The Adventures of Timmy Twinkles 2016

Timmy Twinkles, our festive elf, visits us every year.

This is what he got up to this year.

Day 1. We found that Timmy had been posted to us from the North Pole. Well, I say 'us' but it's addressed to the boys (all three). Anyone else concerned that there's no return address? (Please excuse the large present sticker, it's covering our address).

Day 2, he drew faces on the oranges.

Day 3, he made elf sized biscuits and human sized ones too. Soooo yummy!

Day 4. The boys couldn't find him for ages but they eventually found him behind their bedroom curtains with a bunch of snowflakes.

Day 5, our family photos had been covered in Santa hats.

Day 6 is of course Saint Nicolas Day, who visits us despite our dirty shoes (he's very understanding of this busy mum of three boys, thankfully).

Day 7, again Timmy was hard to find until we left for school and spotted him in the front window with a giant paperchain tree.


Day 8, Timmy had built a Lego Christmas tree featuring two new figurines; an elf and a Santa.

Day 9, Timmy was on a zipline across the living room.

Day 10, there were festive themed activity sheets for the boys, full of mazes, puzzles and colouring in. Timmy even had his own mini version.

Day 11, Timmy was found in the fridge looking rather cold.

Day 12, he'd got breakfast out for the boys.

Day 13, Timmy had written his christmas list.

Day 14, Timmy, Rudolf, Tommy and Kitty were found having an interesting game of sticker face.

I think the rules are; roll an odd number, put a sticker on your face, roll an even number, put a sticker on someone else's.

Day 15, saucy Timmy was found checking out lady elves on my laptop...

Day 16, annoyingly Timmy had finally done the loo roll down the stairs gag.

Day 17, Timmy had worked through a whole box of chocolates. Apparently, some were left in the box but the boys ate them all before I got there.

Day 18, Timmy was found inside a balloon...I mean, how the hell did he get in there? Have you seen the size of his head?

Day 19 and Timmy was enjoying a festive story book with Betty Biscuit.

Day 20, Timmy and Betty Biscuit were found together with some new festive cups and some romantic candle light.

Day 21, TImmy was found enjoying sangria with Sally Snowgirl...leaving both Betty Biscuit and the boys utterly heartbroken.

Day 22, Timmy was missing (someone had hidden him) but he still managed to leave us this delightfully messy note.

Day 23, Timmy must've been having a bit of an 'Up' moment. I can honestly say, more balloons are needed to lift an elf...either that or he needs to lay off the cookies a bit.

Day 24, Christmas eve and there was no sign of Timmy except this note in the tree which told the boys about the festive chocolates he'd hidden all over the living room...

Fun was had, and none of this would have been possible without my darling Mr Strawberry, who often reminded me before I wondered naively off to bed of an evening and held a tired and moaning baby while I quickly set it all up.
I think Ed has probably had enough now, especially as he turns nine in two weeks, but Bean loves to play along and of course next year Zander will be almost two so I'm excited about next year regardless.

Timmy can be found on Instagram, search #elftimmytwinkles.

For more adventures with Timmy Twinkles, check out;

Christmas 2013

Christmas 2014

Christmas 2015

Sensory Sunday: Helium Filled Balloons

Sensory Sunday: Exploring the world with little fat fingers.

***Scheduled post so I can enjoy Christmas day with the family***

I hope you have a very lovely Christmas too

This week, I thought I'd give him some time with the balloons I'd filled for Timmy Twinkles hot air balloon escape. See this post for all of this year's adventures.

Please excuse the influx of bad quality photos. The light in my living room sucks and the room is a tip because it's in that end of a day 'everything has been played with' state, which only takes two minutes to tidy up but we were busy playing.

It should go without saying that this adventure required an extra careful eye, with the high possibility of strangulation, but one shouldn't leave a baby unattended, like, ever, so please don't be concerned with Zander's safety and if you try this at home do be very careful.

During Timmy Twinkles's antics this year, we have discovered how much Zander loves Timmy. He has lovely, grab-able stripy legs and a hat which, apparently, is super to suck on.

Zander enjoyed the consequences of shaking Timmy - all the balloons followed while he tied to the ribbon ends.

