I love my home-ed mom chats, they often spur me on to do something that I may have been neglecting.  On Friday I was chatting to a home-ed mom friend and we were talking about the importance of having our own hobbies.  It is important for us to do activities that we enjoy and the kids often get inspired to try activities when they see us (their parents) doing something that we enjoy.  It really does ring true for us.  My daughter loves gardening with her dad and both kids tend to do arts and crafts that I do but there are a few “hobbies” that I have been negligently lately, one of which is baking – it has just been way TOOOOO hot to bake.  And the natural result is my daughter has not been helping out in the kitchen as much as she usually does. So with the slight dip in temperature this weekend I decided it was time to bake some biscuits and test out some icing piping tips that I recently bought for myself.

I stuck with a basic biscuit recipe, and no big surprise both kids heard me pottering around in the kitchen and could not resist joining in.

Then we made our own piping bags and icing and my daughter took charge of testing out the new icing tips.

It was the first time that she has used a piping bag but she really enjoyed it.  She was focused on making sure she had the pressure correct (part of her sensory make-up is she struggles to know if she is applying enough pressure when she does an activity) so she kept her first session simple and she practiced writing letters and some patterns.

She is now feeling more confident about how much pressure she needs to apply and is keen to try again and create some flowers (guess who is going to be looking for YouTube clips this week).

I am so glad my friend reminded me about taking some time to do my hobbies and I am also really glad the weather co-operated and cooled down enough to make my kitchen a bit more baking-friendly.

Now I need to spend some time researching another idea my friend and I were discussing – I need to find a local shop where I can buy some basic woodwork tools for the kids and us (I am including their dad in this project) to use.