Martha's Marvellous Munchies

My friend Ellie writes a blog which I now shamelessly crib ideas from, when I am stuck for something new to do with Toby.  Some time ago she wrote about a substance with the poetic moniker of cloud dough .  It sounded simple to make and fun to play with, so I tucked it away in the back of my mind. The recipe is childishly simple: 8 cups of plain flour, 1 cup of vegetable oil, and mix.  It comes out kind of sandy, although softer and more powdery. Now, Ellie has two gorgeous girls.  Her blog entries were full of photos of them adding pretty objects and creating cute little landscapes.  I, on the other hand, have a full-on hands-on get-stuck-in-as-far-as-possible boy.  This is what happens when you let him loose on a scatterable substance. We make it and it all starts well.  Notice I have prepared for mess with a large tarpaulin and lack of shorts. A few minutes in, and the mess is spreading up the T-shirt.  It's still mostly in the tray though.  From that point o

For some reason our photos this year wound up being dumped in one large folder, imaginatively entitled 2012 .  Nine months into the year, I finally have been getting around to categorising them, and thereby discovering a few blog posts I should have written.  This is one. Grapevine Botanic Gardens is not on the scale of its Fort Worth or Dallas counterparts, being more of a glorified park, but a very pretty one nonetheless.  We first went there on a sunny Saturday earlier this year, after driving past the signpost many times, and it was packed with people taking bridal photos and picnicking on the grass.  We've been a few times since then, and every time Toby heads straight for the fountain with the handy toddler-height overflow. Once we manage to detach him from that, the next stop is usually the pretty little pond system with footbridges, splashy waterfalls, and huge spotty fish.  On our latest visit we noticed a little snake nestled comfortably under a rock, too.