My Top 5 Tips for Staying Cool with Kids in Summer

1. Waterfight!  With cups, water pistols, watering cans whatever your weapon get wet and let evaporation cool you down.

2. Cool baths. Having a play in the bathtub with some penguin/water animal toys, add some food colouring or pebbles to make it a sensory experience.

3. I just made this banana ice-cream!!! and it is SOOOO delicious and pretty healthy. It cools you down from the inside http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-creamy-ice-cream-with-just-one-ingredient-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-93414

4. Freeze grapes in little containers and you've got a quick snack to hand out that is nutritious and cooling

5. A spray bottle from the $2 shop is entertaining and can be used to spray each other and water the plants. You can  even clean something like the windows or the car in the shade so you're doing something constructive and staying cool.

Snow Day on Mt Donna Buang

Only an hour from where I live I can go up a mountain and see SNOW! This is the first real snow I've seen (once having been to Mt Dandenong to see a sprinkling of snow which was very exciting at the time). To be able to do it with Mum, Dad, and Lucia was amazing since none of them have seen snow either. Matt is an old hand, but he enjoyed himself too.

Community Builder

A person I admire, Kath Holton, told me that some people community builders who work to improve the community they live in. I aspire to be a community builder so that the community that my family lives in is vibrant and active.

To that end I've been working as a member of the Healesville 150 steering committee to develop and encourage celebrations of the strength and diversity of the last 150 years of Healesville's history.  I'm working on the website www.healesville150.org and managing the twitter and facebook pages as well as getting involve in events and trying to make some memorable moments happen for the children in our community.

Matt, Lucia and I have had great new experiences that have come along with this community building experience. Some of the H150 events that we've attended are the Winter Solstice celebration at the
Healesville Labyrinth http://mountainviews.starcommunity.com.au/mail/2014-06-24/seekers-of-the-solstice/  and the Healesville 150 Midwinter Ball which was awesome. There was an amazing band and the chance to get dressed up. I went a bit Frida Khalo inspired and Matt went as Mattman.

Crafting - Drawing on Sandpaper

Firstly, I love libraries! You can request them to deliver any book you choose right to your local library. So I had Art Lab for Little Kids sent to the Healesville Library and Lucia and I launched straight into some new creative time.

I have always found crayons a bit useless, they're waxy and the colour doesn't transfer well to paper. We have always used pastels, oil pastels, markers and chalk instead and then voila the great idea of drawing with crayons onto sandpaper. It grates the colour right in, which means you get good colour transfer.  Then you can flip it over and iron onto a fabric! I had some bags left from an embroidery project that we did a test run on and it worked a treat (other than my drawing the y in lucy backwards)!

A year later... wtf where did that go :)

I love Matt: Why he's the best man in the universe

I love Matt. He is smart, kind, funny and loves me even when I'm crazy or stupid.

I'm watching you :)