• EmbellishBox for papercutters {May box}
    crafts - Paper craft - Paper cut art - subscription box

    EmbellishBox for papercutters {May box}

    June 4, 2017 - By 

    I’ve neglected my hobbies in the last few months and hardly spent any time being creative. Unfinished projects have been piling up around me, only making me feel more guilty about not making time for them. I’ve still been receiving the magazines and subscription boxes though! The latest one to arrive on my doorstep was the May EmbellishBox. Each month has a different theme and this months was On Safari. As usual the box contained four #papercutting  templates: Safari Animals, Safari Party, Looking on Safari and a Safari House. I’ve nearly finished the Looking on Safari template. There were some…

  • How to build a bug hotel - the gingerbread house blog
    crafts - garden crafts - Toilet roll crafts - upcycling

    How to build a bug hotel {Part 2}

    June 3, 2017 - By 

    A few weeks ago I mentioned how we started work building our own bug hotel. The kids love learning about all the different animals they see in the garden so we thought a bug hotel would be fun. What we used to build a Bug Hotel bricks flower pot corrugated cardboard bamboo sticks cardboard tubes How to build a bug hotel A bug hotel can be as simple of complicated as you want. Our garden is quite small but we found a quiet corner we thought would be perfect. We roughly measured where we wanted the bug hotel to go. It…

  • West London Racing Centre
    days out - Hillingdon - Local Review - London - parenting

    West London Racing Centre {exploring the local area}

    June 3, 2017 - By 

    I’ve mentioned a few times that my husband and children have a collection of model cars they like to race (this is on top of the model cars and model planes!). When we moved to West London we began looking for somewhere to race the cars, other than the woods or local park. Someone recommended the West London Racing Centre. The West London Racing Centre is in the corner of Pole Hill Open Space, a park in the London Borough of Hillingdon. The WLRC is designed to provide an organised venue for racing 1:10th Scale Electric On-Road radio control model…

  • Doodle Dogs by Tim Hopgood
    book review - competition

    Win a copy of Doodle Dogs by Tim Hopgood

    June 2, 2017 - By 

    Macmillan Children’s Books have a lovely new activity book for children from author/illustrator Tim Hopgood. Doodle Dogs features different breeds of dogs, allowing children to have fun doodling while teaching children to harness their creativity by learning artistic techniques from famous artists. World famous artist Paul Klee once said, ‘A line is a dot that went for a walk’, so get ready to do some creative dot walking! Fromt dots to dashes and squiggles to scribbles, this book is all about making marks, creating characters and having fun with art. Get ready to do some creative dot walking with Tim Hopgood and doodle Dog,…

  • easy Summer votive craft for kids
    crafts - Father's Day - Recycled crafts

    Summer votive craft {A-Z Play at Home}

    June 2, 2017 - By 

    One thing the children love to do is raid the recycling box for crafting materials. Yoghurt pots seem to be a favourite but all kinds of cardboard tubes, egg boxes, cereal boxes and jam jars go in – waiting to be given a new lease of life. With Father’s Day coming up this month the children wanted to make something special for their Dad, so raided the recycling box for ’empties’ – jam jars which they turned into summer votives. Summer votive craft for kids We used baking parchment colouring pens empty jam jars sticky tape LED tealights I roughly…

  • Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
    book review

    Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig

    June 1, 2017 - By 

    The latest book I have been enjoying is Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig. Published by HQ today, 1st June 2017. I have no experience of Autism at all, other than reading A Boy Made of Blocks which I read earlier this year. I don’t think that matters because as soon as I read the blurb for Ginny Moon I wanted to read more. Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig Ginny Moon‘s painfully honest narrator is Ginny, a girl with autism living in a world that just doesn’t add up. Five years ago the police forcibly removed her from the home of her abusive mother Gloria.…

  • Celebrating Elderflower season with Belvoir
    baking - days out - London

    Celebrating Elderflower season with Belvoir

    May 31, 2017 - By 

    I’m so excited for the start of June tomorrow. May has been a great month but I can’t wait for more sunshine – mainly so the kids can play out more! Did you know that the beginning of June also marks the traditional start of summer when the Elderflower bursts into flower in our English hedgerows? Baking Madeleine Hot Air Balloons with Lisa Faulkner Elderflower sums up Summer perfectly for me. We had an Elderflower tree in the garden of our old house and every year my husband promised to try making our own cordial. We never did get round to…

  • Is it worth installing underfloor heating in your home?
    homestyle

    Is it worth installing underfloor heating in your home?

    May 31, 2017 - By 

    Who doesn’t love the feeling of walking barefoot on a heated floor on a cold winter’s day? As well as giving you a warm fuzzy feeling inside, there are many advantages to installing underfloor heating in your home. That being said, underfloor heating is a big investment to make and may not be suitable for your property, so you shouldn’t make the decision to install underfloor heating without a lot of prior thought. The main advantage of underfloor heating is that its energy efficient and therefore, more environmentally friendly and cost effective. An underfloor heating panel heats a larger portion of  your room more effectively,…

  • The Diary of a Wimpy Kid screening with Joules Clothing
    days out - film review - London - parenting

    The Diary of a Wimpy Kid screening with Joules Clothing

    May 30, 2017 - By 

    Today we were invited by Joules Clothing to attend a screening of the latest film, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, at 20th Century Fox. I’d heard of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series of fiction books, written by the American author and cartoonist Jeff Kinney. All the main books are the journals of the main character, Greg Heffley. We haven’t read any of the books or watched the previous films but were excited to see the film based on the trailer, which we all thought was funny. We had a lovely afternoon in London before the…