Landlocked Mermaid

This month, I have asked the kids to show me on Dylan's world map where some of the sharks they have drawn for me live. Here are their findings: I'm sure Dylan meant to point at the correct America! This will be the last episode of Sharks @ 7 & 3/4, but fear not my favourite shark experts will be back in July with a new name! Dylan pointed out that at nearly nine, we cannot keep calling the segment 7 & 3/4. So we are having a month off and will be back with new videos from July. All of the old videos are still available on YouTube and this channel, to watch to your heart's content.

For this video, I decided to do something a little bit different. I left my favourite shark experts a mission. My partner and I have an aquarium. It's a small affair with five fish and two shrimp inside. But my partner, being who he is, wants to make something a little more epic. So we are currently in the process of building an aquarium which will feature a land mass, a waterfall, a cave, some dinosaurs, and, of course, some sharks.  This is where the mission comes in. I want to know the sharks in my tank a little better. So their mission: Find out four facts about each shark and film their findings.  Here is what they got! I just want to point out, they researched and filmed everything. (And still did a better job than me, their sister with a media degree!) Do you know any facts about these four sharks? Share below!

So yesterday was my Birthday. I am a whole 28 years old. I had a lovely day, chilling out and not doing very much. Eating all the cakes - pancakes, vanilla cake, and shark cake. You read that right, shark cake! As decided last time on Sharks @ 7 & 3/4, the kids were going to make me a birthday cake. And make it shark themed. Because, well, just look at who they are making it for. This crazy old shark lady. So I gave them my flip about a week ago and let them loose in my mother's kitchen. With her permission and supervision, of course. Here is how they got on! The cake was delicious. This mermaid enjoyed it very much. (Also, Mumma said my fringe looks like a wave in the last photo!) Listening to: The sweet sounds of video editing. Urrrhhh--Krrrkk!

I had every intention of this being a proper Sharks @ 7 & 3/4 video. However, our sister got married this weekend, so all planning went out the window because I was partying all weekend long. The best kind of party.  Instead, I let the kids loose on my shark colouring book! All the colours They seemed to enjoy it.  Co-operating and everything! Getting creative Dylan coloured quicker than Addy, so he started to draw some extras. Naturally, Addy did too. But they are the cutest pictures. And yes, there is blood dripping from the mouth of Addy's shark. The finished thing. Almost, it gains a few more jellies. Addy's was inspired by Elmer the Elephant. Dylan never specified what inspired his.  Sea Turtle and fish. Jellyfish. These were a specific jellyfish, but Dylan speaks too fast and my brain is too slow today to ask him to repeat it slow enough for me to jot it down! Regardless, such beautiful additions to the pict...

Happy New Year! I hope you all have a happy and healthy 2019, full of adventure and fun! While I get my new schedule and posts in order, I am going to take this one last opportunity to look back on 2018. I think it's been a good start to the blog and I'm looking forward to aiming for bigger and better things! I thought it'd be fun to list my top five viewed posts.   5. The Waterbike Collective (posted 20/7) This was when I discovered the Say Yes More initiative and the YesTribe . All thanks to my partner being their hero, I got to find out about their Waterbike mission to pick up a million pieces of river litter, Yestival, and hopefully more of their future projects. Hughie in action on the bike. 4. Finding My Fins: Porth Ysgaden (posted 24/7)  One of the biggest things I have done this year is learning how to dive. This was my first sea dive, off the beautiful Welsh coast with SSAC.  I am looking forward to going on more trips ...

Me and my favourite shark experts have been making sharky Christmas arts and crafts all afternoon.  We made cards... Mum joined in. We made ornaments... We made paper shark aeroplanes... We made a mess... Merry Sharkmas Guys!

So this weekend, the kids made a quiz for me to test my shark knowledge. I left my flip with them and let them loose! They did their research and did a little behind the scenes filming. It was their quiz, so I let them film pretty much everything!  We had some good fun doing this, I hope you enjoy watching it!

