She's a chip off the old block

We were back to reality today as the children recommenced their Saturday morning activites. Football for the Sausage Monster and shaking her butt to the music modern dance for Minxie.

After a rather delicious lunch of fresh salmon fillets, oven baked potato wedges and veg, cooked by the resident expert chef me, the boys went off to St Mary's to watch Saints win 2-0 against Leicester City. Southampton FC have a great deal, several times each season, whereby they let children watch matches for just £1!

This left the Minx and I with a glorious girlie afternoon to fill. Our first step? Why a trip to our very local Hobbycraft of course!! Minx bought herself some stickers and I bought some cotton batting, a pack of eight fat quarters for £4.99 and some pretty ribbons. I have several projects in mind for these goodies.

Then it was home for a spot of crafting for Minx. She was given a lovely 10x10 scrapbook for Christmas with some great papers and stickers included.

As Moog's most annoying human who will just never leave the poor old dog alone biggest fan Minx decided her first ever page should be dedicated to the hairy canine fool.

Not bad for a six year old's first trip to the Dark Side, eh?

Unfortunately, Minx then remembered another present she'd had. Now, I'm all for children being allowed to be creative. I love having a mini-me who loves nothing better than just making and doing. This is all very well when the craft involved is something achievable that children can feel some ownership off without having to have an adult do most of it for them.

Minx is so much like me it scares the heck out of me a very independent little girl who prefers to do as much herself as she can. Therefore, when faced with stupid aaaaagh pompoms and pipecleaners that won't stick, no matter how strong your mother's glue, it can become a might frustrating.

Who, I ask you, who decided these would be a good thing for children to do?

We've had them before and they were no less frustrating then. We used very very tacky PVA and lots of it. Still the pompoms won't stick to each other (unless you hold them together for 24 hours) AND AS FOR TRYING TO STICK STUPID AAAAAAAAAGH PIPECLEANER 'LEGS' ONTO THEM - FORGET IT - IT DOES NOT WORK!!!!!!!!

Luckily there was some felt in the set which I was instructed to cut big feet shapes out of. So now we have four precariously glued blob monsters drying in the hope that they might survive long enough for the b***dy huge goggle eyes also included in the 'craft set for children' to be ironically glued on!!!!!

Oh, how I love crafting.......

Once we'd exhausted the pompom art Minx moved onto the next activity.

She was a very lucky little girl this Christmas as she got her first camera. After downloading her first 214 photos (!) she started on the next batch. She's obviously watched far too much of me setting up 'my pretty home' (now that's a laugh!!) shots for the blog:

Here she is after setting up her 'Christmas snuggly dressing gown' backdrop on which to photograph her alarmingly large selection of 'favourite' cuddlies - one by one by one by....... The photo above is, of course, of Jess the sheepdog :)

According to Moogsdad we are heading out for a 'good walk' tomorrow after a hearty full English breakfast. Could be a good day to reintroduce my camera to the New Forest. Ooooooh, just thought - a stop off at the sea on the way back to our slow-cooked beef stew sounds good.

The beach in winter is my favourite place to be :) That's one of a very long list of reasons why I could never move back to where I was born and brought up - landlocked Birmingham.

Hope you have a lovely Sunday xxxxxx