More Reading

I'm finishing the year with one more reading post. I did five of these this year, so this makes six, and I've read over 50 books. In between each blast of reading, I feel like I've read absolutely nothing, so looking back like this actually helps me to remember I did do more than scroll through meaningless junk on my phone this year.

Here is the last batch of reading,

Ottilie Colter and the Master of Monsters by Rhiannon Williams
Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
Predators Gold by Philip Reeve
Raising Girls by Gisela Preuschoff
Infernal Devices by Philip Reeve
Hunted Warriors by Lian Tanner
A Darkling Plan by Philip Reeve
A Different Land by Paul Jennings
The Ice Sea Pirates by Frida Nilsson
The Lost Realm by J. D. Rinehart
The Lost Barkscrolls by Chris Riddle and Paul Stewart

You'll notice an anomaly there if you read the titles carefully. A complete stray from my usual world of wonderful fictional fantasy, I read Raising Girls. I picked it up with good intentions, thinking it would be good from a professional view as well as a mother of two daughters. I'm still interested in reading Steve Bidulp's Raising Boys (purely professional motivation there), but to be completely honest, this version of Raising Girls was a total waste of time. If you want to hear what I really thought, just ask me, but I would not recommend reading it to anyone. Ever.

What I would say, is that the world building in the Mortal Engines Quartet by Philip Reeve is fabulous, and I liked the way the books really moved the story forward. I would recommend those to people for sure. After reading the second Crown of Three books (The Lost Realm) I would really love to read book three. Why is getting books from the library so hit and miss!?

The other thing I saw on the shelf last time I was in the library was book one (which I've read) and books three and four of Lemony Snicket's All the Wrong Questions series. My outrage at book two being absent was noted with much amusement by the pre-teen members of the library who were quietly reading before I came along.

What we've read with the girls has been James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator also by Roald Dahl. After we finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the girls were excited to see where the adventure would lead, and they were suitably excited about the trip to space, the space monsters and then the Wonka-Vite. It was a little harder to get through, because it was just that little bit more far fetched, and there were a lot more adult characters, who were no where near as fun as the children in the first book.

We are also reading our way through all of our Christmas books. Each year, I've wrapped 24 Christmas books and we use it for our advent calendar. We've done it since Sophie was two or three I think. It certainly helped that my mum was an early childhood teacher and had a large collection of Christmas picture books lying around still, but over the years our own collection has grown too. There is something super special about unwrapping a book to read each night and the girls love it. Their favorites have definitely been The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and The Jolly Postman's Christmas.

It's unlikely I'll be blogging again before Christmas, or even before New Years, so let me just say, Merry Christmas everyone! I hope that as you think about the year that was, you don't believe the lie that it was all for nothing, and that you have photos, journals (or blogs) to remind you that you did, in fact, achieve something. See you in 2020!

Christmas Bunting

The first bunting I ever made was Christmas bunting.

But it turns out, I didn't make enough.

So I made more.

You can never have too much bunting.

Christmas Clothes

My mum got in early this year (again), and made both girls some super cute Christmas Dresses in October. Sophie's is the same material as Hugo's shirt below. Too cute.

I was thinking I wouldn't bother to make the girls anything, but I was cutting out some Christmas fabric to make some more bunting, because one can never have too much bunting, and I realized I had enough to make them each a thing.

Rachel got this pillow case dress. Mostly because some of the fabric was already cut up to be a pillow case dress. The front half, the red with green holly print. The matching back piece was not quite all there, so that was turned into bunting and I cut a new one out of that green Christmas fabric that I've used before twice (Sophie's Christmas dress in 2017 and the first ever bunting).

It's all held together with the red ribbon that we cut for our official extension warming party. I still have so much of it.

I asked Sophie what she would prefer, and she asked for shorts, so I made her some Clover Shorts, which are still the most fancy shorts ever. There are loads of parts to it, it's pretty easy to use up scraps with this pattern too, so that was a total win. In hindsight, I probably would have gone with a red fabric for the cuffs, rather than the white owls, but oh well.

I had the owl print in the box, just a fat quarter of each, so it was good to use it, and what didn't go into the shorts, went into the next lot of Christmas Bunting, which I will also blog about soon. The pockets are two different prints of red based Christmas fabric, one from my stash and the other (which you can't see) was leftover from mum's. Oh, and the waist band is some more leftovers from my stash. So much using up of fabric! Hooray!

The girls have both worn their new Christmas outfits already (in November), and it really does make you excited for the season.

Sea Party

Sophie has been waking up early ever since the middle of spring. We don't mind too much, because she's pretty quiet about it, reading books or coloring in. In the second last week of school, she woke up one Wednesday morning and started drawing sea creatures on the colored paper. She then informed me that they were to be cut out for the Sea Party she was planning.

I told her that was a nice idea, and got on with life. But the next morning it happened again. And she started talking about a Sea Party with her friends. Then on the Friday, she was still going on about it. She had plans for games and ideas for name tags and a very specific condition that the guests had to bring a sea toy, or they would not be granted admittance.

So I asked her who she planned to invite. She listed Mia, Hugo and her friend Oliver from school. That's fairly easy really. And we did have Saturday morning free. So I told her that if she asked her friends parents and if they were free, they could come to the Sea Party. Then we came home from school and planned the Sea Party.

Invite list, game plan, food prep. Pretty straight forwards. Sophie was totally in charge of the decorating. And came up with the games to play on her own too. I kept food simple, and had watermelon cut with star shapes (star fish!) which actually, the girls did themselves. As well as a batch of cupcakes and packs of seaweed.

The girls got out their sea creature toys to have options available. Sophie put "name tags" (cut out sea creatures) on each guest as they arrived. You can see Rachel's in the above photo.

Here is our Sea Party organizer with her shark.

We used the big table on the deck, and Sophie hung her cut out sea creatures there. I added the white table clothes to make it feel more cubby like. It was pretty cool under there.

They played a game of "Throw and Catch" which was essentially, throw the sea creature toy in the air, and catch it when it came down. If you drop it you're out. I also put on music to see how they went stopping spontaneously when the music stopped. We played a few rounds and everyone got a lolly prize at the end.

Then was the sea mural craft activity. The girls and I painted the background Friday night and the kids got to glue sea creature shapes on to make a mural.

And lastly, an activity that Sophie did not plan, but I just happened to have in the freezer thanks to one of my day care kids asking for ice earlier in the week. I had frozen a bunch of green gems in containers in the freezer with layers of water and water mixed with food coloring. I tipped out the containers into the big tub and the kids had to melt the ice to get the gems out. Took a while, was nice and cool and very fun.

I was talking with Sophie on the Saturday morning about how lucky she was to be having a spontaneous Sea Party. She was so excited on the Friday night it took her ages to fall asleep, and she was up at about 4:30 on Saturday morning from that same excitement. Even with the sleep deprivation, we managed to pull off a fun event with minimal tears. It gives me great hope for future birthday parties. Can she run her own next year?