Check out our easter tree... a new tradition in our family!

With help from her special little friend Miss May decorated her own eggs too!  Yes I blew the eggs... yes I was dizzy!

Amazingly Miss May managed to paint four eggs all by her self without any breakages.

Holi Festival: March 2013

Holi is celebrated all over India with colour, music, dance and bonfires. It marks the beginning of summer. It also celebrates the end of cold and hardship, and the successful harvest of the winter crop.

Hindu's the world over take great pleasure in spraying their friends, family and I'm sure the occasional stranger with brightly coloured powder and paint.  It makes for one of the most  spectacular and colourful festivals in the world.  What I love about Holi is that everyone seems to get involved... young and old, no family member is exempt from being "colour bombed"!

We opted for a 'finger paint fight' here in our own playground (with some actual finger painting thrown in).... check out our happy little Holi-kids!!

Easter wrap-up!

Easter is rolling in again!  This year we did a bunch of easter activities with the little condo-clan here in Singapore.

Here's the summary in pictures...

Spotted Easter bunnies...

Tissue paper eggs collage....

Styrofoam painted eggs...

My lounge room after the event...

St Patrick's Day

I started this blog with a St Patrick's day activity 12 months ago so I'm feeling a little nostalgic as I write this.  Check out the post from St Paddy's day last year and you'll see just how far Miss May and her band of artsy-buddies have come!!  St Patricks Day 2012

This year we had a pretty similar group get together for a rainbow project which I pinched from the sensational "Imagination Tree", a blog I frequent ... ohhh I don't know... about 10 times a week!!!

During Miss May's nap yesterday I hastily painted a massive rainbow on cardboard and rummaged through boxes of old craft paraphernalia for anything RED: ORANGE: YELLOW: GREEN BLUE: PURPLE AND PINK.  It turns out this is a great way to make use of little tit-bits like tissue paper, ribbon, pop poms, feathers etc.  Anything really will do!

We invited a bunch of the condo kiddlets around and they went to work picking through the pile of tit-bits and sticking it to the corresponding colour on our huge rainbow.  I was so busy slapping glue about the place that I did not manage to take a single photograph myself!!!

You'll find more on The Imagination Tree on the particulars of this project and a HUGE bank of great ideas!!

Before I sign off I wanted to add a little aside about the transient nature of expat-ing.   I am so grateful for the awesome crowd of families we have come to know in our condo-community here in Singapore.  Doing this exercise made me realise that Miss May has been doing art's and crafts with the same core group of little friends for over a year.  Miss S, Master O, Master A, Miss M, Master Z, Miss P (and more recently) Miss Z  are all from expat families like us so it is inevitable that we will all, at some point move elsewhere, or home.  It is this very sad thing when a family moves away and leaves little friends behind, one of the hardest thing (I think) about being an expat.  We know already that a few friends will be departing in 2013 and though months away we are already sad about it!!  I truly believe that with social media and technology we are much more likely to say in touch  and that these friends will remain dear friends for years to come... here's hoping!

I love this.... Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti, spent 18 months taking pics of kiddies from all corners of the world with their favourite toys.  Read more about what his experience here....  TOY STORIES

http://www.gabrielegalimberti.com/projects/toys-2/