Our week in review

Outside our window: Lots of bright yellow flowers are dotted around the garden now. Mainly daffodils but also pansies, forsythia and a few others make the garden look a lot more inviting. And one pot of purple pansies.

From the kitchen: We had Hawaiian chicken drumsticks, a recipe I found online and thought sounded nice but really was too sweet and anyway I think pineapple is for puddings or Chinese take-aways. We had lots of milk left over as for some reason porridge wasn't as often requested by the Monkeys this week. So we made a custardy-blanc-marge kind of German dessert which was easily the best this time round so much so that we didn't share with Daddy Monkey. But he was in Germany anyway so he probably had some treats there. We also had Baked Potatoes with Tuna, Pasta and Cauliflower Macaroni Cheese from the Jamie Oliver 30 minutes book. Apparently he plans to publish a 15 minute cook book next. Exciting because most recipe take about 45 minutes this would mean the chance for a recipe that actually takes only half an hour. In any case I'll keep my eyes peeled, I do like his recipes.

In the learning room: We made another attempt on the bouncy balls with a slightly different recipe. Still no luck so we have given up on this. We still had a good time playing around with the gunk though. Otherwise we mainly focused on revising spellings and maths but we also started on division.

We've been creating: St Patrick's Day decorations. The plan is to hang them in the window, I'll have to do that later.

Missus W came over for a crafty afternoon, I made a few layouts but haven't been terribly inspired mainly  because of being terribly tired. One reason is Little Monkey's inbuilt machine requiring attention early in the morning. But also that I already have to visit the loo several times in the night and a night active baby kicking happily in the wee hours. However, I managed to finish my first She Art painting from an online class with Christy Tomlinson. I'm happy with it but I think she looks a bit too serious but it's the best way to use up the skirting board samples we have laying around.

Things we did: We made green playdoh for St Patrick's Day. As colour we used lemon and lime KoolAid. It turned a lovely minty green shade but the scent was vile. Not good, the Monkeys didn't want to even touch it until I added a few drops of lemon essential oil to the mixture to get rid of the chemical smell. Still, Little Monkey suddenly decided he wanted white playdoh, white! But it's St Patrick's Day tomorrow I said. Green is the best I said. No, white they both want now preferable with sparkle and glitter. Ah, well, next time then. We have glitter so it will be possible but better don't use wholemeal flour...

Favourite things: Magazines with pretty things, on paper or digital are such fun. I downloaded a copy of Martha Steward's Living and it's so pretty with all the lovely moving graphics. Way too many adverts though but still good fun. Daddy Monkey brought back a few magazines from his trip to Germany, one being more of collection of things to buy for the baby than a magazine but oh, the lovely little things there are! We already found a must have set of bath toys in the form of the Barbapapas in boat shape. While trying to find a picture I also found a Barbapapa night light. On the list with it! And green prams! Not that we need a pram but green, it's green. Did you know it's St Patrick's Day today?