Rainbow gnomes

I’ve been wanting to make these little guys for a while and have now finally got around to it. Aren’t they pretty?!

I made some flower fairies a while back for The Limpet and she seemed to enjoy playing with them and still often does. So I decided to buy 6 more plain wooden figures (this time from Myriad). I painted the body of each one and used felt for their hats and cloaks. I thought about added a button to each one but then found some cute little rose beads in my craft stash.

It was my first attempt at this sort of sewing but I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out, even the back is fairly neat.

The Limpet has already been busy playing with them. I gave her some other rainbow items and she got to work creating a rainbow gnome land.

Due to the popularity of this post and a number of enquiries, I have now decided to make more sets to sell on. If you are interested in purchasing your own set please visit my Facebook page pocket treasures

Farm play mat

Now that I’ve finally learnt to sew, I thought I should put my new skills to use.

We bought The Limpet for her birthday some farm animals but she doesn’t have a farm house or barn or anything like that. So after searching through Pinterest, I decided to make a farm play mat.

I’d like to say that I used lots of scraps of fabric that I had lying around but as I’m new to this sewing malarkey I don’t have many scraps. So off I went to my local haberdashery to buy lots of fabric in various textures, colours and patterns.

I planned out a rough design and then got to work cutting bits up and sewing the whole thing together.

I wanted to make it as appealing as possible so I added lots of different textures. I used mainly cotton fabric but also included a heavy wool, corduroy, felt, ribbon and wool.

I wanted to inspire the monsters imagination and creativity so I didn’t make anything too obvious apart from the pond.

It was only finished last night but so far it has gone down very well. Here is a picture of The Limpet enjoying playing with it.

Beach play scene

I often think my children aren’t that good at playing but when I look in their toy box I can see why. It’s a complete jumble of mixed up toys which all look very uninviting. I’ve realised that at their young age they often need a prompt or some kind of encouragement.

When I worked in nurseries we would always set out the toys before the children arrived and make the activities look as inviting as possible. This is now something I intend to do at home a lot more.

I set up our first play scene today based on one of our favourite places – the beach.

I put large and small pebbles and shells at one end and a pile of sand with a ‘bucket and spade’. I filled a tray with water for the sea and added some blue glass pebbles. I included some small figures to play on the beach. Unfortunately we don’t have many little people but Mr Tumble seemed to enjoy his trip to the seaside!

Both the monsters enjoyed playing with this especially once The Limpet decided to mix the sea in with the sand.

I will definitely be setting up more imaginative play scenes for them to explore in the future.

Bottle top posting

My son’s current love is putting items inside things and taking them out again. Last week he decided to throw something down the toilet for the first time. Unfortunately that thing was my husbands mobile phone!

To encourage his new hobby (and save any more toilet dramas) I decided to make him his own posting box. I’ve been saving milk bottle tops for a while and thought they would be idea to post through small gaps. Small enough to develop fine motor skills but not so small as to be a choking risk.

I used a smallish box and cut a number of slits into it on both sides, some vertical and some horizontal. This took me about two minutes maximum.

The Gannet started posting his bottle tops without any instructions. When he managed to get the first one through he peered into the hole wondering where it had gone. I left the top of the box open so that he could easily find all the bottle tops again and empty them out.

As usual, The Limpet also had to join in with the fun. She found the activity very easy until she got to the hole which I had accidentally cut smaller than the bottle top!

Cooking up Valentine flowers

After just over two weeks, my valentine flowers have definitely seen better days. So on this gloriously sunny March day I decided that The Limpet could use the petals for some garden ‘cooking’. She currently loves helping mix things with a large spoon so I gave her a wooden spoon, a selection of colourful bowls and some water. She helped me pull all the petals off and then started playing.
Even The Gannet got in on the action when he woke from his nap. And amazingly he didn’t eat a single petal!