"Creativity is contagious, pass it on."

Day 28:

Most days we have no problems keeping ourselves fully entertained but recently this self isolation craziness has started to take it's toll. The last couple of days, every now and again we've both been a little fed up but its to be expected so we're doing all sorts to try and keep a positive head about us. Today we started a 30 day creative isolation project where each day someone is nominated to come up with a word and everyone involved has to create something around that word. Todays word was 'Spider' so this morning was taken up creating cute spiders made from printing with a sliced up toilet roll tube. If it hadn't have been for this today I think we'd have probably spent the morning staring at the walls.

Stay creative peeps, it really does help. 

"Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster."

Day 10:

It would be so easy during these insanely weird times to just lose all hope and fall into a deep emotional pit of stress and worry, and although the last few weeks have affected me deeply (as they have most of us), I'm doing my best to say 'NO!' We need to focus on the love and the laughter. Like eating S'mores with a beard and giving no fluffs about the mess I'm leaving as I eat. This is the new world now people and we need to embrace it or we'll lose our minds.

"Be Excellent to each other, and Party on Dudes!"

Day 8:

It will no doubt be one of the weirdest birthdays that Opeie is going to experience with everything that's going on in the world at the moment but I wanted him to feel just as special when he woke up this morning. Its crazy that 9 years have flown by this quickly and although I clearly didn't envision us spending it in isolation, he's had a pretty lovely day. Despite the current situation the only thing that was missing was him being able to spend it with his friends. As I write this though I can hear him downstairs playing online with his besties, So I'm pretty thankful for technology today.

Also I'm looking forward to the cake.

“Trade your expectation for appreciation and the world changes for you.”

Day 7:

I've been so thankful of the garden over the last few days as we've spent most of our time sat out on the trampoline listening to music, drawing and playing games. As rubbish as this situation is I hope that for many people it really makes them appreciate the space that they do have. People always seem to want more but when it comes to situations like this would 'more' actually mean anything?

I will (as always) be focusing on the important things in life. Like the people that really make this life worth living.

"Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones."

Day 6:

During these crazy confusing times its really important to keep busy, if we don't I think many of us (especially the creative folk) will start to wilt very quickly. We've been concentrating on the creative side of things the most while we've been shut away, as the satisfaction that you get from completing a project or producing a piece (no matter how small) can fill you with all those happy vibes.

We've recently started a couple of online drawing classes and todays character illustration was just what we needed for a self isolation pick-me-uk.

Keep creating people, I think we're going to see some amazing pieces of work off the back of this pandemic and its going to be amazing to see. 

"The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind."

Day 3:

Ive not been in the greatest headspace today but the sunshine has really dragged me through it. After  a peaceful walk this morning with Becci and the boys, Opeie and I spent the remainder of the afternoon sitting in the garden building LEGO. I think those magical bricks may just help us through all of this.

If you are doing your part and staying home then stay creative, there's real magic in letting those creative juices flow. 

"Instead of hate, celebrate."

Day 2:

 I'd like to think that what is happening in the world at the moment will make people take a step back and look at how they have been acting towards people in their lives. As heartbreaking as this situation is it could also be a turning point for fixing those relationships that don't need to be volatile.

It's also important to really make the most of days like mothers day to celebrate and remind us that although dark, its not all bad.

Happy Mothers day all.

"Do we need distance to get close?"

I've been finding it harder and harder to write over the last few months for various reasons and it has really been getting on my nerves. The world seems to be going to shit and its been taking my motivation and confidence with it. So in an attempt to get my juices flowing and continue documenting our journey for the boys I'm going to post one picture a day to get us through this slump and give us that little bit of sunshine for these dark times. 

Todays picture is from Titterstones Clee, clearly not practising social distancing from each other but doing our best to keep our distance from others. It was one of those days that was good for the soul and we all really needed it. 

Stay safe people.

"A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind."

I like to try and make the most of our days in full, it doesn't always happen because at times life just gets in the way but making the most of our time together is really important to me . Its so easy to fall into that headspace of getting to a certain point of the day and deciding that there's no point going out, especially this time of year when the weather is cold and wet. 

After an afternoon out with Opeie's home ed friends on Friday we got home, packed our paints, pens and Becci 😂 and headed over to one of our favourite hideaway spots for an evening of creativity while watching the sun go down. We backed the car up to the edge of the hillside at Titterstones, dropped the seats, opened the boot and we had the perfect relaxing view to accompany a creative mind. 

Nights like this are perfection and are everything we need as a family for calm and clear headspace.

