Technical hitch.

Back up and running as soon as we can upload pictures again.

Advent Calendar: Day Six!

Today we discovered that yesterday's shoe was filled with chocolate coins, crayons and sitting on top of a notebook for drawing in.

The perspicacious reader will note there are no photos accompanying this entry. The reason for this is simple, and I issue a challenge - please do attempt to feed a child a stack of chocolate and then take a non-blurry picture of them in full-on sugar rush.

Saint Nikolaus filled her shoe because she was a good girl. To show me what a good girl she was, she shared some of her chocolate with me. Later on she refused to share her broccoli with me and ate it all up.

We're doing something right with this kid. She's pretty cool.

Advent Calendar: Day Five!

We had a busy day today. We fled the builders in our house (at 6am, of all the ungodly hours) for a flight that was delayed in the boarding lounge, then in the queue on the stand, then in the air at our destination. We sang Elmo's Song for two hours in order to keep the tired toddler from Epic Meltdown. And here we are at her grandparents' house.

Today's activity is a fairly simple one, considering all the excitement. We're subscribing to the central European tradition of St Nikolaus putting nice stuff into the boots of children who are good through the year. We left the shoe under the tree.

Has she been good enough this year? We shall see.

Advent Calendar! Day Four

Fairly mundane activity today, but one we're trying to instil in her while she's still little enough to think this is fun.

All our glass, plastic and metal is now safely recycled, and my small girl thinks that putting our old stuff into the giant containers where they're collected and taken away to make brand new stuff is the coolest thing there is.

We're doing this today because the builders are coming tomorrow to take our old vintage kitchen away and replace it with a shiny new one. So the toddler and I are fleeing the building site and visiting her grandparents while her long-suffering father takes care of the builders and eats exclusively from the microwave and the takeaway till the new kitchen appears.

We're looking forward to the trip, but not the bit where we don't see Papa for a week.

Advent Calendar! Day Three

We are delighted to report that nobody has that horrible bug any more and so we got into today with great gusto. First, we had to tackle the charity donation we didn't manage yesterday. After some thought, we decided that the toys would be best dropped off at a charity shop for children's items and so off we went.

It was a long walk to the train.

but we saw a very interesting building site. A builder even waved at us.

Fascinating. Right?

I think these trousers might be on their last wearing.

We made it to the charity shop and gave the very nice lady our bag, then we stopped for lunch and came home for a long nap (toddler) and a lot of organising/tidying/covert Christmas organisation (mama). And once the toddler was up, we were onto today's activity: making cakes. The problem with that was that our kitchen is due to be ripped out on Monday so most of our supplies were boxed or otherwise hard to reach. No problem, instead of the planned fudge we made savoury muffins. The recipe comes from a very lovely friend of mine and here it is:

8oz self raising flour
2 oz almost melted butter
2 eggs
150ml milk

Throw it all in a bowl, mix until just combined, add grated or cubed cheese/courgette/carrot/ham/whatever else you have in and put into muffin cases and bake at about 170(F) for 15-20 mins. We added several handfuls of leftover grated cheese, I wanted to add some bacon but couldn't find the small frying pan and didn't want to wash the big one just to make it dirty again.


If my toddler was a bit older, I could have got her to do that bit. Word to the wise.

This is our mix. I can't embed the video of the toddler singing her mixing song for some reason. 

This is my Most Awesome Muffin Pan, oiled and floured.

And the finished product. Cheesy Animal Muffins!

The elephant was the toddler's favourite. She ate him as soon as she could nibble his tusks without wincing from the heat.

I think this lion is my favourite.

Advent Calendar! Day Two

Ironic, really, that today's activity is "Donate a gift to a charity," because my toddler donated a wonderful gift to me yesterday.

It was a generous stockpile of bacteria, meaning that she and I are both somewhat out of sorts and probably not safe for the trek across the city that I'd planned. We have this bag of toys:

and we're currently a bit of a biohazard risk (TMI? you have no idea) so I made an executive decision to send Papa out to see if any of the local shops are accepting donations. If that doesn't work, well then we'll be looking for online opportunities during the day.

Anyone with suggestions please feel free to let us know. From a safe distance.

Advent Calendar! Day One

In this year's advent calendar each pocket contains an activity as well as a tiny chocolate bear. Today, we opened it up to find quite a low-key activity to kick things off.

1: Watch a special Christmas video.

The special video was a Portable North Pole special, a free personalised video from Santa. The toddler's mind was blown - Santa knew her name, knew of her potty-related struggles and even had a photo of her!

You can see our video here.

And how did she react to it?

With chocolate-smeared mouth wide open in astonishment, giving way to slight trepidation as the elves checked which list she was on.

She loved it so much my screen is covered in chocolatey fingerprints. I'd call that a win, sort of.

What will happen tomorrow? I don't know... or do I?