Five on a Friday {Easter Edition}

Happy Good Friday everyone! Hope you have some amazing plans over the long Easter weekend - we have been preparing for Easter and doing lots of fun things already this week!

ONE - I packed away the pine cones and autumn/winter candles and decorated with gorgeous pastel spring colours for Easter!

TWO - The kids had a fantastic time at Marsh Farm which is a local animal park - feeding the animals, going on the rides and the easter egg hunt was a big hit!

 

THREE - Our local garden centre had a Mad Hatter's Tea Party - the kids had a great time painting the roses red, playing flamingo croquet with the queen of hearts, an easter egg hunt with alice in wonderland characters followed by a yummy tea party!

FOUR - Zack and I went with some of his friends from school to Nevendon Manor for the Wizard of Oz - Finding Toto event - during this amazing event the kids go with Dorothy through different scenes telling the story of the Wizard of Oz - it truly is a magical event and the kids were completely in a world of make believe!

FIVE - This morning I have blood for the first time, I was really nervous but everyone was so lovely and the donation only took a few minutes - It got me thinking that on Good Friday Jesus gave his blood for our lives and today I donated blood which will hopefully used to save someone life.

Kelly x

Valentines Day {2017}

As Valentines Day fell on a day that Danny was working the late shift, we decided to celebrate this weekend by going out for dinner so I thought it would be fun to do a little Valentines Day lunch for the kids.

I got all all the table decorations from poundland and the glass bottles are recycled starbucks frappuchino bottles.

 I kept lunch simple - margherita pizza with heart shaped ham, cucumber & tomato kebabs and fruit

 As a little treat chocolate love birds - my friends is a rep for Chocolate for Chocoholics they have the most amazing seasonal ranges of chocolates! 

The kids loved their special fancy valentines day lunch!

Kelly x

Christmas Eve Box

Last year we introduced the tradition of a Christmas Eve Box to bring a little extra magic and sparkle to Christmas Eve, the box is full of little treats and is a great way to settle the kids before bedtime in preparation of the big day itself.

Here is a list of what we put in ours

Festive Bathtime

What better way to wind down on Christmas Eve than a lovely warm bath - I found some cute snowman bubble bath from Avon which was perfect!

PJs

After bath time the kids put on some cosy new Christmas pyjamas and are then ready to start of all the other things in the box

Christmas Movie

A Christmassy dvd to cuddle up and watch as a family

Christmas themed Chocolate

A little treat to eat whilst watching the movie 

Magic Santa Key

We don't have a fireplace in our house so to allow Santa to get in we leave out a 'magic key'

Treat for Santa & Rudolph

A tradition that I had whilst growing up to leave a mince pie and drink for Santa and 

a carrot for his reindeer

Hot Chocolate

A mug, sachet of hot chocolate - to be enjoyed before bedtime in the hope a hot milky drink will help the boys drift of to sleep

Reindeer Dust

This is such a cute ideas - make up a little bag of reindeer dust to sprinkle on the lawn - simply mix porridge oats with some edible glitter (real glitter is toxic to wildlife) and wrap with ribbon - there are also some great printable poems that you can download by searching on the internet or pinterest.  The dust will sparkle in the moonlight so that Father Christmas and his Reindeers  can see the way to your door.

Christmas Book

A lovely Christmas book for a quiet bedtime story before sleepy excited heads hit the pillow in anticipation of the arrival of Father Christmas tomorrow

I would love to hear what you put in your Christmas Eve boxes?

Kelly x

School Christmas Plays

Last went to see both Zack and Josh in their school plays.  I was a very proud mummy moment!

For the past few weeks the house has been filled with Zack singing the songs from his play "Christmas Counts" and he rocked playing the role of a cow.

 Joshua melted my heart as a one of the 3 Wise Men in his pre school nativity - he didn't do much singing but played his role beautifully and delivered his gift of gold to the baby jesus on cue!

Have your little ones had their nativity or Christmas play yet? 

Kelly x

North Pole Breakfast ... A look back

Last year before I started writing my blog, I decided to introduce a Christmas tradition of a breakfast with the arrival of Buddy the Christmas Elf.

Buddy the elf arrived on Joshua's birthday in early December and had been sent by Father Christmas to stay in our house until Christmas Eve and fly back to the North Pole each night to tell him about all the activities, good and bad that the boys have done throughout the day.

Each morning he is then found getting up to lots of mischief in the house - there is one rule however, that the elf must not be touched by children otherwise he will lose his magic and won't be able to fly back to North Pole.

For the breakfast side of things I kept things simple by preparing scrambled eggs, sausages, crossiants and some sweet treats.

For decorations I used the North Pole as a theme.  I found a cute North Pole sign on Pinterest that I put in a frame,  I used a red and white table runner that I already had and picked up some plastic gingerbread plates from pound land.  The milk bottles are Starbucks Frappuccino bottles which you can pick up in any supermarket, I took off the label washed them throughly and attached a printable for Snow Milk I also found on Pinterest.

Here are a few photos of the breakfast....

Some of the fun things Buddy got up to during the 2015 Christmas visit to our house!

It was such a fun way to start of the Christmas Holidays I can't wait to a Christmas breakfast again this year especially since the boys are into Christmas even more this year - I just need to think of the theme!

Sources
Elf on a Shelf
North Pole Printables
Snow Milk Printables
Gingerbread Plates

Kelly x