Mamma Kerr » Mamma’s Garden

Wordless Wednesday – Let It Snow!

Mamma Kerr — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 07:30:43 +0000

Wordless Wednesday – Does This Look Like Spring To You?

Mamma Kerr — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:16:35 +0000

Our Garden

The view from my window

Our rabbit run

You can see more Spring Snow pictures, taken in Scotland in the last couple of days on the BBC News website here.

Get Creative With Your Easter Egg Hunt

Mamma Kerr — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:53:08 +0000

What’s Easter without an egg hunt?

My five year old twins look forward to their annual Easter Egg Hunt. Hubby and I like to hide a mixture of decorated hard-boiled eggs, chocolate eggs and other Easter novelties around our back garden. However, living in Scotland, we have once had to resort to Plan B and hide the eggs around the house instead, because it was a wet and windy Easter Sunday.

The girls believe it is the Easter Bunny who leaves their treats for them. He also leaves treats for our own pet bunnies, Chip and Dale.

Are you looking to have an Easter egg hunt for your children? With a little creativity, you can make the experience enjoyable for children of all ages.

Pre-school children

For pre-school children, hiding real eggs can be a rite of passage at Easter. You should limit the number of eggs that you hide, as young children don’t eat as many of them. It’s important to store your decorated Easter eggs in the fridge until just before the egg hunt begins. In spite of the eggs being hard-boiled, they could spoil if left at room temperature for too long, especially as they will be hidden outdoors in the sunshine. (Although, sunshine cannot be guaranteed, particularly in rainy Scotland!) Keep the egg cartons aside for after the egg hunt. Assign each child an ample section of the egg carton to hold the eggs that they have found. If there are lots of children involved in the hunt, you might want to award prizes to the top egg finder or perhaps even the top three finders. In the excitement to find all the eggs, it’s likely that some eggs might get damaged. This is, of course, absolutely fine, as it’s all in the name of fun.

Primary School Children

Older children probably won’t be as interested in a traditional Easter egg hunt. For them, you need something slightly more challenging. Hide plastic eggs instead of real ones. Plastic eggs can be filled with coins, sweets, small toys, and stickers. The hiding needs to be a lot more difficult since more is at stake. Older Primary School children will find this particular kindof egg hunt good fun without being too babyish.

High School Children

Turn the egg hunt into a scavenger hunt for high school age children . This idea requires thorough planning from start to finish. You can place handwritten clues inside each plastic egg. If you are planning an Easter egg hunt for lots of children in this age group, divide the children into teams, and give each team the same clue to start. Solving one clue, will lead them to another egg, containing another clue. The winning team shares the prize.

Happy hunting!

Share your Easter stories / experiences by joining the MckLinky blog hop or simply by leaving a comment below.

Blog Hop – Snow Pics and Stories

Mamma Kerr — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:28:08 +0000

The MckLinky Blog Hop theme for this Monday is “Snow Pics and Stories“. With many places getting their “once every hundred years snow”, MckLinky thought it would be fun to see our snow pics and hear about the snow in our areas.

I live in Scotland, UK, and we have experienced our coldest winter in more than a generation. The British media has dubbed this winter as “The Big Freeze“.

I recently posted the following two snow-themed entries on my blog:

My Wintery Walk to Work - See some photos of the “Winter Wonderland” I had to walk through on my way to the office, during the “Big Freeze”.
My Twins’ Favourite Ways to Play in the Snow - See some photos of my gorgeous twin girls having some festive fun over the Christmas holidays.

You should also visit the BBC News website links below to view some stunning photographs of my beautiful country taken during the Big Freeze:

There’s no snow here at the moment, but various places in the UK (mostly high or coastal areas) have experienced snow in the last week or so, and the MET Office have warned that there’s still more to come. Here it’s actually a lovely sunny day, but it’s perishingly cold.

What like is the weather where you are? Please leave a comment and/or (if you have your own blog) join the MckLinky below to share your snow pics and stories.

If you have hopped by on the MckLinky blog hop, please say “Hi!” in the comments below, and (before you go) check out my other MckLinky’s here.

