Strange Machines

Our Halloween props from Woolcrazy on Etsy arrived! The kids were so thrilled to decorate their Halloween nature table.

Discovered these beautiful fabric dollhouses on Etsy a few weeks back and I ended up ordering one for myself and one each for the kids. They are such wonderful creative and open ended toys!

The seller Laurie (shop FrivolTees) was really lovely to work with. She responded to me quickly and was incredibly helpful with fabric samples and advice.

Shipping was super fast too, considering it was a custom order for 3 houses and dolls. I ordered on 14 July. Production took a few days and it arrived on the 1st of August. That’s about 14 days altogether!

They are sturdily made and well crafted. Packaging was beautiful and professional too with thoughtful notes and cards which the children treasure. My greatest and utmost respect for a talented artisan working from home and raising five children!

The children are so happy and love their own fairy dollhouses so much! They had a hand in selecting their fabrics of choice and were especially thrilled to see the end result.

And I get to play with them too, now that I have my own mini fairy avatar me and my own fairy dollhouse.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon making our own snakes and ladders game. I taught the kids how to measure and use a ruler to draw straight lines and create 2x2cm squares. They had a great time drawing in numbers and their various snakes and ladders afterwards.

Happy 2012!

I know I know. I’d been fairly MIA all of 2011. You see, my weekly housekeeper quit to look after her sick mom back in December 2010 and we decided not to hire anyone new to replace her. So I’ve been doing the cleaning and laundry too, which after a year I am still doing rather poorly (but we get by). Plus when you’re so exhausted any blogging ideas kind of dissipate and disappear before they hit paper (or the iPhone).

The kids have been great. 5 and 2 have been a lovely age for each kid so far. Both are helpful with housework – they love hanging out and keeping laundry, folding and keeping clothes, and pick up their toys and keep them. When I need to do housework, they have a choice of helping or entertaining themselves. They’ve become very good at the latter!

So I have to say full-time housework has been a win-win for this family. The kids have learnt to play on their own without my having to be there but am within shouting distance in the same house. I get a bit of quiet time washing dishes and doing laundry.

The only downside for me is I need to rest a lot more during the day because it isn’t second nature for me to do housework but I trudge on because I want it to be easy for my kids, second nature, no sweat for them to do housework, not like the chore it is for me. After all, isn’t parenthood is about arming our kids with life skills? This is one skill I want my kids to have. I truly feel that life would be so much easier for them if they embrace it.

The kids asked if I could make them a gingerbread boy and girl. The faces took a while! I need to work on my embroidery…

We found this cute roll of ABC sticky tape at Isetan and the kids had fun with it and origami paper this morning.

Some days I am too exhausted to carry Kitten for her nap and really need to lie down. Wolf on the other hand wants to play and we have a situation with one sleepy kid who won’t sleep because her brother is playing noisily in the bright room.

This afternoon, I got Wolf to turn off the light and pretend he is in a dangerous zone somewhere with wandering monsters (so he needs to be very quiet) and he needs to recruit stuffed friends scattered around the bed to be his soldiers (he learns to id them from touch) and he has to build a fort from blankets and pillow and assign jobs to his soldiers.

So far so good! He does whisper questions to me and I issue instructions on the scenario but it is quiet time.

Mommy Doll (see previous post) has been assigned the role of Commander because she is the most powerful. :p

Update: The game lasted an hour till he wanted to rest too.

I recently got 2 Waldorf dolls for Kitten from the amazing dollmaker Mim of Chestnutdolls. Kitten loves playing with dolls and I had to get a baby doll with the mama doll. Wonderful, wonderful workmanship. We love them so much!

The kids and I made homemade flour bites (flour and water) ready to fry tonight. They had a great time making the dough, kneading it and pressing the animal shapes.

The very talented MamaMadeThem is a single mom who admirably left her job to spend more time with her son and makes these amazing toys for a living.

Here’s a wonderful opportunity to buy her beautiful safe open-ended toys for your child.

Everything except the Little Kitchen, Sun House, Oak Bus, Hammer and Nails, Tools and Toolbox is 20% off! The coupon code is JANUARY.

Go visit her store already: http://www.etsy.com/shop/MamaMadeThem