“Crackers!” said Dumbledore enthusiastically, offering the end of a large silver noisemaker to Snape, who took it reluctantly.”

Home ed has gone out the window a little this week, and we've decided to focus the week on Christmas craft. If I'm honest we were in the Christmas wind down zone a couple of weeks back and it seems like all our other Home Ed buddies are feeling the same. With a list of things that Opeie wants to make he decided to kick off the week with home made Christmas crackers for the tree. I disappeared upstairs looking for patterned paper to use and while rummaging I found some Doctor who magazines that had the perfect pages in to make Christmas crackers fit for a Timelord.

Becci had brought Opeie a selection of cardboard tubes round over the last few weeks (that boy loves a cardboard tube). So we cut one of the tubes down so that we could support the main body of the crackers, folded the ends of the paper and cut in diamonds into the fold for where the ribbon would be tied. Then we unfolded and rolled the paper around the tube (nice and easy).

We had picked up a roll of Harry Potter wrapping paper a few days back that Opeie had spotted in a shop and as soon as we started making the crackers he told me that he wanted to make the hats with that, So much better than the hats that you usually get in crackers.

Opeie had the time of his life writing the jokes (which obviously I wasn't allowed to see) so I'll be looking forward to hearing those on Christmas Day. All that was left to do was to find something fun to put inside them and we came up with a pretty lovely idea, but I can't reveal it on here because our Christmas guest will be reading.

The crackers were a nice easy activity to kickstart a week of Christmas fun and its already making us  feel a little more festive. 

“Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.”

The autumn/winter weather is definitely here to stay for a while and although its been all big coats and winter boots, Opeie is not letting the change in seasons hinder his fashionsta ways and is still donning shades when he goes out. 

I love how confident he is when it comes to what he's wearing, he reminds me so much of myself when I was a kid trying to find my own style. These retro style cats eye glasses were from Smartbuyglasses and they've got a great selection over Black Friday if (like Opeie) you are looking to stick it to this drizzly wet weather.

Check out the latest deals here.

"A good picture is equivalent to a good deed."

With it just being Opeie and me most of the time I very rarely get pictures of us together so it was a nice surprise recently when Seth said that he had taken some photos while we were out walking. We had gone for a walk around comer woods and passed a field full of bails of hay, so inevitably the boys said 'can we climb on them?'. One of the many things I love about the boys is how they don't need to do the kinds of things that cost  the earth, just to have fun. Life is about adventure and adventure can be found anywhere. For me its all about the company rather than where we are because when you are around people that make you happy that fun and adventure happens organically.

As we sat in the field mucking about we didn't need anything else. It was one of those afternoons where everyone was just content and its the kind of day I strive for every day. It was really nice having a day like that and then coming home to find out that Seth had documented it to. Im definitely going to encourage Seth to take photos more often. 

"Despite the weather, it gets better, You won't do this alone"

It's been a while since I wrote an update about the music that is having an impact on Opeie but I think it's really important as his love of music gets him through the confusing emotional things going on in his life. When we are at home we have music playing most of the time, it has always been an important part of my life and the love of (all kinds of) music has definitely rubbed off on Opeie too. So here's 10 tracks that he's been listening to recently. Hopefully he can look back on these and remember what an absolute dude of an 8-year-old he was.

Modern Baseball - Your graduation

With Confidence - Voldemort

Hit the lights - No filter

The chats - Smoko

Two Year break - Change my mind

Our Last night - The Middle (cover)

Kid Quill - Daily Routine

SonReal - Everywhere we go

Shakey Grakes (feat Esme Patterson) - Dearly Departed

Queen - Don't stop me now

"...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.

“If there's a better definition of love than mutual benevolent insanity, I haven't heard it.”

We all have a bad day every now and again, one of those days where you feel like you could either scream or cry at any point and that was Opeie yesterday. He's an over thinker like me and I could tell pretty much as soon as he'd woken up that he was processing some heavy thoughts. It's been a really confusing couple of years for him and Ive done my best to try and help him navigate through it all, sometimes though talking about it just doesn't work and instead you need to do something a little bit crazy to take you mind off of all the head traffic.

So as the weather was a bit rubbish on and off yesterday and Opeie was clearly in need of lots of cuddles, we decided to have a movie day. It would have been far too easy to throw a load of blankets on the sofa though and where's the fun in that? Like I said we needed something to take his mind off of everything so after a little chat and a few giggles we decided it was a good idea to take the trampoline down in the garden and put it in his bedroom.

