Ice gem garden decorations

Baby its cold outside, so the girls and i are taking advantage of the cold and creating ice gems to decorate the garden.  After foraging around the garden we were surprised to find there are still pretty and colourful things to be found this time of year.

 Using a collection different size and shapes of pots we placed a sparing amount of water in them and let them freeze for 30 mins and then arranged the foliage on the ice adding another sparing amount of water and letting set again, we then repeated this one more time making up a nice half cm piece of ice.

 After using a metal kitchen skewer dipped in hot water this melted and hole perfectly for threading some twine so we could hang them from the trees outside.

Celebrating Autumn

We are continuing to celebrate Autumn at home last week we went on an Autumn walk and made autumn crowns and this week we are decorating the house, we cant resist making a wreath for the front door and used some of the acorns we foraged for, as well as some pretty fabric maple and oak leaves to add autumnal colours .  Sophie is getting a dab hand at wreath making now, even with the difficultly of an excited Ella wanting to join in by running off with all our crafting bits.  We even made a second small wreath for one of the kitchen windows and to add a bit of warmth and sparkle we mixed rattan light balls to natural oak leaves, ivy and maple florist wraps to lay across the window sill.

Autumn Crown

 Every year we love to go out and explore the change in season from summer to autumn. As we  say goodbye of warm heady days of fragrant flowers these change to the dry seed heads ready for a new year and the crisp nippy air lets us know that soon we will be snuggled up in front of the fire. We watch as each day leave change from green to brown and hedgerows burst forth with burnt orange foliage and bright reds berries.

One thing we love to do is collect nature treasure we find on our walks and in autumn turn these into autumn crowns.

 Sophie is such a nymph of the woods she loves all thing nature and is not afraid to pick up a toad or a daddy long legs to have a closer look and wont fear tromping through the undergrowth wadding past nettle and thistle to see what is growing.

Here is some of the treasure she found we especially love the acorn burst out of what looked like another seed case.

 When we got home Sophie helped as we plated up 3 strands of willow and she used the plated holes to tuck her nature treasures into to make her autumn crown.

Feathered Owls

Sophie and i decided to do some sticking today and a bit board of random bits of paper and glue we thought we would stick feathers instead.

Instead of paper we found these pots, what a great shape for making owls, so we got the glue out and got sticking.

We started with the small pot and the stuck the feathers round the edge one by one the size of the pot was quite good as 1 feather covered top to bottom on it.  Next we had to cover the top so we picked the fluffiest ones for the head and carefully stuck these on too.

Of course we hunted out our biggest roundest googly eyes and stuck these on with a little yellow beak.  Sophie did a good job and mummy didn't get much of a go so made one to out of the bigger pot with Sophie's help, so now we have a mummy and baby owl.  

We also had some coloured feathers and for fun we made a parrot (ish) bird this time we stuck the feathers pointing the other way up.  he looks rather odd but fun and i think we prefer the Owls 

Sodium bicarbonate and vinegar for kids

Seeing as were in the experimenting mood and our Flour clouds went well, today we did more experimenting with Sodium bicarbonate and vinegar.

I set up some pots and cups and put plenty of sodium bicarbonate in each cup and a mixture of glitter and liquid colours and scents so when Sophie added the vinegar not only did it fizz but it gave off different smells, colours and sparkled.

There was lots of laughing and ooooing from Sophie when the pots fizzed and she even got a wiff of the scents i put in too.

After all the fizzing had happened she played happily still spooning the mixture and exploring the consistence.

PART TWO ADDING FAIRY LIQUID 

So today we tried the experiment again but we added fairy liquid to the mix as well of course we added glitter and colour again just for fun.

As you can see the foam this time was thicker and stayed for a lot longer and went on for ever and the more Sophie mixed it with the addition of a little more vinegar it reacted it again and again

We even had a go at trying to make a volcano but the bubbles were so dense and thick they pushed the funnel off the pot so i had to hold it in place and try and take a photo so i didn't get the big explosion part.

 

i have to say my platter we played on came up sparling clean after we had finished