Our week in review

Outside our window: Some very, very sad broccoli. The weather has turned cold and the last two days the temperature was below zero and this hasn't done the plants any good. The marigolds also look really poorly. It's been sunny but that didn't help, it simply was too cold. Another year without purple sprouting broccoli from our own garden for us. The orange balloon is now totally deflated but it is the only colourful spot in the garden right now. We also got a new visitor at the bird food table, a little brown one and my hopes are that it might have been a sparrow which are very rare round here, would you believe it. It only fed from the side of the bird feeder furthest away from me so I couldn't see it properly.

From the kitchen: 

In the learning room: Still working on maths, measurements, the 24-hour clock and the Romans. Big Monkey made a temple for the Goddess Diana. We now found a way of learning more German that works best for us. She remembers her numbers now and we work on her understanding by reading books. We also do some other topics in German, often maths which always includes some eye rolling. She will be very well prepared for her teenage years with this skill.

We've been creating: Birthday cards, Birthday party goody bags, wrapping presents... yes, we've been very focused. But I also managed to create a couple of layouts, a few pages in my artjournal and a couple of tip-in pages. So far my create a piece of art a day works well for me and I manage to create something. I've also started to crochet again if I sit in front of the TV which I haven't done much in the last few weeks.We also made magnet paintings, we put some paint on the paper, popped a paper clip in and used a magnet to move it around to create pictures. Little Monkey added brush strokes over it afterwards which wasn't quite the idea but he had lots of fun and that certainly was the idea of the whole procedure.

Favourite things: Happy and excited Monkeys. Big Monkey was at least as excited as Little Monkey about his birthday. A really nice hot cup of tea after coming inside from the freezing cold.

Things we've done: We visited a friend in her new home in Kew where we got tea and cake on table with a proper table cloth. Very posh and very unusual for us, we normally only get a table cloth out when we do messy things. We also asked our friend how to tell the time in Germany which I remembered correctly they do differently from us Austrians. We realized we didn't have any idea what we talked about if we didn't have the 24 hour clock to fall back on. As we had taken the long journey we also visited the Botanical Gardens. Due to the cold we stayed mostly in the Greenhouse which was lovely and warm. Big Monkey decided she wanted to be a cycad when she grows up. Spoken like a true Monkey...