanut butter.
3. In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder & salt, then fold into peanut butter mixture until well combined. Divide between the cases and bake for 25 minutes.

For those not following a gfcf diet, these could be made using butter, wheat flour and dairy milk, but use a bit less milk - gluten free flour soaks up more liquid.

We liked them as they came but you could probably ice them if you were that way inclined - I am far too impatient for icing, cos I like to eat my cakes warm from the oven!

Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Last Thursday saw the arrival of my Suma order, which included six jars of peanut butter so couldn't resist making these cupcakes! Today was joined only by Waif in this, as Gman was far too busy making the arrangements for his latest Lego animation, which is going to involve storm troopers searching the galaxy for suitable Christmas presents for Darth Vader :-)

Anyway, here's the cakes and rather yummy they are too:



Gluten Free/Casein Free Peanut Butter Cupcakes

50g dairy free margarine (we like Vitalite in our house)
200g light brown soft sugar
1 large egg
1tsp vanilla extract
90ml rice milk
125g crunchy peanut butter
150g gluten free plain flour (we used Doves Farm brand for this)
1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1. Preheat oven to 150C/Gas Mark 2. Line bun trays with 18 paper cases.
2. Melt the margarine, let it cool down a bit. With electric whisk, mix together the marg and sugar (you could do this by hand with a wooden spoon, but it's not as exciting ;-)) Add egg and keep beating. Stir in the vanilla extract, rice milk & peanut butter.
3. In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder & salt, then fold into peanut butter mixture until well combined. Divide between the cases and bake for 25 minutes.

For those not following a gfcf diet, these could be made using butter, wheat flour and dairy milk, but use a bit less milk - gluten free flour soaks up more liquid.

We liked them as they came but you could probably ice them if you were that way inclined - I am far too impatient for icing, cos I like to eat my cakes warm from the oven!

Autumn Trees

The boys have been making these lovely tree paintings:


First of all I painted Waif's arm with brown paint and he pressed this onto the page to make the tree trunk and branches. At this point Gman declared "yuk! yuk! yuk!" and refused to have his done (he has some sensory issues related to ASD so wasn't too surprised at this!) Luckily Waif was more than prepared to do more tree trunks - making two trees for his painting. When these had dried, they used fingers to print the different coloured leaves on (Gman was ok with this bit!). Gman painted his grass with a brush and Waif used a piece of cardboard. When they had dried we mounted them on the different coloured card.

Don't they look fabulous?

The idea originally came from the Kaboose website here. There are loads of great ideas there, it's well worth a look.