Your friendly neighbourhood... fairground vendor?

Over the summer holiday we didn't venture out anywhere near as much as usual and ended up spending a lot more time at home and surprisingly I absolutely loved it. During term time we're all over the place, adventuring and visiting interesting places but as soon as the holidays arrive we tend to shy away and keep ourselves to ourselves, It seems to be common practice among many home edders. The erratic weather helped with the 'parent guilt' of not doing much but I think Opeie  got as much out of the rest as I did. Because of the hermit like behaviour our weeks ended up being heavy on the LEGO building and we were been busy creating all sorts. The building of Opeie's upside frown made him realise again that a little time and effort with the building goes a long way.

So after that was finished we were having a discussion one evening about where to go next with those magical bricks. I asked him if there were any other of the larger kits that he liked the look of for a bit of inspiration. We had a little mooch through the LEGO site and Opeie decided that he really liked the look of the Ferris wheel but had a much more 'Opeie fitting' theme to base the build around.

So the following afternoon we went on a piece finding binge In hope that we had the parts for the main structure before we started putting our own spin on it. Aside from a few technics parts and some pieces for the main wheel that we had nowhere near the quantity needed, we were pretty much good to go. As expected Opeie had no interest in the start of the build, as building the main body is "Boring", he's all about the cosmetic flair. So I got a chunk of the 'boring part' out of the way while he was in bed over the first couple of nights and got the build to a point where I knew he would be excited.

While I carried on with building the main posts and the big wheel Opeie got to work on the kiosks and as you can see, the 'Opeie fitting theme' was of course Spider-man (which is why I was so excited from the get go). A Spider-man themed Ferris wheel got us talking about all sorts of creative ideas to follow up this build and the the more parts we connected the more the ideas were flowing. I could never get bored of the great ideas that Opeie comes up with, his imagination is amazing.

In no time at all we had the main structure completed, the base of the wheel filled with Spider-man themed things and we were left with the part of the build that Opeie was most excited about. We had decided early on that the twelve Ferris wheel carriages were each going to based around a different character with colour schemes matching their costumes or personalities. This part was really fun because the carts themselves were pretty basic to make and we didn't want them to be too heavy and affect the way they moved, so we had to be creative with the parts etc. My favourite was definitely J. Jonah. Jameson's carriage with his Daily Bugle desk in and Opeie's was Sandman's bumpy looking sand carriage.

Unlike other things that we have built recently there was the added satisfaction of adding the power functions in to make the wheel spin. The fact that Opeie could have it remote control made the whole thing more exciting, and there was nothing quite like the look of pure happiness on Opeie's face being the first to push the button and watch our creation spin.

The Gifts from the Pirates LEGO London adventure.

Hi it's Seth and this is our London LEGO adventure.

"The fruit derived from labour is the sweetest of pleasures"

Never before have i fallen in love with a piece of machinery, I'm not the sort of person thats ever bothered about 'stuff' and the things that we own. I don't tend to get attached to items like people do to their phones or computers but i would be gutted if anything happened to our new juicer. As we had been using our old one so much we thought it would be a good idea to invest in an industrial one as i don't think we were fully getting the benefits out of our centrifugal juicer.

Its a lot bulkier and doesn't really fit in with the kitchen aesthetics but since having it we've realise we had been slumming it with our old juicer as this beast can take on anything you shove down its chute. The boys are getting in to fruit and vegetable juice more now too which is great for their five a day not to mention all the health benefits that come with it. Seth likes to play a game where I make a fruit juice and sneak a vegetable or two in there for him to guess. Who'd have thought vegetables could be so fun.

There's even attachments for using it to make pasta, pretzels and bread sticks but most importantly for Mrs M is that we've already used it to make ice cream. (although I can't eat it due to not being able to eat banana's, rubbish!). Our healthy lifestyle continues with the help of our new juicy friend.

" Ice-cream is exquisite - what a pity it isn't illegal."

A month or so back we received a message on our Facebook page after adding the post about our pink Lego from one of our readers Tricia. We had asked at the end of the post for any idea's on what to build next. After reading our post about building our Jokers Ice Cream truck Tricia commented "What about an ice cream shop?". I had a chat with Seth to see what he thought and after the initial excitement of someone reading our post and making a suggestion (because Seth thinks that were famous because of the blog) Seth agreed that it was a great idea, but decided that if we were going to make an Ice cream parlour it was going to be a Joker Ice cream parlour. We decided to start this build off a little different with my architect partner drawing up some plans on how he thought the final piece should look...

