38/52

 "A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014."

Matilda: Her joy is contagious. Her smile melts my heart. Her beauty astounds me.

Orlando: After having a vomiting bug all week, he is finally starting to feel better. Still slow and gentle but his strength is returning.

Both: On a visit to Floriade and we discovered 'The Great Hunt'. He read the clues and searched for the answers. She followed him and explored writing it all down, watching and learning from the mentor she admires so much. She has missed him this week while he has been sick and was so pleased he was ready to play again.

37/52

 "A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014."

Orlando: He has become a Joey Scout! So proud of his uniform he is too (first uniform as he doesn't have one for School) He has loved every week and is becoming a part of a wonderful team of kids, developing a new community for himself.

Matilda: She is in love with the flowers that herald the start of Spring. The garden is bursting and she is dancing from one flower to the next declaring and showcasing it's beauty to the world.

Pair:  The iPhone has created a new relationship. He is the film-er, recorder, choreographer. She is the performer, the presenter and the actress. We have to download the data weekly to keep up with the storage.

36/52

 "A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014."

Orlando: Inspired by older peers at school he requested to learn how to knit. YES!!! I would LOVE to pass this knowledge on to you!

Matilda: The first signs of Spring in Canberra is the wattle. It's buds burst and bring sunshine to the naked trees. Tilly has been on a wattle hunt for a week. All of her car trips consist of "Wattle! Wattle! Wattle More Wattle Wattle!" I love how in-tune with her world she is.

Pair: We brought some garden beds, Orlando said "these look easy to put together" and so I set them the task. Work together to build all 6 new garden beds. What a team they are!!

Sharing Skills

I don't excel at many things but I can do a pretty good job at most of them. The age old 'Jane' of all trades, master of none! 

A wise woman once mocked me saying "Of course you have lost interest in it, you have figured out how to do it, so it is no longer a challenge!" I think this really hit the nail on the head. 

I love learning how to do new things. Racking up the skills, feeling that if I needed to I could make most things for myself, without the need of the shops.

I also love sharing these skills, learning from others, teaching others. I have a strong belief in crafts and cooking skills being passed on from one person to another. Usually through shared experiences and communal moments. 


Learning to cook something new while sharing wine or having a bench full of little bottoms, all eager to nut out how to crack that egg without getting shell, or crank the pasta machine and see the spaghetti come out.

Sitting in the sun or around a fire with a pot of good tea and teaching someone how to crochet or read guitar tabs. Sitting side by side and mosaic-ing with someone, continually learning from each others techniques. 

The world is full of teachers and those eager to be taught.

Orlando has asked me to teach him how to knit. I have been waiting for his interest and with me doing quite a lot of knitting of late, I was not surprised at the request.

I have a delicious memory of my Grandmother teaching me to knit. She had a little poem that has stayed with me through many 'non-knitting' decades ready to be recalled as soon as I picked the needles up again. It went:

"In the rabbit hole,

round the tree, 

out the rabbit hole,

and off!"

So Orlando selected his wool, we choose some bigger needles to begin with and set to work. 

He took a movie of my instructions to remind him later if her needed (talk about techno-native generation) He settled himself in the crook of my arm and off we went. Hand in hand to begin and then just that little poem being repeated over and over.

He caught on really fast, seems interested, has come back 4 times in 2 days. I am loving that he is at an age where he can start to comprehend these more complex tasks and his fine motor control is developed enough to achieve what he needs.

Another skill shared in the beauty of a communal experience. One that hopefully Orlando will teach someone else one day.

35/52

We love a good dress up at our place! 

So when the party invite came saying 

"Dress up as your favourite character from a book" 

That's exactly what we did!

 "A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014."

Orlando: As Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third (How to Train your Dragon)

Matilda: Sleeping Beauty (or any other Disney Princess she feels like at the time)

33/52 - Gardens

 "A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014."

Matilda: She is creating a garden of her own to make the cubby look beautiful. Chook dirt added, some 'huge' worms lovingly found, fondled and hidden back beneath the soil. The flowers are the important bit, along with the worms, maybe we will throw a few bulbs in somewhere too.

Orlando: He is creating a garden of his own, to have control over what is planted. Plants are chosen with great care, tags read, depth measured to perfection, spacing even and ordered. Worms are noted, observed and left to their devices. There is much anticipation as to what will be and how big things will grow.

Pair: Playing music is a big thing in our house hold at the moment. These two have always been drawn to the piano - at the moment there is a lot of collaboration in their masterpieces.

Joining with Jodi

Beauty in Black and White

The end of the school holidays has come too soon, we need another week at least. 

Today we donned the downs and went-a-walking...

There is something beautifully classic and simple about black and white photography. 

No colours to mix it up and confuse it, just the beauty in the details. 

