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Posts Tagged ‘Fun’

Dr Who visits the Vicarage

Posted in Family, Kids, tagged , , , , , , on 27 December, 2011| 3 Comments »

It’s the holidays. We are all playing games as much as possible. Today the Joker has been incarnating as Dr Who. And I was asked for a picture…

No daleks allowed in the Vicarage

But we’re not worshipping him.

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A Craft to Make You Laugh

Posted in Church, Craft, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 14 November, 2011| 3 Comments »

We had a Messy Church planning meeting in the Vicarage this morning. We’ve been thinking through the crafts for the next few months, so we can make sure we have all the materials ready. In the process we came across this great clip of Aussie music teacher Jon Madin showing you how to make a rubber glove bassoon. We are *so* going to make these. Bet you can’t guess the bible passage, mind. It was a bit of a stretch…

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Halloween Reflections

Posted in Faith, Family, tagged , , , , , , , on 2 November, 2011| 1 Comment »

We had a fun evening on Monday night. Wildchild came over and carved pumpkins with us. Then callers came round in silly costumes and we showed them our works of art, got them to tell us jokes, plied them with sweeties and gave them tracts about how Jesus is the light. It seemed like we were doing door to door evangelism from the comfort of our own home – and noone refused to listen to us or slammed the door in our faces. Although there was a teenage girl who claimed not to speak English in order to avoid the joke telling. And we weren’t so sure that she would be able to read the tract, although we hope someone in her family can.

The last callers (at 9pm) had to negotiate getting to the front door knocker round Gone, who’d deposited himself on the doorstep. He wasn’t drunk (tho’ a little smelly, I’m sorry to say), so although they were young and without an adult, it was fine.

Works of art in the Vicarage window

Yesterday I read a few thoughts from Christians with different approaches to Halloween but I think all of them fell into the Resurgence‘s ‘Redeeming’ category. Dr BexL at the BIGBible Project  had loads of good ideas and Kevin on his blog and Dan on his blog had useful stuff too. We at the Vicarage were glad to have seized this new opportunity to talk to our neighbours and bless their kids. Our only regret this year was that we forgot to hand out invites for Tuesday night’s Messy Church. But we’ll remember next year – this new festival is only set to grow in the UK.

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Jollifying Jumpers

Posted in Fun, Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 7 September, 2011| 3 Comments »

So now we’re all back to school and back to the realities of the parish after a great summer break. I’m glad that today the Vicar dragged me up into the tow-un to run some errands. On the way we passed our open air market, where you can buy cheap fruit, mobile phone accessories, underwear, overalls and all sorts of clothing. Everything on the market is pleasingly good value. We bought the Queen a gorgeous deep pink furry fleecy throw for her bed there. She adores it and sleeps under it in preference to her duvet.

The jumper stall is my absolute favourite, though. He sells a random selection of very end-of-line (but still brand new) knitwear, from shops I’d buy from anyway. Over the last couple of years I have bought (or been given) three excellently warming long cardies for Vicarage wear from the market. And today we had a great jumper day, stocking up for the Vicarage winter. The Vicar acquired three M&S v-necks (including a gorgeously toasty lambswool one) and I bought a Next jumper dress and a Monsoon angora/wool mix cardie. Total bill £17. Result. Sometimes I can be cheered up by pretty shallow things…

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The Reading Rule

Posted in Fun, tagged , , , , , , on 3 August, 2011| 4 Comments »

Last month the Vicar and I spent some Nectar points on a garden swing. Sitting on it is incredibly relaxing but we had to make some rules about usage by children as we anticipated that over-vigorous swinging might ensue.

So the rule is:

You can only sit on the swing seat IF YOU ARE READING

This is working very well. I occasionally break the rule myself, but as it’s my rule I think that’s okay. Sometimes I just sit there with the Vicar or a friend and talk. But today the kids were on the swing, obeying the rule, which I found very heartening:

Reading (from L to R) Dr Who, Roald Dahl and Harry Potter

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Best Babies

Posted in Family, tagged , , , , , , , on 2 August, 2011| 1 Comment »

Yesterday we went to Dudley Zoo to celebrate the Queen’s tenth birthday. We loved our visit, as usual, but today was extra special as there were some new babies on show:

Two baby meerkats have joined the colony

We enjoyed a talk on the meerkats and watched the babies playing for ages. But not for as long as we watched the fabulous new baby orangutan:

Baby Sprout and her mum Jazz

A lovely way to celebrate one of my babies being in double figures now.

Happy Birthday The Queen

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Vicarage Top Tips: How to Cope on Sundays

Posted in Fun, tagged , , , , , , , , on 12 July, 2011| 1 Comment »

Not that I'm advocating heavy alcohol consumption or anything...

Sundays in the Vicarage can be rather busy and stressful. This Sunday was no exception, as you’ll know if you follow me on Twitter. I thought I’d share a picture of the Vicar helping me (and some lovely visitors) to cope before we ate lunch.

