Family

Dinosaur Weekend!

| brightblueballoon

I have been meaning to post about our 🦖DINOSAUR WEEKEND!

Last weekend we randomly decided to make our weekend dinosaur themed. It began while reading one of our favourite books about dinosaurs which lead to crafts, a library visit to find more dinosaur books, drawings, playing with all the dinosaur toys and more.
The kids absolutely loved it and kept coming up with ideas to add to our weekend theme. And in a way it helped to minimize those post holiday blues. Hubby and I even watched the Jurassic World movies 😂

Swipe to see some of our activities:

🦖Craft:
– Dinosaur puppet using coloured paper, glue and a paper bag

🦕Books:
– Lift-the-flap Questions and Answers about Dinosaurs from Usborne books
– Mr Men Adventure with Dinosaurs by Roger Hargreaves
– The Dinosaur That Pooped A Planet by Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter
– Step into Reading Jurassic World Dangerous Dinosaurs adapted by Courtney Carbone
– The Dinosaur Atlas by Don Lessem

🦖Drawing:
– Followed tutorials from @artforkidshub – Followed drawing instructions from The Dawing Book For kids 365 Daily Things to Draw: Step by Step from Woo! Jr Kids Activites

I have made a new hashtag #ourweekendtheme om @instagram
Feel free to join in and please tag me if you do so I can share in stories. The idea is to have fun with it and not feel the pressure. Keep it simple or be extravagant whatever provides the most fun. Choose your own theme or join in with ours.


We will strive to have a different theme each weekend 🙂

Thanks for reading and visiting brightblueballoon.com
We would love to know your thoughts in the comments below
Image and text
(C) Lisa Moralee McLardy


Craft: Mix and match robots

| brightblueballoon

This week we have had fun creating our own mix and match robots. The boys really enjoyed them and it kept them occupied for a while.

After drawing the robots on A4 paper we coloured them in.

I cut each picture into three strips and then the boys had fun mixing and matching.

What kind of mix and match characters would you make?

I think we will make aliens next 🙂

Happy page turning x

©️ Lisa Moralee McLardy

Happy Pancake Day!

| brightblueballoon

It’s pancake day, yay! This post was from last year but I wanted to share it again.

Hope you get a chance to enjoy some pancakes for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

🥘

Pancakes for breakfast and dinner too

Maybe a salad for lunch – yes that will do

Gather the ingredients there are seven on the list

Get ready to mix

2 cups of flour, 2 and a half teaspoons of baking powder, 3 tablespoons of sugar and a pinch of salt.

In a separate bowl beat two eggs and 1 and a half to 2 cups of milk. Then add to the dry ingredients and mix, mix, mix

Lastly add two tablespoons of melted butter until you have a silky smooth batter.

Heat up a pan – not too hot that it splatters.

Cook and flip repeatedly, it should make a lot.

Decorate with blueberries and banana

Don’t forget a drizzle from the maple syrup pot

Pancakes for breakfast and dinner too

Happy Pancake Day to you!

 

*We enjoy having pancakes every Saturday/Sunday for brunch. We have a few allergies in the household so we usually substitute flour with gluten free flour, butter with dairy free spread, milk with soya milk and eggs with egg replacer. They still turn out yummy and the boys love them.

Copyright (C) Lisa Moralee McLardy 2018

We finally had craft /art time!

| brightblueballoon

We finally had craft /art time! ☀️

It’s been rather cold lately but the sun is shining today – making the frost and ice glisten so beautifully.

It’s feel like ages since we took time to do art and crafts. Happy to say we had a much needed chill out, creative session.

Carson (age 2) has been begging me to paint and keeps pointing at the bottles of paint in the storage cupboard. Unfortunately things have been busy and therefore no opportunity to have operation clean up the paint. So we revisited watercolour pencils and watercolour paper. This time we used some of our coffee stencils.

The kids loved the stencils and choosing different colours. Afterwards they painted them with water and a paintbrush. Owen also made use of a water-dropper he had from an old science set. They loved watching the beads of water turn to paint and lifting up the page to watch the colours run.

We will definitely do this again.

