March 31st 2015 - Dragon Egg

March 31st 2015 - Dragon Egg

As lil  man decided that he was decorating eggs today I  took one out of the packet to make into a Dragon Egg with drawing pins like the one on pinterest.  This was very east to do and looks good, the only downside was the last few pins wern't very secure in the egg so I think I am going to have to glue them in.

I am going to look for some bigger polystyrene eggs as well so that we can have an assortment of sizes and places them into a nest.

Very easy to do, but the egg doesnt stand up on its own

March 30th 2015 - Harry Potter Halloween Planing

March 30th 2015 - Harry Potter Halloween Planing

Today is the end of the first 3months of the 365 challenge, i'm impressed to have made it this far, there has been a few problems and I have had to pin new things to match what I have done on a few days, but we are here 1/4 of the way through the year.

For today there isn't 1 pin but a whole new board of pins linked to a Harry Potter Halloween Party for next year, 2016.  Yep that's right i'm planning Halloween 2016 already and we still have 8months until this years party - but that's not really my problem as it's being held at a friends house, although I am helping with decorations and such for it.

Me and hubby were talking about how we need to beat what we did with last year party and the spider theme - we had spider nests and webbing everywhere, hundreds of spiders all over the place and  it too us over a week to put it all up as we were stretching the webs and then layering it with another thinly spread bit in the opposite direction.  It did look really cool especially wit the disco and uv lights on.  I started looking on the net and the halloween forum for ideas and there was 3 possibles - Harry Potter, graveyard or scary carnival, but as the youngest will only be 5 and the next two up be 7 we decided the scary carnival can wait until they bit bigger and we only have a few graveyard bits that I picked up in the sale, we need to buy more!

So we decided to make a plan for the party - the plan is that everyone dresses up as a character from Harry Potter or comes as a Witch/Wizard.  This can be as easy or as hard as you like - Witch/Wizard costumes are widely available and so are proper Harry Potter ones, you can also get iron and stitch on patches that can be added to cheaper outfits.  There is no other rules, and if the adults want to dress as one of the kids at Hogwarts they can!

Hubby already has long blue wizard robes and a long white beard so he will be going as Dumbledore.  I always have my hair  dyed a bright red but will do it purple and I am going as Tonks - the punk Witch.  My eldest son has straight blonde hair and a major attitude, along with being gobby and opinionated so he is going as Draco Malfoy.  My middle son has dark brown curly hair and wears glasses, so he is going to go as Harry Potter.  My lil son is still really small despite his age, so I said about him going as Dobby the house elf but hubby says no he needs be a Wizard, we're just not sure which one or if going as "a Wizard".   He also has Wizard robes in blue that he is going to wear this year, but it wont take much to get a Ravenclaw badge and tie for him to wear next year so its not qute the same.   I have messaged our friends that will definately be here and 2/3 have replied so far saying it sounds a good idea so I will be going ahead with it.  Nearer the date next year when the kids decide which friends they want to invite I will let them all no about the theme so the parents can get Witch/Wizards as well.

My mind has gone into over-drive of the possibilities we can do to the house etc, and although this will be a party a think it is going to end up very big and a thing in its own right.   The internet is going to be a great help for ideas and printables as so many people have already held Harry Potter parties over the years.   Although my house isn't huge I do have space to do things if I move few things around.  Plus I have the garden but there is no guarantee that the weather will behave!

I plan to re-use the spiders and webs etc from last year, with a trail of spiders stuck to  my floor, across my bedroom door and into the bathroom where the big spider will be as Arragog!  The toilet is going to be re-named Moaning Myrtle's bathroom (as I can't put it as girls bathroom cos it will confuse the boys) and im going to have a picture of Myrtle on the toilet lid, I am going to try and find some quotes from her as well to put in there - if I can find a way to do it I will have her talking from the films on repeat playing somehow - this still needs to worked on as to how we can do it. 

I need a platform 9 3/4 sign and a brick wall making - my house is made from concrete so I don't have brick walls, so this will be done via a white shower curtain or bed sheet and a sponge with brown and red paint to give the brick effect.  I plan for this to go over the lounge doorway so everyone goes through platform 9 3/4 to get into lounge.  And hopefully on the other side of it a picture of the fat lady that is over griffindor house.

