Happy Birthday Thom Beaner!

Morning present opening....





Monsters of Darkness sent by Grandma Foxy:


These look MUCH too scary for a little three year old, to me but he absolutely LOVES them.

And afternoon cake, once Eve and Noah had got home from school:





Wanting more cake:


(Noah and I managed to persuade him to wait until after dinner for another piece.)



Happy Birthday, Thom! You are a delight to all of us!

The Himalaya by Eve

Crappy Crafts = Eco bags

Here you go - three bags, made from old clothes:




Ok, so they are quite crappy, but I actually quite like them for that.
Big one is for Eve, made out of dad's shirt; middle sized one is Noah's, made from the jeggings(!) I cut off because it's so hot here in the summer that full length ones are much too hot; and the little one is for Thom Beaner, made fom one of the legs I cut off his trousers to make them into shorts - and gratifyingly already full of his little soldiers.

Think the two smaller ones have quite a bit of robustness to them and will last through lots of play - don't have quite the same confidence in Eve's, but I know she'll be chuffed I made it for her and that's the point of it really....

Happy weekend wishes to everyone xx

This is what load-shedding looks like....

Well, in our house, anyway....
There's no mains electricity for 12 - 14 hours a day here in KTM at the moment. We have something called an invertor in our house, which is basically a large car battery; when we're without power it'll run certain lights for us, and one plug socket. (As long as you don't plug in anything too big - I plugged in the electric oven once, in a fit of other-mums-visiting-must-cook-for-them desperation and overloaded it instantly. We had soup. And bread.) But with so few hours of electricity (and often of insufficient wattage/voltage/whatever) it doesn't get fully charged. So we're on candles, and no TV. The smalls seem happy enough though....
They spent ages making this dinosaur land, then asked me for the camera to take photos of it:





Eve designed this picture for the Eco Festival on Friday afternoon:

I have been commissioned to make three Eco-bags for the smalls to take into school. Will post photos as long as I remember....

They had fun pulling faces. (All 5 following photos were taken by the children.):








Then did some more Eco-bag designing by candle light: One with flash so you can see what they're up and one without so you can feel the atmosphere....




So, they are pretty much (albeit temporarily - ahem) weaned off TV. I'm not. Vampire Diaries here I come.......!