"Don't limit your challenges, Challenge your limits"

I love those occasional emails that we get where we are asked to show our creative side. If you are a regular GFTP reader then you will be fully aware that we are big crafters and love to show a bit of creative flair when we can. We have only ever been asked once before to come up with something creative using those amazing bricks that we love though. When one of our readers came up with an idea for an interesting build. That was until I opened a recent email titled 'The Debenhams Big LEGO Challenge'. These are the sort of emails I love to open and when I explained the rules of the challenge to the boys, like me, they couldn't wait to get stuck in.

The Rules:

After being sent a LEGO kit from Debenhams awesome LEGO Range, along with a Mechanical timer we had 15 minutes to come up with 'the most adventurous creation' using the bricks inside. I know what you LEGO enthusiasts are thinking "I could build something cool in 15 minutes" and I thought exactly the same thing but when you get into it, 15 minutes really isn't that long at all.

So... We had to be strategic.

We couldn't start as soon as we received the kit so the boys and I spent a little time assessing the kit on the front of the box trying to decide what we were going to build. It didn't take long for Seth to come up with an amazing idea, so we sat and worked out what parts were going to go where.

On the day we got the all clear to start, we didn't dive right in and start building, as I said 15 minutes really isn't that long. So we opened the bags and separated the parts clearly so we knew exactly where the parts we needed were. I'm used to building under pressure because Opeie is always coming up with ideas for things he wants building and he is really impatient, but I've always had a lot longer that 15 minutes to play with. This was going to be tough.

After discussing what each of us was going to be doing, Seth wound up the timer and we started building, completely focused on what we were trying to create.

I know it probably sounds like we had our plan well mapped out but when it came to the execution it started falling apart pretty quick and those minutes kept ticking by at what seemed like a crazy speed. We lost Opeie in the first two minutes when he decided he was going to go rogue and build the Minifigures and freestyle his own creation which he named the 'Ultra Jestro Super Suit'.

As for me and Seth, we stuck to our plans and attempted to create a mask that you could wear like a pair of glasses that resembled Jestro, the Nexo knights antagonist. While Seth worked on the glasses section using those awesome translucent wheels as eyes, I worked on the nose and mouth section making the most of all those teeth included in the kit. Had we have had a little longer we could have used a lot more of the parts included in the kit but we stuck to the timer and here is our creation...

Attaching both Seth's part and mine together was really tricky and to finish it off Seth did an awesome job of making curved arms that sat behind the ears. I don't think it came out as either of us had planned but it was a really fun and exciting build and as always the perfect father/son bonding time together.

Seth said it would be really cool if we were set a challenge to create something using every piece of a lego kit, which I thought was really interesting So the offer is there if anyone wants to take us up on that haha. LEGO kits are amazing but it's sometimes easy to forget that they are a creative building toy too. I think Debenhams has done a great job of reminding us that.

You can find their full LEGO range HERE.

Now get building!

"You have to get through your fear to see the beauty on the other side."

There has been a huge build up to the release of The Good Dinosaur in our house. Our mini dinosaur enthusiast has been so excited about seeing the film ever since he saw the trailer a while back and this week we finally got a chance to go and see the film. The four of us headed out for a family night out but then seperated at the cinema. Mrs M and Seth went off to see Spectre and thinking at the time I may have drawn the short straw, me and my boy made our way to screen 9 to embrace our inner dinosaur.

Opeie had decided that he was going to watch the movie as Arlo himself and wore his Good Dinosaur mask all the way to the cinema. He did inform me that it would be cool if I was to dress as Spot too but I had no intention of heading out in the cold wearing nothing but leaves to cover up my modesty. I really wanted to get a lovely picture of Opeie in front a big cardboard cut out for the movie but sadly there wasn't one in the cinema.

The movie was amazing and I may have had a little tear in my eye at the end, Disney really know how to pull on your heart strings. When we exited the screening we had an hour to kill before the rest of the humans joined us. Luckily it was late night shopping so we gave Opeie's Arlo mask a tour of the shopping centre. My own little Good Dinosaur was getting thumbs ups and smiles from everyone.

After a good hour of stomping about, me and my dinosaur made our way back to the cinema to pick up the other humans and make our way home. We would definitely recommend the film, if you are heading out to see it, why not take a mini dinosaur too, they'll love it.

"I hear the pitter patter of a dinosaur"

There will probably be a few short posts pop up over the next couple of days as Opeie has declared it 'Dinosaur week'. It seems that the new Jurassic World LEGO kits kick started something laying dormant that we thought was extinct. Then a great surprise delivery from Nintendo just got this week of dino appreciation started. 

