Apple Stamping

It was inevitable, with all the apples in the house, that apple stamping would happen.  I have been unable to find other crafts using apples on pinterest.  We took the painting outside and it was much more fun than indoors.  Cricket, who is not that interested in crafting and painting, even got stuck in and enjoyed himself.

The last idea with adding numbers I got off the babycentre blog called baby.co.uk.  I am trying to teach Cricket some numbers and thought this might engage his interest.  I am well pleased with the result..the kids had good fun outdoors and these cheerful garlands have brightened up my kitchen door.

pumpkin and Apple Soup

Here is a quick Pumpkin and Apple Soup recipe.  I am so enjoying making soups at the moment...it's still a new thing for me so when I make one and it is delicious I get really excited.  The most exciting thing is how easy this one was to make.  I almost feel like I didn't make it and and am cheating somehow.  I found this easy pumkin soup recipe in the NetMums "Feeding Kids" cookbook and I was reluctant to change it in any way as why mess with perfection,  but I added an apple as we have so many of the blighters and it turned out scrumptious.

Pumpkin and Apple Soup Recipe

2Tbsp Olive Oil
1 Medium Onion, chopped
1 Garlic Clove, chopped
1 box frozen Pumkin pieces 450g (found mine at Albert Heijn)
2 chicken or veg stock cubes in a litre of boiling water
1 Apple, peeled and chopped...optional
1tsp tumeric....optional

Fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil till translucent.  Add the frozen pumpkin, apple pieces and tumeric and cook for five minutes.  Add the stock and simmer until the pumkin is tender.  Blend it all together and serve.

Recommended to serve with hot buttered toast and a bowl of grated cheddar cheese to throw on the toast or the soup...yum!  I have never seen my kids so excited about lunch and never seen so much food go down the hatch.  I think I heard the work "delicious" a hundred times = happy mommy!

 I forgot to add the apple in the picture..but very simples

One of those days

Our mornings and days generally bump along pretty well...we have our routine down pat and the kids are so good at getting ready and cleaning up, etc. and then every now and again it's one of THOSE days.   Don't pretend you don't know what I am talking about, we all have them in some excrutiating form or another.  I can pinpoint the problem though...zombie children overtired from school/nursery school who have slept badly in turn causing Mommy to sleep badly.  You would think with an excrutiatingly early rise by absolutely everybody, that there would be plenty of time to get ready for school...and you would be wrong.  The more time you have, the later you are going to be.   So the zombies got up early early because at the crack of dawn Cricket re-discovered the new Ikea book tub that I had put in his room for handy bedtime reading.  He obviously found his "What the Ladybird Heard" book because we all woke to the sound of cows mooing, ducks quacking, geese honking, you get the picture.  It was unexpected is all I can say.  We all trooped down.  They all wanted weetabix, but there were no bananas so I made porridge.  This did not go down well..cue wailing for weetabix, falling around and refusal to sit at the breakfast table.  I ignored the problem hoping it would go away.  No fresh bread, but aha pita breads in the freezer.  Heating ovens and leftover chicken for the pitas.  Exploding nappy!  More wailing because the porridge is now cold.  Heating ovens, chicken, porridge and milk for coffee.  Sandwiches made tick, gym bag packed tick, nursery bag packed tick, looking for dutch books for my lesson -why are they never in the same place and oh shoot, I have not done my homework.  Quickly sit and dash it down.  Get dressed, get dressed, get dressed, sit on potty, sit on potty, oh dear, one of Cricket's socks is full of porridge - collect new socks upstairs and come down again and oh dear, Tiger's one sock has holes - collect new socks upstairs and come down again.   Cricket trips over the potty sending wee flying in all directions..Ohhh dear, Tiger has stood in the wee and his sock is wet - collect new socks upstairs and come down again.  The lounge is strewn with pyjamas, porridge socks, wet socks, holey socks, wee, upturned potty.  Offer stars, points, cash, anything for the cleanup to swing into action.  It usually does, but today I just get zombie faces.  Get dressed, get dressed, zombie faces.  Clean teeth - have to persuade Cricket that his shark teeth need to be sparkly and white and not poofy and dirty.  He takes time considering this as moments tick by.  He agrees and teeth are successfully cleaned.  Find shoes!  Zombie faces.  I find that Cricket has left his shoes outside all night (or I have as I did not know they were there) and they are wet.  I stick him in wellie boots and scream for Tiger to get his shoes ONNNNNN.  I grab Cricket, four bags, a dummy, a puppy(his knuffel), dutch homework and load the car.  Just one child left now with no shoes on.  Finally we are all ready and off we go, but oh darn I have forgotten the slip I needed to get back to the teacher last Friday.  At one point in the morning it was in my hand and I was determined that today was the day to remember.  Never mind!  Only one EPIC fail of the day...in all the chaos I did not put my bin out.  Usually the husband does this for me and he is away in Denmark.  I am upset...I don't care about the crazy zombie morning...I want lovely empty Wednesday bin.  Meh!

