A fun morning in Pretville!

We had such a special day yesterday. The four of us went on an outing to Hartebeespoort - Wyn went on his bike and I took the girlies in the car. This was exactly what my soul needed - some special family time!

Pretville is a movie set in Harties, where they filmed the movie, and now it's open for the public to visit, walk through the streets and look at the "shops", from a hair salon, post office, Baby Boom to a Pep store! It all has a 50's feel to it, stunning vibrant colourful décor, I just loved the bunting hanging everywhere and cute Afrikaans sayings and posters. Vintage cars and scooters parked all over, and so many cute corners to take photos in!  They play music from the Afrikaans movies over the speakers - really felt like we stepped back in time - or onto a movie set!

It was a lot smaller than I expected, from what I remembered from the movie I was expecting a long street to walk through, and it's really just like one block - but with enough to look at and lots of little corners to take photos in! A super quaint restaurant with milkshakes and hamburgers offers refreshments, and there's a movie theatre where they have set times that they show Afrikaans movies.

Definitely worth a visit, I would highly recommend it for a fun day out!

Afterwards we went to Jasmyn fruit & veg market, bought a trolley full of veg, yay!  Then a quick lunch before we headed home and both girlies had a nap in the car.  Ella was soooooo good the whole day, sitting in her pram, looking at everything.  Mia enjoyed the outing a lot too, I wasn't sure what she would think of Pretville, but she loved looking at everything, knocking on all the doors and loved her pink milkshake.  She was also kind enough to oblige and entertain me by posing everywhere I asked her to! ;-)

Mia's Winter School Holiday in Pictures

Two weeks of holiday went by way too fast! It was wonderful to not have to get up while it's still dark to prepare a lunchbox, to be in a mad rush juggling a baby that needs to be fed and getting Mia dressed and breakfasted in time!

This is a few of the things we got up to:

She's finally understanding the memory card game, so it was fun to play with her! She just didn't grasp the concept of "taking turns" - so she won the game, because for each turn I get, she got 3 turns! ;-)

 

She and I both went for a haircut.  So serious. ♥

 

She had a sleepover at Aunty Boo's house. She loved it!

 

We baked pink cupcakes with pink icing. Love these lil handies at work.

 

A visit to the dairy farm.

 

She tossed a coin into the wishing well, and she wished for summer! Bless!

 

A fairy in the garden!

 

We went to the movies, always fun, think I enjoy these movie outings even more than she does!

 

Sister love ♥

 

Icing marie biscuits for great-grandfather. It's his favourite treat.

 

Presents that Pappa brought the girlies from overseas.

 

And back to school this morning!

Winter holiday time!

School has closed today, for two weeks!

I am rejoicing in the thought of two weeks of not having to get up at 6am to get dressed and prepare a lunchbox and juggle Ella's feeding and awake time with Mia's getting dressed and breakfast time!  I can stay in my pj's and breakfast can be at any time and we can all snuggle together in bed! Yippee!!

I want it to be a special fun time for Mia though, so have planned a few activities and outings:

• We're going to go see Mr Maker at the DSTV Kids Extravaganza at Vodaworld
• A trip to the hairdresser to trim Mia's hair
• Lunch at the dairy farm
• Bake cookies
• Make playdough
• Playdates with a few friends
• Tea parties
• Watch movies in our pajamas
• A sleep-over for Mia at Aunty Boo's house

Yeah, sounds fun. And hopefully after two weeks when I know I'm going to be quite relieved that school is starting again, it won't be quite as dark at 6am anymore! ;-)

xx

Christmas Crafts & Holiday Fun!

We've been baking up a storm, making salt-dough decorations, making Xmas cards, and going on fun outings. We've been busy bodies, I must admit I am exhausted - tomorrow we go to my folks for a couple of days, and am looking forward to vegging on the couch!

Baking:
We've done a batch up cupcakes, and 3 batches of cookies already - and counting! Mia loves rolling the dough and decorating the cookies. It does make quite a mess in the kitchen, but hey, the fun is more important!

For the Melting Moments, I've been using this recipe:
       250g butter
       4 tablespoons icing sugar
       4 tablespoons custard powder
       1.5 cups plain flour

       Cream butter and icing sugar until pale and fluffy. Add rest of ingredients slowly until all combined. Roll into balls, working quickly so mixture remains cool. Refrigerate uncooked biscuits for a few minutes so they hold their shape when cooked. (I didn't do this the last time, they still turned out fine!) With a fork, press down to flatten tops slightly.
Bake at 150 for 15-20 minutes.

Optional: Can ice biscuits once cooled.
Can decorate before baking, with vermicelli, cherries, smarties, etc.

Mia has her own small baking pan, which is so cute to use, and she rolls the cookies into her own "balls" without messing mine up. ;-)
My favourite decorated ones, are the ones that she put some red icing on, and then some raw cookie dough on top! So funny and precious!

Salt-dough decorations:
The same as last year's ones we made - see the post here.
Once again, we did them over a couple of days, first baking them, then painting them the next day, then glitter the next day, etc. Very cute and special!

Xmas cards:
There are so many ideas to be found on Pinterest, for ways to make cards with kiddies. I chose these candy cane ones, coz I love how personalised it is when it's Mia's fingerprint.  These were quite quick to do too - bargain!

