Easter favors for Kindergarten

Three days left of school for Term one and 6 sleeps until The Easter bunny visits. There's been much excitement about the holidays, the break from school (I don't think she understands yet!!) and the chocolate that will be coming shortly.
Today as soon as I picked up Isabella she told me how she got Easter eggs from one of the girls in her class today. I totally forgot that all celebrations in kindergarten require gifts of some sort for the whole class. Luckily this usually only entails Easter (chocolate eggs) a birthday (cake or lolly bags) and Christmas (hopefully a Kris Kringle gift for one child). Then there's presents for the teacher at Easter, her birthday, the end of the year and when you're in Kindergarten sometimes every day of the school year. I bet Kindy teachers get a lot of loot during the year. Probably not stuff they'd pick themselves. I imagine they get a lot of flowers that have been picked from gardens with no stems and saved in sweaty hands or pockets, melted chocolate bits lovingly held with warm fingers, drawings, paintings, recycled goods of many varieties. Isabella decorated a cereal box with bits of paper and stickers. Luckily it made its way to school!
Below are photos of how we made our little Easter favors today.

Isabella's 5th Birthday party

The courtyard cleared for party action after the rain cleared.

Today was Isabella's 5th birthday party and we had 7 little people coming over to help celebrate. They were: Amelia, Meg, Jess, Annabelle, Bridget, Kaitlyn and Cooper. I decided to organise a fairy to entertain them and to let me have a chance to touch base with the mums that I usually only get to see in passing. Eg on the way to or from preschool.

I got hold of 'We came here to party' and organised a fairy through the lady in charge 'Kylie'. We were amazingly lucky with the weather today. The forecast was for rain and so I had set up the entire party inside, moving furniture in my craft room to the edge of the room so that there was enough room for them to move. The fairy arrived and the skies cleared and it ended up getting really quite hot! So out we moved them. The party finished while it was dry, but about half an hour later the rain was pouring down and we were thanking our lucky stars that we'd had a dry morning!!

The Great Stuff

Fairy Laura was pretty and her costume was gorgeous. She really could've passed as a fairy! The cupcakes, balloons and party bags were exactly as described. Fairy Laura was on time to the minute! Her punctuality was fantastic and let me relax! She got herself organised quickly as far as set up, chairs, music, costumes etc. The children (all the girls) were engaged the whole time!

The Good Stuff

Fairy Laura arrived 15 minutes early to set up and was stunning in her purple fairy ensemble. She unpacked her car quickly and had Isabella help her. She thought helping Fairy Laura was wonderful! The set up included pink chairs (although the website says they have pink cushions as well - there weren't any), a little white tree with butterflies on it for decoration, a white basket with pink ribbon on it for the prizes, another container full of the fairy costumes, cupcakes for the children(fairy topped ones for the girls and a pirate one for Cooper, the only boy), lolly bags and helium balloons (I had to pay extra for those). She was very polite and friendly and she greeted the children as they arrived. She had the kids engaged the whole time and there was very little noise coming from them. They played some cute games outside and were all very happy. The prizes were good quality and the kids loved them so much that many of them came inside to show 'mum' what they had won. Very cute.

The not so good Stuff

So the issues I had with Fairy Laura were her arrival in my house chewing on gum. It kind of ruined the wholesome fairy goodness that my five year old needed. She did get rid of this before any of the kids arrived though. Although Fairy Laura greeted the kids as they arrived it seemed that she had nothing for them to do in this time other than sit on their little pink seats. I think I would've liked to see some story-telling on a special 'story mat' or her putting on their dresses while waiting for the others to arrive. The children arrived between 10 and perhaps 10:15. So I feel that 15 minutes of that time could've been better spent. The Fairy party didn't really cater for boys, although they said that they did. I asked if they could supply something for the little boy that was coming to wear and they said 'no' in a round about way. I ended up going out and buying a little pirate costume which I'm sure will come in handy in the dress-up box for when we have boys over to play dress-ups or for when Hamish is old enough to play. I'm not sure if quiet always equals good fun! But it did mean that the parents had a chance to drink a hot cuppa! Supposedly the party says 2 hours, but in reality they don't stay for the 2 hours. Fairy Laura arrived 15 minutes before the party and then packed up at 11:30, half an hour before the end of the party. I thought she was going to stay for the cake, but to be honest I spoke with so many party places that they may not have said this. I really should write down what exactly is on offer shouldn't I! The only other thing that worried me was that Fairy Laura took off all her fairy stuff before she finished packing up which I thought broke the illusion of 'magic' that she had created. I would have liked to see her disappear in her fairy outfit.