He also loved the curled ribbon ends, which were perfect for practising his pincer grip skills.

More balloon shaking.

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#tbt: Preschool Nativity Sheep Costume

Throw back Thursday: taking a look at stuff I've made in the past.

Once upon a time I made an emergency sheep costume for Ed out of two bath towels.

On reflection, it would have been cheaper to buy a costume, but I probably had too many towels at the time anyway. 

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Wreck it Wednesday: Cover This Page in Tape

Wreck it Wednesday: a page from one of my journals.

I created a tree silhouette with sticky tape, but the paint bled through as it dried, so I repeated it in a slightly different colour (hence the two-tone effect) and I rather like the outcome.

About 'Wreck This Journal' by Keri Smith

(Description from Amazon)

It is book for those who've always wanted to draw outside the lines but were afraid to do it. For anyone who's ever wished to, but had trouble starting, keeping, or finishing a journal or sketchbook comes Wreck This Journal, an illustrated book featuring a subversive collection of suggestions, asking readers to muster up their best mistake - and mess-making abilities to fill the pages of the book (and destroy them).

Through a series of creatively and quirkily illustrated prompts, acclaimed artist Keri Smith encourages journalers to engage in "destructive" acts - poking holes through pages, adding photos and defacing them, painting with coffee, colouring outside the lines, and more - in order to experience the true creative process. With Keri Smith's unique sensibility, readers are introduced to a new way of art and journal making, discovering novel ways to escape the fear of the blank page and fully engage in the creative process.

Tempting Tuesday: Chocolate Fudge (Not)

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

As you can see, my attempt to make chocolate fudge hasn't been that successful.

It's super tasty, but I'm not sure it's fudge.

Saying that though, having left it in the fridge overnight, it is muchly improved.

he problem was that I couldn't find a straight forward recipe that wasn't in american cup quantities or used the ingredients I fancied using.

So I made it up.

Ingredients:

a tin of sweetened condensed milk

a 200g bar of dark chocolate

50g butter

pinch of sea salt

a handful of chopped pecans

Method:

Throw it all in a heavy bottomed pan, heat slowly until combined and a little bit longer to thicken it up.

Plonk it all in a greaseproof lined tin, try and spread it evenly but good luck. It's sticky and gloopy.

Leave for an hour or two in the fridge.

I found that it just didn't set.

So I scraped it all off the paper, but it back in the pan, melted it down again and added 100g icing sugar. I would have whisked it in but I didn't want to smash up my nuts, so I had to stir carefully.

I then put it back in the fridge for two hours (in new greaseproof paper, same tin).

When I came to slice it up, though it was much better than before, it was still really sticky and not how you think fudge should be, as you can see from my photo.

Most recipes seem to use twice as much chocolate, but I just don't have another spare bar and I'm unwilling to sacrifice one for something which might fail.

After it's night in the fridge, it was much firmer and more slice-able.

Oddly though, I managed to mould the edges I trimmed off back into squares. I'm pretty certain fudge shouldn't be mouldable.

After sharing, I think the general concensus is, it's tasty, but it's not fudge. I don't know why but it isn't.

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Monday Make: Snowflake String Art

Monday Make: This week's project

I saw this on Pinterest and felt inspired. I love the simple quality of it, and living with Mr Strawberry means there's always lots of wood straps laying around.

Ta-daaa. Random wood.

With some very useful sticky-back plastic, I cut out a tree line silhouette.

I painted the whole thing black and then sprinkled white paint on it by flicking the paintbrush over it from above.

Then I peeled off the sticky plastic and cut out a paper snowflake.

I laid my snowflake over the top of my wood (as soon as the paint was dry) to guide me while I hammered in the pins.

Then I ripped off the paper as I wrapped the string around each pin. 

I just knew if I took off all the paper at once, the board would become a mass of confusion; just pins and no clue where to wrap the string, so I took it off as I went along.

I'm actually really pleased with this. There was a point during the make when I thought it would turn out really crappy, but as soon as the sticky plastic came off, it was like magic, revealing my tree line, despite the fact that I originally wanted to them more like this...

...but thought that a simplified version might be nicer than a cocked up version as I didn't have the patience to do all that cutting out.

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