I have a BIG idea of making a Professor Trelawney from a stuffed painters suit, hippy clothes (charity shop), wig, big glasses and sat at a table with crystal ball, set of rune stones and few other pieces.  This can be used as a photo station as well.

The other BIG thing I will be doing is turning the cupboard under my stairs into Harry's bedroom, complete with airbed and blanket, dressing gown and slippers, a pile of books, a dim light and a few other things!   This will be available for everyone to go into (carefully) for a photo that I will print out and they can all take home at end of night.

I have also had the idea of making a giant basilisk and fixing it around the ceiling of the lounge and up the stairs, just not 100% sure on how to make it - im thinking ladies tights stuffed with ? so it's light weight, just need to play around to make it look effective and like a snake not stuffed tights!  There is a bigger problem here though and that is HOW I fix it to my ceiling as I have horrid polystyrene tiles on it and I can't afford to take them down and get ceiling artexed.  I thought about somehow turning the ceiling black and added small fairy lights to it like the stars in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, but not sure on how to do it or to fix it up.  So again it''s a possibility that I have time to play with and see where it goes.


There is also loads of other things as possible decorations on my list but i'm not declaring them just yet as I want some of it to be a supprise for  the actual party but i'm sure it will be really good by the time Halloween 2016 gets here - I have 20months to get it sorted - that's a long time and gives me leverage to buy bits cheaply as and when I see them! Ebay has loads of jewellery type bits and other things from 1p, sent from China but as i'm not in a rush it doesn't matter.

I have started to compile a list of possible foods, or foods we can name as Harry Potter foods, possible games we can play and ideas for party bags - including Harry Potter magic frogs - i've found a template for the boxes and frog cards to go them.  I plan to label sweets as though they are from Honeydukes and hope to get some "tricks" like they have in Zonkos joke shop, all for as cheap as possoble.

I am really excited about this and I plan to make it a night to be remembered by all!

March 29th 2015 - Boys Bedroom (or total tip?!?)

March 29th 2015 - Boys Bedroom (or total tip?!?)

This is the million dollar question!  Is it a bedroom or a total tip???  I am led to beleive that it is MEANT to be a bedroom BUT it looks like the local council tip/waste dump!  I told the boys (9 & 12) to tidy it this morning, they came down with armfuls of washing (supposedly dirty, yet some was folded) and then a while later came back down and said they had done it, I believed them (more fool me!) and I said they could play on the Wii (mine!).

When I next went upstairs I decided to stick my head in their room to check if it was tidy and they had picked everything up off the floor, and yes I could now see the floor which I couldn't before (and no it wasn't piled on the bed like pinterest pic. lol) BUT I could also see a nice pile of "stuff" sticking out from under the bed.  There was clothes both clean and dirty screwed up with toys and games and books thrown in for good measure, not to mention the random lego bricks on the floor!  So I did what most mothers would do drag all of it out from under the bed and dump it in a heap in the middle of the floor and told them to get off my Wii and get upstairs to sort it out - they had 20minutes!

This was part of the pile I pulled from under the bed:

They seem to get distracted very easily whilst tidying up - they find things that were deemed "lost" and start playing or they get into a fight over "whose mess it is anyway" or "that's mine!" and start shouting at each other as "the others not helping".  This causes me to get even more worked up as they are not tidying up their room as I have asked them to!

However, after the battle today I have made a decision there room is now going to be a "no-go zone".  I am not going in it unless it's tidy or there is an emergency!  There is going to be some rules though, and they have been told them -
1. No food or drink or plates/cups will be allowed upstairs. 
2. Clothes WILL be brought downstairs for washing daily. 
3. Clean washing WILL be put away in the wardrobe and drawers. 
4. Room needs to be tidy if they want friends round

Apart from these they can do what they like - if this means they tread on lego and hurt their feet on the "plastic carpet of bits" their problem.  If they have lost game pieces under the bed or on the floor then they cant play their games.  If their books get ripped then it's their problem I am not replacing them.  If they wish to have a pile of paper work, drawings and magazines on the floor they can.  This may sound harsh but they have got to learn and I am fed up of arguments and battles over the state of their room. 

I appreciate that they need "their space" and want to have all of their figures set out in "battles" but they need to realize that if they want their friends to come round then their room needs to be half tidy!  Neither of the boys are great fans of spiders and bugs and really freak out when they find them in their room, yet they don't seem to believe me when I say that bugs like mess!

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.