Squishy bag

Breakfast time is quite difficult with 2 kids. L. finishes with her breakfast quickly and gets bored in her high chair. E. is as slow as a snail so it's hard to finish at the same time.

While E. is eating and I'm busy in the kitchen or clearing the table I always give L. something to play with. One morning this squishy bag.

I filled up an IKEA zip lock bag with a little water and added hair gel. I threw in some buttons and beads and gave it to her. Before closing it, I pushed out the air and then I put wide cello tape on the zip lock.

She was busy with the squishy bag only for 5 minutes. Better than nothing.

She poked the buttons gently. I love the careful and focused movement of her tiny fingers.

Next she needed to taste it just like everything else.

When she got bored she tossed it down and checked when it was on the floor, pointing at it. A few times I gave it back to her. And everything started all over again.

The problem was that E. was more interested and didn't want to eat. *sigh* I don't really know what to do with this...

Either L. might have made a hole on the bag with her 2 teeth or the hair gel was extremely bad quality as I could smell it 5 steps away from the high chair. After few days it ended in the rubbish bin.

Mummy lantern

This Halloween was quiet. E. wasn't so excited about it this year and Baby Sis is too little to understand it at all. The party we wanted to throw had to be cancelled as some families got ill some other went away for the long weekend.

Therefore a calm and peaceful (not at all frightening) family fun took place on the 31st.

E. and Daddy went to buy a pumpkin in the morning and after decorating our living room with some Halloween decor ...

... Daddy carved the pumpkin. (We made it lit up with led tea light inside as last year due to the flame the pumpkin got cooked on the inside and rotted away quite quickly. Not to mention the fact that led tea lights are more baby-friendly). E. drew the eyes and the nose of this year's jack-o-lantern.

Then came a little crafting. Mummy lanterns. (The original idea came from last year's Halloween party at our Helen Doron school).

At first I wanted to make only 2 mummies, but E. had something different on mind. She wanted a mummy family.

What you need:

• 4 baby food jars (2 little and 2 bigger)
• 4 (led) tea lights
• gauze rolls (cheap at the chemist's)
• 4 pairs of googly eyes
• glue
• cello tape

How to make them:

1. Wash the label off the jars
2. Fix the end of the gauze on the jar with a little cello tape
3. Wrap the gauze around the jar (make one or two layers only or the tea light won't be seen through)
4. Fix the gauze with cello tape when finished with the wrapping
5. Glue the eyes on
6. Add the tea lights

Mummy family with pet spider 💀👻

Of course, we didn't miss out on a Halloween party altogether as in our Helen Doron school a spooky-crafty fun Halloween was organised for the kids on 29th and we were invited.

The party was just as fantastic as the last year's. Here come the pictures:

E. dressed as a (pretty) ghost

Baby Pumpkin with her gourd

Healthy snacks were served: Jack-o-tangerine, Frankenstein fruit mix and ghost popcorn

Dark and scary room with some English activities was on again:

Crafty part: painting a gourd with glow-in-the-dark paint (we missed that as we were a little late) and Halloween card (see bellow)

Plus a bit of colouring

This Halloween was much more quiet and relaxed as in the previous years. But to be honest, life's hard enough with two small kids, and without the hassle of a home party (preparation, decoration, snack making, throwing the party itself, then the cleaning up) it was pleasant and peaceful for me too.

Crafty Mommy Workshop - Autumn

After a lot of thinking and preparation I managed to hold my very first Crafty Mommy Workshop with Autumn crafts and activities.

Quite a few moms have asked me about the activities we've been doing with E. since she was small, so I thought it would be a good idea to have a craft session for mommies (instead of telling everyone separately).

The workshop was in Hungarian as English-speaking moms didn't sign up 😞. The main idea was that moms could learn some easy to make activities and at home they can work them out with their kids.

I collected autumn activities around 5 major topics:

• Conkers
• Leaves and trees
• Halloween
• St. Martin's Day (Márton nap)
• Thanksgiving

I dedicated 1 hour to go through the activities, however, they proved to be too many as we couldn't cover the last 2 topics. Still, I hope the 2 moms who turned up (other 2 cancelled 😞) will benefit from what they heard at the workshop. 

The original ideas of these activities are either from other blogger moms or mine. I mainly came up with  the conker games but here I'd also like to pay tribute to the pages I read and "steal" ideas from:

Leaves and tree activities:

1. Paint and stamp with the leaves
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Paint around the leaf
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Laminated leaf rubbing (or just place leaves under a white sheet of paper and rub it with autumn colour crayons)
   
   
   
   
4. Leaf lacing
   Although I didn't print the free printable leaves, just used our laminated leave that I'd punched on the sides. Shoelaces are pretty goof for threading, but if your child has any difficulties with the small ending you can add some cell tape to make the end firmer.
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Make leaf faces and  people out of (laminated) leaves
   
   
   
   
6. Leaf shred pictures autumn images and animals too
7. Count the leaves with free printable
8. Stamping leaves on a tree with toilet paper roll
9. Popsicle stick tree 
10. Make a hedgehog/squirrel with leaves
    
    
    

What else to do with leaves:

• collect them
• group them by their size, colour
• make them stand in a line from the biggest to the smallest
• paint them, colour them, trace them
• press them
• make a crown out of fresh autumn leaves

The participants got a nice pack of goodies to work with at home, like 10 laminated leaves, a punched leaf with a shoelace for the lacing, some magnets so they can stick the leaf faces/people on the fridge, popsicle sticks, squirrel/hedgehog templates and the counting leaves free printable.

The third topic we could cover was Halloween. Here are the crafts I showed to the moms:

1. Cotton ball ghost
2. Baby food jar mummies (I'll soon write a post on this in detail)
   
   
   
3. Jack-o-lantern faces with shapes
4. Pumpkin emotions
5. Toilet paper spiders, monsters with googly eyes 
6. Skeleton out of cotton buds
   
   
   

In the mommy package there were some toilet paper tubes, googly eyes, black pipe cleaners, cotton balls, baby food jar, a roll of gauze, black cardboard, orange construction paper and, of course, two printables: the black shapes for making Jack-o-lantern faces and the pumpkin faces showing different emotions.

The other topics were postponed and due to the lack of time we agreed to have a similar session with winter and Christmas activities. We had a wonderful time together and I've been planning our next session excitedly.