'Your friendly Neighbourhood Yoshi'

 I'm a professional when it comes to procrastinating when I need to be writing. For the last few nights I have come up with all manner of things to stop me doing the one thing I need to be getting on with. My favourite though has been playing Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World, to say I am loving this game would be an understatement. Last night Mrs M wanted an early night and I should have been the perfect chance for some quiet time to get my head down and write, but I decided to join here and take my 3DS. I had planned to play a few more levels but found myself hooked when entering the 'Yoshi Hut' on the game. The game itself is AWESOME, but being able to create your own Woolly Yoshi's  is such a great addition to the game. 

It started with Wolverine Yoshi and then when I looked at my phone I realised I'd got a little carried away. It was 1am and I'd been creating marvel Yoshi's for a couple of hours. Anyway, I thought I'd share them with ya'll.

"It wasn't all bacon slices and pork crunch..."

We are loving series 13 of the LEGO Minifigures, in fact we've all said its been our favourite yet and as me and the boys sat down to play with our beloved bricks, this epic LEGO battle took place. I love the ideas the boys come out with, they both have a great imagination and sitting down with them is always entertaining.

Get to the shops, get some Minifigures and start creating. With such a versatile toy, whats stopping you?

"Collecting is more than just buying objects."

When I first started writing the blog it was going to be a pretty unpersonal affair. No names and no pictures of us just posts about playing and a homage to mine and my boys love of toys. All our posts were about new toys we had found and how we loved playing. The early posts were dominated by one range of toys in particular. A collection I had started for Opeie when I found out he was on his way, that collection is still going strong and locked away for when he is a lot older despite not adding to it for about 6 months, until yesterday.

I was drawn into the Marvel Super hero squad range from the moment i saw them. Aside from the more 'grown up' collectors ranges like 'legends' or 'select', super hero squad boasted the largest variety of heroes and villains aimed at a younger audience. These figures are great, a cute introduction for younger children into the magical world of comics and all the characters I grew up admiring.  Opeie's collection is pretty immense and even though I've got a lot of the characters there are still loads I need to track down. Yesterday's delivery added a few great characters I was missing, Thanos, Gambit, night crawler, Beast etc and has relit the flame for hunting down the missing characters.

It's great to see when I'm looking online that some of the characters I own are fetching much higher than the £5.99 asking price I found them at when I first started collecting. The internet has been a god send for anything we're collecting but while we were in Florida last year we popped into target and i spotted three boxes of figures from the Iron man 3 movie. The problem with collecting a range like this is that most of the characters were never released in this country so finding them has been daunting at times.

 I love collecting, there's something so satisfying about finding the things that you are looking for, my inner geek comes out full force. When I first met Mrs M she saw it as hoarding but I think she understands now especially after I tracked her down most of the Dick Bruna book collection a few Christmas' ago for an advent gift. I love jumping in on other peoples collections too I find it all quite exciting.

Well as I said the new additions were delivered yesterday which spurred me on to get the rest of the collection out while Opeie was having his afternoon nap. Seth hadn't seen them all out of storage and his eyes lit up at the amount of characters that were there. There will probably be many more posts abot these figures, at least until i have completed the collection. I have a few collections on the go for the boys, i think it will be nice to have something to give them that they will love and who knows they might be worth a little something by then.

"Well you can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft."

There's only 1 week left of the summer holiday and both me and Mrs M are starting to get a little sad. It's so nice having Seth at home and i know Opeie is going to be unhappy when his brother isn't about during the day. As i mentioned in my last post the summer holidays can be a pretty expensive time of the year. 

We love craft in our house, you cant beat a bit of cutting and pasting. I started looking about for something interesting to keep Seth occupied especially as we have had an abundance of terrible weather this summer. An then Bat-Blog posted an article about some fun card craft.

These were great for Seth as they were pretty easy to cut out and put together (well after printing them out again when Seth cut off all the tags), they can be found on http://www.squatties.com/. Seth's going through a batman phase at the moment so he picked two of the characters and i printed them out...

I only had beige card in the house at the time so they came out a little dark so if you do decide to have a go yourself make sure the card is white. I wanted to try something a little more detailed and obviously Marvel so i found these at http://www.cubeecraft.com/genre/pop-culture/ ...

I clearly got into these far more than Seth, they are so addictive and the end result is great. There are plenty of characters to choose from (and not just Marvel). Theres lots of Star Wars characters, Ninja Turtles, Ghostbuster's and even Muppet's (That's right Chris you can even print out Kermit).

As you can imagine these have kept me pretty occupied on many an evening, even though they were meant to be for keeping Seth busy (I'd say he's more of a cutting and gluing kind of child). The great thing about these is there is no need for any glue or tape. all the tabs slot into the holes made. The instructions and the 'cut lines' are very clear so there's little chance of error.

Since making these Bat-blog added another post with print out card craft at mypaperheroes which i have just started. These are going to take a bit longer to make though and you need tape/glue for these. I've been having issues with my double sided sticky tape. The finished item does look amazing though so watch this space. If i can find time i would like to make all of the Avengers.

I'm always on the hunt for interesting craft idea's so if any of you guys out there know of any then please message me with ideas and me and the boys will have a go for you.