"Come on, step out of your cage. There's a whole twisted world out there."

 There is something incredibly relaxing about sitting with my headphones in, sewing of an evening. Which is why I'm all over Opeie's new interest in puppetry. I'm looking forward to making some random characters next but this weekend was spent making an Alice Angel puppet from Bendy and the Ink machine. The puppet was fairly easy to make until I got to the hair, if I'd have had any myself I'd have probably pulled it out. 

After I'd finished it Opeie made a pretty cool video for the channel. Check it out Here!

"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.

"You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend."

The last few months have been all about making the house ours, moving rooms around, de-cluttering and making use of all of the space we have. We decided that one of the rooms downstairs needed to be a relaxing reading space. We couldn't quite decided what to put on the wall though in a relaxing space dedicated to one of our favourite past times. That was until I thought about a gift that my bestie Helen had got me for my birthday. She has really helped me through a lot of the harder parts of all this heartache and she was eager to help with putting some personal touches into the house. She had very Kindly bought me 3 canvas's so that the boys and I could create one each.

I asked the boys if they would use their artistic flair to create something each around a book (or series of books) that were important to them. I knew straight away that mine was going to be based on A Series of unfortunate events as Ive been reading them to Opeie at bed time and Ive really loved how excited he's been as we have ploughed through them. I didn't want to draw an obvious picture of the Baudelairs or even their nemesis Count Olaf so I went for a random singer from the Volunteers fighting disease, as the song about the heart shaped balloon always stuck out for Opeie.

I wasn't at all Surprised when Opeie decided he was going to base his canvas design on Beetle boy by M.G. Leonard. The Beetle boy trilogy will always be very special to me as they were the books that really opened up Opeie's imagination and made him realise just how amazing the world of books can be. He hung off every word of those stories and after the first and the second books we were both eager for the release of the next one. I was genuinely gutted when Battle of the Beetles ended.

I not quite sure what I expected Seth to choose, as he mainly reads on his own these days and he gets through so many books that I can't keep up with him.  I was pretty surprised that he chose Enid Blyton's 'The Secret Seven' as they are books that I have been reading to him at bedtime. The secret seven and the Famous five were books that I grew up on and I wanted to share those adventures with the boys.When I asked Seth what was so special about the Secret Seven books he said that he loves me reading to him and finds my voice really relaxing (which made my day).

Emotions may be all over the place at the moment but these little personal touches around the house are making fun new memories and giving us the relaxing home that I think we all need.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that"

I genuinely had no idea that the transition to becoming a single dad was going to be so difficult. I'd felt like a single parent for such a long time, so I figured everything would just fall into place. Being there for the boys though during this confusing and upsetting time has been so exhausting. Its hard enough dealing with my own confusion around why someone could walk out on their family for what seems like no reason at all, without having to also be damage control for those two very special boys in my life and the hurt and disappointment that they are feeling. Keeping busy is all I've got these days and I'm trying to desperately hold on to my passions and creativity, while keeping it together.

LEGO for me has always been so much more than a building toy, it has become a way of life in our home and a way for the boys and I to not only explore our imaginations but to also communicate with each other. Recently LEGO is the one thing that is keeping me sane of an evening, which may sound dramatic but there have been moments over the last few months where I have felt like I'm not coping very well and the evenings can be quite lonely. The rummaging, the designing, the entire process of building has become like my evening meditation and Ive started using that to build things to make the boys home more interesting. 

All the heartache aside, it has actually been pretty nice transforming our home into the home that we want and the first thing we did was to scrap the lounge and turn it into a LEGO room. It made so much more sense to actually make use of the space that we have and it has really helped the boys to look at our family home in a new way now that its just the three of us. 

The past couple of nights Ive been busy making small changes to things in the house. A couple of damaged picture frames have been replaced by frames made of bricks and (not being a fan of the main lights in the house) I decided to create some new table lamps for the house for a little more relaxed lighting (we could all do with a little more 'relaxed' these days). Opeie recently bought the Powerpuff girls kits with his pocket money and after building them they were just sitting on the shelf not doing much, so I decided to build the first lamp around them, mainly because of all the bright colours. It came out looking pretty cute and fit perfectly into the room.

