It must be Easter...

Children running around in the sunny garden, spraying water at each other, forget-me-nots a-plenty in the flower beds, chocolate eggs filling up baskets on the kitchen table and a spot of holiday baking. It's definately Easter.

Equations

sb+f+npsps=vbtm

sb-SmallerBean
f-friend
npsps-newly planted (yesterday) sweetpea seedlings
vbtm- me, or in other words, very bad tempered mummy

Fun and games

A wee while ago I had some cyber dialogue with driftwood and talk veered a little to the games the Smalls play here at BeanTowers. It made me think. These are the sort of games I remember playing with my sister when we were little and I really like the way that these sorts of things kind of go down in family history.

One game I remember playing with my sis I will not be explaining to the Beansprouts. It involved turning out the bathroom lights while we were having a bath and chucking wet flannels at each other. Inevitably the whole bathroom got drenched. But I don't ever remember being told off for doing this game. Either OldBean was blissfully unaware (g and t time?) or she didn't care. Anyway, I thought I'd share some of the Beansprouts games with you, giving them ratings out of five for danger, irritation to adult (ie me), hilarity, mess and duration. I tried finding suitable photos but mostly failed and of course since I started thinking about this post they have not played any of the games. Or the camera has been awol or out of juice. So apologies for a rather wordy read.

1. Dizzy Dogs
Spinning on the spot until you fall over.
Danger **** (particularly if the dishwasher door is open)
Irritation *** (when they are in the kitchen)
Hilarity ***
Mess * (unless a headcrackedopenonthedishwasher incident has occurred)
Duration*

2. Under The Covers
This is an early morning game which happens in Smaller's room as she is Not Allowed into Small's room. The BeanSprouts get into bed with every single soft toy they can find and anytime they hear anyone coming they shout 'Somebody's coming' and dive under the covers screaning and having a fit of the giggles. This game usually ends up with both Beans being naked. I don't ask.
Danger *** (often a head can be kicked in by a flailing foot)
Irritation * (unless I am woken up by crying before 7am)
Hilarity *****
Mess **** (clearing the toys away is a real pain at bedtime if you have forgotten this game has been played)
Duration*****

3. The Dog Game
Spread all the cushions on the sitting room floor. Tie a dressing gown belt around your brother's neck. Make him sit, bark, fetch an old baby rattle which doubles up as a bone and generally boss him about.
Danger ** (she's not so good at tying knots)
Irritation *
Hilarity ***
Mess **** (the cushions everywhere annoy me intensely)
Duration***

4. The Horsey Game
This is mostly played when they are bored of the Dog Game. Smaller suggests that she has a ride on Small as he is crawling round being a dog.
Danger **** (Small gets annoyed that he can't be the rider and stands up)
Irritation ** (unless there is an injury)
Hilarity ***
Mess *
Duration*

5. Deadly 60 in the garden
When I feel that the Sprouts Need Some Air, they get thrown out into the garden, often with much protest. However, this is usually one of the longest duration games they play together. The washing line is used to 'abseil' down the mulberry tree. The odd little playhouse is painted with water. Smaller talks the the green man at the end of the garden. Battles are fought with bows and swords.
Danger ***** I do keep an eye on them when the washing line is involved
Irritation
Hilarity ****
Mess
Duration*****

6. Hairdressers
This is a bath game. Nail brushes, toothbrushes (?) and flannels are used to do new do's on each other.
Danger * (unless you count scatches made by the nailbrush)
Irritation *
Hilarity *****
Mess *** (the water tends to leave the bath...)
Duration***

7. Dens Get all the pillows, blankets, duvets, cushions and rugs you can find and pile them up in a corner with all the softies available and hide. When your ma helps with some sheetage, all for the better.
Danger *
Irritation *** (this game mostly ends with the Sprouts falling out about how the game is played)
Hilarity ***
Mess ***** (have you ever known a 3 or 6 year old tidy up bedding????)
Duration*****

8. The Hammock Game
As with Under The Covers except played in the hammock in the garden.
Danger****(Smaller has a tendency to fall out)
Irritation*(unless softies are strewn about the garden and then it starts raining) Hilarity****
Mess**
Duration*****

9. Jelly Jelly Warp Warp
A very new game involving sitting on a parent when they have just woken up and chanting 'Jelly jelly warp warp' until the parent (me) loses it and chucks them out of the bedroom.
Danger* to***** depending on my mood...
Irritation as above Hilarity depends who is asking...
Mess*
Duration*



10.The Chasing Game
Running round in small circles trying to tag each other. This is ALWAYS played in the kitchen as I am trying to cook something or strain boiling pans.
Danger****(hot water and small bodies do not mix well)
Irritation***
Hilarity****
Mess*(we haven't had a trip to A&E yet)
Duration*

So there we are. The BeanSprouts TopTen of games involving only each others company and the odd prop. I am very lucky that the Smalls play very well together. Lots of the time though, there is bickering and they play on their own. When they do get together and do these sorts of games I just love it and actually writing them down will remind me in the future just how well they do get along. It also makes me realise that I need to take more video of them as they grow So Fast. Better go, Smaller's getting out the boxing gloves...

