Life around here

I did say I’d share some stories and pictures from our Christmas but I think January 22 might officially be too late to even mention the word Christmas so we’ll have to wait until 2019 now for the next full tMatM Christmas roundup.

Although… in case you wondered what last minute looks like…this is Christmas Eve in our basement:

Yes I am holding my head and yes that is Love, Actually.

We woke up to our garden looking like this, though. Peaks and troughs.

And the children came up with a pretty great dad-gift this year:

Could he have wished for anything else under the tree? I can’t imagine so.

Since then: it’s been a bit of a long January hasn’t it! And mr tMatM is away for work this week, so we are operating with a skeleton crew (plus a visiting grandparent, so I really cannot complain).

But before he departed, we were busy. A trip up Island on just about the wettest day of the winter, to Port Renfrew:

I’ve a feeling we’re not in London anymore, Toto.

It remains quite amazing to me that you can drive for a couple of hours here and be somewhere that feels fairly seriously remote.

Very wet. Very happy.

We also got a bit playdough and salt dough happy. (Here and here). I used a really basic salt dough recipe and the children did some relatively competitive salt dough crafting and well the good news is that I’m not raising overly gendered children AT ALL (head in hands). I mean the girls made these ornaments and items of jewellery:

And Jacob made… Viking weaponry:

Including viking helmet.

Two birthdays, two serious mum-cakes:

And a fight over a watch that prompted my making a pretend felt watch for Mim so that she didn’t feel too left out with so many watch-wearers in the house (might have been easier to just buy her a watch)

Life around here: island trips, salt dough, birthday cakes and faux watches. The classic start to a year. How’s your January going?!

tMatM x