This week was a fun and relaxing one as we continued to enjoy our summer holidays, and celebrated my birthday as well.
A dear homeschool friend, who lives on the other side of town, went away for the week and I house sat for her. I incorporated it with my daily walk, walking up to their place, checking their mail, having a look at the place to make sure everything looked secure, and then walking home.
The photo on the left is a little tiny skink that was running around their back verandah, and the photo on the right is one I simply snapped as I headed out to walk to their place and also run some other errands for the day.
I decided I want to start working on our vast collection of jigsaw puzzles that we own. So I searched through our collection, chose this one, sorted all the pieces, and got started on it one evening. Munchkin was my helper and we got about half the border put together before we stopped for the night. Sadly, I completely forgot to photograph our progress so I'll have to remember to do that the next time we work on it.
My birthday was a low key day as I don't make much fuss about it as I continue to get older. While hubby and Monster were out driving around doing errands they discovered this treasure at a local op-shop and surprised me with it when they got home. I absolutely love it. I think it is a noodle bowl (what you can't see in this photo are two notches on either side that I think are meant for chopsticks) but I will use it for all sorts of different things.
Munchkin (my resident baker) baked special brownies for dessert for my birthday. They are from a boxed mix, but they are a premium brand that I only treat myself with occasionally, so it was pretty special. Sadly, I think our oven runs a touch hot and the brownies were a bit overcooked for my liking, but they were still delicious.
As my birthday fell on a Tuesday I decided it was Taco Tuesday and made all the fixings for tacos and burritos for dinner, which the boys were absolutely thrilled about. All in all, it was a wonderful day, and when I wasn't cooking or overseeing Munchkin baking, I spent my day doing activities that I love.
I've started purchasing some of the things we need for our new school year. I did an online order of school supplies and everything arrived this week. Most of the order was "boring" stuff - pens and notebooks and such - but Monkey got a new set of high quality coloured pencils and he got right to work trying them out.
This is Monkey's first creation with the new pencils, though if you look carefully you can see that it isn't quite complete because his guiding pencil marks can still be seen above the rose.
Project number two with the new pencils...
As you can see from the left hand photo, Monkey chose a photo online using his phone, and then used that as a guide to draw the photo. By using a photo online on his phone, it allowed him to zoom in and look carefully at the details. He used his new coloured pencils for the drawing and added white paint for highlights.
The finished rose drawing...
Another walk up to my friend's house and I was pleasantly surprised to discover two Galahs in the next door neighbour's yard. I followed them for a few feet and tried to get some good photos of them, but they were NOT interested in cooperating and ultimately crossed the road to get away from me.
I took Munchkin with me on my last day of house sitting (Thursday) as he wanted to jump on their trampoline. However, he discovered the warm, humid weather meant a shorter jumping session then he would normally enjoy.
We were also amused to find that because of some recent rain, their yard was covered in small mushrooms.
A third art project with the new pencils... this time a drawing of the Earth showing the side of the Earth that is in darkness and some of the lights from towns and cities... again using the technique of dots of white paint over the top of the pencil.
The finished product...
Monkey left one of his sketch books on the dining table so in the early morning I flipped through it carefully and photographed some of his recent drawings as I'm trying to make sure we document everything in case anything gets lost or damaged. It also makes it much easier to see his progress and growth over time...
This is a portrait of Barack Obama sometime mid last year and still hasn't completed it yet. I decided to go ahead and photograph it as incomplete, but will suggest he finishes it before we have homeschool registration at the end of 2023 as I'm sure our AP will enjoy seeing his progress with portraiture.
We finished off our week with Munchkin attending a school holidays event at the library. It was a very simple craft activity (scratch art) but he LOVES scratch art so it was absolutely perfect. While he worked on his scratch drawing I scanned the junior non-fiction section of the library for new books to add to our studies for the 2023 school year.
Munchkin's independent reading for the week...
He has discovered, and LOVES, the All the Wrong Questions series by Lemony Snicket. I'm not interested in reading this series aloud so the boys read it independently if it interests them. So for two of the three boys have loved this series.
We discovered these books a couple of years ago and they two younger boys loved them but the library only had the first book in the series... now they have all five and the boys are enjoying reading all of them.
No COVID for me this January to destroy all my plans for the early part of the month. So I am walking most days, doing the Yoga with Adriene January challenge, and Monster is helping me get started with some weight training. My plan is to have the habit in place well enough by the end of the month to continue these healthy habits even when the addition of the start of school means things get more hectic.
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