Seth had a few initial ideas, the first was that the entrance had a spinning door (like in the movie Elf, as he put it) and it also had to have a nose that lights up. Not a huge ask so i decided to build the revolving door first and build the rest around that. I knew that this was going to end up being a bigger build than the Jokers Fun house we had built a while back just from the doorway but we were well prepared for it. 

I made the fascia to the building first including the light up nose and as i said before the revolving door...

Once the fascia was finished i started to build backwards adding inside stairs and two side rooms for customers, then i added a base plate for the main restaurant area. Before putting in tables and chairs i wanted to add in an interesting floor design so i used a Joker face and the name 'Joker Ices'.

I then added the till area with fridge and other accessories. I had a Butcher Mini figure in my collection and he worked out really well for the cashier. Mrs M's favourite part of the build was this figure, she really loves the hat. I also tried the Joker head on the same uniform.

Seth came up with plenty of new ideas as the build progressed. It's great building with Seth because he is never short of fun ideas and things to add to get it just how he wants. This time round he lost interest on the actual building early on so became more of the foreman dishing out instructions as i built. Seth's next specification was that he wanted a security room and camera for goons to watch over the customers...

Then we moved on to an idea he had about a toilet with a trap door that went into a cell. He thought it would be really funny if the trap door sprang as the customers were having a wee.

I needed the build to be as easily accessible as possible so the boys could play with it so it needed to be pretty open. i built a large door with a clown face on for the toilet so that Seth could put the mini figures in and out easily. Its all about the playing after all.

If i was going to build a trap door with jail cell then i thought i should build Joker an office out the back of the Ice-cream parlour next to the cells. The colour scheme for Jokers office was going to be different from the whites and pinks of the restaurant but i wanted to build a fitting door for the entrance to Jokers area that also fit in with the restaurant area colours.

 

 I made the jokers area purple and green, the obvious choice really. one of my favourite smaller pieces was the jokes throne which was easy to make and was very effective. I spent days looking through our Lego for some Lego brick money and playing cards which i know we have somewhere but they seem to have vanished so i found some dynamite, kryptonite and a mug with a smiley face on for Jokers desk. After building the area i thought the walls looked a bit bare so i added some hooks to attach a skeleton to the wall (one of Jokers previous prisoners).

Well the Ice cream parlour was ready for the grand opening. Seth wanted trumpet players on the entrance so he made them for me...

The tables and chairs were built, the floors and stairs were added, all we needed now was customers and there was no shortage of them.  I loved this part of the build because adding the customers really made the build. We didn't want to discriminate only using DC mini figures so we gave all our figures chance to sample Jokers tasty Ice-creams.

The Monsters managed to get in early and snag a booth...

Darth was obviously feeling generous with his time that day as the stormtroopers were lucky enough to get a lunch break.

A couple of the Avengers got to make the most of the frozen fun although Thor wasn't best pleased with the service...

It was nice to add a few personal touches to the build too Using mini figures we had made of people that we know. Obviously Myself, Mrs M and the boys were there for the grand opening after all 'Jokers Ices' are sponsored by Giftsfromthepirates.

Our friends Chris and Michelle managed to stop by for a quick drink and an icy treat.

And even Mr McGinley, Seth's Tae kwon do teacher was seen in the queue waiting to be served

There was a steady foot flow and the counter was hectic with customers...

Mrs M even got involved making this chap who was apparently on a date (fancy hat!!)...

Mrs M was such a great help while i was building this, sorting the remainder of Seth's new Lego into colour order and finding me parts that i needed, were such a good team.

The overall thing took a week or so to make but mainly because when you have a young child running about all day it's hard to get a large chunk of time to sit down and build. We got there in the end and without wanting to toot my own horn to much i think it came out pretty good. I'll let Tricia be the judge of that though as this was all because of her idea.

The boys have had lots of fun playing with it and Seth has come up with some pretty great scenario's, he's got such a fun imagination he always makes us chuckle. Opeie loves getting involved too and he especially likes the trap door toilet. I'm sure this will keep the boys very entertained over the next few weeks.

Thanks Tricia you certainly kept us occupied x