Well, I'd got the buzz, so the following evening I started to build a Spider-man themed one for the boys bedroom. As I sat there clicking those bricks together it was the first time in what seems like such a long time that I really felt like myself again. Not only did the lamp come out looking really fun  but it really got me thinking of more things that I wanted to create over the coming weeks. I think it has been good for the boys to see me getting excited about something again.

Ive always had a thing for lighting around the house, especially of an evening and I can't believe I've not thought about doing this before. The great thing about building the lamps with LEGO is that if we get bored of them we can take them apart and change the theme. The boys also pointed out that we can create lamps for Christmas, Halloween, Valentines etc. It looks like this may be a new family tradition and as Opeie keeps saying 'Im glad we are are making new fun memories over the bad ones'.

As always, another amazing win for LEGO in our house, Its amazing that something as simple as plastic bricks, could have such a huge impact on us three boys.

"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick."

As much as I adore LEGO, I wasn't 100% sold on the Brickheadz range when they first came out. They seemed too static and lack playability which really put me off. That was though until a couple of days back when Opeie decided that he wanted to spend some of his birthday money on the new Brickheadz Go brick me kit. He got home tore open the box, had a quick flick through the instructions and built himself and his doting dad. The instruction book is awesome, giving you all sorts of plans for various facial features and accessories. I was blown away with the characters that he built and I think he really did us both justice.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/steve_jobs_416858?src=t_brickres and accessories. I was absolutely blown away by what he built and I think he really did us both justice.

Opeie's creations have completely changed my view on these fun builds and I'm now hooked. we've ordered the parts we need to build lots more so watch this space.

Success for me is ABC - Ability, Believe in yourself and Creativity

If there is one thing that I always try and install into the boys, its that effort is everything. I like to think that I do a great job of letting my family and close friends know exactly how much they mean to me and this has always been something I have taught the boys, especially when it comes to Mrs M. Back at the end of November I asked the boys to think of a thoughtful gift that they could create for Mrs M, I didn't specify what but said if they wanted any advice or help all they had to do was ask.

A few days later Opeie came to me with his idea. He has always loved the book I made for Mrs M when I asked her to marry me and he reads it a lot. I think it is because it is about how we met and with each page an insight into how we got to that magical moment in Orlando. His idea was to create his own book all about his beautiful mom which I was super excited about (part of me was worrying about the amount of time we had to complete though).

The thoughtfulness of this gift really touched me as he knew it was going to take a lot of time and effort but he wanted to show Mrs M just how much he appreciates being home-schooled. This was another huge bonus for me as from an educational view it was the perfect way to wind down our year of home-ed, combining literacy and huge amounts of creativity. 

We got to work quickly. Opeie wanted to make a 'Mommy ABC' in the style of one of his favourite Dr. Seuss books. An A-Z of everything to do with Mrs M with rhyming couplets on every page. Firstly he wrote all the words down that made him think of her, for the letters he struggled with we looked online for lists of words for that letter and combed them looking for relevant words. Trying to combine the words in rhyme was going to be tricky but luckily the first page was a breeze and it was all the motivation Opeie needed "Big A, little a, what begins with A? Auntie Lottie's Autumn Aeroplane A A A". As soon as the words were down that creative flair kicked in and he was drawing an aeroplane with a beautiful autumn print.

This was pretty much how the following few days of daddy school went, we would sit down and try and work out a rhyme for the page and then Opeie would grab his crayons and start creating. Then a couple of days before we had reached December I received an email from the company that I was going to use to create the book with a discount code for 40% off, perfect I thought, until I saw that the off was only valid for 8 days!!! Feeling a little deflated I mentioned it to Opeie in passing and he said "we can finish it by then dad", I loved his enthusiasm but I genuinely thought it would be pushing it for a 6-year-old. This is when I realised that when it comes to an amazing mom that you want to make smile at Christmas, anything is possible.

