Green fingers and diabolos

On the way to a party today girl monkey mentioned that her teacher has a poorly garden. Apparently everything that grows gets either eaten by slugs or dies straightaway she told me. She then asked me about green fingers and why hers weren't green. I just love those questions. Often I will make up a story but as it related to her teacher I simply had to explain what was meant by green fingers and that we were going to put this into practice after the monkeys came back from their parties. So here we are : cress sowing in the shape of a gingerbread man or woman. The cookie cutters were kindly lent to me on a semi-permanent basis by my friend Liz who had them for a while but never used them. Funny enough I thought we'd be making lots of biscuits with the cutters but I find them rather large as a treat. They are great though as templates for Christmas decorations and making cress figures. 

To make the shapes we bought some cotton wool (in a pleat, not the balls) and tore of a piece slightly bigger than the cutter. We then laid this on a small plastic plate, moistened the cotton wool, put cutter on top and filled this with the cress seeds. We used one packet for the two of them. We covered the plate with cling film and it is now waiting to grow in our utility room that doubles as a green house. The monkeys are very excited about this project.

I am getting into party overdrive. There are so many children's and adult parties going on at the moment, great fun but hectic. Tomorrow is the school's Summer Fair and we are really looking forward to that. But more exciting, I am trying to put together girl monkey's juggling party. She really loves circus acts and is mesmerized by diabolos, spinning plates and poi. I am scouring the net for some fabulous finds for her. I never thought I could get so excited about children's parties but the best fun I have had so far this year was organising boy monkey's pirate party, I'd love to do that all over again. I hope I can match it with the juggling party......

FLY and be Green

My intention was to create a basket full of brooches today but I got side tracked and realised I was a SHE (sidetracked home executive). In order to put me on track I have recently signed up on the flylady.net site. It is just brilliant! As the monkeys are helping me by pleasing the Housefairy I needed to do something myself and although some people think I was born organised it is more like organised chaos in my life. OK moving house 4 times in 5 years didn't help and having too many projects on the go doesn't make it any easier but still that shouldn't be an excuse. 

If you like being told what to do then FLYlady is fabulous. I now get daily emails to remind me what I should be doing, such as clearing out the plastic tub cabinet (don't we all have one with lids that do not match the pots?), or decluttering your hotspots for no more than 10 minutes. FLYlady believes we shouldn't spend more than 15 minutes a day doing housework and if I understand her correctly one hour of power cleaning a week. I am now getting in the habit of setting my alarm for 15 minutes every morning and it is unbelievable how much I can get done in that time. After I drop of the monkeys at school, I make myself a coffee (I never start the day without, it's the one unhealthy habit that I could not ever give up), catch up on the news, set my alarm and tackle one room. I can then start crafting without feeling guilty. I try to do 15 minutes at the end of the afternoon as well though, I am obviously still a FLYbaby. For those of you who had children and didn't like GIna Ford's method, you might not be too keen to become a FLYlady but if you're anything like me and raised kids with Gina's book in your hand, this could be a saviour.

As I got into this home organising thing today I got myself Ecoballs and Dryer Balls, and printed off some information to teach the monkeys a bit more about the environment. I love being green and wish more would be done to save our planet. Having grown up in Holland I was used to recycling and it came as a shock when I moved to London some 15 years ago that there wasn't a paper or bottle bank in sight. In the village I lived as a child paper was always recycled (and I am talking nearly 40 years ago if not more), plastic and glass bottles had a deposit on them and well, tins we used to keep to make stilts, containers for keep sakes etc. Dad hardly ever threw anything out that he could re-use. He still keeps a lot, his shed is hilarious. 

Meanwhile I have thought of a little green project I can do with the monkeys after school tomorrow: we can sow love heart or teddy bear cress figures. That should keep them entertained for a week or two. The holidays are coming up and my list of things to do is getting endless, could we please take the rest of the year off?