Today we’ve been reading The Underwater Fancy-Dress Parade by Davina Bell and illustrated by Allison Colpoys. The book is a touching and realistic portrayal of a child dealing with the common dilemma of shyness, beautifully illustrated by an award-winning designer. The day before the underwater fancy-dress parade, Alfie got that feeling … Sometimes it’s hard to be brave. Sometimes you get that feeling. Sometimes you’re just not ready … Until, one day, you are. From a dynamic new picture book partnership comes the story of Alfie and a big octopus wearing a tiny hat and the things you can only…
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This year marks a special anniversary for one of the world’s most famous children’s characters. Miffy, the little white bunny, will be 60 years old. Miffy was “born” on 21 June 1955 – the date Dutch artist Dick Bruna first drew the character to entertain his young son whilst on a rainy seaside holiday in Holland. Dick Bruna’s Miffy stories have been refreshed for a modern British audience, with newly translated texts by award winning British poet, Tony Mitton. We were sent a special 60th anniversary edition of Miffy’s Birthday book to review. Miffy puts on her best dress because…
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My 3 year old loves Tinkerbell and we’re really excited about the release of Tinkerbell and the NeverBeast on DVD on Monday 20th. It’s a long time since we saw it at the cinema and we’re looking forward to taking part in a home viewing party to celebrate its release. Both my children love playing with play dough so I thought we should make some Tinkerbell inspired play dough. I used my never fail recipe with a little sprinkle of pixie dust. Tinkerbell play dough recipe: 150g plain flour 100g salt 2 tsp. cream of tartar 2 tbsp. vegetable oil…
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I have a fun little make to share with you today. I don’t know about you but my husband is forever putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher when in fact it’s clean and needs emptying. My children also love to help tidy up but needed a little visual help to understand if the dishwasher was clean or dirty. This is such an easy project. I love crafting with Scrabble letters so I have hundreds of tiles to play with but you should be able to pick up a vintage Scrabble set from your local charity shop for a few pounds.…
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We seem to be experiencing a mini-heatwave in the UK today which meant we have spent most of the day outdoors. My 3 year old loves playing fairies so we thought we would add to our fairy garden. So far we’ve built a fairy house in the garden, made a painted stone fairy door for a fairy house and painted pebble animals to live in the fairy garden. Today we had some messy sensory fun, making proper mud cakes for the fairies, in our tuff spot mud kitchen. Setting up a tuff spot mud kitchen It was really easy to…
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A couple of week ago I treated myself to this gorgeous Cath Kidston skirt in my very favourite print – London buses. I adore this print but sadly the skirt didn’t look so great on. I wanted to keep the skirt so decided to re-fashion it into a cushion. I’m trying to have a London theme for our living room with my vintage London bus blind and vintage London bus collection. How to upcycle a Cath Kidston skirt into a cushion: First I removed the elasticated waist band and unpicked the hem to stretch out the amount of fabric. I…
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I can’t believe that two weeks of school holidays are over so quickly. The holidays kept us busy and we created some really fun memories. The weather has been amazing so we’ve spent a lot of time sorting out the garden. We’ve had a few trips to the local garden centre and put in some lovely plants and veg in our upcycled pallet planter. I enjoyed spending time with my mum over the Easter holidays. She always organises the best Easter egg hunt which the children love and she helped me upcycle a Cath Kidston skirt into a cushion. The…
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I love to re-use and upcycle the children’s toys. This year we’ve ended up with a few of the large plastic Playmobil Easter eggs and I really wanted to give them a new life. We used a few Playmobil eggs as containers to grow cress in which was fun (and lovely to eat something we had grown ourselves). Today I’m going to show you how to upcycle a Playmobil Easter egg to make simple Easter egg and Marshmallow popcorn – a perfect way to use up leftover Easter eggs! Ingredients needed to make Easter egg and marshmallow popcorn 50g popcorn…
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I’ve been a stay at home mum for a couple of years now. I love the fact I’m able to spend so much time with my children, attend School events and take them to their swimming lessons. I wouldn’t be able to do it without the support of my husband. We’ve been together for 11 years this year and one of the first things we did after we moved in together was to take out a joint account. Fingers crossed we’ve always tried to be savvy with our money. We’ve paid the mortgage, bills, food and then any leftover goes…
