Our week in review

Outside our window:  Daffodils to brighten things up and lots of feathered friends. The goldfinches come regularly and there's been a new visitor who we couldn't identify as he disappeared as quickly as he arrived. We think it might have been a sparrow.

The silly squirrel entertains us with his attempts to get to the peanuts.

From the kitchen: Big Monkey made popcakes to take to her friend. In case you're wondering what that is, it's cupcakes with a little something inside. My attempts to add more vegetables to our diet progresses well, we have at least one day a week where we only eat vegetarian meals. However, offering all these vegetables doesn't necessarily mean that they are also eaten so this is an ongoing project. I did catch Little Monkey eating a few carrots the other day though, I didn't say anything but I noticed of course. We also had Jamie Oliver's 30 minute chicken tray which was lovely as always even though it wasn't really planned. We had a freezer scare so I thought we had to eat ice cream for a week but luckily we could sort this out. That would not bear well for the healthy eating attempts.

In the learning room: This week we made some more experiments, apart from the milk painting we also made bouncy balls. Or better said we tried to. It wasn't terribly successful, one ball turned out reasonable well but the others were soft and after a few feeble hops turned into little square marsh mallows.

We've been creating: Layouts and cards and crocheted heart bunting. The Monkeys made pipe cleaner flowers and baskets.

Things we did: The Monkeys went to the Transport museum and finished the whole trail and collected all the stamps. Big Monkey visited her bestest friend for a sleep over.

Milk painting

We decided it was time for another fun experiment so I suggested to do some milk painting. It's easy and doesn't require fancy ingredients. All that's necessary is food colours, washing up liquid and milk. Obviously. We poured some milk into a shallow dish, added the food colouring and then the fun could begin. Just add a little washing up liquid onto a cocktail stick and hold it into the milk. No moving required the colour starts twirling and moving away just by itself. Magic. We had good fun with this.

For our second attempt Big Monkey wanted to use blue and green only. On the left photo you can see how the colours spread out and away from the cocktail stick.

The end result of the many colours was really pretty. The blue and green combo was a bit samey in the end but still pretty.

New Counterfeit Kit

This month's kit to counterfeit is by Birds of a feather. Very boyish I thought.

So I had to make a version for the girl too.

And some things that go with both like the journaling stamps. I had them for ages but never used them as they were not with the other journaling spots.

Mica tip in page

Our week in review

Outside our window: Today rain and wind so not very nice but spring is on its way. There are snowdrops and crocuses out and best of all we spotted several daffodils in our garden.

From the kitchen: We tried a new recipe and made a cinnamon loaf, which turned out very well. We had a laugh at the recipe as it instructed very firmly to only once and once only pull the knife through the batter before it went into the oven to swirl the cinnamon sugar through.

In the learning room: I won't mention the maths, shall I? We worked hard on spelling this week and had to acknowledge Big Monkey's love for the letter "o". She likes to put it into every word sadly not every word needs on "o". The human body and its organs was this weeks science topic, we worked with an iPad app that we thought was generally quite good but for some reason it didn't let us place the liver unless it was the very last organ left. In art Big Monkey chose to learn about Claude Monet as she loved the feeling of the water lilies painting.

We've been creating: Layouts and cards and lots of drawings. I have finished a little cardigan, it's been done for a while now. The instructions were strange to say the least and the finished piece ended up with a wonky front. The positioning of the button sorted this though and now it looks like it always was meant to be like that.

It's also been Grandpa Monkey's birthday so we made him a present.

Favourite things: New toys, Daddy Monkey realised that the iPad was something good and has taken his back and because we used it a lot he had to get me a new one. I also got a set of new markers for free because I had a voucher which makes it doubly exciting.

Things we did: Little Monkey and Daddy Monkey went to Germany for the weekend to check on the building work on the new house. They also went swimming. In the meantime Big Monkey and I went to the cinema to finally watch Puss in Boots. We had waited so long we got to see it in the special kids performance for very little money.

Feathered friends

We finally managed to get a photo of our goldfinch pair. They come every morning at 10 am to have their breakfast. Every day we get excited to see them. They are very pretty, aren't they? If I had a tele lense for my camera I would hover at the window all morning. Alas I don't have one so we sit there doing school work with the iPhone and Big Monkey's little Canon at the ready to jump up the moment we spy them.

They still are very shy and they fly away at the smallest movement but we hope they relax a bit more soon. The great tits, the robin and the starling too visit regularly and the magpies check every day twice whether there are worms in the feeder for them.

World Book Day

Today is World Book Day. Did you know that? Well, now you do. Because we love books and reading here we celebrated by buying everybody a new book to read. Any excuse...

Big Monkey chose the The Wishing Chair Collection by Enid Blyton and Little Monkey wished for a book about Robots. They only had two, I was expecting them to have loads. But this one is very cute about an inventor hamster. Then we thought we need There's a house inside my Mummy. I ordered a book for myself and Daddy Monkey on Amazon because the Children's Book Store only sells books for children. Not surprisingly.

Big Monkey also dressed up as the heroine of one of her favourite books.

She is Mary from The Secret Garden. Mainly because we had transformed her only plain top with an embroidered horse and that wouldn't do to be Daine from The Immortals by Tamora Pierce.