Monday 31 October 2011

Point + Shoot: Good Clean Fun

I love weekends with my two favourites, and having the time to play with my growing-up-way-too-fast toddler.  This weekend we discovered that a few drops of food colouring + a small bowl of shaving cream = hours of fun… or at least until the bath water gets cold!!

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We started off with paintbrushes, but soon discovered that once you had enough up there, it was a brilliant consistency for finger painting. Best of all, it cleaned off with just one easy wipe of the washcloth – and then we had the fun and excitement of sitting in a blue bath! No bathroom walls were damaged in the making of this blog post – in fact, that is now probably the cleanest patch on my entire bathroom wall!

In other weekend news, we also enjoyed a lovely Sunday afternoon (and totally gourmet) picnic in the park with my sister and brother in law.

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Yes, my daughter is queen of the awkward photo face. Luckily the remaining 99% of the time she’s utterly adorable and more than makes up for it.

Hope you had a happy weekend too! Play along with Louise and tell us all about it!

Getting My Art On

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be sent by my school to a very awesome Oxlades art Professional Development day. My sister got to come too, so basically, I got to hang out with my sister, and paint, and learn sweet new art skills all day long. It was brilliant.

We mostly worked with water colours, which is probably my favourite type of paint and technique, so I was a happy girl!

Here are the beautiful pieces of art that I got to create.

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The turtle was done with Micador water colours

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For the owl I used a Micador tempera painting station

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For the lizard we cracked open our Koh-I-Noor brilliant water colour discs (this was by far my favourite variety of watercolour).

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And for the fish and the bird I used a mix of the paints.. but mostly the brilliant water colours because I was so in love with the palette.

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My favourite is definitely the fish. But we had so much fun creating all of them! Once we were done with our animals, we got to try out a few different techniques using water-soluble graphite, charcoal, various shades of graphite pencil with vegetable oil, oil pastels and water-soluble oil pastels. It was very cool, and made us feel very artsy. I think my favourite of these is the water-soluble graphite, which is in the top left.

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It was an awesome day, and best of all we walked away with a huge goody bag filled with all of the different types of paints and other art materials we had tried out that day!

Yahoo for awesome PD courses Smile

Sunday 16 October 2011

Colin Buchanan

A few weeks ago, we took Mayana to her second Colin Buchanan concert. At the first, she was about 8 months old, and mesmerised by the music and the lights. This time, she got entirely overwhelmed for the first two songs, and sat snuggle into my neck, while sneaking peaks of the stage every now and again.

It wasn’t long though before Mayana started to notice that Colin is funny, and that she recognised some of his songs. By the end, she was down the front with all the kids, trying to climb onto the stage and get in on all the action. It was a lot of fun to watch her, and a lot of fun to watch Colin. If you ever get the chance to go to one of his children’s concerts, do it. He’s a great entertainer, for the adults as well as the kids!

Mayana asked us if we could line up and meat Colin, and so we did. For a very. long. time. In fact, we were the second last people in line. It was a little ridiculous. But kinda worth it in the end, when Colin wrote a special message in the book we’d bought her, and gave her a big cuddle and posed for a photo. She’s still talking about it, and loves looking at the picture of the flower and bee that he drew in her book.IMGP0507

It was a great day out, and I think Colin may have scored himself a brand new fan :) IMGP0509

Once upon a weekend…

I don’t think I ever told you about the lovely weekend my darlingest husband and I had away for our sixth wedding anniversary. We left our very excited daughter with her grandparents and aunty and uncle for a sleepover, and headed to Brisvegas.

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We love weekend city trips… we would NEVER live there, but it’s always fun for a weekend. It was a good weekend to head to the city, because it was Brisbane Festival and there were all kinds of fun things happening.

We walked back and forwards between the city and Southbank, strolled through the markets, and ate soooo much delicious food.

