Arvo Tea and Bibops

I love working with children. I love that the children in my room are learning to speak and so pick up a lot of things from us, or create their own words.

We've been teaching most of our older children, 16-20month olds, to say 'ta' when we give them their food etc. They've not only picked up saying 'ta' in these situations, but they also like to use it when they want us or other children to take things. The most common time for them to say 'ta' is after they have wiped their hands for meal times. Our youngest child, now 12 months, has recently begun to say 'ta' too, and it is so adorable. His parents have also begun to gel his hair up, which looks so adorably funky.

Another phrase I've been trying to teach the children is 'Arvo Tea'. We have a morning tea and an afternoon tea at work. Most of the children can say morning tea, and excitedly chant "morning tea, morning tea" when they see the food tray come to our room. They also chant 'morning tea' when afternoon tea comes to the room. I started trying to teach them 'afternoon tea' but quickly decided 'afternoon' was too long for them to pick up so switched to 'arvo tea' as arvo means afternoon in Aussie.  I wasn't seeing much success in this approach until yesterday when one of our children started chanting "Arvo tea! Arvo tea!" in the afternoon. It made me pretty happy.

The child who picked up the phrase 'arvo tea' is one of our better speakers. She has an adorable word for lollipops (which we like to make with playdough and popsicle sticks), calling them 'bibops'. Today I was trying to correct this to lollipop asking her if she could say "LOLLI-pop", the best I could get out of her was "lolli-bibop". Too cute.

Skywhale

Image found here.

Canberra turned 100 this year. To mark this big birthday a hot air balloon was designed and created, above is the result. It's called the Skywhale. It's caused a lot of debates. I personally think it is ridiculous and cannot for the life of me see what it has to do with Canberra turning 100. The more I look at it the more I feel like it could go down in history, and maybe that was the intention...but I doubt when people remember the Skywhale that they will remember what it was for. I do think the money could have been better spent, on maybe a lasting monument rather than a hot air balloon.

What are your thoughts on this boobiefied whale?

Image found here.

Snuggling into Winter

It been getting colder these last couple of weeks, so when the lovely store Adairs put a whole bunch of beautiful throws and stuff on sale we went and got some. We got two, a super, super soft fur one and a gorgeous, woollen, blue one. They are so very, very comfy and snuggly, we are pretty happy with our purchase. :)

Kid President

Today I discovered Kid President. He is one awesome kid. I may have spent the last hour or so watching videos of him. I think he will go places in life. :)

Our Eurovision Top 10

It's Eurovision week! Yay! Unfortunately, due to being in Australia we get the final later than Europe, but fortunately we still get to watch it! I was so excited last year when I discovered they showed it on TV here. We'll be watching the final on Sunday, so I've taken the Monday off of work (I know, I'm so awesome, right?). Before the semi-finals, James and I went through all the songs and chose our top 10. We don't really have a particular order for them, but we do have a top 2. I thought it would be fun to share our favourite 10. :)

Those that unfortunately did not make the finals:
Bulgaria - Who doesn't like a catchy beat with some awesome drumming skills? Apparently a lot of Europeans...

Latvia - I reckon they would have made an excellent opening act for the final. They also make me think of Top of the Pops. Added bonus: Awesome ipad usage.

Albania - They have their own John Lennon look-a-like. This was probably one of my least favourites of our top 10. So not so bummed.

Switzerland - We may both have a biased towards Switzerland...but then I should have a biased towards the UK and Austria, and I will happily say I would have been fine with both of them out of the final. Sad to see Switzerland didn't make it though.

Those that made it to the finals:
France - It sounds like an underwear or perfume ad. It makes me want to turn off all the lights, light some candles and sit in my underwear...maybe with some red wine?

Finland - Upbeat and a tad weird.

Malta - Upbeat, happy, adorable.

Belarus - It's very Eurovision: catchy, and you're not sure if they are speaking English or another language.

And our top 2, both in the finals, yay!
Romania - He has an amazing voice. It makes me smile. If you watch his face, he knows he's going to shock a few people, and he knows his voice is ridiculously amazing. Love it!

Greece - Kilts, facial hair, stalker with a thick moustache, and an awesome song.

That's our top 10. We're not really ballad people...so those songs kind of bore us, which means the whole of Semi-Final 1 kind of bored us, and also made us sad since it meant half of the final was going to be boring...Let's hope costumes, commentary and hosting makes up for that. :)

Cork-board Map

You may remember me talking about trying to put up a cork-board map in our place, well that failed. It just would not stick...we were a little bummed. So, we came up with an idea. We had a massive harbour bridge picture from Ikea for about $15, which we felt didn't quite fit with our new apartment, and for the price we got it at I was more than happy to paint over it to make it work with our new place. It got painted over, the whole thing, frame and all. I then added the names of places James and I would like to visit and we stuck down the cork-board map. We now have an awesome interactive piece of art in our apartment! We are pretty in love with it and can't wait to start pinning photos all over it! :)

Mother's Day

I couldn't buy you lilies, so I drew you some instead. Hope you have a wonderful day and don't work to hard. Love you!

Highlight of Work Today

We know one of the children in this ad, so we all got quite excited when the ad was e-mailed to our director. It's also a pretty funny ad. :)

8 rue caffarelli

I am, without a doubt, a visual person. I can so easily get lost in a photo or a piece of art. I love watching the world around me. I love the visual. Today, through Paris in Four Months, I came across another beautifully visual blog: 8 rue caffarelli. I love getting lost browsing blogs like this. So, so gorgeous. I recommend you check it out.

(Due to 8 rue caffarelli I now want to cycle from Sydney to Melbourne, and have rainbow lorikeets eat out of my hands.)