As soon as breakfast was out of the way on the mornings, Opeie pushed himself to complete his 26 drawings that he knew he needed to create, along with the 26 pages of writing to cover each of the letters of the alphabet. This had gone from an amazing creative and literacy based activity to an awesome lesson in working to a deadline and time management, not something that I would have ever purposely added into our homeschooling schedule but it all happened so organically.

One afternoon Opeie had written 9 pages for the book and drawn some of the pictures an he said his hand was really hurting. I had been telling him for about an hour to stop and we would do something else but he was so focused on getting the book finished, it was adorable to watch. With all the pages written and all the drawing complete Opeie started looking for backgrounds to mount all of his drawings on around the house to make his creations more colourful. He then used his pictures to create a cover and we sat together uploading it all online, he was so excited when he saw it all coming together.

On the day it arrived the excitement was too much for him, we still had 2 weeks until Christmas and he was desperate to give it to Mrs M. I couldn't get enough of that look of pride on his face when he took it out of the box. I saw that same look again as he handed it to his special lady on Christmas day.

It's lovely to buy nice gifts at Christmas but for me (and hopefully the boys now too) its all about the effort that we go to for the people we care about the most.

"For every disciplined effort there is a multiple reward."

Its been a fun build up to Christmas this year mainly because we have decided not to go mad, buying things for the sake of it. When writing their letters to Santa this year, like every other year, we told the boys to just write 3 things that they wanted. You would think that this would be easy for any 6 and 11-year-old, the only difficult part being narrowing the list down to 3. For Seth and Opeie though it was a bit of a struggle. 

For a long time now I have been the sort of person that gets to Christmas and genuinely doesn't want anything. I am so content with how my life is that there is nothing that could make me any happier. All I ever want is a happy Mrs M and the boys. This has unexpectedly rubbed off on the boys, Seth especially. Opeie had one thing on his Christmas list that he really wanted and Seth simply said "I feel like i have everything that I need" which I thought was a very grown up and humble thing to say.

I like to think of Christmas as a time for making effort rather than it revolving around heavy spending. I like to try and do something special for the boys around the festive period that doesn't cost anything and this year I decided that I was going to make them both an advent calender. I had made them an advent in the past with the help of Mrs M, this year though I wanted to build them something using those lovable bricks.

At first I was kicking myself that I hadn't kept the LEGO advent calender we had bought last year as they would be great for reusing, all I would have had to do was design a cover for the box and I'd have been sorted. We ended up using the tray from our previous one as paint pots when crafting. Good old LEGO and their recyclable packaging. This years LEGO calender became my advent and mind started ticking away with ideas for the boys, I knew exactly what I was going to do.

Opeie has become a HUGE Ninjago fan since the LEGO Ninjago movie was released so it was a no brainer that his advent was going to be Ninjago themed. I decided to build his advent in the style of a Japanese temple with 25 doors to open. For each day a Ninjago character for his collection. Any LEGO enthusiast reading this with probably think 'that would cost a small fortune' but being a member of so many Facebook LEGO trade pages I managed to trade all of the figures for other LEGO items that we have. The advent didn't actually take that long to build and the look on his face on the 1st was amazing. Now on day 18 I get an excited little boy waking me up to tell me who he has got, its awesome.

I struggled at first for Seth's advent as he's not into any themes that come with minifigures. For Seth LEGO has become all about Technics. He loves playing with cogs and motors and working out how to make machines witch from an educational point of view is amazing. I decided to cruise the Facebook pages again and contact friends online looking for interesting Technics elements that he doesn't have in his collection. The problem I had though, was that I didn't know what style to build the advent (and I'm definitely out of my building comfort zone with Technics). That being said though I sat one evening and worked out how to make a remote control box which worked great but it looked boring so instead I decided to build a snowman with motor and receiver on the back so that Seth could open his torso every morning via remote and get to his LEGO Technic surprise.

Its been such a lovely feeling every morning watching them get excited about whats coming next and for me this is what Christmas is all about. A little effort goes a long way.

“Ninjas don't wish upon a star, they throw them.”

