March 28th 2015 - Family Walk

March 28th 2015 - Family Walk

This morning the weather was really bad,  it was cold, wet and really dull and overcast.  I thought this was going to stop us going on a family walk, however, after lunch it brightened up and stopped raining so we stuck shoes and coats on and we headed off in the car.

Yes I no I said family walk and we went in the car, but we were heading 10mins up the road to a nature reserve we had found on the net that looked really good.  We found the turning in the road and went up it and parked the car in a lay by just down from Harrington Nature Reserve.

First impressions as you walk by the big fenced off area to where the gate is situated is "there's not much water here and it looks like waste land".  Not a good start.  Before we went through the gate we looked at the map and it looks like there is quite a lot here.  We went down the path and onto a bridge and the kids played pooh sticks - they love this simple game!

We followed the path round to the right and the river just stops as it goes under the road, so we followed the very wet and muddy path round a piece of grassland and came back to the main "rezzer" which again had very little water in it, only a few ducks and lots of dead trees and plants and rubbish!  I don't mean drink bottles and crisp packets but tires and road cones and broken things.

Sadly this walk was a big disappointment to us as the Harrington Nature Reserve website makes it look so much better than it actually is.  I would like to think that it is in the process of being tidied up the fact trees have been cut etc, it is a great site and has the potential to be a very nice place to visit.

Here are a few pics that I did take there.

After we left here we headed 2mins up the road to the Salterbeck "rezzer" which again didn't have much so we took a short walk up to the sea - most of the cliff top didn't seem very safe and you could see where a lot of it had collapsed down to the beach.  I'm not sure if it used to be a coal pit/mine or something else but it was definately buildings of some sort.

We nipped to Harrington Marina on the way home and some of the waves were huge, not as big as I have seen but big considering its not very strong winds.

The kids did enjoy being out of the house for a bit, just a shame the initial place we went wasn't as good as it looks on the net.  But never mind.

March 27th 2015 - Dragon's Fire potion jar

March 27th 2015 - Dragon's Fire potion jar

Today is the last day of school for the boys for the Easter Holidays, they finish at 1:30pm.  I have had quite a productive day so far - I have finished painting the lizards new house (finally) and its now drying ready to have the glue put on it to waterproof it.  I have done 2 lots of washing up and 1 load of washing, plus todays pin.

For today's pin I have done another Halloween thing, I found this lovely apothecary bottle on pinterest but sadly there was no instructions just a link to the ladies etsy shop.  This made me start thinking as to how I could make 1 and what I could use to get the flame effect.  My inital thought was pillow stuffing and that is what I used.

I have a pillow that is in the craft box and used as stuffing for toys etc.  I pulled some of the fibre stuffing out and started to colour it with sharpie pens - not as easy as it sounds as the fibres seperate, but I perservered with it and the final result is really good.  I used a base of bright yellow and then added an orange and some red patches to it all and then re-did more yellow to get a nice flame effect (see pics below).

 

Obviously it's not quite finished as I need to print a label to stick on it when I get some ink and I also have a brass dragon necklace on its way from China to add to it.  I'm also trying to work out whether I need the lid added to the jar with "fire" stuck on it or just glue the "fire" to the top of the jar.  I'm really pleased with how it looks.

March 26th 2015 - Re-painting the hallway & stairs

March 26th 2015 - Re-painting the hallway & stairs

Thanks to my lovely kids and their dirty hands up and down the stair walls I need to re-paint them, as where I tried to clean the walls with wet wipes it has removed the paint as well!  GGggggrrrrr!!!!

So we have bought kitchen and bathroom paint that can be washed/is waterproof, so that I *should* be able to remove dirty marks off it.  We have gone for almost the same colour - Water, similar to the pale in the middle.  Once its dry I will take a pic of the painted wall still got all the top to do but as my knee isn't too good today i'm not over doing it.  I will try and get it painted over the Easter holidays.

 

Pic shows the old and new colours, although makes the carpet look grey it is actually a deep green with the pale duck egg type colour spots.  They go really well together.  As I posted above, I need to do the top of the walls and the rest of the stair walls.

March 25th 2015 - Easter crafts

March 25th 2015 - Easter crafts

Today was our last day at family learning and as its Easter week we made little baskets and added shredded paper and chocolate eggs.  This was my basket:

This also gave me a very short notice idea for St john Ambulance tonight as its Easter crafts with them as well. So I set about finding a basket template and printed on paper as printer doesn't like cardboard and then drew each one and double sided taped them all together.  The kids can decorate them with Easter bits and stickers and we will put a small egg and bag of haribo sweets inside.

Last week they were asked to all decorate an egg and bring in for the competition of decorated eggs, there is 2 prizes for under 10s and 2 for over 10s.  They also have Easter cards they can make, pictures of eggs and bunnies and chicks etc to colour in if they finish.  All in all I think will be a good but messy evening for them.

Here are my 3 sons decorated eggs:

Blake (5) wanted to make a nest with chicks in which he did via a brown paper cake case, shredded paper and craft chicks, he then added a part open plastic egg to it.  I Said to him that we needed to put the nest into a tree so cut some branches from our hedge for him.  The only problem the heat in the house dried out the leaves so I have had to tape new leaves on to it today.  The main "tree" was placed in a plastic cup but kept falling over so I filled the cup with stones and expanding foam and then Blake stood it inside a plant pot and added more stones.

