Little Monsters Bash - Brighton

This year we went to Brighton's Little Monster Bash - a children's festival in our own county (well... nearly, we're in West Sussex, but what's a couple of miles).  Anyway, I love that the event was being held with Tree of Hope children's charity with proceeds going to them - so I for one am NOT going to complain about £5 car parking fee for the day - especially when bigger London-based children festivals charge double that!

We arrived at 10am - when it started, and I do believe the dark cloud above is what stopped a lot of parents turning up this early (not that 10am is early in our house, Max certainly does not get his early bird attitude from me....).  Maybe parents were waiting for seeing what the weather was going to do? or being local just decide to turn up much later?  I don't know, what I do know is by 3pm it was a lot busier than 10am.

So, back to our morning.  We had a lovely clear view of the event, we could see all the tents, toilets and stage.  We purchased guides to show us what was going on and where it was - again these you had to purchase - but that is no different to purchasing a guide to Reading.

DryNites Craft Projects with Tamara Melvin - Part 1

Photo courtesy of DryNites

When I was invited by DryNites to spend the day crafting with BBC2 Great Sewing Bee finalist Tamara Melvin at the Camden Tea and Crafting rooms, I immediately thought this was going to be a great day and perfect learning opportunity on so so many levels - and I wasn't wrong!

I had a brilliant day and so much so I'm never going to be able to get this all in one blog - well not without it being the mother of blogs posts (for me!).

So what is this all about?  Well, Tamara Melvin has teamed up with DryNites to create a series of craft projects to bring some grown-up touches to kid's bedrooms - Craft Projects - oh hell yes!

Created on behalf of DryNites and with support from child psychologist Emma Kenny, Tamara wants to provide a fun way to normalise the night time routine, potty training and most importantly bed wetting phase which affects almost 600,000 each year.

So our morning project was - Lamp Decoration.  The idea behind this is to give your little one comfort when waking up to a lamp decorated with their own toys, especially in the night when needing to visit the toilet.  This is a great way to reassure and give your child confidence as they get used to being dry at night.  It will make them feel so grown up, right around the clock.

Materials for Lamp Base

* Working lamp base

* Toys your child relates to

* Sand Paper

* Glue Gun

* Spray Paint or paint that doesn't need a primer (chalk paint)

Give everything a clean and then scrape everything to a rough surface, this is for the glue to stick to then choose your paint colour. I chose blue as this is currently Max's favourite colour and painted his hot wheel car and dinosaurs.... T-Rex is a must.

After painting the lamp base with the same paint and allowing to dry I then glued my images around the base giving a unique lamp base for Max's bedroom with items he associates with his day.

An alternative is to glue the toys to the base first then spray paint the entire base making sure all switches are first covered.

Materials for Lamp Shade:

* Lamp Shade

* Thin Card (any colour)

* Craft Knife and cutting board

* Glue Gun

* Pre-cut shapes or stencils

The card is cut to fit around the outside of your shade and use the pre-cut shapes as stencils to decorate the card or use craft time with your little one to decorate the lamp together, this also gives them a sense of safety and knowing if woken in the night, the lamp showing a sense of familiarity from the day.

We also decorated our lamp shades with trim - the list is endless with what can be done with the shade and the more involvement from the little ones the better.

Whilst we were painting, this gave us the opportunity to talk with DryNites and  Emma Kenny regarding Potty Training and Bed Wetting. 

We've been very fortunate with Max, he took to potty training straight away and only wears a pull up at night - which is rather common from what I gather.  He is now at the stage where he is dry most nights, occasional wet but to help us DryNites have a new product launched: Huggies DryNites Bed Mats RRP £4.99.  These fit discretely under the bed sheet and have a unique stick and stay put peel off adhesive.

We put Max's lamp in his room when I got home and it was an immediate hit, a great talking point just before bed - really lovely feeling, I'm thinking of finally removing the pull up this weekend.....

So much advice, laughter and crafting in the morning alone - what did the afternoon bring?? My favourite of tool..... STAPLE GUNS

Part 2 coming soon.....

Butterflies with Insect Lore

I'm not entirely sure how this happened but I caught an advert on TV - and got sucked in!!

Now I'm not trying to brag here that I don't usually get sucked in by adverts - I do, I'm human......what I mean to say is I don't usually get to watch programs when they are aired - I end up watching TV on catch up and Sky+ when little one has gone to bed.

Somehow, probably on Boomerang - the Tom and Jerry channel!  I caught the advert on growing your own butterflies from caterpillars sent to you - thanks to Insect Lore and found myself thinking about the advert the rest of the day!!  Put a status up on Facebook and found other parents had either done this project before or thinking about doing it.

So I bought them!

I'm not entirely sure who got the most enjoyment out of this.

When our caterpillars arrived we put them up on the shelf out of direct sunlight and watched them grow.

