With another 4 weeks of national lockdown starting now, I'm feeling like the only way through this is back to daily activities concentrating on creativity. The creative lockdown project really helped to keep us in a Calm and focused headspace while the whole world was falling apart. So for the next 4 weeks our home-ed will be focussing solely on a variety of creative activities base on a word of the day. It's been a really tough month emotionally and I think we both want to be feeling better about the path that we are on. I'm kicking off our project with our LEGO Halloween build for this year, an explosion of black and orange.
Autumn is by far my favourite time of year, Unlike most I'm a big fan of the temperature drop, Ive always had a thing about my coat going on, making our outdoor adventures that little more cosy. And who doesn't love the colours on the trees, that autumn change is pretty magical. For the boys it's an exciting time of year because we get to go up the loft and start bringing down those end of year decorations. It's always so nice to transform the house and make it that little more interesting and of course that always includes some spooky LEGO building. We were all wrapped up one evening with hot chocolates making Halloween characters and a big sign for the wall in The LEGO room.
Opeie requested we build a witches house another evening and despite not feeling in a creative mood we stuck with it and it all turned out pretty lovely. The LEGO building really got us into the build up to halloween festivities.
With the decorations out and the house feeling a little more spooky we were pretty excited about the fun that was going to be had. Pumpkin carving at home and maybe a spooky party.
Then at the last minute our plans changed and a couple of days before the big spooky celebration we found ourselves driving down to the Cornish coast to Boscastle to for a few nights away. With a mass of negativity starting to muscle its way into our lives at home I think we were both really needing to get away for a bit.
Halloween ended up being an awesome day at Tintagel, adventuring around Merlins cave, Stomping up some big hills and finding waterfalls, perfection.
All has been quiet on the blog over the last week and may be for another week or so as I'm in LEGO mode at the moment, We're building something big (all will be revealed soon) and also building lots of little things for some lovely people to say thank you. Because of these addictive bricks taking up so much of my time i managed to skip a Halloween post so i thought i better do a little catch up.
On the build up to Halloween Opeie informed me that he wanted to do some spooky themed painting so we had a fun afternoon painting skulls, spiders, ghosts, bats and pumpkins.
After our trip to the pumpkin patch a few weeks back we had four pumpkins to carve, Opeie requested a 'Mickey Mouse' first which me and Mrs M attempted (apologies for the quality of the pic)...
And on Halloween we were invited around to out friend Tabiitha's for a pumpkin carving session, It was great to hang out with friends and stab fruit together.
If I'm honest I'm not a huge fan of Halloween (said like a Halloween scrooge). Spooky craft sessions are great but that's where it ends for me. The thing i find most irritating is the door being knocked late at night, usually by kids who clearly havent made the effort with their costume and are just wearing a black bag with some fake blood on their cheek (i guess that makes me a spooky costume snob but I'm fine with that). We did however leave some lollipops by the front door for our doorstep visitors. Surprisingly though the door was only knocked once but as we were eating we looked at each other and neither of us made the slightest effort to go to the door (like i said.. 'Scrooge). I hope you all had a fun Halloween.
As a family we have many annual traditions, an array of things that we look forward to throughout the year. I think it's so important as a family to have these special and personal things that we do. It's a way of bringing us together, especially with all the other things going on in our lives.
One of our yearly traditions is picking pumpkins at Essington fruit farm, When the temperature starts to drop that's when i start looking forward to our Halloween trip. I remember the first visit like it was yesterday travelling by tractor up to the Pumpkin patch, Opeie was 7 months old and when i looked back at the pictures a minute ago i was reminded just how little Seth was. It was cold but a lovely sunny day and we laughed and joked around in the field studying each pumpkin so that we could be sure to make the perfect selection
We missed the following year as the weather had been so awful, the crops had been rained off. Last year though it was all go and we were stomping through the pumpkin patch once more. What we didn't realise last year though was that we were not supposed to be in the field, we just made our own way and helped ourselves, oops. I love having these things to look forward to every year and the boys get so excited, It's nice to think these special family outings are giving them great lifelong memories.
So its that time of year again and last weekend seemed like the perfect time to head out on our yearly hunt for something big and orange to stick a knife it. Opeie was a little more excited this year too being that bit older. When we arrived at the farm we couldn't believe how busy it was. There was a country fare on and there were cars and people everywhere. They always have amazing carved pumpkins on show but this year they had the artists there so you could watch them at work.
