Valentine's Day

Did you do anything special for Valentine's Day?

Here in Japan it has become 'traditional' for women to give gifts to men on Valentine's Day. Homemade chocolates are a common choice for someone you actually love, while shop-bought ones will do for colleagues and other people you feel obliged to give to. Hey! I just realised! H didn't get any chocolate at work this year. Shame, he usually brings it home and shares it with me :-) Anyway, men are then supposed to reciprocate on March 14th, known as White Day, although I don't think a lot of chocolate making goes on then...

Anyway, at K's preschool everyone in the upper classes (all 8 students) were instructed to bring in a little handwritten card and sweet of some kind for each of their classmates. He enjoyed writing them, and later showing me all the cards he had received. He even shared some of his chocolate with me!

Meanwhile, I stitched up a little card for H, from a design found here. I finished it (ie did 90% of it) late the night before. H opened it and said 'Are they hearts? I thought it was a bra at first'. Hmm...



I just looked at the website I got it from again, to get the link, and realised that the hearts aren't actually supposed to be joined together. I also should have left out the top centre stitch to make an actual heart, as opposed to bra, shape. This explains the nagging feeling I had that my card hadn't turned out as good as the ones I had originally seen. Doh.

For Valentine's Day dinner, I made cheese fondue. Fun, easy, yummy, out of the ordinary. I (thought I) was super-organized, getting all the ingredients the day before. It wasn't until after lunch that I realised I didn't have any of those little fuel blocks to cook the fondue with. Another 'Doh'. Collected K from school, drove to the other side of town to buy them, came home... couldn't find the fondue set. I. Have. Looked. Everywhere. Still can't find the darned thing. So it was fondue in a little saucepan cooked on the stove, and eaten with regular forks. Oh well.

Dessert though.

Dessert was good. No 'Doh' moments at all there.

The recipe (find it here) was actually very easy, but please don't tell anyone. The impressiveness-to-ease ratio is very good on this one. I followed the recipe with no changes, but I did make the cakes in advance and then leave them in the fridge until it was time to bake them. Oh, and the recipe said to tip the cakes out of the ramekins to serve them but there was no way I was going to chance that. Eaten straight out of the dish, with cream and strawberries - yum. Reheated in the microwave the next day - also yum. I will be making these again...

Building snowflakes

K has been enjoying building felt snowflakes lately. I found this activity at My Montessori Journey (there's a link from there to print out the cards) and printed out the cards myself last winter. I stuck the pictures onto card, carefully cut them out and laminated them... and then got discouraged at the thought of cutting out all those little bits of felt. Oh, and then spring was coming (and a baby), and the moment passed.

So a couple of weeks ago, when the ground was covered in snow, I found the cards again and cut out the felt pieces. You know what? It didn't take half as long as I thought it would. I found an old chocolate box to keep the pieces in, so that each shape could have its own little space and so that K could more easily find the piece he wanted. The brown felt for the background isn't really the best colour, but it was just the right size.

So there you have it. DIY snowflake fuzzy felt. K and I looked at some pictures of real snowflakes on t'Internet and talked about the shapes, especially the hexagon bases. Then we both had a go at copying some of the cards, before making some of our own designs too. Later in the day, the Santa hat (who knows why it was being worn in the first place?) got dropped in the toilet. Never a dull moment with these little monkeys...

Spring??

Last Friday was Setsubun. Mid-way between the shortest day and the spring equinox, it is supposed to mark the beginning of spring. This was how the day began...

Hmm, not really my idea of spring. Actually, the weather was worse the day before. When I took K to pre-school on Thursday, it was snowing heavily and everything was just, well, white. I couldn't really see the road. Or the traffic lights. Or other cars. On the way, at 9am, the roadside thermometer read minus 4, and even on the way back at 3pm it was still minus 1. Brr...

We had more snow through the day and overnight, but on Friday it soon brightened up. Unusually T had a little nap in the morning so I showed K the sledge I bought secretly the other day and we headed out into the garden...

I pulled him round a bit, and he had a little slide down the tiny slope. It doesn't sound very impressive but he loved it. He tried pulling me but that didn't work out, although I did go down the slope :-)

As well as playing in the snow, we did a couple of little Setsubun things too. An oni (demon) came round, but K was there to throw beans at it and scare it away. H came home just 10 minutes afterwards and K was quite disappointed that he'd missed it. K wasn't at all scared; he told me it was 'just a fake one', although he didn't connect it to H's arrival minutes later :-)

Another tradition is to eat sushi rolls, facing a lucky direction and without speaking. K and his classmates made them at pre-school on Thursday and I, with another mum, went along to help. It was fun to help the children make their sushi rolls, and also to spend the whole day there and experience K's school life. T was with me too of course; he's quite well-known at K's school now and the kids all enjoyed playing with him at lunchtime :-)

Anyway, the snow has all gone again now, but there is more predicted for the next few days. I think we'll have to wait a bit longer for spring yet...