IMGP0401If you haven’t visited the Turkish Restaurant at Little Stanley Street, you gotta. Word to the wise though, don’t make eye-contact with the belly dancer!

We even got to enjoy a very cool laser-light show over the river that was part of the festival. Best of all though, we just got to be together, just the two of us, which doesn’t happen so much these days.

IMGP0403The sky-writer wasn’t just letting us know the name of the day, it ended up spelling out ‘Sunday Mail’, a major sponsor of the Bridge to Brisbane charity event that was happening that weekend.

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Eating at Max Brenner for breakfast is something that everyone should do at least once in their lifetime. We went for the banana praline crepes. Oh my.

 IMGP0412     IMGP0409 IMGP0410 They also do these amazing ‘choctails’, Peter had a coffee-type one, and I had this incredibly evil and wonderful concoction that tasted like liquid chocolate and peanut butter.

Anniversary weekends are the BEST!!!

Tuesday 11 October 2011

Saturday 8 October 2011

The Incredible Imagination of Mayana {or} Things I Don't Want to Forget

Seriously, this kid is just blowing me away and cracking me up so much lately.

She has discovered her imagination.

Imaginary friends, imaginary toys, imaginary phone calls, iPads, cameras... You name it, she's imagining it. And it's the cutest thing ever.

For example:
The other day we were grocery shopping at Aldi, and Mayana was taking photos with her imaginary camera. Then she started crying. I asked her why, and she said she had dropped her camera, and it smashed! Papa had to find the pieces and fix it and give it back to her.

A few days later, we were shopping again and went to the bathroom. I hung my handbag on the hook behind the door. Mayana, who has been bringing a handbag with her everywhere she goes lately, had forgotten hers that day. Still, she asked me to hang hers up too. She told me that her handbag was like the one Opa got her from China, but it was orange, not blue.
After we had used the toilet, and taken our handbags off the hook, we went to wash our hands. She put her handbag on the bench, and we were halfway out the door before she remembered that she hadn't picked it up. We had to go back, and I had to lift her up so she could get her imaginary handbag off the bench.

One afternoon, I was using the iPad, and her Papa told her to come and get it off me because he wanted it. I told her no, I was still using it. So she walked back over to her Papa and said, 'Mama's using it, but here, you can have my little one,' and handed him an imaginary iPad (haha Papa).

Friends-wise, her newest best friends are mostly characters from Monster's Inc (her new favourite movie). She is always hanging out with Boo, Sully and sometimes Mike Wazowski. She even takes Boo to the toilet, to help her be a big girl. She also has a friend called Lucas, who is a girl. We're not sure where she got that name from. Her friends come most places with us, and she'll often hold their hands or make us hold their hands.

She has imaginary phone conversations with people every day. Usually Opa, Kami or Lala. Full on conversations, with pauses while she 'listens' to them, and jokes that make her laugh. It's hilarious.

I love that she has an imagination, I hope she can hold on to it.

While I'm sharing Mayana funnies, here's another one I want to write down before I forget it.

The other day we were having lunch with Boo & Lock Lock, and Mayana was having a great time playing outside with their puppy Dusty. We could hear her telling him off... 'no Dusty, stop it! Stop it! I'm going to go and tell your Mummy!'

She ran inside to Bethanie and said, 'Boo! Dusty is eating a stick and he won't stop it!'

I just love the way her mind works.

I also love that she loves reading, and that the other night the reason she was crying when she was supposed to be going to sleep was because, 'I haven't read enough books today!'

I love that she listens and comprehends well enough to link what happens in stories to her own life, and to what happens in other books... I have students who are 6 or 7 years old who can't do that!

And while I'm busy boasting, can you believe my two year old has such good fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination that she can use scissors to cut perfectly along a straight or slightly curved line? Again, I have prep students that can't do that!

Being with this girl is an awesome adventure, a constant surprise. She makes me smile and burst with pride every single day.

I am so beyond blessed to be her Mama.

 

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