'Tis the Season

Can't believe how quickly this year has gone by! Christmas is just around the corner!! Thankfully I've had the boys' main presents stashed away since the start of the year (train sets for the big boys; wooden bug-themed shape sorter for the Bean) and their stocking pressies 'from Santa' are organised too. Have just gotten all their birthday presents ordered for next year too... how organised am I this year?!

Today we made heart and star shaped Christmas tree ornaments out of salt dough (gifts for the rellies). Was our first go at working with salt dough and I guess I didn't roll it out as thin as I should have (was about 1/2-3/4 of a cm thickness)... but nothing that a good 6 or so hours in the oven couldn't fix!! They seem okay now, nice and solid (but SO not a good day to have the oven on for all that time - it was really hot!). Shmoo & Loo kept staring into the oven, asking 'Are they cooked yet!?!'. The boys will paint the ornaments tomorrow and then we'll get some ribbon hang them with on the w/end. I wonder how long salt dough will last, if I should put a layer of varnish or whatever over them??

I am having a go at making my own vanilla essence/extract too - just vanilla beans and vodka. I love vanilla! We'll see how it turns out in a couple of months.

Hoping to make it to the next homeschooling group meet on Thursday and someone from our community has offered to take us for a ride on her school bus on Friday so the boys are really excited about going on a bus (they have only been on a bus once before, about 2 years ago in Melbourne, and Shmoo was terrified back then!).