The Lemon Revolution

We have a crazy lemon tree in our back yard.

Last week we decided to start sharing our lemons with our neighbours - this was the inspiration behind our 24/52 photos.

I've come to realise that A) our neighbours love lemons (our whole bag full had been collected in less than 24 hours) and B) collecting lemons and making notes for our neighbours is a fun activity that keeps Mimsy engaged for ages!

So we've decided to start The Lemon Revolution.

So far this revolution involves doing much the same as what we did last week. Pick some lemons, write a note to our neighbours and hang them on our gate.

 Mimsy came up with the ideas on the list (except for the last one, that was me)

 And she enjoyed heckling the neighbours, demanding that they take some lemons.

Episode #2 of the Lemon Revolution was a success, despite the rain and freezing weather, all of our lemons were gone by mid morning the next day.

What's next for our revolution? Not sure yet. We'll make it up as we go along. My lack of height requires a ladder to reach some more of the lemons at the very least.

I can see some cooking in our near future and hopefully some more subtle lessons on being generous.

#thelemonrevolution

25/52

The 52 Project: A portrait of my children, once a week, each week in 2014

Linking up with Practicing Simplicity.

I've just spent the past half hour looking back over my 52 project with my husband. We're really enjoying seeing this documentation and I'm so glad that I've kept it up (even though a run late very often!).

 Who needs toys when you can play with a cardboard box!

 Look who can sit up now!

24/52

The 52 Project: A portrait of my children, once a week, each week in 2014.

Linking up with Practicing Simplicity.

I'm running late again! But here are some photos from our afternoon picking lemons from our extremely full tree.

Mimsy's wild hair and sense of humour - trying to sell me lemons out of the window of her cubby house.

Juju Man enjoyed helping us collect the lemons.

 A little note we left for our neighbours (photo from Instagram)

23/52

The 52 Project: A portrait of my children, once a week, each week in 2014

Linking up with Practicing Simplicity.

 This week's photo of Mimsy is a terrible quality iPhone photo. I've been chasing my tail and the daylight amongst crazy busy days to take a photo of my gorgeous girl, and it just hasn't happened. So here is my little miss reading me a story. I love the way little minds work and the way stories are created. We've only read the first couple of chapters but Mimsy's imagination is running wild with possibilities of what happens next.

 I had a little more luck capturing my gorgeous little boy and his beautiful little smile. I'm fairly sure a little tooth will make an appearance soon.

22/52

The 52 Project: A portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2014

Linking up with Practicing Simplicity

 This is the way Mimsy always leaves the house, hands full of things she collects on the way through the house and out the front gate. In this photo: a toy bee, a 'snapping card' and a flower that had fallen off the tree.

Juju is taking really well to solids. He especially loves it when his food comes from his sister's plate. Funnily enough, Mimsy enjoys food most when it comes from my plate. I think I should just serve up one plate of food and put it in the middle of the table - then maybe everyone would be happy!

I almost didn't post this photo of Juju because of the untidy kitchen bench. But, given that most people who know me also knows that my house always looks 'lived in' at best, and quite often it's much more cluttered than this, I thought I'd go right ahead and show our life exactly how it is. At least I now know how to use my camera to make the background blurry!

21/52

The 52 Project: a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2014

Linking up with Practicing Simplicity

It's the end of our holiday and back to reality for us this week. But 21/52 sneaks in a couple more holiday photos.

 Proof that this little guy does sleep sometimes! He looks so peaceful.

 Mimsy hard at work making her Malaysian Batik painting. You can see more photos here.

Malaysian Batik Painting

While on holidays Mimsy and I tried our hand at Malaysian Batik painting.

Mimsy loves doing watercolour painting at home, so it wasn't too difficult to explain how to do it.

We picked our pre drawn designs - flowers for me and an orang utan for Mim. She also wanted to paint a turtle for Juju. Knowing that she would finish hers much quicker than I would, I was all for the idea!

The lovely ladies in the shop explained to us that we needed to paint the cloth with water first, and then use the inks to colour in the various sections of the drawings. The drawings had been made using hot wax, which resists the ink.

We worked hard under the watchful eye of Juju. We were provided with completed examples of the same drawings to guide us and give some inspiration. I used mine as a guide and experimented with similar but different colours. Mim took a more creative approach.

I was pretty impressed with our finished paintings! Not bad for a first effort. I was thinking I might turn Mimsy's into some library bags.

I can see us doing similar paintings in the future - lots of fun, easy clean up and room for plenty of toddler creativity.