The queue for the tractor ride up to the pumpkin field was insanely long so we decided to venture up to the pumpkin patch on foot. When we reached the field as always we were greeted by masses of the Halloween fruit ready for the taking...
We had our usual muck about, or should i say, Me and Mrs M as usual were acting like children...
But we were there on serious business and our 3 and 8 year old children informed us of that. Time to pick our pumpkins. picking the right pumpkin is a big decision and one not to be taken lightly. I cant wait to get carving this week.
Our Pumpkin picking session was cut a little short when a tired Opeie fell over in the field and got prickles in his hand, bless him, we were all getting a little cold though so we waited for the tractor to take us back. This years pumpkin picking adventure was complete, now time to let our creative juices run wild.
On the drive home i had a song stuck in my head inspired by the day. A CD I had bought when i was about 14 (wow 20 years ago that's crazy). I'll leave you with the song i was humming all the way home and i hope you have fun carving your pumpkins...
I'm not a huge fan of Halloween, it always seems like a bit of a pointless holiday, maybe I would feel different about it if I was in the US. Seth gets a little excited though and although Opeie finds it all a little scary he loves to copy his big brother, so despite my reservations it was important that I indulge them both. Whatever time of year it is we always have to fit in a relevant Lego build and this Halloween was no different...
Seth wanted to decorate his room so we made a giant spider to hang from his ceiling and got him some inflatable pumpkins. Opeie wasn't sure what to make of it all but thankfully he didn't freak out.
While we were out at the shops earlier in the week, Seth spotted a 'decorate your own plate' and asked if he could create a Halloween plate. I'm so glad he did because the finished piece looked amazing, I love Seth's drawings...
Opeie joined in the fun too with a little help from mommy...
I know the post is a little late but i got side tracked doing other things, I was pleasently surprised that no one came knocking on our door on Halloween (yes I'm like the all hallows eve scrooge). I'm not surprised though, the only trick or treater i saw was a little girl wearing a bin bag. I wont lie I'm glad its over so that we can concentrate on the real holiday, Christmas. You can be sure that there will be many Christmas posts coming your way
Every year around Halloween we head down to Essington farm to pick our Halloween pumpkins for carving. Last year because of all the bad weather all the crops had been rained off and there was none to pick (sad faces all round). So this year we phoned ahead to see if there were pumpkins for picking. They don't start their tractor ride to the field until next week but they said we could make our own way up there and pick away.
Not the best of days for traipsing around a muddy farm but then that sums us up, picking out door activities to do on the wrong days. It's only a bit of rain though and we make our own fun whether its sunny or gloomy. We made it to the pumpkin field and despite the 'no entry' sign on the gate we headed in, we had been told it was okay after all.
The boys picked a pumpkin each and we brushed them off as best we could and put them in a bag to take them to the farm shop. Opeie's little pumpkin was so cute and were going to do something extra fun with that one.
And then we got told off by a farmer, oops! Apparently we were not supposed to be in that field until next week but we explained that we had phoned ahead of the visit and was told it was okay. Trust us to cause trouble wherever we go. The friendly farmer was fine though and apologised for the confusion.
Well our pumpkins have been brought now so next is a bit of creativity, stay tuned for what we actually use our pumpkins for, should be fun.
I realised right before i went to sleep last night that i hadn't written a post about Seth's pumpkin so I'm a day late on this post. We were really looking forward to going to Essington farm this year to the pumpkin patch, you get to ride on a tractor and go and pick your own pumpkin. We had phoned a few weeks back and sadly because of the terrible weather this year they had no pumpkins. We were very disappointed.
A week ago we visited Mrs M's parents and Nanny Roo had brought Seth a pumpkin to carve which was lovely so the night before Halloween we started our squash craft session. I cut the top open and Seth began to scoop the insides out, he got bored of doing that after 5 minutes so i took it in the kitchen to scoop it out. I was using a plastic ladle and it split slicing quite a substantial piece of my finger out, there was a fair bit of blood (well I'm sure I'm not the only person to injure themselves carving a pumpkin, although technically i had got to the carving part yet).
Well i patched myself up with help from Mrs M and began the carving. I think you'll agree that Seth did a great job with the design.
Fingers crossed Essington will have some pumpkins next year as it was a lot of fun and a great place to take photo's. Ive added a couple from last year. Hope you all enjoyed Halloween.