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Playdough Recipe: A Vicar’s Wife’s Standard

Posted in Craft, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 29 June, 2011| 1 Comment »

Last night we had a great time at Messy Church – the next one in our series on the ‘I am’ sayings of Jesus. This time we were looking at ‘I am the True Vine’ and the craft team decided that they’d like one activity to be making playdough grapes to place on a vine drawn on a paper plate. The Vicar then volunteered me to make the playdough, knowing that I had a recipe up my sleeve.

Every playgroup leader has a  recipe for playdough – that ubiquitous soft dough which mums hate to find in carpets. But many folk I’ve spoken to have found their homemade dough to be too sticky or oily. This recipe always seems to come out well, though, as long as you don’t mind your fingers getting a bit stained with food colouring. It lasts a few weeks if kept in an airtight box in the fridge.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (250ml) plain flour
  • 1 cup (250ml) water
  • 1/2 cup (125ml) salt
  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
  • Few drops food colouring

All you do is pop all the ingredients together in a pan (preferably non-stick) and heat it up, stirring, until the dough magically forms. You can also do it by heating it in a covered dish in the microwave for 1-2 minutes but it’s so fast on the stove top I use that method. Also, the food colouring can make the inside of a microwave dish look rather interesting.

I know these were meant to be grape coloured, but the local shop only sells colouring for pilau rice and Indian sweets, so the colours are a little lurid and approximate. For Messy Church I made a quadruple batch, which was ample. It’s great fun to hold and knead – we gave a couple of handfuls away to some of the teenage tearaways who were lurking in the church yard. One came in especially as he reckoned it would help him to deal with stress.

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A Formula for Trouble?

Posted in Fun, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 16 June, 2011| 2 Comments »

As we nibbled our rhubarb crumble cake and gingerbread loaf at Cake and Chat this morning, we were discussing (as usual) the state of the neighbourhood. Our local PCSO was visiting to eat cake catch up on intelligence and he and I were talking about the broken Vicarage windows and the local children who play together most evenings. Often there are more than a dozen of them, and they can often be playing out for four hours until the dark drives them home.

We decided that there is likely to be a mathematical formula for the likelihood of trouble eg broken windows that could be developed, using the number of children (C), the number of hours they spend unsupervised (H) and the amount of trouble (T). Something like this I would guess:

CxH = T

So if there are fewer children, or they are driven inside by rain after only an hour, or parents come and supervise, the amount of trouble is much less. The broken Vicarage windows didn’t happen first thing in the evening, but towards the end of things, and there were always a good few kids playing together.

Of course, the formula is really more complex than that, and should include such factors as emptiness of tummies, sugar recently consumed, time since the last big telling off and air temperature. Perhaps if I work on it I can develop the definitive predictor of Trouble and head it off before it comes. Or maybe I should stick to prayer and building relationships.

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All Age Service Illustrations to the Max

Posted in Church, Faith, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 6 June, 2011| 18 Comments »

All age services are a great way for families to worship together, but it can be a real challenge to keep them fresh and accessible. This weekend we began a new series for our monthly All Age gatherings. We are going through Colin Buchanan’s great song ‘Big Words that end in SHUN’, from his Super Saviour album, teaching a big word each month:

Big words that end in SHUN!
Show us what the Lord has DONE!
Through Jesus, His own SON!
Big words, Big words that end in SHUN!

Revela-­‐SHUN!
God shows himself to us
Substitut-­‐SHUN!
Jesus takes our place
Salva-­‐SHUN!
Sinners saved from hell
Big words, Big words that end in SHUN

Propitia-­‐SHUN!
God’s anger turned away
Justifica-­‐SHUN!
Just like we’d never sinned
Imputa-­‐SHUN!
Jesus’ righteousness is mine
Big words, Big words that end in SHUN

Resurrec-­‐SHUN!
Raised from death to life
Redemp-­‐SHUN!
Sinners bought by God
Adop-­‐SHUN
Sinners made God’s sons
Big words, Big words that end in SHUN

This Sunday we tackled REVELA-SHUN and the Vicar spoke on Hebrews 1:

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…

So the Vicar decided that we could get Dr Who to come and take us back to meet a few of the prophets to find out what they had to say. Suddenly plans were afoot for the construction of a tardis and the Queen, the Joker and the Engineer were very pleased to spend a day in half term wielding paintbrushes.

Tardis construction in the back yard of the Vicarage

Once it was painted, the Joker decided that our tardis should be manned by Doctrine Who. And so here is the finished item in our front drive, being shown off by Doctrine Who and an enemy (although my knowledge of Dr Who isn’t sufficient to tell you which enemy it is). It went down very well on Sunday morning, and is now installed in the boys’ bedroom, where time-travelling adventures continue.

Doctrine confounds an alien

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