Holiday Fun:
I took Mia to the movies for the first time today!  What a special mother-daughter outing, I loved it so much.  She kept calling it "going to a concert". We got popcorn, smarties and slush puppy to share, and our 3D glasses for the movie. We watched 'Frozen' - a supercute animated movie. Mia loved it! She watched the whole movie, just a couple of times asking questions or talking loudly, and at the sad part when all was quiet, she could be heard sobbing, be still my heart! We got one of the "love seats" in the movie theatre, so that we could snuggle together - perfect.  I look forward to a lifetime of movies on the big screen with my big girl! ♥
  

 

Liggiefees at the Jakaranda Kinderhuis

Tonight we went to look at all the Christmas lights at the Jakaranda Kinderhuis in Pretoria.  It's stunning!!  They decorated all their houses with millions of lights, so pretty and festive.  They had food stalls, we had yummy curry and rice, very delish.  I bought Mia some bunny ears that light up, but then she didn't want them on, so I wore them. ;-)

I think it's such a fantastic funds-raising initiative, and something the whole family can enjoy.  We'll definitely do this every year!  It's quite a walk, luckily we had comfy shoes on.

Highly recommend it, if you live in Gauteng!  Get more info on their website or their Facebook page.

Really put me in a festive mood! :-)

Fun times!

Mia and I had a great time visiting my folks in Pietersburg. Special to spend relaxed time with them, and Mia loved all the attention.

She discovered the piano, that belonged to my great-grandmother.  I used to play when I was younger, but stopped with the lessons and didn't ever carry on playing, unfortunately.  I don't think that piano lid has been opened in ten years! It needs to be tuned, but Mia had so much fun making different sounds!

She played in the water fountain at the garden centre, sopping wet and super happy!

We came back home on Friday, and was nice to be back with Wyn, I missed him so much for the two nights we were away! Mia was so good in the car.  She had a nice sleep on our way to P'burg, but didn't sleep at all when we went back home. She watched her dvd player, and amused herself by sticking small jelly teddies on her arm and then eating them off.  Too funny!

On Saturday morning I took Mia to a Lollos concert - this is an Afrikaans kiddies character, that does lots of cute singing and dancing, Mia's liked Lollos since she was one year old, and her 2nd birthday party theme was Lollos too.  She was so excited to go see the real Lollos!

When we were standing in the queue to buy the latest DVD and a Lettie doll, (she already has the Lollos doll), Minki walked past us (she's also one of the main dancers and singers in the show) and Mia smiled and waved excitedly at her, so she stopped to say hi, Mia was so chuffed!

She stared in amazement when Lollos came up on stage, clapped so much, and towards the end she even stood dancing in the aisle.  Lots of fun!

My lil social butterfly

We had a fun weekend filled with friends!

It started already on Thursday, when we met some friends at the dairy farm for lunch.  Gosh, how the little people adore the open space there! They ran about, looked at chickens, cows and calves, ate fish fingers, and just generally had a good time.  When we had to leave, and Mia realised we were headed towards the car, I had to pick a lil tantrumming body up and haul her to the car with promises to come back to the farm soon!

 
Then, on Saturday morning we went to a fourth birthday party, nearby here at a farmyard venue.  The kiddies got to feed the chickens, ducks and goats, and went for a pony ride.  Super cute, fun, and Mia loved it!

 

On Saturday afternoon, we went to a third birthday party, at a pretty tea garden venue in Joburg.  Mia had fun playing on all the jungle gym equipment and swinging.

(Thankfully, she was so tired when we got home on Saturday at noon, after the first party, that she had a good 1.5hour nap before we left for the afternoon party!)

Then, on Sunday, we met our special friends and fellow blogger, Rox and Layla, at a nice lil coffee shop nearby here, that has a small water fountain that kids can splash in.  Oh, what fun the two girlies had!  These two little girls are such cute friends, it's so nice to see the interaction.

While Rox and I could sit enjoying something to drink and a bite to eat, (well, mostly sit... sometimes had to run and apprehend a little girl headed towards the car park, or to rescue shoes from the water fountain) the two girls splashed, laughed, and had a few sips of pink milkshake every now and then.  When we were finished, and changed the girls into dry clothes, they took a spin on the animals-on-wheels, that you have to use your legs to propel forwards.  They sort-of got the idea of the motion, but mostly we had a bit of a workout in pushing them around the fountain. ;-)

 

 

All in all, fun was had by all!

We ended off the weekend with an early evening braai on Sunday, just to spend some time relaxing with Wyn too.  I think he had a nice relaxing weekend in front of the tv, being able to watch what he wanted to for a change, while we gallivanted all over the place!

xx

Zoo Outing!

We went to the Pretoria Zoo yesterday.  It was so nice to spend time with my two loves, just the three of us.  It was a stunning day, sunshiny and bright.

It was the first time we visited the Pta Zoo.  Gosh, horrible part of town!  And the parking wasn't very nice either, R20 for a dirt road parking full of hawkers bugging us, and having to cross a super busy road to get to the zoo.

The zoo itself is huge!  Well-kept - but can see it's seen better days.  The animals all looked fine, and most of them had nice big enclosures.

We spent over 3 hours walking around - great calorie-burn, hehe!  Gosh, what a big selection of animals, let me try and remember what we saw:
Flamingos, variety of buck, variety of birds, leopard, monkeys, hyenas, gorilla, bear, tigers, lions, forest giraffe, elephants, zebras, hippo, rhino, camel, seals, koala bears, kangaroos, penguins, fish in the aquarium, alligator, dassies, porcupine, lemurs, buffalo and owls.

Really a great day out!