To celebrate the release of Yoshi's Wooly world on Wii U, Nintendo have created these adorable knitted Amiibo's which started the conversation of 'what other Dinosaurs do you think Yoshi would be friends with?' Opeie informed me that as Triceratops (his favourite dinosaur) is a Herbivore, so they would be great friends as they wouldn't eat each other! So as the package came full of craft items also we decided to kick of 'Dinosaur week' with a Triceratops mask.

After creating our masks we had lunch while watching Walking with Dinosaurs on Netflix. I had to turn it off after one episode though when a dinosaur stuck its nose in another Dinosaurs nest and ate its baby. There was a genuine look of distress on Opeie's face, luckily there was a great selection of dinosaur themed shows so we replaced that bleak (but interesting) look at the prehistoric era with Jim Hensons 'Dinosaur Train' (much more appropriate for a four year old).

All that was left then of  'Dinosaur week' day 1, was to strap a Triceratops puppet to front of his Micro Scooter and head out on a Dino hunting adventure.

Note: While watching walking with Dinosaurs Opeie asked " where are they filming this? because we don't have dinosaurs in this country!!

Love that innocent little angel.

Yoshi's woolly world is out now and we can't wait to give it a play, until then though Roooooaaaarrrr!!!

" speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues"

Slight panic this week, half an hour before heading out for Opeie's dance class, the theme was 'trees and flowers' and we hadn't had our usual craft session in preparation. So quickly I raided the craft draw looking for inspiration. Luckily the mention of the word 'trees' meant Opeie shouted out 'I am the Lorax I speak for the trees', it was all the inspiration I needed.

Not my finest of craft activities but with half an hour to complete, it didn't turn out to bad and most importantly it put a smile on Opeie's face.

“Nothing is more real than the masks we make to show each other who we are.”

I can sometimes be difficult to get Opeie interested in craft, he's more of a tinkerer and will happily sit for an extended amount of time taking Lego Minifigures apart and creating his own. One craft activity he loves though is making masks and so far this seems to be the week for it.

Yesterday was one of those days where you wake up and there seems like no time to get things sorted before dropping Mrs M at work and Seth at school, Mrs M was über stressed and ended up forgetting some things for work, plus she realised last minute she had the house keys in her pocket, it could have been a disaster. When we got home I realised we hadn't made anything for Opeie's dance class, it's not compulsory but we've made something every week and I feel we owe it to the teacher to make the effort. The theme was the letter 'A' and the first thing that came into my head was ant, so an ant mask it was. Sadly I was far to rushed for lots of photos but I did get a shot of the finished piece and Opeie class teacher loved her gift...

Last night Opeie seemed like he was coming down with a cough and he had a temperature, Because I'm still fighting off Bronchitis and Mrs M has had it too i decided to keep him in today and do some fun activities in the house. After dropping off Mrs m and Seth i asked Opeie what he wanted to do and he decided he wanted to get the craft box out that Auntie Lottie had got him for his Birthday and make some more masks, this time though, masks of characters from his and Seth's new favourite show, Adventure time. I must admit the boys have got me hooked, i love the insanity.

We planned to make Jake and Finn the two main characters but as expected that demanding little mini me had other ideas, i love a good craft session though and was happy he was getting involved cutting and pasting. The masks turned out great and Opeie kept saying 'Seth is going to love these when he's back from school'. Its lovely to see the boys proud of the things they make.

The Ice king and Marceline were added to our craft session and then the craft boxes were packed away for another day, or so i thought. An hour or so before picking Mrs M up from work Opeie decided he wanted to make Seth a mask of one of their favourite characters from the show. Sadly Opeie got side tracked doing something else and i was left to complete 'Billy' the ultimate warrior from the land of Ooo...

And then it was time for a little posing by Opeie...

Finally we used the masks to decorate one of the only empty walls in Seth's room. Job done, a well executed craft session.

"Big F little f, F..f..F. Four fluffy feathers on a Fiffer-feffer-feff"

Despite the lengths we go to to teach Opeie about letters and numbers sometimes I think he's a little to young to fully understand. Other times though he surprises me and completely blows me away with what he's picked up. Last week at the end of Opeie's music class, Julie revealed the theme for this week, the letter 'F' and as she reeled off some relevant words Opeie turned to me quite to the point and said 'Like Fox or Feet!'. It really did take me by surprise but it's so nice to know that what we are teaching him is sticking.

So yesterday morning's craft session was all about the letter 'F' and it was clear from the get go that we would be attending Clatterbugs this week as Foxes. If you've read the blog before then you'll know that the Fox makes a regular appearance with our 'fox hunting' posts where we take photos of foxes we spot while out and about. We do own a fox mask that we bought a while back but it's more fun to create something ourselves.

We managed to find all the material we needed to create our masterpieces so we got to it. Opeie's been really unwell this weekend so the activity was partly to try and take his mind off feeling grotty. The Poor little soldier sniffed and coughed his was through our craft session but he was having fun. 

