Vegies, rain and craft...oh my!

Woke up to rain this morning which is lovely after such a hot and humid few weeks..the heat seemed to descend upon us so quickly this year. The gardens are really enjoying the rain and i am loving not having to use water!

I was planning to begin harvesting some of the garlic today after reading Linda's post here . I have been a bit confused about when to start pulling them up but they are looking pretty straggly now. However, now that we have rain i am going to have to wait until they dry out again i think after reading Linda's tips.

This is how one of the garlic patches looks at the moment...do you think it's ready to pull up?

This is today's little harvest.....some of these will go toward tonight's dinner of silverside with parsley sauce. I love the smell of silverside simmering away in the slowcooker! I add an onion, garlic, cloves, brown sugar, mixed herbs and worcestshire sauce to my water....not sure why, just how my mum did it i guess and it tastes good! How do you cook silverside? I always make parsley sauce and mashed potato with lots of veg to serve. Leftover impossible pie and homemade custard for dessert...Yum.

The toddler twosome had fun with some Goop Play this week.....

Goop play is a great activity for younger children as it does make a mess but actually dries and just brushes off....everything comes out in the wash and i think it is so important to let children make mess and explore a medium in every way they want to. Tara actually took some over to the fruit trees in little cups and poured it on the base.

 

Goop is just 1 part cornflour and 1 part water with some edicol dye or food colouring or just leave white is fine...a higher ratio of cornflour to water gives it a mouldable feel and allows little fingers to make balls and pull up large strings before adding more water and making runny again!

We also 'painted' the fence with some dishmops and water....the water turned colourful as we had previously painted with the dishmops and paint and obviously some dye still left in the fibres. Little hands love to paint everyday things around the yard!

We also did a little more contact paper 'sticking'.....this activity has been very popular and the toddler twosome have enjoyed picking out the items they like best to add to their sticky paper...rearranged many times. Easiest way i find is to tape some contact (sticky side up of course!) to a window or table and then when the masterpiece is finished you just turn it over and stick to the window or table.....children love to admire their creativity over and over.....great fine motor and eye hand coordination activity.....relatively mess free too which is always nice for a change!

It also turned into a great game for Tara who likes to pick things up and bring them to Mummy...she went around finding all the dropped collage items and brought them back to the table....she loves to put things where they 'belong'....

The rain looks like it is setting in for a few days and Lismore is on flood watch again so looks like we will have to forgo outside time for a little while....activity ideas for toddlers stuck inside most welcome!

Have a nice day all...thanks for stopping by!

Jode x Pin It