What Can We All Do To Help Save Bees?

Mamma Kerr — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:45:07 +0000

I’ve never really been a big fan of bees. I actually have a phobia of creepy crawlies, bees, wasps, etc. Since becoming a parent five and a half years ago, I have had to conquer this phobia somewhat. I certainly don’t want to pass on my irrational fears to my daughters. Therefore, I have developed nerves of steel when confronted by the little critters.

Still, it would have been quite inconceivable ten or so years ago, for me to consider writing an article about saving bees. However, that is what I am finding myself doing today, as part of a campaign on Bloggers Unite.

The Help The Vanishing Bees campaign asks bloggers:

“To draw attention to the bees. They are vanishing in alarming numbers. With out bees we will have half of the food we need.”

Over the last couple of decades our bee population has been in rapid decline. There have been many theories put forward as the cause of this decline:

environmental damage
weather conditions
the parasitic varroa mite
viral disease
mobile phone masts
pesticides
diminishing forage
GM crops
bee-keeping practices

However, as yet, the exact reasons are not conclusively known. Indeed it is likely to be a combination of these factors that is behind bee colony losses.

Many people may be indifferent to the plight of bees. They might ask what business it is of theirs that this is happening. Some, especially those with insect phobias, might in fact be happy to see the back of the bees. Sadly, though, the declining bee population poses serious threats to our survival. Some scientists have predicted devastating consequences for humans if bees die out. At best, our quality of life will suffer.

So what are the implications of the demise of bees? Their demise has serious implications for food supply and the price of goods. Bees are important pollinators of flowers and crops. They pollinate many of the fruit and vegetables eaten by humans and that feed livestock. The economy will suffer greatly if bees die out. In the UK, the estimated economic value of crops grown commercially that benefit from bee pollination is approximately £165 million per year.

So what can we do about this? There are several ways that ordinary people, like you and me, can do our bit in helping to save our bee population:

Plant bee-friendly plants in your garden, such as cornflower, foxglove and thistle.
Provide shelter in your garden for bees, such as an area of long grass or densely planted flowers.
Provide a source of water for bees to drink in your garden.
Reduce the use of pesticides in your garden.
Encourage solitary bees to nest in your garden by purchasing a special nestbox. (For more details visit The International Bee Research Association here or Plan Bee here.) NB: Solitary bees do not swarm and will not sting.
If you don’t have a garden, perhaps you can plant a bee-friendly windowbox or why not adopt a hive? (For more details visit Adopt A Hive.
Refrain from purposely killing bees and report swarms to your local authority for safe collection and removal by a qualified bee-keeper.

I am personally going to look into buying a selection of bee friendly plants for my garden, and perhaps installing a nest box for solitary bees. After all, I may not be the humble bee’s biggest fan, but I do love the delicious honey that honey bees produce, and I do enjoy the wide variety of foods available to me through pollination. It’s only fair that, in return, I do my best for our fuzzy black and yellow friends!

Twin Tuesday: Looking Forward to Spring

Mamma Kerr — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:04:21 +0000

It’s Twin Tuesday again, and I’m posting on TUESDAY this week! Yay!!

The Twin Tuesday QOTW, courtesy of Jennifer Miller of Twin Happy, is:

What are you looking forward to doing with your twins, once spring finally gets here?

The girls and I are soooooo looking forward to Spring! We’re looking forward to (weather permitting) spending more time outdoors.

We have a big back garden, with lots of play equipment for the girls: swings, slides, trampoline, seesaw, playhouse, sandpit. The girls love playing outside, and they love to invite their friends from next door over to play with them.

We also get to spend more time with our two pet bunnies, Chip’n Dale, who live in a huge hutch and run in our back garden.

At Easter, we have an Egg Hunt in the garden and the girls love finding eggs, nestled in various hiding spots, to fill their Easter baskets.

Mothers’ Day also falls in the Springtime (UK), and the girls look forward to this day as much as I do! They make me cards and gifts, help Daddy bring me breakfast in bed, and then we all go out for a nice lunch together. Bliss!

What about you? What do you look forward to doing with your children in the Springtime?