Birthday Funny Face Biscuits

A quick treat for Mr 6 to take to school to share with his class mates for his birthday. Quick, because he only decided at 5pm the night before that he'd like to take something.

I used a gingerbread recipe (the biscuits don't spread too much when cooking) and then iced them and added a malteser nose. Apparently they went like hot cakes. It's always nice when a last minute decision works out nicely.

Minecraft birthday party

Mr 6 is right into anything he can play on the tablet right now, especially minecraft. So for his birthday party we had a bit of a computer game theme.

The cake was candy crush (because it was made with lollies, surely you can't get a much easier cake than that!)

We had one party game. I wasn't sure how it'd go, seeing as I'd just vaguely invented it in my head, but it worked brilliantly and all the kids, from the 1y/o to the 14 y/o wanted to line up and have a go.

Student parting gift

I was so happy how this one turned out. The photo unfortunately doesn't really do it justice. One of the students in my son's class at school is leaving soon, and so I asked the teacher if the kids could all write a few adjectives down to describe her, and I would make a word cloud key ring as a parting gift.

Adjectives are currently part of their curriculum, so the teacher thought it was a terrific idea, and in 4 groups the kids sat down and each came up with a huge number of adjectives describing nice things about the girl who is leaving. I couldn't just use a dozen of them in a key ring and leave the rest un-used, so I bought a $5 frame, painted it pink, decorated it a little and made one large word cloud with all the words.

I hope it makes her feel terrific while she's starting at her new school.

It would also make a terrific teacher's gift.

(Note: the swirl in the middle is where her name went, but I've removed it for privacy sakes.)

Paint and Pastel Self Portrait

This is a portrait Miss 4 did a while back (when she was 3) using the beautiful tutorial at Deep Space Sparkle. Such simple technique but I really love the results. We used poster paints instead of tempera paints (not sure if/what the difference is there) but it seemed to give us the right results.

The best things about this technique were: starting with a U shape (rather than an oval), using 3 circles for eyes, mixing the skin colour and then testing it by putting it on Miss 3's skin, and the look on her face when she'd finished.