I love a bit of spontaneity, and little crazy activities like this are really good for the soul. As soon as the trampoline was up and was covered in blankets, Opeie had an hour playing with his friends online and then we gathered snacks and chilled out watching movies. In no time at all he was back to his happy self and the rest of the day was all smiles. Sometimes it really pays to be a little bit creative with your time and showing a little bit of genuine effort goes a long way with kids.

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. "

Ive written so many posts about the things we get up to, the places we go, and the things we create but I haven't actually written about the one thing that takes up my evenings when the boys are tucked up in bed.  Writing the blog has taken up a lot of my evening time over the years. I'd never really been the sort of person that committed to anything but that all Changed when I became a dad and my life was turned around for the better. Being a dad is the greatest thing that has ever happened in my life, my defining moment, and when the boys are awake my time is completely devoted to them and the blog really helps me with this. It keeps me motivated to be constantly doing things with them and making sure that they get the attention they deserve. 

I can see how easily it could be as a parent to just sit on your bum and let the kids get on with whatever they want to be doing but that's not the way I could ever be. I have unfortunately had a bad relationship with my own family over the years and I never want my boys to feel how I have. We may not have a house that is immaculate all the time, the list of DIY jobs keep mounting up and maybe we cant always afford to go on holiday when we want but I know that the boys go to sleep and wake up happy and as a dad that shows me that I am doing a great job.

I started the blog for the boys, we play a lot and I wanted them to be able to look back on this and see all of the fun that we had and are still always having. At first it was all about our Lego builds and the crazy craft activities that we come up with. As the years have gone by though it has turned into so much more, its something for all of us to look back on including friends, family and all of the regular readers that are following me on this amazing adventure of being a dad. I feel so lucky to have the boys in my life they will never know how much they have bettered me as a person and the fact that I can look back on the pages I have written is amazing as I know that time can never be taken away from me.

Even if there are negative things going on my life, things that are getting me down, I know that as soon as I sit down at my computer to write for that time it all goes away. I try not to write anything negative on here, after all the blog is a celebration of everything family, It's about colour, fun and creativity. Its a way for me to come across as I am meant to be seen with out the outside negative influences of my childhood creeping in.

What I'm trying to say amongst all the waffle is that the writing really means a lot to me and hopefully it will to the boys when they are older and understand it all. It's been an interesting journey, not all good, but the three of us have really grown together and we've got each other through a whole mess of heartache. I'm looking forward to another year of documenting our adventures and watching the boys grow into proper little gents. Being a dad us truly amazing.

"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves."

Im really having to force myself over this blogging hump and its getting to the point where I'm driving myself insane, Its like I'm desperately trying to claw back my confidence. Aside from the boys obviously, writing was one of the things that really kept me going through the emotional battlefield I had been dealing with for the last four or so years.  I would look forward to that quite time when the boys were asleep so that I could get on here and write down my thoughts and document all the fun we had been having, for them to look back on. Things had to go and get complicated though and in no time at all that fire to write had gone out and that evening quiet time, became the darkest time of the day for me. I had a plan, it involved a strong family unit,  content and happy children and life of adventure and learning together. Im still working on that daily and to a certain extent we still have it, but now there is a dark cloud looming over all of us that we just can't shake.

I want to see the blog as a positive again but with so many people that I know reading it, it can at times make me feel a little uneasy. Especially when they get the hump about light comments written within the more personal posts. I need to get myself back to that place I was when writing was exciting, there is so much that I've not written about over the last 15 or so months and I want to continue giving the boys something amazing to look back on. 

Im not the same person I was a two years ago and I'm only just starting to realise just how much has changed. My views on life and relationships are so much clearer now and feel like I've reached the point where I can move forward in hopefully a healthy way. So for now, a bunch of short posts to ease me back in gently and hopefully I'll have my confidence back in no time at all. 

"Little things make big days"

There really is never a dull day in our house, we always seem to be doing some random activity or out looking for adventure. For all the fun that we have though there are always those random days here and there that stand out from the rest and today was one of those days. What seemed like forever ago, when we read the first of M.G. Leonard's books (Beetle boy) our whole world was opened up to to the fascinating world of Coleoptera. I can honestly say that I had never given beetles a second thought, I barely even noticed them, but those first few chapters changed everything for Opeie (and myself) and in no time at all it had made us so much more aware of the things that are around us.

The second installment of the story (Beetle Queen) was released and we were hooked, becoming more and more interested in beetles and why they are so important to the natural world. I had been so desperate for Opeie to take a real interest in something and this was it, so it became the driving force for a lot of the things we were doing with his home education. 