Kenzie (9) wanted to make alien eggs on another planet.  I helped him with his planet as it is made of expanding foam inside a box, which he then coloured blue with sharpie pens to make his planet.  I also super glued the material to his alien bodies as kids gllue didnt stick.  He decorated his aliens as he wanted them.

Jay (12) wanted to make a star wars egg, so I found some pics online for ideas and he decided on Yoda.  I helped him bu super glueing the material to his body as kids glue didnt hold.  He then drew the markings on his face etc and coloured it all in, he added the light sabre and even gave him a lego star wars vehicle to sit in.

I think all 3 are great and i'm hoping that 1 of the other adult members will judge who wins as I don't want to choose - this is a big problem with my kids being members, if I pick them for things looks like favourites even if this isn't the case.  The younger 2 will be taking theirs into school tomorrow for the same things - decorated egg competitions.


UPDATE:

3 of the adult members judged the eggs last night - lil man won the under 10s with his tree and nest, middle son came 2nd in under 10s and eldest son won the over 10s.  All were really pleased about this and they did work hard on them.  Sadly there wasn't that many members turn up to the meeting "because it was crafts night" was what we were told.  This does mean that I wont be doing the craft badge with them anytime soon.

March 24th 2015 - Bedlam cube

March 24th 2015 - Bedlam cube

I had to got to town today to see if I could get my middle son some jumpers as he only has 1 that fits and my friend is on the hunt for some travel games to take on holiday but hasn't been able to find any so I said would have a look whilst in town.

Well it wasn't a particularly good trip, none of the charity shops had any jumpers in my sons age nor did any have mini travel games, well thats not quite true I had a game called the Bedlam cube.  Now my friends children are younger than mine so sadly I didn't think it would be of use to her but ok for mine.  It says it has 19,186 ways to make it - I took it out of its case and after 10minutes couldn't get it back as a cube. lol!  So I passed it to hubby and he spent a further 10minutes trying to do it and neither of us have managed to re-build the cube to put it away.  I think it may make the kids very annoyed as they will want to do it but may not be able to.

I have looked online and most of the solutions to the bedlam cube are via youtube, nothing you can print off and stick in the box!

However, all was not lost for my friend as I nipped into home bargains as they had games at 49p last week - they had none but they did have travel snakes & ladders for £1.49 and a 4-in-1 kids card game for 99p, plus I got a noughts  crosses for £1.00 from £1 shop.  So I have 3 games to post to her this afternoon ready for going away at weekend.

March 23rd 2015 - Try something new for tea

March 23rd 2015 - Try something new for tea

As part of the family meal planner I made back in January (that has been altered/updated twice since as found other meals we had forgot about) there is a "try something new for tea".  For this I decided we would try a recipe I had pinned on pinterest for Honey & BBQ shredded chicken.

It sounds really nice and hopefully the kids will like it.  The only thing we have not included is the Italian dressing it says as when I looked at it in shop it looked really horrible and the ingredients had things in I don't eat, so fingers crossed it works and is liked.  It smells nice so far.

The recipe says to use 3 pieces of chicken breast but mine are just big enough for a mouse so i've added about 8 bits to the slow cooker.

I will update later with pics and the verdict of tea.

UPDATE

Well it was cooked alot earlier than the time stated so we had tea at 4pm instead of 5:30pm.  There was mixed reviews on it.  I personally thought it was really nice and so did 2 of the boys, they just couldn't eat all I gave them and there was loads of chicken left so we don't need as many pieces of chicken as I thought we would.  Hubby liked it loose on plate but not in the bread roll as it altered the taste and lil man said he didn't like taste BUT he has come home from  school not well and complaining of ear ache and is off to docs soon.

We will try it again another day but I think would work nicely as an extra for a bbq!  Overall I would say thumbs up for it.

The shredded chicken in the honey & bbq sauce

March 22nd 2015 - Steroids

March 22nd 2015 - Steroids

Today is day 4 of being ill, last night I thought I was going to end up in an ambulance as every time I laid down it felt like my throat was closing over and I couldn't breathe, I would take my inhalers, cough more as they hit my throat and then couldn't breathe due to coughing, a viscious circle!  So I ended up propped up by the v-pillow and 2 normal ones.

Hubby rang the out of hours docs this morning for me (as can hardly talk today) and a doctor rang us because of my asthma and said they would ring me back with an appointment time.   No sooner had we hung up from him it rang again with an app for 20mins later.

Off to the out of hours we headed, got there 5mins early but didn't get seen til 15mins after appointment time as running late.  I explained to the sister how things started wednesday night and I was hot/cold and nose running/blocked etc and how i've got worse.  I've been taking beechams, paracetamol and honey & cinnamon.  She said have been doing the right thing.  She checked my pulse, bp, temperature, checked my chest and looked in my ears and my throat.  She said my chest sounds clear but my throat is really red and will be being made worse by inhalers so I need use a spacer for few days.

She did issue me with Prednisolone steroids for the next 5days, 8 a day.  And said it should help ease my chest and throat and to keep up with the beechams, paracetamol and honey & cinnamon drinks, she also said ice cream will soothe my throat as well.  Not been like this since Sept/Oct last year, so fingers crossed it eases soon.