How bad can an "afspraak" be?

In the Netherlands the kids "afspreek" with one another...or make playdates with one another whilst at school and most days you have a request to have a child in your home or for your child to go off with some random stranger.  Firstly, it always amazes me that despite me being the strange foreign lady who should be avoided at all costs, the other moms/dads are very keen to offload their kids onto me.  That's a whole other issue, but we don't have all day.  I am actually getting quite fond of these playdates as generally the kids are easy and they let Cricket, the small one, join in with them and be one of the big guys.   Because Tiger is reluctant to go to other houses, I end up with kids in our house most days.  Firstly the ride home from school with this newly obtained person is extremely exciting.  I am always amazed I get home accident-free.  Who knew that three kids could make that much noise.  I am sure people fall off their bikes in fright as the noise machine goes past.  Today, we had a boy that decided it was a good idea to throw the library books around the car and some came flying through to the front.  Of course the others could not resist throwing them back and a book fight ensued.  Okay so the playdate was pure stress from beginning to end and involved broken bottles, drawers and cupboards being emptied, stuff taken out the garage, etc.  The parents did not look impressed that I mentioned bad behaviour.  Ha!  How to make yourself even more unpopular as if being english is not enough.  I actually remember a horror story in the summer where I left the room and came back to the sprinkler INDOORS and sprinkling away.  Almost died!  Feeling quite tired now, so time to put naughty boys to bed.  Night night.

Collecting Stuff

This morning was misty and chilly - about 10 degrees celcius.  The desire to stay under the blanket on the couch was there, but the plan was a walk in the woods, so we dragged ourselves out.  We went to the Wandelbos in Tilburg ...there is a lot in these woods, namely a ramshackle kinderboerderij with stone castle and pancake house (Zeven Geitjes), another kinderboerderij without play area and an outdoor park with amongst other things some tunnels.  But we just walked today and collected sticks, pinecones..ag the usual stuff.  The reason for this was of course for fun, but also for the collections we are working on. 

Finally a bottle of pinecones...you can also see some shells there...and here are some more shells and rocks collected recently at Domburg Beach in Zeeland

Tiger loves collecting and also has a bottle cap and bottle top collection to name a few.  Cricket prefers to collect stones.  Oh yes, so if you are interested, below I have added some pictures of Domburg beach.  What a fabulous afternoon we had.  It was brisk if that is the right term...about 17 degrees, but forget brisk it was freezing on the beach and I felt quite bad that I had only dressed the kids in shorts and fleeces.  It was joyous is the only word to describe it, walking in that bracing wind, collecting sea treasures, laughing and shouting at one another.  We stopped for hot soup and tostis at the beach restaurant which is situated right there in the middle of the sand on stilts...awesome!

apple picking in the rain

What a find...an apple orchard in Eindhoven where you can gather your own apples, the kids can play in the orchard and a very handy pancake house right there.  It had been arranged as a group outing, but the weather was looking awful...dark, grey and rainy.  As the sky started clearing, we started throwing stuff and kids in the car...all systems GO!  Alas, as we turned the first corner, the heavens opened once again and it poured down the whole way.  It is Phillips Fruittuin and about a half an hour from Tilburg.  Thinking I was the only loony who would be in the orchard, I was surprised to see multitudes of people arriving and walking in the rain to the entrance...hoorah for the dutch fortitude.  Well, we found some friends who had also ventured out and the kids had so much fun ...they did not want to stop picking fruit and we ended up with about a ton of apples and pears.  Moms and dads proceeded to sit and drink hot chocolate whilst the kids played together for absolute ages..by now the rain had cleared and the day was balmy.  Not bad, not bad at all for an afternoon outing.

Now the question is what to do with all these appleas and pears.  I have so far only got around to trying my hand at drying apples.  Firstly, take a look at some of our bounty.

Tiger dipping the apple rounds in a mixture of lemon juice, orange juice and water to stop them turning brown.

And wow what a sophisticated system...on a stick on a clothes rack.  Sorry!  I have a husband who seems to have a pathological hatred of putting hooks anywhere...it's very distressing.

We will see how these turn out.  Apparently they need to be in a warm sunny place, which my kitchen certainly is.