Oasby Music Festival!

Today, I played two piano pieces in the Oasby Music Festival! I played Hornpipe and Xiong Mao (which means "The panda" in Chinese!). These are two very difficult pieces to play, but I did them both perfectly! The other kids weren't as good as me, especially not the violinists! Some of the kids were really young, but the younger the violinist, the better they were!

The whole concert was 2 hours long and I was in the second half. I was so nervous, my hands were shaking while I was pressing the piano keys! It didn't help it was absolutely freezing in the Church, and you weren't allowed to have a coat on!

Me and Mam in the interval

In the 20 minute interval between group 1 and 2, there was a few snacks and drinks. I was too nervous to eat anything, so I just had a small biscuit and a drink.

Mom took this picture of me and my eyes are so creepy! This is what happens when I step into a church!

Scary eyes!!

Gingerbread and Christmas!

We have a gingerbread house every year at Christmas.

Mom's tree

I've got all of my Christmas decorations up already, more than a week early! We still have to do the outside lights, but the tree is magnificent!
Mom  is spending all of her time sewing cute pink tree decorations like cute dogs with pink coats and a beautiful star with a button in the middle! These pink decorations go on mother's dining room tree, which looks really cool!
Mom's tree is still quite bare, so we're going to bake some gingerbread cookies! We definitely won't put them at the bottom of the tree, one year Maisie ate them! All that was left was the ribbons and a couple of crumbs! Dogs love gingerbread!

Incase you want to bake your own gingerbread cookies, here's the recipe!


Ingredients:
350g Plain Flour
1tsp of Bicarb of  Soda
2tsp of Ground Ginger
1tsp of Ground Cinnamon (if you don't want to use Cinnamon, you can use mixed spice instead)
1 Egg
4tbsp Golden Syrup (and another tablespoon for eating yourself!)


To decorate:
Writing Icing
Cake decorations/sweets.


Method:


1: Sift the Flour, Bicarb of Soda, Ginger and Cinnamon/Mixed Spice into a bowl. Chop the butter into small pieces and rub into the dry mixture until it looks like bread crumbs (This is my favourite bit!). Stir in the sugar.


2: Beat the Egg and Golden Syrup together. Mix it into the dry mixture to make a smooth dough.  Wrap the dough in clingfilm and leave in the fridge to chill for 15 minutes, or even longer! The colder it is the better it rolls out.


3: Preheat the oven to 180c/350f/Gas4. Line two baking trays with grease-proof paper.


4: Roll out the dough to a 0.5 cm thickness on a lightly floured surface. Using cutters, cut out Ginger bread man shapes, or stars, or anything you want and place on a baking tray. Don't let them touch each other.


5: Bake to 12-15 minutes until lightly golden-brown. Leave on the tray for 10 minutes to cool and then move to a wire rack to finish cooling. Now you can decorate them!

The cookies smelled delicious



Time to decorate

Shelter

I recently bought Shelter on Steam! Shelter is a game where you play as a mother badger escorting her 5 cubs from your small warren to a new home. Easier said than done! There are lots of different stages in the game, and in all of them it's a struggle to keep your cubs alive. You have to find vegetables and fruit to keep your cubs from starving, and if you're feeling extra hungry you can go hunt a fox or a vole. But you have to be careful, because your cubs will be prey to some birds! If a bird spots you, you have to hide in the tall grass and wait until the perfect time to run to the next bit of tall grass.




If you mange to survive the deadly white birds that are after your cubs, good job! I didn't do it the first time! I thought the struggles were over when I finally managed to get all of my cubs safe, but I was wrong. Way wrong! Next is the night level. It looks pretty simple, there's plenty of frogs and vegetables to eat, but your cubs don't see it that way. If there's a snapping twig in the distance, your cubs will run away. You have to sprint after them to catch them again, which can be difficult when you don't except them to run!




Once you get through the night maze, your cubs will still be in danger! There's a forest fire where you are, and you have to try to dodge the spreading flames in time! Not only are the flames trying to kill your cubs, but another gigantic bird is as well! You have to choose the patch of grass to run to carefully. If you choose the wrong patch, it'll catch fire and you'll be trapped! This level took me ages!




Once you escape the flames, there's a dangerous storm that makes the riverbank overflow. You have to cross the river by choosing the right time to lead your cubs to a rock in the middle of the river. This would be easy, if it wasn't for the waves that come after you! If you're not securely on the rock, your cubs will be washed away in an instant. (I lost 2 cubs to this).




If you've managed to protect your cubs up to this point, good job! Now, you'll  be in a peaceful forest in the Summertime. There's lost of food to get to keep your cubs healthy and it all looks good until you reach a large plain. Then, a giant bird spots you! It'd be like any other bird attack, but there's nowhere to hide! The bird swoops down to attack, and to keep your cubs safe, you have to run at it. Each time you run at it, you'll slowly get tired.  Once the bird has had a few tries at attacking your cubs, it'll change its mind and go for you!  You send your cubs to run away, and the bird carries you away.




Then there's a small cut scene of your cubs running away, fleeing to the mountains.




Once you've finished the game, you'll unlock another part of the game, Nurture. In Nurture, you have to find food in a small area near your den to feed your newborn badger babies. Every 12  hours, food replenishes in your land, and the more you feed your cubs, the bigger they'll grow. Once your babies are big enough, they'll start venturing outside with you. The longer you wait to feed your cubs, the hungrier they'll be.












To buy it on Steam, it's only £7. I loved this game! Even though it's quite sad, it really gets you excited!

Wildcats!

That's me far right with the hat on; I always have a hat on!!