Perhaps we will get to those bottles of paint this week…

Happy page turning x

©️ Lisa Moralee McLardy

The bubbles stayed for a while…

| brightblueballoon

The bubbles were invited to play

They floated up

And paused for a moment

Before landing gently in the ground

They decided to stay,

Observing the surroundings,

Reflecting light,

And creating colour

They stayed for a while

Until a curious giant

Could no longer wait to investigate

A quiet pop

Satisfied smile

And swift return to the swing…

.

©️ Lisa Moralee McLardy

Christmas baking, crafts and reading have commenced!

| brightblueballoon

While Owen and Daddy spent Sunday morning at the cinema, Carson and I made the first batch of sugar cookies (gluten, egg and dairy free). I always like to bake a batch as early as possible in the season, a few trial and errors so to speak. Pretty happy with how these turned out though. We divided the dough into three to make different flavours (plain, cranberry & cinnamon and chocolate chip).

A few years ago just before Owen’s first Christmas just we took a trip to Berlin, Germany where they have the famous Ampelmann traffic lights. We bought Ampelmann shaped cookie cutters and it has become a tradition to use these during the festive season. Cant believe that the first batch of cookies is almost finished!

In the afternoon the boys did some Christmas crafts. I cut out tree and snowman shapes out of coloured paper and they decorated them using small round stickers. We attached them to cotton and stuck them up. Owen and Carson had great fun decorating their trees and snowmen and there wasn’t a lot of mess to clean up afterwards!

After dinner we retrieved the Christmas books from storage and had a read and reread.

What festive crafts, baking or reading have you been up to?

Happy page turning x

©️ Lisa Moralee McLardy 2018

The last day of October

| brightblueballoon

It’s the last day of October which means it’s Halloween (and my awesome hubby’s birthday). Great excuse to get up early (this is not out of choice as our boys are early risers) have waffles and light the pumpkins.

The kids get so excited for Halloween. We love to indulge in spooky crafts, stories and baking. So much so that it will probably continue after Halloween.

Thought I would share this illustration from my new children’s book. Which will (fingers crossed) be available soon.

Happy Halloween everyone

And happy page turning!

©️ Lisa Moralee McLardy

This Halloween (and next Halloween)

| brightblueballoon

Meg and Mog by Helen Nicoll and Jan Pienkowski is one of our favourite Halloween books. It was given to the boys at a Halloween party last year and it has been enjoyed many times since.

Meg the witch is getting ready for the spell party. After putting on her black stockings, shoes, cloak and hat she makes an interesting breakfast using 3 eggs, bread, cocoa, a kipper, milk and jam.

“She put it all in her cauldron and stirred it up

There was plenty of breakfast for everyone”

Meg then flies up the chimney with Mog and joins her friends for the spell party. They each add something to the cauldron and chant the spell.

“Frog in a big

Bat in a hat

Snap crackle pop

And fancy that”

A flash and a bang later the spell is complete but it didn’t go according to plan. Meg will have to try again “next Hallowe’en”.

This fun Halloween story is complemented by bold and colourful illustrations.

We recommend reading Meg and Mog this Halloween (and next Halloween)!

Title: Meg and Mog

Author: Helen Nicoll

Illustrator: Jan Pienkowski

Publisher: Penguin

Happy page turning x

©️ Lisa Moralee McLardy 2018

The start of Halloween fun

| brightblueballoon

One of my favourite things is reading Halloween books with the boys. It’s always an exciting task taking the Halloween themed books out of storage and revisiting the spooky tales and characters. They get so excited listening to the stories and looking at the pictures over and over.

Throughout the month we will share Halloween themed books that we love. First up is That’s Not My Witch by Fiona Watt and illustrated by Rachel Wells. This Usborne “touchy-feely” book follows a variety of friendly witches.

“that’s not my witch. Her skirt is too soft.”

Each pages has a bright illustration, Halloween themed colours and a different textured patch. As with all the Usborne “touchy-feely” books the kids enjoyed feeling the different textures throughout the book.

This short and sweet book has been enjoyed many times already. We recommend giving That’s Not My Witch a read.

Title: That’s Not My Witch

Author: Fiona Watt

Illustrator: Rachel Wells

Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd 2017

Happy page turning x

©️ Lisa Moralee McLardy