Andrew turns 28 today, here's the cake we made him, a chocolate Jaffa cake. It's just a standard chocolate cake, with the addition of crushed Jaffas. Evie calls it the happy birthday cake.
The girls gave Andrew the Ostheimer father, this is how we found him earlier- holding the baby :)
I just took the girls for a walk down to our local shopping strip to run a couple of errands, I had seen these gorgeous Easter chocolates in our local fruit and vegetable shop yesterday, so thought I'd buy some for Easter next time Evie fell asleep in the pusher. Well, today was the day. The Europeans really know how to do Easter don't they? Beats some of the garish Easter egg packaging I've seen around.
And this little Ostheimer rabbit hutch has been squirrelled away for a little while now. Looks like we'll be celebrating Easter a day early, as Andrew is heading to the USA for work early Easter morning.
I've been trying to figure out what to do with this corner play area, whether we should try to make a playstand or two, or get some sort of low, wide bookcase. Anyway, I came up with a temporary solution- bringing our old TV cabinet inside and covering it with a play silk for a farm play area, there is a cupboard underneath so we can store a few toys in there. I need to get some more baskets, to separate different toy types ie puppets, puzzles, dress ups, blocks, animals. I think it'll be a work in progres for a while, but the rearranging seems to have freshened up imaginative play for Evie.
Top of the old TV cabinet with farm scene. I apologise for the darkness of the photos, this house doesn't have a lot of great light, this room in particular.
Don't you love the scenes that kids make with their toys? I think the Evi doll riding the reindeer and the "gnome" riding the horse is pretty cute. The "gnome" is one of the seven dwarves that I mistakenly called gnomes when I gave them to Evie, the name instantly stuck, so it's Snow White and the seven gnomes I guess. Possibly more politically correct. By the way, the pink "gnome" is missing, anyone know of his whereabouts?
I've finally put together a summer nature table after putting the nativity scene away- we don't seem to have many surfaces for decoration in this house, and Christmas decorations took any available space we had. We had to put our hall table in the garage as our hall isn't big enough for it :( There's the Ostheimer ducks, pond and bridge, Kinder Kram boat, Gerda Muller Summer book, and 2 little mermaids from here:
This is our little Christmas tree, a potted woolly bush, which is native to Albany, Western Australia. It is called the woolly bush because it feels so soft to touch. It is decorated with 7 Ostheimer angels, it needs a star on top though. Hopefully we'll get a few Christmases out of it before planting it in the garden.
Now it's the first of December, I'm "allowed" to put up Christmas decorations, my eager little helper just wants to play with them all though :) Here's our Ostheimer 'mini' nativity scene, minus the king's animals, hopefully they'll join us next Christmas. Evie is loving all the angels in our house :)