I am back with everyone's favourite shark experts! This time we play Addy vs Dylan: Pictionary. They didn't playing for doughnuts today, just for fun. And it was a lot of fun! Enjoy roughly ten minutes of chaos.

The new episode or Sharks @ 7 & 3/4 is live! Watch Addy and Dylan, my favourite shark experts, go head to head in a quiz about the hunting styles of the Wobbegong, Goblin and Megamouth Sharks. What were they playing for? A doughtnut - the best of prizes. The game was simple. After drawing a picture of each shark, I posed them nine questions. All they had to do was show me the shark they thought was the answers. With nine points to play for, whoever had the most won the doughnut. Find out what happened below: And because their pictures are so beautiful, here they are close up. Left: Dylan's. Right: Addy's.

So this was a golden opportunity. August being a five week month, I had the chance to refilm episode three of Sharks @ 7 & 3/4 and get back on track for episode four next month. But the small window of opportunity I had vanished. I feel like the boat for refilming has been missed but rather than abandon this episode entirely, I am going to break this episode down here. The kids did some really great pictures, it's not their fault I fail at filming. So I'm going to showcase their beautiful pictures, share some facts and get my act together for the next episode. Basking Sharks Top: Dylan's. Bottom: Addy's The 2nd biggest shark alive today. They are filter feeders, meaning they eat plankton. They feed with their mouths wide open. They filter 1.5 million litres per hour and catch the microscopic plankton on their gill rakers. See those structures inside the mouths the kids drew? Those are the gill rakers. Their name comes from appearing to bask in the su...

So according to my new super duper organised schedule, today's blog is supposed to be the new episode of Sharks @ 7 & 3/4. If you haven't already guessed... it's not. Between my terrible filming skills, feeling overwhelmed and a severe lack of time, I haven't got enough to produce a full episode which I am 100% happy with. Which is a shame, the kids came out with some golden stuff and drew some lovely pictures. To rectify this, I am going to refilm. (Mum, I need to borrow the kids again!) I am going to coerce someone into being a cameraman for me. (I cannot host and film at the same time, not with my little Flip.) And I am going to bring you the proper episode for Sharks @ 7 & 3/4: British Sharks, next month. Apologies if you were super excited for this, but trust me, I literally broke every filming rule I learned about at University. Every last one. Instead, I am going to whet your appetite with the little bits which I did like. It is mostly the kids...

This post has been a long time coming as I started filming it before going to Italy - in May! I hope you enjoy what we finally came up with. It was fun to film - a lot of chaos, laundry and background cooking noise. But that is the way this mermaid grew up! Let me tell you a little about Bananagrams . It is a letter game, a little like Scrabble, where you have letter tiles and you need to make conjoining words. There isn't a designated board, meaning you can re-arrange as many times as you need. Each player is given 12 tiles and the remaining tiles are face down in the centre, which have to all eventually be put into play. When they run out of their immediate tiles, the player yells PEEL and everyone takes a tile. A player can opt to DUMP a difficult tile and pick up three. Once all the tiles are in play, the player who runs out first yells BANANAGRAMS and wins! (And if you are me, you get your words checked by your sisters because they don't trust I can spell, for good re...

Meet my little brother Dylan: He is seven and three quarters, though he'll tell you he's already eight. He is just as crazy about sharks as I am, if not crazier. He can name at least fifty species of shark, just off the top of his head. He can tell you the bite force of several sharks. He is even writing a "Word Documentary" about sharks. (His phrase, not mine.) Because of this, I decided he'd fit in perfectly at my blog. He's a little strange and talks through clenched teeth sometimes (no, I'm not sure why!), but he is a sweetie with a mind full of sharks. So here is the first episode of Sharks at 7 & 3/4 ! It's inspired by the B-Movie Sharkenstein , and well, I'll let Dylan do the talking. Filmed by Mash - she's the watch buzzing half way through! (In case you hadn't noticed, I have a YouTube now! I would say check it out, but it is literally this video. But there will be more to come and it will be yo...