March Scavenger Hunt

Here is the March Scavenge. I've finished it! First time this year that I've actually completed something on the computer within the time limit! Thank you postcards from the pp for an imaginative list. It has been great fun trying to get it finished. An empty chair. This is our cosy kitchen chair and usually Puppy sits here waiting for Smaller to return from pre-school or the school run.

A ring. Us girl Beans like our cheap and tacky rings. I think I need a bit of hand cream...

A lion.

And a lamb. This is also the something which is the same age as me. Is this cheating? Peeling paint. A bit tricky to see. I have only just painted the hall ceiling, so to see the paint flaking is quite demoralising. Not enough for me to sort it out though...

Fancy gates. The gates themselves are a bit dull but the railings on either side are magnificent. SmallerBean and I bike past these every day and she loves the wolf and cockerel picked out in paint on each side. They are one of the set of gates into Jesus College.

Something green. Some of our ever increasing euphorbia.

A rainbow. At a certain time of day when the sun shines onto a mirrored photo frame in the sitting room, magical rainbows appear in the hall. Amazingly, the planets lined up this month for the scavenge.

A collection. This is a printers tray which has all our found treasure in it. A dried poppy head, old coins from the garden, stones and shells, a china dolls head, a couple of really old cigarette packets from under the floorboards, a piece of the Berlin Wall to name a few. SmallBean now has his own tray for the treasures he finds.

Something sentimental. SmallBeans first pair of proper shoes. Bad photo as you can't quite tell just how diddy they are. They measure 13cm long.

So there we go. March. Gone. One quarter of the year has vanished in what seems like four and a half weeks. Looking foward to the April hunt. Hope it will be filled with eggs, chocolate and bunnies.

Jewellers of the future

At Smaller's pre-school I decided to run a little competition to see if there were any budding designers out there.

The children were asked to design a necklace for their mumma and a winner would be chosen. The winner would have their design made into a real life wearable piece of jewellery to give to his or her mummy on Mothering Sunday.

The letters went out and I waited to see if anyone would actually take up the challenge. Then on Friday, the staff, or Lovely Ladies (as they are called in our house), chose a winner. Except they didn't. The pressure was to much for them and they went into the church office to ask Mrs Random to select a winner. And she chose...... Ellie's design.

I am truly grateful that she picked this winner as it did actually resemble a necklace. Quite a few of the drawings were quite, how shall we put it, obscure? Abstract? Imaginative?...

Here is Ellie's design.

Isn't it fantastic? Now I would never put those colours together but quite frankly, I think they look stunning. Hasn't Ellie got a great eye for colour?

Now, I did say on the letter that the winning design would be my best interpretation of the drawing. But Ellie's drawing was really quite straightforward. I chose some teeny tiny peridot discs, some larger rounded amazonite nuggets and some dark, dark blue round freshwater pearls. I hooked them on in a random but not order and it looks like this

...what do you think? A passable representation? Personally, I think it is very pretty. I hope Ellie's mumma thinks so too. I'm giving it to her tomorrow. And I might sign Ellie up to help me when I get stuck choosing colours.

Free

Down the road there is a house (some people on our street call it Boo Radley's House) with a very big and exceedingly overgrown garden.

Biking back from pre-school, Smaller and I saw that the cherry tree in the front garden Boo's House was being dramatically pruned and there were loads of smalll branches lying on the pavement with hundreds of blossom buds about to burst open.

Me (to bemused tree surgeon chopper man): 'Are those branches being binned? Please could I take one if they are as the buds are just about to open?'

Bemused tree surgeon chopper man (wildly looking round for Beadle style camera and presenter): 'Er, yes. Do you want me to chop them up a bit?'

Me: 'No, they're fine like that. Thank you.' And off we go with branch precariously balanced on bike basket.

And here they are.

Free.

And making my sitting room look much better than an hour before.

Willpower. Or lack of it...

A few weeks ago I saw some shaped pearls. I saw them and dismissed them. No, I cannot buy something so contrived. No. Walk away. Good girl, well done.

But then I couldn't get the little blighters out of my head. Shaped pearls? Snowflakes?!? Pah! Corny. Tasteless. Yet...

I looked again and left. However, in the end, the pearls won and I handed over the cash and went away feeling slightly disproving of myself. But at the same time my mind was going into overdrive with the possibilities.

Trying out different combos from the magic bean box, I kept coming back to the same mix- the snowy white looked deeelicious with these tiny faceted garnets.



To me there is something quite Tudor about these jewels. In my head I am seeing bodices and ruffs. And fleas. People are saying 'Forsooth Mistress Blackadder (?), where is the pottage for supper?'

Or perhaps I am just a little deluded what with the mess and paint fumes here.

There are more snowflake and garnet delights but I haven't tried using the card thingy yet to up/download my photos. Lead is still AWOL. Think it took my brain with it.