I love that I've now got to the point where the boys can just use their imaginations and create blog posts for me. Opeie received two great LEGO Ninjago kits for his Birthday and he was so excited about getting them built and creating a story for them. He called in the help of his big brother and they sat, played and created. It's what being a kid is all about and I love watching them play together.

Anyway over to them two...

Samurai VXL and Dragons Forge are just two of the great new kits from the Ninjago range. The full selection can be found HERE.

 

 

"Oh, you see this? It's the Time Stone. If you take another step, I'll send you all the way back to the Big Bang."

There are some amazing big LEGO kits out at the moment and honestly, I would happily have every single kit released if I could. Sadly we just don't have the disposable income for that level of Lego obsessiveness so I have to put self-control into action and reign it in.  It seems that everyone I know's children adore those addictive bricks in some way and each one pining after the same huge kits. One thing that always used to frustrate me was the variety of super hero figures that were only available if you purchased the larger kits. I imagine in many households these bigger kits are completely out of reach financially but last year LEGO did something to change that which I thought was really awesome.

I've been saying for a long time that I would love LEGO to make a Marvel minifigure series, filled with all of the obscure characters. At £3 per pack these are accessible to pretty much everyone (and who doesn't love LEGO at pocket money prices). With the release of The Lego Batman movie, there was a step In the right direction with the minifigure series to accompany the movie (and those figures are pretty amazing). Although I can't ever see the same thing happening with Marvel comics characters (unless of course there was a LEGO Spider-man movie), LEGO did something else last year to offer Marvel super hero characters at an affordable price to all of their super-hero brick lovers.

Mighty micros revved their engines and exploded onto the toy store shelves in a blaze of glory and I was instantly hooked. Not only were 6 new figures available, with interestingly fun facial expressions and mini legs but they also had matching vehicles for speeding around the floor. To top it off though, and what really had me excited, was the price. I've spent an obscene amount of money on LEGO over the years but the price of the Mighty micros as I said before has meant that Spider-man, Batman and their friends are available to everyone.

Last year the three Marvel sets were snapped up straight away and it was clear that the vehicles were here to stay (I'm kicking myself now that I didn't pick all of the DC ones up from last year, The Lego Batman movie has turned Opeie into a HUGE DC fan).  You can always tell in our house how much the boys love the kits they have built as sometimes after being built and played with they are taken apart and the parts are used for new custom builds. Other times though the kits stay built and are lovingly displayed in our LEGO room (yes we have entire room devoted to those super bricks), or they get their own box to be stored in until their next outing. The mighty micros got their own box, so when wave 2 was released they were ready for action.

I can't wait to see if there is going to be a third wave of Mighty Micros and there is a list as long as my arm for characters I would love to see included. These awesome little kits are one of my favourite newer releases from LEGO and I'd love to see the range opened up to possible other themes, like Adventure time, teen titans or powerpuff girls from the new LEGO Dimensions kits.

"Why did you build this thing with only one seat?". "Uh, cause last time I checked, I only have one butt."

After watching a video on youtube a couple of weeks ago of someone installing RetroPie on to a Raspberry Pi and using a Mario/Duckhunt NES cartridge as the casing I was completely hooked and found myself wasting an evening trapped in a Youtube video loop, clicking from one video to the next (I'm sure we've all been there). I was fascinated by all of the things you could do with this amazing tiny computer. After chatting to my friend Steve who is my techy go to guy, I decided to pick one up from Maplins for the boys to have a play about with. We installed Retropie with lots of retro games on and I even shocked myself by watching some videos so that I could add in some coding to fix some bugs. There is that much literature out there that learning some tricks and programming should be easy for the boys to use.

As awesome as the Raspberry PI is to use, the problem we had was that it is just a motherboard, meaning that all the parts are exposed which isn't great when you have little ones using it, plus it doesn't look great sitting on the bookshelf in our lounge. So I did what I always do in this kind of situation and turned to those amazing bricks. I knocked a multi coloured case together in no time but as I got into bed that night I felt really dissatisfied with the outcome. As Opeie wasn't feeling great yesterday morning we decided to have a LEGO creating start to the day, as he happily sat and built an awesome police car for his LEGO Batman movie Barbara Gordon, I had another go at the PI casing.