Beauty in the tones and contrasts. 

In the shadows.

Beauty in the positive and negative spaces. 

We had a day full of beauty. 

Beauty in bush, granite tors, streams, and SNOW!

All beautiful, 

all contrasting, 

all unique.

23/52 - Attitudes

With bodies and brains growing we are observing many different phases. When they are so small the changes are more physical, but now that they are bigger it is their personalities that go through phases. We know they are all phases that will pass, but at the moment our house is full of attitudes... I look forward to this one shifting :)

"A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014."

Matilda: A new sulk has begun, she is going all quiet and refusing to talk. I guess it is a very different way of getting attention, when her brother tries to get it from being loud and in your face.

Orlando: Now that he is 7, he seems to think the world should serve him... we're working on shifting this perception, but in the process we are seeing this look... a lot!

Pair: Nan's garden in the afternoon sun is a great place to explore and play :)

Joining with Jodi

Rock and Gem Party

He is 7! It has happened already! Now I need to figure out how to parent a 7 year old! I haven't done that before.

Every 2nd year we support our children to organise themselves a birthday party. Orlando has done a few now and he loves the process.

This year he had a dilemma as to which 'theme' to choose (he is passionate about many things) so we planned them all! Through this process there was a clear winner. A theme that he has been passionate about for a long time and was going to make for a really cool party.

Rocks and Gems!

Here is what he planned...

Invite

Tools

Each guest was provided a bucket with a magnifying glass, paint brush, pair of tweezers and a tool for excavation. These were used in all the activities and then taken home at the end. 

Activities

Excavation - Sandpit was buried with bones, real fossils, polished gems, shells and an assortment of other 'treasure'

 Fossicking - Big tubs full of sand, water, chip gems, shells and large gems. Scoops, real fossicking sieves and gold pans made it feel even more authentic.

Rock Dig - We had a lot of fun creating a plaster and sand rock dig. We followed the tutorial over at 'longlivelearning'. We had great fun making them before hand and 3 of them lasted the whole party, and now, 3 weeks after the party, they are getting close to being finished. They were very popular and the party and the kids got a real sense of achievement when they finally got out a treasure.

Gold and Gem Mine - I forgot to take a photo of this! We got a kids tunnel and a small tent and covered the whole thing in MANY black plastic bags. This made it completely dark inside. We then spray painted a bucket full of normal rocks gold. These rocks we hidden all through the tunnel and tent. So when the kids went in with a head torch it lit up the gold for them to collect. We hid some large rough cut gems in there also.

I am not a big fan of competition at birthday parties. So near each experience was a bucket for you to place the treasures you had excavated or found. This served two-fold, if an activity was wiped clean, we could re-hide treasures, but also made the morning feel like a communal effort. We were all working together to excavate as much as we could. At the end of the party we collected all the buckets and put it into 2 really big trays. One of the kids said "WOW look at all the work we have put in! We have all collected so much!" (my non-competitive heart sang)

Then everyone collected 20 of their favourites to take home from the party, along with their tools.

Cake

This is always the first thing Orlando plans. Pinterest is a wonderful tool when it comes to ideas for cakes. There are some very talented cake decorators out there... I am not one of them. I can usually make a cake look pretty good but when thinking of rocks... A friend had her sons birthday party a few weeks earlier and she had made EDIBLE GEODES. They were IMPRESSIVE! So we got to thinking and thought that we might use this idea to make a geode cake topper.

Not all went to plan, I learnt a lot. But we had some crystal caves to use and found some chocolate rocks to add to the 'rock-i-ness'.

Inside was chocolate mud with jube lollies baked though it (like gems in the dirt). I DON'T recommend doing this... and wont be doing it again :) They made the cake really hard to cut and all sank to the bottom. They were hard to eat also.

Food

Well the food all needed to be rock - related so we had...

Chocolate Chia Seed Balls
Caramel Macadamias
Chocolate Rocks
Caramel Pop Corn Balls
Rock Cakes
Pretzels (with Salt Crystals) 

We also added -
Homemade Sausage Rolls and Spinach Rolls
Prawn Cutlets
Fruit Platter
Cheese Platter

Natural Beauty

I had a rare 'spare' day. So my girl and I went exploring. Although it is late in Autumn, the sky was clear and the sun was shining. It was BEAUTIFUL! 

I love exploring with children as they see beauty everywhere. Things that my adult mind sees as a weed, messy or misses completely, they see.

Matilda and I have made a deal. If she sees something special, I'll photograph it for her. Leave it in its home for others to enjoy and we will take home the photograph.

Today her eyes were particularly attuned to fungus - we keep the terms mushroom and fungus quite separate to avoid confusion. Mushrooms = in the fridge and we eat them. Fungus = outside and where you are likely to find fairies living - look but don't touch.