"We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones."

 

                                                                       Day 1... (part 2)

With another 4 weeks of national lockdown starting now, I'm feeling like the only way through this is back to daily activities concentrating on creativity. The creative lockdown project really helped to keep us in a Calm and focused headspace while the whole world was falling apart. So for the next 4 weeks our home-ed will be focussing solely on a variety of creative activities base on a word of the day. It's been a really tough month emotionally and I think we both want to be feeling better about the path that we are on. I'm kicking off our project with our LEGO Halloween build for this year, an explosion of black and orange.

Stay safe people and keep on creating.

"Sometimes brightening up the outside of your store is just the thing to perk up business, yes?"

Day 126:

Conversation in the house recently has been heavy on the Animal Crossing. Since picking up a copy of New horizons a couple of weeks ago Opeie has been busy building his island and creating and it has been so much nicer hearing about that rather than Fortnite. While he was having a chat with his friends yesterday I decided to build him Nooks Cranny. His smile when he came off the phone and saw it was contagious and leaving the build empty means that that smile can continue tomorrow when we are building the furniture together. Another win for those amazing bricks.

"Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway."

Day 125:

I love it when Opeie shows me a picture he's found on the internet and says "Can we build this?". Mainly because it means an afternoon of sitting down with the LEGO and working something out together. Its rare that he ever wants to add Technic functions into builds but this kinetic cowboy build by Tankybrick had really got him excited. So we watched their video about 50 times to try and work out the functions. After building pretty much the entire thing no matter haw many times we watched the video we couldn't work out the final piece that got the horses moving as the video wasn't very clear. After a stressful 30 minutes or so of trying all sorts of different elements we finally cracked it. It definitely wasn't the same piece, and the horses the finitely don't run as smooth as theirs but overall it came out great and ended up being a fun afternoon building with my bestie.

"The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the viewer."

Day 91 and 92:

Opeie has really been getting into his LEGO photography for his latest comic idea. He's been in the garden with all sorts of kits and bricks creating scenes for each picture and its been so lovely to watch. As I really wasn't in the mood to write yesterday I decided to use two of his photos for today. I can't wait to see the finished piece, its starting to look really interesting.

"The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind."

Day 3:

Ive not been in the greatest headspace today but the sunshine has really dragged me through it. After  a peaceful walk this morning with Becci and the boys, Opeie and I spent the remainder of the afternoon sitting in the garden building LEGO. I think those magical bricks may just help us through all of this.

If you are doing your part and staying home then stay creative, there's real magic in letting those creative juices flow. 

A weekend lost in the 'Upside Frown'

Ive never bought anything LEGO that I had seen as just mine, any kits bought over the years have been inevitably broken up and the parts have vanished into our huge amount of mixed LEGO ready for future creative builds. A few weeks back though I decided to treat myself to a kit I had been pining after since I had first seen the pictures online. I picked it up just before my birthday and planned to build it on the day with Opeie. As he obviously hadn't seen Stranger Things I assumed there would be no interest in the Kit, but he would just be happy building it with me, how wrong was I! With the kit being that little bit different with the 'Upside down' aspect in the build, Opeie was hooked as soon as the two pieces where joined and saw that the upper level was flipped.

Opeie asked to get it down from the shelf a few times that week and although he loved the build he knew nothing about the characters so it was a little lost on him. While I was putting it back on the shelf one evening I looked across at the big colourful Unikitty build standing next to it and noticed Unikitty and Master Frown standing next to each other with the contrast of 'bright and positive' and 'gloomy and negative', I'm sure you can image the next thought that went through my head. yup.... Opeie needs an upside down of his own. 

So last weekend we woke up on Saturday morning after a fairly busy week with friends and decided that we were going to do nowt all weekend and slob about the house, the perfect time to start a fun team build I thought. I ran my ideas past my building assistant and he reeled off some awesome ideas of his own and we got building (well I got building, the first part of the upside down build is a large obscure shaped baseplate and as far as Opeie is concerned that part is boring and beneath his skill level). With the base plates built we started the 'Fun part'. Saturday was one of those building days where it felt like we had slipped into a black hole of bricks, before we knew it it was bedtime and we had spent the entire day rummaging for parts.

