"I'd rather be the king of kids, than the prince of fools."

As a family we can spend weeks, months even, planning and building a huge well thought out LEGO build. Which as you are probably fully aware, i absolutely adore as it is quality family time with the boys. I love sitting with them both, hearing all their ideas and then working together to come up with ways to make those ideas possible, it's one of my favourite things to do with them. Sometimes though we don't have an extended amount of time to do this, sometimes the boys need something building there and then and our building becomes a little more spontanious.

The release of the series 13 minifigures has got many LEGO geeks like myself excited, for me this has been the best series in terms of characters and has been great for our ever expanding collection of parts. It happens a lot with us that a single minifigure will spur on a larger build (remember Deadpool?, Wyldstyle? even The Joker got built an entire ice cream factory). This time round though two characters from series 13 gave us all the inspiration we needed.

When we saw the pictures of the series months back i was pining after the Hotdog guy, hes going to come in very handy. For Seth though it was all about the king and after seeing him built i can see why Seth started building a castle straight away. Months back our friend Steve had given us a big bag of castle pieces and Seth had been looking for a reason to get using them. The king minifigure sorted that out.

It wasn't long before Seth had built a castle for the big beard donning king and in what seemed like no time at all an army was being built, a mass of knights and soldiers ready to defend the throne.

Ready to move forward on their enemies, they instantly hit a rather important hurdle...

... they had absolutely no one to fight, which is right about where i got summoned upstairs to their room. In great Seth and Opeie style i was given minimal time to come up with some sort of army for king whats his name to fight and inevitably conquer in the process. I quickly looked about and spotted that Ming the Merciless looking chap from series 13 and decided on a baddie army with a magical element. I love building like this sometimes as i have no idea where to start so i just start literally piling up bricks on a base plate.

I wasn't liking it at first but the more small bricks i added the better it looked. lots of small grey pieces to make an uneven rocky surface and i even managed to use the large skull face piece that i bought years ago for 50p that had been sitting in our grey box (i still have no idea what kit it is off). Spikes on the doors and plenty of fire and it was pretty much everything the boys wanted from a bad guys castle. The female minifigures get a rough deal in our house, unless its Mrs M's minifigure the boys are usually playing with male characters (i am unsure why? could make an interesting future post thought). I made sure i used some as the main part of my army and built witches casting spells around a crystal ball.

Surprisingly since being rushed to complete the castle, we've not actually had the battle yet as the boys keep adding to the castles with new ideas and accessories but i am sure if the weather keeps up like it has there will be plenty of medieval LEGO brawling this weekend... 

...someone has got to save that poor princess locked away in the tower after all.

"How stylish of you to joust in an antique, you'll start a new fashion if you win. My grandfather will be able to wear his in public again, and a shield, how quaint. "

The four of us spend plenty of our time reminiscing about the holiday we had back in November. There was so much fun crammed into our two weeks in Orlando and its something we will never forget. For each of us the things that we look back on are different but the two younger members of our family were changed by one Knight out!

Knights, castles and all things medieval have been on the forefront of our play time over the last few months. The boys love a good rumble especially if it means loading ourselves up with an armoury of weapons to use during battle. There's nothing wrong with a bit of play fighting as long as everyone's safe and watching what they are doing. Role playing is a big part of our playtime and when we are play fighting you can be sure that i will always be the bad guy and have to defend myself against miniature foes. 

Thanks to thetoadstool.co.uk the youngest of our army can now relive his Medieval experience any time he feels, donning the finest in battle attire. The Haba Henry the Knights Armor is a colourful attention grabbing take on a knights dress up, making Role playing from days of old a fun and comfortable experience.

Since receiving the outfit our little warrior has wanted to play knights every day, and who could blame him. Nothing screams 'brawler' more than a big green dragon on your chest breathing fire. Unless you have a sword, shield or other accessory (which luckily we had) you may want to consider buying the accessories that come from the Haba Knight range. The one thing i found disappointing about the outfit is that each part is sold seperately. I think when you are purchasing the Armour it should come with the helmet and one of the accessories as it would seem a little lost on its own. Needless to say though, our armor wearing, sword swinging play fighter has not wanted to take it off and this weeks theme at Opeie's dance class was dress up so you can image what he wanted to wear.

now that its half term i think i can feel a knights helmet craft session on the horizon to compliment our new outfit so stay tuned.

The Henry Haba Knights armor can be purchased from thetoadstool.co.uk along with the other great items from the Haba knight range and with world book day just around the corner what better way to celebrate than marching round the playground as Prince Caspian or a member of Prince Johns army from Robin hood.

All that's left to do now is fight....

CHARGE!!!

"Knowledge is a weapon. I intend to be formidably armed."

YouTube is such a great source of entertainment for a stay at home dad. It's also a great learning platform. If you don't know how to do something, watch a YouTube video. Aside from all the ridiculous unnecessary videos on there of people making idiots of themselves there are loads of great ideas for entertaining your children. I use it a lot for learning craft techniques. While I was on there a few nights back a video popped up of someone making a crossbow using paper, lolly pop sticks and tape so as the boys are having a knights and castles phase at the moment I thought me an Seth could sit down and give it a try.

We sorted out the things that we needed and found the video to use as a tutorial, Seth was very excited when he saw it on the video in action. It fires pencils and yes I know that doesn't sound all that safe but the boys are very careful and I knew they wouldn't use them while I wasn't about.

Its what play tables were made for!!!

 I won't go in to to much detail as I will include the youtube video that I watched at the end of the post. They were pretty easy to make although some of the bending of the thick rolled paper was a pain even for me. The chap on the video used all white paper but we wanted ours to have a little more pizzazz so I chose pink (obviously) and Seth chose Blue. They actually turned out great, Seth's fired a lot better than mine but they both worked great. When we had finished I noticed another video of something I would like us to create but that's more of an outdoors summer activity so stay tuned.

For the full instructions on how to make a paper crossbow here's the video, enjoy...