So I was happy to pay the money in the end and had a fantastic time at Isabella's birthday party. She had an awesome time too and really that is the main thing. I think the little things that I nit-picked wouldn't even have been noticed by most people, but I'm very fussy!

The thank you I sent to all the mums.

Josh playing Lego with Cooper to keep him happy.

Sammy being Cooper for a minute!

Bella having her hair sprayed with glitter.

At the end of the party. I made it!

All the gorgeous girls and a handsome young man.

Changing it up...

I'm stuck to the couch with a sleeping Hamish lying on me and the computer perched on my lap. I can't move for fear of waking him up so I thought I'd update my blog with another free background from the cutest blog on the block. Poor Hamish is still very snotty and is snuffling on me like a pig searching for truffles.
Too late!! He's awake. He just started bobbing up and down on my chest like he's in a bobbing for apples game. Very funny!! He's attached now and relatively happy.
So today was a day of catching up with housework and reorganising my craft room. Hamish slept for 3 hours today which is unheard of in this house. So I used the time wisely and tidied, spray and wiped, vacuumed, loaded and unloaded the dishwasher twice, put a load of washing on (hubby hung quite a few loads out today. In our house I'm very lucky as he is in charge of the washing. Lucky me!! A big thank you to you honey!! XXOOXX) dusted, wiped down all the photo frames in the house and changed some things around in our room (the decorative bits). Since Hamish was still sleeping after all of this I then started on the craft room. I managed to unpack the last of the cardboard boxes in there and got rid of a whole lot of rubbish.

An unused photo frame. Will change out the yellow I think.

I even managed to make a little bit of craft. Not very interesting, but I thought the kids would like to know what we're having for dinner and if anyone wanted to cook they could see what was on the menu for the week and then make something. This of course is wishful thinking, but my darling husband has started to cook more often and the two oldest are showing a smidgen of interest. Maybe this will help.
Dave got everything ready outside for him to start painting the cot tomorrow and for me to paint the inside of my scout cupboard that Dave got for me for FREE. I need it to finish my craft room, so I'm keen to get it painted.

She said this is for when she turns five. See the '5' in the middle.

Isabella LOVED having the craft stuff more accessible in the craftroom and spent a good couple of hours happily sticking bits of paper and sparkles to paper and then using the super patterned scissors to cut more paper and stick that on and then use textas to colour it all in.
A good day was had today by all! And a very productive one for me. Yay me!!

The Craftroom Cupboard first coat

I finally had a little time to paint after getting the painting supplies I needed. Hamish was being a good boy and actually slept when I had some energy. This doesn't happen that often. Isabella was also wanting to help but was prepared to draw for the hour it took me to paint the first coat of paint on the cupboard as long as she could paint afterwards. First I painted over the dents that had been filled and spots I didn't think the roller would get into. Then I rolled away to my hearts content. It didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. Isn't that always the way! An hour all up.
This is after only one coat. The only problem was the awful paint smell in the house for a good day after. Dave put an onion in the room to help with the smell. I'd never heard of this. It seemed to work. He put half an onion in a bowl of water.
Afterwards I took Isabella outside to do magic water painting. She loved it! Very cheap clean fun that entertains for hours. All the kids have loved painting with water.