Sunday started pretty much the same way Saturday had ended. Opeie (now my 'build master') had pretty much ushered me into the lego room as soon as I was awake and on my feet, he did however make my breakfast and bring it into me with an excited 'I'm ready to build' face. By late Sunday afternoon we had built both houses but realised that we didn't have any of the pieces to hold the two together so we were straight on Bricklink to make sure they were here this week. When I had put Opeie to bed that evening I sat and built the trees that hold the houses up. I loved building the original Stranger Things kit but I got so much more out of this custom one building with Opeie. Theres something about recreating a LEGO build with an extra fun twist and not being held back by colour schemes is really satisfying (and we went all out with the colour... well it is Unikitty).

On Tuesday afternoon the beautiful sound of package hitting the hall floor filled the house with excitement. Opeie couldn't wait to get our creation clipped together. Once it was all secure and he could see it in all his glory, we really started getting stuck in to the little touches that we love so much. The build of course needed to be populated, Someone pretty amazing had bought me Unikitty's Sweetest Friends Ever, for my birthday, which was the perfect start. Opeie pointed out a whole bunch of characters we didn't have and I'd not even seen before so it was back on Bricklink, like I need an excuse to be buying more LEGO.

The build turned out to be one of the most fun things that we've built together, usually I prefer to build something completely 'US' but this fun colourful twist on a pretty amazing build was very satisfying... but what to call it? the Upside-Frown of course!

Oh and I may have also built a Unikitty Demogorgon... I get carried away, what can I say.

"This is the day you will always remember as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow!"

When it comes to movies and things on TV Opeie can be very fragile at times, he gets easily scared,  by things that I wouldn't even think would affect him. He's a sensitive little thing. If this happens then we can pretty much count on the fact that we will be in for a rough night with him as the things that do affect him really play on his mind. You can imagine my surprise when Opeie informed me a couple of weeks back that he wanted to watch Pirates of the caribbean, I was a little reluctant (mainly due to the zombie pirates) but I thought we'd give it a go. Suprisingly he loved the film (although as expected not a huge fan of the cursed pirates) and straight after asked if we could track down some of the LEGO minifigures (I'm feeling a custom Silent Mary with a GFTP twist on the horizon).

It seems we had watched the film at the just the right point, although I'm not in a position to be splashing out on the latest pirate ship there were two other recent Pirates of the Carribean releases in the LEGO range. Brickheads have hit the shelves and from what I have seen online have made a huge impact. If I am honest I'm still not sure how I feel about them personally as I love some playabilty in the things that I build and Ive not been a fan of the pop! style figures that have been hitting the shops recently.

That being said though, its not all about me and Opeie absolutely loves them as they are just the right size kits for him to build quickly so that he can play with them soon after opening. Captain Jack Sparrow and Armando Salazar from the recent installment 'Dead men tell no tales' are a great start to what may end up being a Brickheadz collection, which I dont mind at all because at the price they are perfect LEGO kits for keeping the kids entertained with having to spend a large amount of cash.

The full Brickheads range can be found HERE and if you are a fan of the range be sure co check out some of the custom builds as there are some really great ones out there.

"I need to get in to LEGO mode"

It's no surprise to anyone that I am an enormous LEGO geek,  These awesome bricks have had an amazing impact on the way the boys and I play together and they have been an never ending fountain of creativity. Lately though, they have become a big part of Opeies homeschooling too as they have given him a chance to express his creative writing in a very interesting way. After writing and creating his Scarecrow and Bane dress up post a week or so ago he has been craving writing another post and creating a story with his LEGO. So as we had the Iron Man: Detroit Steel Strikes waiting to be built we sat down together and started a new story. Over to Opeie...

"I love writing blog posts because they are fun and I love playing lego. I love making up stories and pretending that I am a lego man and I love building lego cars. Here's my super hero story..."

"I live underground y'all are just tourists."

I love it when the boys get into making up a LEGO story and this one was all Opeie's idea.  He was desperate for the Killer Croc sewer Smash kit for quite some time and is so excited about the new LEGO Batman movie kits that are being released in 2017. It's going to be an Awesome LEGO year for super hero kits.

I'm sure we'll get kidnapped again soon, so stay tuned!