Yesterday we experienced typical British weather, the complete opposite of the previous 24 hours. After a long day soaking up the sunshine, it rained practically all day long. I wanted to make a delicious lunch, packed full of good things to give us all some much needed energy and came up with an asparagus and egg salad. It’s the asparagus season so it’s lovely to be able to eat something fresh and packed full of flavour. It was super quick to prepare and a meal the whole family enjoyed so I thought I would share it here. Ingredients for an…
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My 3 year old loves her Sylvanian Families toys so we planned a fun day out at the weekend – a trip to Hatchlands Park to follow the Sylvanian Families Trail! Hatchlands Park is a beautiful National Trust owned house and parkland in Surrey. The house isn’t open very often but the gardens and parkland are. Although we spent a few hours there we didn’t see much so will be going back again soon. Sylvanian Families nature trail at Hatchlands Park This is the first nature trail in the UK to feature Sylvanian Families, and is part of their global…
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As you know when I’m not blogging, or crafting with my children, I’m sewing. I always have a few projects on the go and my current project is the Union Flag quilt I’m making for my daughter. I’ve been trying to add some handmade touches to her room so I’m also making a patchwork cover for her vintage Lloyd Loom nursing chair. It was added to her room when we moved 2 years ago but I wanted to match the cover to her pink colour scheme. I found some gorgeous fabrics from elephant in my handbag, an online shop which…
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Jenny Makes Mollie Makes star hoop stitch kit from issue 53. There were 3 sweet designs to choose from, a piece of navy blue fabric and a gorgeous turquoise plastic embroidery hoop. Mollie Makes star hoop stitch kit The instructions recommended using coloured transfer paper on to the dark fabric. Unfortunately the kit didn’t include any so I bought a pack of coloured transfer paper from eBay and waited for it to arrive. I used blue transfer paper but it didn’t work at all so I used white transfer paper which worked perfectly. I stitched the pattern in an hour…
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I love making my own home made play dough for the children. It’s really cheap to make and lasts for ages. However, we were offered some products from the Plasticine range by Flair, the original modelling clay and a timeless classic that can be used in a huge variety of ways! The products are aimed at boys and girls aged from 3+ up to any age. Creative fun with Plasticine We received a large selection including a Plasticine FunTUBulous bucket with 7 bumper sticks of Plasticine and 4 fun cutters, which are stored in a sturdy plastic bucket with carry…
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We’re all really enjoying spending time out in the garden. Although we’ve been in our house for 2 years now progress on our garden has been slow. Our first priority was the children’s play house, giving them an area for their sand pit and water table, and planting some vegetables in our upcycled pallet planter. Over the weekend we had some fun making simple watering cans for the children to use. Recycled milk bottle watering cans for kids This was really simple but fun. I found a couple of empty milk bottles from the recycling box. I used my Dremel…
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I’m pleased to say the past week has been slightly less manic as I’ve taken a small step back from blogging and spent more time crafting! Following on from the success of the fairy garden we built in our garden I wrote 10 top tips for creating a fairy garden which was published on Female First. Take a look if you’re thinking of building your own! We’re huge fans of Miffy so I was pretty excited the miffy bento lunch I made for my children was shared on the miffy blogs too. You can see my original blog post about…
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Role play is really important to help children explore their imagination and develop social skills. My children love role playing, even though they probably aren’t even aware when they are doing it. The children have an indoor and outdoor kitchen and they can spend hours taking orders for food, preparing food, serving it, taking money and doing the washing up. Part of the fun for them is copying what they see the grown ups doing so we were delighted to be sent the Hetty Cleaning Trolley from Casdon to review. Both my children love to clean (much more than I…
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I’ve always hoped my children would been keen to collect Schleich toys. They’re a great heritage brand and represent excellent quality and value to me as a parent. Luckily both my children love collecting Schleich animals and people. They’re perfect for small world play, pocket money friendly and a day out is never complete without squeezing a few in their rucksack to take with them. We were offered the Schleich Horse Riding Arena to review, which comes with the Arena, a horse with rider, accessories and jumps. The packaging was visually appealing and the arena required minimum construction skills from…
