"...and of course he wanted his crayons to be happy. And that gave him an idea."

I can't ever see LEGO not being a part of our lives, over the years its been an amazing bonding experience for the boys and I and we have built so many fun things together during this time. I love putting our own spin on the Sets that LEGO releases but for me the real magic comes in those completely original and creative ideas. I love hearing Opeie's weird and wonderful ideas and then sitting down together and working out how we are going to make these things work is something pretty special.

Im not sure where the idea for this build came from, it could have been influenced by the Oliver Jeffers book The day the crayons quit, which was always a favourite of ours. Or maybe just one of those mad ideas that pops into our heads at times. Either way our mission was to create a box of crayons with a colourful story to back it up. Opeie has a thing for miniature play sets that he can carry around with him so the box had to have some form of scene in there too.

Anything Opeie creates has to have some form of backstory, sometimes the stories are deep and other times they are complete madness. This one was about an angry purple crayon, fed up with the restraints of being imprisoned in a box and having minimal outdoor time to let his creative juices run wild. He eventually reaches breaking point after being mocked by his peers for wanting more from life and goes on a rampage, melting his colourful housemates (poor light green crayon 😭).

For me these are the kind of LEGO builds that really get me motivated, giggling to ourselves as we talk about the story while creating is the best kind of bonding there is. I can't wait to get stuck in to the next crazy idea.

"And on that day Mr. Caper learned how sweet being earthy and acidic could be."

With tomorrow being World book day you would expect every school around the world to be doing something amazing to join in with the celebrations. Not Seth's school though, for the past 3 years they have not done anything and the couple of years before that they decided to have their world book day on a different day??? I have absolutely no idea what is going on in the head teachers mind but clearly there is something wrong up there. When we asked his teacher why they didn't do anything he simply said "we're not allowed". So again this year March 2nd has come around and Seth, much like many children at his school I imagine, is left disappointed.  He loved the costume we made him a few years back and proudly walked across the playground dressed as Mr Twit. What has annoyed me even more though is that this failure to get involved with the whole world on this awesome day has left Seth unmotivated to get involved in what we are doing too, which is really sad.

Opeie and I have been crafting away this week though and decided to have a World Book Day activity week in preparation for the big day, so we've been busy doing all sorts. Opeie wanted to make masks of some of his favourite book characters. So he made the Lorax, the sweet lollipop and sour caper from The great Lollipop Caper by dan Krall, for me and him and for Seth, Bzzd from the DC Super pets from the books that Opeie is reading at the moment. 

Opeie also wanted to make a giant crayon from Oliver Jeffers amazing book 'The Day the crayons Quit'. If you've not read this book already it's a must.

While chatting to Opeie we decided that it would be a good idea to take some chocolates and biscuits down to the staff at our local library, which I thought was a great idea. We picked up some bits while we were out shopping and then we made some book related packaging to go around each thing. It's been lovely seeing Opeie get into all this book-related fun. Opeie finished off his fun world book day treats with a card for the staff at the library and he's looking forward to dropping them off tomorrow. We also gave his scooter a mini makeover too for the celebrations but I'll put that in a separate post.

It's going to be another fun couple of book themed days for us and We hope you all have an amazing world book day too.

"There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures."

It's been 6 months since we moved in to our new home and although we are completely settled now we didn't have a single light shade up in the house! Well until this week anyhow. You would think lampshades would be something that would get sorted as soon as we moved in but we didn't take any of the ones from the previous house and just hadn't spotted any that had taken out fancy.

It was starting to get to the point where it was annoying us so we went looking for some lighting accessories to cover the bulbs and perk the rooms up a little. Mrs M spotted some odd looking shades while we were out shopping one afternoon and although i couldn't stand the look of them I went along with it and we brought them to try (they were returned the following day, I don't know what she was thinking??).

I was hoping to find something quite simple that was very 'US' but nothing was getting my attention.

If you have been reading the blog for a while then you will be aware that I love recycling old books and I'm always picking up extra copies of the picture books we love for future craft ideas. As reading is such a big thing with our house we wanted to incorporate the stories and illustrators we love as much as we could in to our home. While we were out at Ikea last week we spotted some really simple shades that you velcro to a frame and we knew they would look great lined with pages from our favorite books. 

Oliver Jeffers has now dominated the two lights in our hall and the extra copies of 'The amazing book eating boy' and 'The great paper caper' I had found a while back worked out great because of the amazing illustrations and colours he uses. For the boys room it had to be Dr Seuss as the books are really important to me and we have had some great times together reading them. I asked Opeie which book he would like me to use and he asked for Green eggs and ham, great choice I thought.

We love the way they look so much that I think that these illustrations will be popping up throughout the house now in various ways and we still need to add shades to other rooms. Its amazing that some old books and some double sided sticky tape can transform a room this much. Adding these decorations to our home just shows even more the importance of books and the impact they have on us as a family.