One of Me, Three of You

A combination of the heat wave coming to an end and Mark having to work Friday and Saturday nights means I was very grateful for Pinterest and its ready supply of craft ideas over the weekend. We made some straw rockets (and W made an extra rocket bracelet), insect finger puppets and finished it off with our own tortoises. These were inspired by our unexpected house guest last Monday - we found a tortoise in the garden who stayed the night before we delivered him to the vets on Tuesday.

I finally got around to making my own bubble mixture (thanks to the recipe on Red Ted Art ) and it worked! Most things I try like this don't go quite to plan but after adding a bit more glycerin and leaving it for a couple of days it is producing really good bubbles. I might have to invest in a big litre bottle of glycerin now...

W got given a crafty book (Mister Maker, who I think is someone I should have heard of!) for his birthday and we managed to knock up a couple of scarecrows after school last week. I was quite impressed with my resourcefulness - the book is good but it tests my craft supplies.

I decided to crack out the paints again and make A a present for his first birthday - rainbow teething rings and a mug tree to hang them on! Left it to the last minute as usual so the mug tree could do with a second coat of paint (and we should have varnished the top with the toy safe varnish as that is the bit A keeps gnawing) but pretty pleased with the result. The rainbow thing is starting to rub off on the boys - we saw a stack of rainbow coffee mugs in the charity shop the other day and T commented on how nice they were!

I'm catching up on here after a quiet few weeks as I've been spending most of my time planning and preparing for W's birthday. We decided a few months back that having a party at a soft play or village hall and inviting the whole class wasn't what we wanted to do. He's not really into big groups and I think there is a fair chunk of his class who he doesn't play with so it didn't feel like the right approach for him. We also deliberately kept school and family separate - I don't know how W would react to the two sides of his life mixing but was pretty sure that one of them would come out on top and he would completely ignore the other side.

We had a practice camping trip last weekend, mainly to check that everything will fit in the car and that camping with three small boys isn't too horrendous ahead of a week long trip in the summer holidays! We went last summer when A was 6 weeks old but that was with one side of my family so there was a lot of help at hand. Things that I learnt:

I chucked my mini rainbow into the toy bag for camping last weekend and really glad I did - A loved it! Think it was a bit uncomfortable when he was rolling around on top of the pieces but it held his attention for a good while and provided some dinosaur houses for the bigger two as well.