Funny little things they are.  Shedding and silk threads, food and growth all in the space of 7 days!  Then, they all started making their way to the lid to form the pupa stage.  This took a couple of days to complete and we had a moment when Max picked up the cup only for one of the caterpillars already in its chrysalis to fall!!  Oh, my days!  I did worry about that one!

Yes, this project comes with stress!

The chrysalis can be moved after a day into the butterfly netted tube - stress.  You need to make sure there is no silk when transferring the chrysalis otherwise they butterflies could get tangled in it.  If they fall off, scoop them up with a spoon and put them on tissue on the bottom......

Well after spending 10 minutes trying to get the lid off slowing and carefully..... we put our butterflies new home up high out the way of danger.... (little fingers)

And there they stayed, growing, getting darker and waiting...... waiting for us not to be looking - to emerge!  We managed to miss every single one of them!  3 appeared overnight so they have a good excuse.  1 waited until I was in the bath - and that was the one that had fallen from the cup.  More appeared that night and whenever we popped out.

We caught them just after, stretching their crumpled wings and it really was the most amazing thing to watch.

Once all the butterflies had hatched we kept them for a couple of days with twigs and flowers and nectar.  Then the moment came to let them go.  We took them out into the garden near the trees and opened up the tube and with a little help set them free.

It's been a fantastic experience and will definitely be doing it again.  We may even try other bugs... but that's a big maybe, not sure I'll feel the same about stick insects as I do about beautiful butterflies.

Butterfly Crafts with children

As part of the Bostik craft family with Tots100 I was sent a bundle of fun this month with the Bostik glue being 'Sew Simple' - Yeah, that concerned me slightly.... you know I got ungraded for making a pin cushion when I was 12.... it bent the pins - it was a fair grade.... but needless to say - put me off sewing!!

Anyway, we have a bundle of goodies and thanks to Insect Lore we also have real caterpillars growing into painted lady butterflies so I thought this would be our theme for 'Sew Simple'!
 

Butterfly craft with Bostik and Tots100

Obviously first up - caterpillars.  We used some felt and a circle cutter for our caterpillar and used our Bostik to glue the body parts together.  I must admit it didn't really work for felt and we ended up glueing the felt to card backing and then on to each part of the body.

For butterflies, we decided to vamp up the blank canvas bag.  Now, this - the glue was perfect for.  I found a great template on Favequilts.com and used this to cut out some butterflies on the fabrics supplied.

I rather enjoyed this, and Max loved glueing the images onto the bag and then had a good rummage in our craft box for some butterfly buttons (that I had no idea we had!).

Note to self - I will need to get the iron out next time.....

I was rather impressed with the glue, and as I'm not one sewing I thought I'd try my hand at making a little bag - and it worked!! The first attempt at anything fabric based (that doesn't involve a staple gun or mod podge since the pin cushion days) so bear with me!

First up I put a hem on the material to give it a nice clean finish so it didn't fray (that was scary enough!)

Then from our box of goodies, I got bold and added a handle!

I glued around the end of one half and closed the fabric up and wahey - got ourselves a little bag to put all our spare pieces of material in for our next craft day.

The best part of today was by the end of our crafting, wet and windy day - our little-painted lady butterflies currently hanging in a chrysalis - started to hatch and spread their wings.

Thank you, Bostik and Tots100 for our goodies

Letters to my son

Dear Max,

Over the last 4/5 weeks we've seen a few more first, an oldie but a goodie and progress with your speech.

So, lets start with the speech.  I'm beginning to think nursery were just a bit too keen with you regarding your speech.  You're a wee bit shy and didn't speak a lot at nursery, so much so they thought you may have glue ear or a slight hearing problem.  

So after quite a bit of paperwork and confusion we managed to get you to the hospital to have your ears checked.  They are perfect, you have 100% hearing and truth be told you didn't really need a referral - and certainly not until the age of 3.  Needless to say, you are coming on leaps and bounds with your speech, to the point that you were able to tell Grandma that you hurt your leg on the slide.

This is you at the hospital waiting to be seen, you were in great spirits and you were so so good with the hearing test.

So, the oldie but goodie - well that would be your nursery photos!  This year not only will we be buying your photo but I've also bought your class photo - you are so cute pulling your cheeeese face I couldn't resist.  Obviously I can't post that on your blog as there are 16 other children in the picture and I don't have permission from their parents - not to worry - I'll blow it up on to A1 paper for your 18th.....

And finally our day of firsts was at the annual Buckingham Park event that Granddad has a stall at.  We witnessed daddy holding an owl (he was very excited about this) and you riding a donkey for the first time.

You really are growing into a handsome wonderful little boy I am proud to call my son.

Love you Maxwell
Lots of Love
Mummy 
xxxxxxx