Seth had made an awesome sofa for Lobster Lovin Batman and it was sitting on the side because he'd not used it for anything, so I used that as the starting block for my case. He had built it so well that I thought it needed displaying. The great thing about LEGO when it comes to a mini project like this is that there are so many different elements to choose from, you can build to fit perfectly. leaving all of the ports accessible, with an easily removable lid to get to the board itself. 

With the new LEGO Batman movie Minifigure range in the shops at the moment, it was inevitable that we would be using those as they are so much fun. Plus they are the most played with LEGO at the moment with the boys so it was definitely a fitting case for what they are loving right now. Anyway, that's enough waffling from me. Here's the strange looking Batboat that we ended up with...

Definitely a lot more interesting to look at than the bare motherboard and if Seth gets bored of it, we can just build a new one, that's part of the magic of those amazing, addictive bricks.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

All last week Seth had been watching videos on YouTube of how to make DIY hockey goalie pads. We are forever looking on eBay for some because in this country they are a nightmare to get hold of and when they do pop up they are really expensive. With Seth's recent video viewing, it was inevitable that this weekend he would be wanting me to make some. So after talking to a friend in the library early in the week, I was told about 'Scrappies' a shop in Church Stratton that sells bits and bobs for craft ideas. I was hooked by the thought of a shop dedicated to that so as soon as I got home that day I checked out their website. Their website header says 'supporting creative arts and children's education'. That sold it for me.

The following day after a fun (but freezing) afternoon at Stiperstones we decided to detour home slightly to check out Scrappies in hope that we'd find the things that we would need for Seth's pads. I needed foam and something strong and water resistant to wrap the pads in. The store was a lot smaller than I was expecting but it was packed full of all sorts of random things and the staff in there were so friendly. I quickly found some large pieces of foam and a roll of yellow plastic that looked like the kind of material gym mats are covered with so that was perfect. I also had a yoga mat in the loft that I had brought home from a Netflix event a while back so apart from Duck tape (which I picked up on the way home) I had everything I needed for Seth's big hockey idea.

I had an idea of what I wanted to do and like most of our creative ventures I tried not to over think it and just get stuck in. So we cut the foam and the yoga mat to the correct shape for Seth's legs and glue gunned the layers together. The plan was to stitch the yellow plastic material around the foam but it wasn't doable with Mrs M's sewing machine so we had to improvise. Mrs M had a large can of spray adhesive for carpets so I took the foam and material out side and I wrapped the pads. For extra support, I used the yellow duck tape to seal the edges. I was so excited when I saw the yellow material in 'Scrappies' as our team, when we are playing hockey in the street is 'The Bees'. So with some black Duck tape, we also gave our bright yellow pads some black bee stripes and they looked great. I also took Seth's plain white hockey mask and with the yellow and black Duck tape and a stanley knife, gave it a makeover, fit for any hockey playing bee.

The part that was concerning me from the start, was how we were going to attach them to Seth's legs. Seth set about rummaging through the house looking for anything strap like that we could use, but there was no joy. So we jumped in the car and headed to Hobbycraft and found some thick black elastic to use. I still had no idea how we were going to attach it though. As we were walking back through the door though it came to me. We cut 4 slits in the pads and threaded the elastic through the front and then tied them around his legs, job done! I will get round to adding clasps on the back at some point but for now they are awesome.

All that was left to do was play and the boys were loving their new pads. Seth was blocking most of my shots which meant he was brimming with confidence, talking about wanting to become a professional hockey goalie. The goals that the boys are using were also made by us, we used heavy duty Wilkinsons bags with bees on to hold the netting to the pipes, we're very resourceful.

The pads were a touch too big for Opeie's little legs (even though I think they look great on him), so as there were some leftover materials I made him a smaller pair. He wanted his Bee pads to say 'HONEY' though, these boys of mine are too cute!

Seth has now asked if I can make a blocker and catcher! A hockey dads job is never done.

Game On!