We were making one each, so we made mine which was really simple and then I gave Opeie the option of any famous foxes he might want to create, fox in socks, fantastic mr fox, tails (from sonic), Robin Hood, Mr Todd, but in the end he went for Swiper the fox from Dora the explorer.

Our masks were really quick to make which they needed to be because poorly Opeie soon lost motivation and just wanted to have a cuddle on the sofa with mommy and who could blame him, it's exactly where I wanted to be too.

Sadly Opeie was to poorly to show off his cunning creations this morning so we stayed in the warm with the promise of a foxy dance later when he's feeling up to it. We'll just have to get working on next weeks theme instead.

"My life is an ongoing, ever changing adventure."

Mrs M was doing her usual yearly bit for charity this weekend and as much as I wanted to get involved this year it wasn't really fair on Opeie, so once the car had been unloaded and gazebos had been erected, me and my little padawan set about our adventures. It was another beautiful morning so we headed over to the Lickey hills, I used to go there a fair bit when I was younger so it was nice to know my way around. There's two main parts, being the forward thinking dad that i am i decided on the side with the visitor centre as I thought it would be a safer option for our newly qualified, big boy pants wearing toilet user.

I packed my backpack with snacks and books and lifted the little adventurer to his favourite spot on my shoulders. It was exactly how I remembered it which was nice, it was quite early so there wasn't many people about. First thing Opeie spotted was the playground, most of it was for bigger children but that didn't stop Opeie. I find when we're at playgrounds or soft play areas that a lot of children are so rude. Opeie tries to make conversation with any child that makes eye contact and some of them look at him like 'why are you talking to me', I always think its such a strange attitude for young children you would think they would all be really smiley and happy of the interaction.

After charging round the playground for a while Opeie's eyes lit up, he got really excited and was repeating 'Gastons cave', I looked over to see what he was talking about and it was a rock sculpture next to the park. Opeie explained to me that Gastons cave was really messy so we pretended to have brooms and sweep it out. 'Gastons house nice and clean' I think that means we did a good job.

We headed off for a walk through the hills but didn't get very far before Opeie rubbed his tummy and and said 'Opeie hungry'. We found a nice grass area to sit down and while Opeie had some snacks i read him a few of the books i had packed. It was so lovely sitting under a tree reading in the nice weather.

Snack time passed and we continued our journey through the woods. I love just walking about in this lovely weather, we could hear the birds tweeting and rustling through the leaves and Opeie was on butterfly watch and there were plenty to keep him occupied. As we were walking deeper in to the forest we saw a horse coming towards us and Opeie froze and we watched it pass by. Opeie then referred to me as 'Daddy horse' and i galloped after the horse doing my best vocal impressions.

We ended up in the middle of nowhere and we had been doing a lot of walking down hill so the walking back was starting to seem a little daunting in the heat with Mini Lester Piggott on my shoulders commanding me to 'go faster daddy'. We eventually found our way back to the car park but we walked straight past and to the gift shop as Opeie had spotted an owl mask when we first got there and was talking about it for a lot of the morning. I requested the owl mask but then Opeie said 'Daddy fox in socks' and 'Mommy......' (pointing up at a hedgehog), so they came with us too.

After lunch i assumed Opeie would want a nap, it was getting to that time of the day but he had other plans. As there was no chance of him going down we drove over to the other side of the Lickey hills, the side with the castle. As soon as we got out of the car and Opeie laid his eyes on said castle he was off like a whippet. Its not a proper castle it's only little and was built i assume just for the view, to Opeie i bet it still looked huge though.

Opeie soon started to feel a bit tired so we headed back to the car and went for a drive to get him off, it didn't take long. As soon as he was off i found a quite shaded place to park and reclined my seat, trying to get as comfortable as you can with a steering wheel on your knees. Mrs M text and said she would be late finishing so i did a bit of internet searching looking for somewhere close to go and keep Opeie entertained. We ended up going to the Botanical gardens, it was close to where Mrs M was and I'd been there before with Mrs M on a uni trip and knew Opeie would at least like the shop and the playground. He woke up not long after i pulled in to the car park so the adventure continued...

I don't think that Opeie was the slightest bit interested in the beautiful plants and flowers but he was loving the big fish. Opeie made a new friend called Eva on the playground which was really cute and i chatted to the girls mom as they played, its nice on these days out when its just the two of us to have a little adult conversation.

We only stayed for an hour or so as it was getting close to mommy pick up time and i had some work to do taking down gazebos and loading everything back in to the car. Me and Opeie had a fantastic adventure and I'm really looking forward to the next one, he really is one of my three best friends (I'm sure you can guess who the other two are).