Paper Planes...

We watched Paper Planes for Friday night movie night...

 Sunday morning Michael and the kids made their own paper planes...

My loves...

Life's looking awesome...

and busy and productive and tiring and exciting and mundane!

Looking after my family and going to work I quickly realised there needs to be a concerted effort to include fun in our days as well.

It's so easy to be worn out and run down and just go through the motions, when we sometimes need to wake up and remember that we only get one life to live.

While it's unrealistic to think life is without challenges, I think it is more than possible to not only look for all of the good that is out there as well as create some of it ourselves.

I guess it's a balance really, of work and every day jobs, the really fun and exciting stuff and quiet, calm and beautiful moments.

Is that too much to ask?  Haha. Forever a work in progress perhaps!

Anyhow...here's few bits and pieces from the last couple of weeks...

The boys are still loving the kinetic sand:

Ethan left his doggy at Pa's house when were in Melbourne the other week for my birthday.  They were reacquainted after Pa sent him in the mail.  Ethan was beyond happy to see him...

The boys love the Wiz Khalifa song "See you again" and printed the lyrics out and put the music clip on and sung their little hearts out.  I love that they love music...

It's such a beautiful song...

Family fun: Kinetic Sand

We picked this up at Spotlight over the weekend and it has been a hit!  So much fun to play with...for everyone!

We were all a little sleepy but it was a nice evening activity that we could all just relax and enjoy.  The boys did a relatively good job of keeping it on the trays so we only swept up a little at the end so it wasn't too messy either. 

Some drawing time...

Saturday afternoon we pulled out some oil pastels and had a draw.  Louis started his artwork straight away, but Jayden was begging him to draw an outline of something for him to colour in.  He finally did it for him...

This was his finished project!

He was quite proud of his effort and stuck it up on the lounge room wall!

I started drawing also and started with a poppy for Anzac day and then played around with our family symbol - infinity hearts. 

The colours made me happy and drawing it was a lot of fun.

It really made me think about the point of art or creating and that's it really isn't it?  If we enjoy making it and we enjoy looking at it then we've hit the jackpot!  It doesn't matter if it's considered good or bad or whatever by anyone else if we feel good about it.

It made me think about my blog and IG page and the point of them.  This may sound terrible to some, but I want to be able to look through those photos or read my words about life and my family and enjoy it.  I get those fuzzy beautiful  moments when I look at our adventures or our everyday moments that I've taken the time to notice and record.  

It makes me grateful for what I have right now, and what I have had.  It allows me to remember without any of the emotional garbage that may have been running through my head at the same time.  It filters all of the unpleasantness in my thoughts and tiredness in my body and leaves me with all of the great feelings and memories.  It makes me look around right now at what I have, who I am, everything I love and take notice.  Because the joy is here, right now, in this moment, it's just up to me to recognise it and be thankful. 

That's why I'm going to write and record.  I want my boys to get that too as they look through this stuff as they get older.  (if the do! haha).

I also played around with some of my Project Life supplies and made some cards I needed.  Cards I would have just bought at the store normally now allowed me to be creative.  I've just started getting a kit mailed out each month from Studio Calico and it's great.  I'm still uncertain and not used to all of the bits and pieces but I'm enjoying it.  It's very exciting to open up a little parcel of goodies to play with! 

It's good for the boys to see me playing around and being creative as well.  They were all happy with their work because they could see that I was happy with mine.  If I said, oh mine is terrible.  I can't draw at all and it's not very good blah blah blah, they would also start to critique their own work.

I think it's time to embrace all the goodness inside of us, all of the imperfections and just love life.  Do what makes you smile, have a good attitude about the things that we may not enjoy so much and just make the most of every opportunity. 

On that note...I must go and do some of those everyday things like washing and dishes, but I'm going to play some music so I can enjoy it as I go.  xo

5 simple activities for family fun!

Spending time with the kids doing something fun shouldn't have to involve a degree in education and a second mortgage to pay for.  (Although, that can be fun on occasion too!).

So here are 4 simple ways we've had fun lately...

1. Make Goop

2 cups of cornflour
2 cups of water
Food colouring

Mix in a container until combined and let the kids go crazy.  I actually think for the mix I made I didn't measure it just added enough ingredients until it looked right.
The boys loved it because it's quite solid to pick up and then melts in their hand.  Mum and Dad may have had a little try as well because it really is pretty great.

2. Tracing pictures

This was really fun...simply ask the kids to choose a picture book and sticky tape some baking paper over the top of it.  Grab some pencils and copy away.  The boys weren't sure about it all, but after having a try were really happy with their reproductions. 

 

3. Make paper boats

We found some instructions here and the boys and their Dad had fun following along building and then floating their boats.  Of course it didn't take long for them to work out how to sink their boats either!  

4. Make a volcano

You will need:

Bicarb Soda
Food colour (optional)
Vinegar
Dishwashing liquid

Add the Bicarb soda and food colour to a container.  (It is better to give it a mix to combine it as the first time I didn't and most of the colour stayed on the bottom).  Add a squirt of dishwashing liquid to the vinegar and then pour over the Bicarb soda mixture.   You will want enough supplies to have a few goes I'm guessing!

5. Make gingerbread cookies

We used a recipe from Taste and they turned out really great and were eaten by everyone! We decorated by placing the icing in a zip lock back and snipping the corner which is such an easy way to do it if you don't have the "proper" tools. It was fun coming up with lots of different looking gingerbread men with the odd cyclops thrown in!

So there you have it, 5 simple "if I can do them so can you" ways to have some family fun!

What are some of your simple ideas for having fun as a family?

Bubbles...

One of my priorities as a Mum is to grow a close connected family.  As my boys grow there will be so many distractions and they will get pulled in so many different directions that I want to make the most of our time now to build a solid foundation.

One of these ideas is to have family time a few nights a week to either play a game, do a craft or activity or simply read a book together.  The activity itself isn't whats most important - although it can be a great learning opportunity - it's the fact that we're all together having some fun.

Of course, there are some nights (and weeks) where this isn't always successful depending on what's happening in life, but the goal is there and I will continue to work at it.

We tend to have family time after dinner.  I encourage the kids to get their homework and jobs done in the afternoon so we can can be free to have fun later.  It works out well for us at this stage.

I find if we don't make the effort to connect like this we can get bogged down in the chores and necessities of the day to day and forget that life is meant to be enjoyable.

I want our family to know that while we need to be responsible and get our work done, there should always be time for play and fun.

So blowing bubbles is a super easy fun night.  Just squirt dish soap in a bowl of water and spread it over the table...hand everyone a straw and blow!  

Lots of fun and it cleans the table! :)