Wednesday 18 September 2013

Hedgehog Day

Also known as Piper’s birthday. Which, as she has been telling anyone who will listen over the last few weeks, means Bolognese and Hedgehog Cake for dinner.
At one point she had grand ideas of hedgehog decorations and hedgehog costumes for all the (adult) guests but we were able to manage her expectations back to just the hedgehog cake.
Hedgehog Cake Piper2013
As a special gift for her I used some of her beloved “slug scraps”* to make a little hedgehog brooch, now known as Hedgy. Not my greatest achievement, but after the third go I gave up trying to improve the shape, and besides which Piper seems to like him, which was the point really.
Hedgehog brooch
* A local (and online) shop called Love From Hetty & Dave makes these fantastic slugs, which Piper likes to go and visit. Last time we were there Zoe kindly gave Piper some tweed scraps from the slug she was making. Piper is quite attached to them. And has a postcard of one of the slugs on her bedroom wall.

Wednesday 4 September 2013

Not a portal to Narnia*

141041301138_1We recently invested in a wardrobe for my son’s bedroom – but it had to be small enough to fit underneath his IKEA loft bed. And cost almost nothing. So Ebay it was. After three days of searching and bidding I then got the wardrobe I kind of wanted from the beginning (main criteria being size and price). It does need some love though. Aside from repositioning the hanging bar inside, we want to do something special with the outside.
We asked Matthew what he wanted and he responded “cogs and pulleys!” Robert’s response was “ooh, steampunk!” but I was a little more cautious in embracing this notion as:
a) Matthew is 7 and he hasn’t come across steampunk yet and
b) if it doesn’t contain bright colours he doesn’t want it; brass and sepia just don’t fit into this picture.
After a little more conversation I had a clearer picture of brightly coloured stencilled cogs connected by the occasional belt. A further search of Ebay, and a couple of hours later I had these:
Vintage Meccano Yellow Gear Wheels
Watch this space… possibly for a really long time, nothing happens fast around here.

* the actual portal to Narnia lives here. (no, honestly, just scroll down!)