Wildcats is very difficult at the minute (I still love going though). We are learning grade 4 LAMDA. I was only meant to be doing Grade 2 this year!
I am singing "I'm not that Girl" from Wicked and "Naughty" from Matilda. I really like the songs but "Naughty" is a hard one to sing...it has so many words and I keep mixing them up.
I have made some friends at Wildcats and I have gained the trust of the shyest girl ever! Her name is Zoe and she is the double of Ralfie. Ralfie, for those of you that don't know, is my internet friend. Ralfie is awesome; she makes me laugh at everything and she always helps me fight off mobs in Minecraft. There was a time I broke my sword and if it wasn't for Ralfie I would be a gonner!!

Anyway, back to Wildcats: My exam is February so there is still plenty time to practise.

The third Halloween Party!

 Sorry I haven't posted about this sooner but I had such a good time it's worth posting about now!

Tilly came for a sleepover and mom did our Halloween face-paint.

Day of the dead. This is what they celebrate in Mexico

Halloween disco at Marston Vale. It's my third year here! I danced the night away!

We cooled off outside because I was so HOT with dancing.

Fireworks at Tallington Lakes.

Me mam and dad went to Tallington Lakes which isn't very far from Bourne. There were loads of people there to see the fireworks but there wasn't a bonfire. Dad wasn't happy about that and neither was I; we usually go to Baston where there is a HUGE bonfire that keeps me warm in the cold November wind.
The fireworks were quite good but not as good as the one's in Baston plus there was no music playing. A bit disappointing really. Luckily, I was pleased that dad bought me a colour-changing light sabre! And it still works 2 weeks later. I take it to bed and use it as a night-light so I can read in secret!

 

I love my light sabre

Warrior Cats!

I'm obsessed with a new set of books! Warrior Cats! Warriors weren't written by one person, they were written by 6 people, who call themselves the Erin Hunters. The Erins also do 2 other series of books, Survivors Dogs and Seekers Bears, but I love Warriors most of all!


So far I've read 21 books in 3 months! I'm on a roll! There's 5 series in Warriors, and about 6 books in each of them. That isn't including all of the Super Editions and the Mangas (there's a lot of them as well!) The 5 series are (in order): Into The Wild which is 6 books long, The New Propechy which is 6 books long, Power Of Three that's 6 books long, Omen Of The Stars which is also six books long and Dawn Of The Clans (which is the newest series) which is, currently, only 4 books long.


I've read about 4 Mangas but mom says I can't buy anymore because I can finish 3 of them in about 20 minutes. Mangas are like comics, and I really like them!


Warriors has a Wiki page, so you can search all of the characters and learn stuff about them! Warriors Wiki. There's also a website. Warriors Website. And there's a Warriors App which you can download on almost anything!

STEM!

A little while ago, I went to my first STEM class! STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths! In this class, we learned about flying things and air resistance! We made a paper plane and flew it outside. Mine didn't go very far, though. Then the woman who ran it said to make the plane fly better by altering it. There were lots of things like Play dough, feathers, and felt to change your plane around. I'd smoothed out the edge of the wings with Play dough, then added feathers. Once we'd finished editing our planes, we went back outside and threw them again! Mine went the farthest and I won the competition of who could fly their planes farthest! My high score was 4 meters and 27 cm!


Then we watched a video of a guy in space dropping a feather and a rock, and both of them hit the ground at the same time! That was because there was no air resistance to keep the feather up.


I can't wait to go back to the next STEM class!

Duxford Air Museum!

A while ago, I went to visit the Duxford Imperial War Museum in Cambridgeshire! I went with Tilly and Lavinia. They had loads of really cool RAF Planes that were massive! There was also a little lesson on how things fly. Me, Tilly and Lavinia built some paper planes and flew them! Mine flew really far, almost the best!

Showing off our planes.

There were also recreations of the battle fields. You could see all of the tanks and the bunkers, they even had real sand bags filled with sand! It looked so scary, and I know I wouldn't want to be in the war! There was also a lot of display cabinets with lots of things like soldiers' hats and the outfits they wear.

Mom was scared of these!

In the actual plane museum bit, there were loads of planes that were in the war and you could even look inside the glass! It looked really complicated to fly one, there were buttons and wires everywhere! You could even go inside a few of the planes, but the only one that was open at the time was the Concorde. The Concorde had really big wings and a really pointy nose. It's the fastest plane ever, it can fly over 2 times the speed of sound! Thankfully the plane wasn't moving when I was in it!

The lesson of how things fly was really cool. We were asked questions like: if you blew between two balloons what would happen? Me and Tilly both got it right, the balloons went really close together!

I got to fly a plane!

We all held the plane up!

The New Prophecy! Books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5!

Sorry I haven't done a book review in awhile, I've been RACING through the second series of Warriors, The New Prophecy! Since I've read 5 out of 6 books in the series, I'm just going to do a quick overview of all of them.


Main Characters: Stormfur, Feathertail (up to book 3), Brambleclaw, Squirrelpaw (SquirrelFlight in book 5),  Crowpaw (Crowfeather in book 3+), Tawnypelt, Leafpaw (Leafpool in book 5)


Plot: When 6 cats set out on a heroic journey to speak to the mystical Midnight, they're faced with many more challenges than they expected. After hearing the devastating prophecy, the 6 cats head home, though not all of them make it back.


  Once they are home, the cats have even more trouble to face, as the deadly prophecy has already come true. The cats that embarked on the journey have to lead their clans into an unknown land to stay alive.


Review: Like always, I loved all of the books and I'd rate them all 10 stars out of 10! The books can be quite difficult to understand because the main cat keeps switching between Leafpaw and the cats that went on the journey.