By the time the third and final book came out for the Beetle boy trilogy (Battle of the beetles), We could be found many times a week crawling around in the woods, turning over rotten logs and rummaging through leaf piles, it had become a way of life. We have a beetle hunting kit (which we take out everywhere), we stopped cutting our grass in the back garden and gathered rotten logs so the beetles had somewhere to live and the house became a shrine to all things beetle, with decorations and themed furniture everywhere.

When the forth book (The Beetle Collector's Handbook) had been released we had got to the point in our beetle loving lives where we were in farmers fields breaking up pooh looking for Dung beetles, I guess you could say that we had fully embraced Opeie's main interest and honestly, I was loving every minute of it.

We owed a lot to the hero Darkus and his amazing transgenic beetle Baxter, but more so to their creator and Opeie was desperate to meet her. The magic of this generation means that we were able to chat to her occasionally via social media which was awesome and we hoped that at some point that she would be book signing somewhere over our way in Shropshire. It was a long shot but we were patient. While we waited for this encounter to happen we continued our Coleoptera adventure, attending Entomology events, visiting museums and even spending an afternoon with a Dung beetle specialist in Oxford (which was really interesting). We made a list of all the places we wanted to visit and at the top of that list was Dr Beynons bug farm over in Pembrokeshire. The plan was to visit over the summer but then...

It was like a dream come true for Opeie, His favourite author at Dr beynons, Suddenly it was all systems go, Opeie was going to meet his hero and there was so much excitement surrounding the event. We tweeted Maya and let her know that we were coming to meet her finally and to have her pen ready to sign Opeie's books. The plan was to take Opeie's beetle book that he has been creating as part of his home schooling to show her so that she could see what a huge inspiration she has been to him. 

As we pulled into Dr Beynons Bug Farm on the morning of the visit another car followed us in, it wasn't until we were getting our things together ready for the visit that we realised it was Maya and her family. Opeie was in complete awe and just watched her walk by with his mouth open, Starstruck. 

Not wanting to pounce on her from the get go we spent a couple of hours looking around the bug farm, it was full of interesting information and some beautiful beetles including the Rainbow Stag Beetle which Opeie has decided he would really love as a pet.

The talk by Maya and Sarah was awesome and hearing Maya read an extract from the book in her very flamboyant way must have made my bedtime reading seem really dull, she really drew us in with how she saw the characters personalities. After the talk we waited for all the other visitors to chat and get their books signed and then it was our time to pounce. Opeie was in his element and I was feeling pretty excited for him. We chatted beetles and both Maya and Sarah read through Opeie's beetle book and seemed genuinely impressed by the work he has been doing, Sarah even requested a copy of his beetle poem to display somewhere in the beetle farm which is really exciting.

It was one of those days that was just filled with pure happiness. 

By the time we got home we were exhausted, it was one of the most fun days out we had ever had and as Opeie drifted off to sleep the huge smile on his face said it all. There must be something so satisfying when your heroes actually turn out to be heroes in real life and Maya is as super as they come.

"You couldn't be kindred spirits with a beetle . . . could you? "

Opeie was adamant on the build up to world book day that he didn't want to dress up. He just wanted a day of reading and to take cake and biscuits in for the staff at the library to say thank you for all the books they have ordered in for him in the last 12 months. That of course all changed on the morning of world book day when he informed me that he did infect want to dress up and as expected he wanted to be Darkus from M.G, Leonards Beetle Boy. So we quickly headed out mooching around our local charity shops for an oversized brown wooly jumper and a headband to hot glue his beetle too. Im So glad he chose something doable on a short timescale.

With the costume complete we headed down to the library with our gifts for the staff and came away with a handful of new books for an afternoon of reading. It was a pretty awesome world book day.

"Read enough about the dung beetle, and a picture of its character emerges: patient, optimistic, uncomplaining."

Home educating Opeie has really helped me embrace our day to day adventures and I couldn't be happier with how it's turning out. Over the last few years I have been regularly reminded that you never know what is around the corner and some of our home ed days out have taken some pretty amazing and surprising turns. Last week we ended up on an unexpected trip to Oxford, as our friend Charlotte was dropping off some of her amazing work at the Ashmoleon. The plan was to have a look around the museum, visit the natural history museum and then the Pitt rivers museum too (pretty awesome day out I thought, little did we know where the day would take us).

The Ashmoleon was fab and was a great help for Opeie's current Egypt project. We spent a good couple of hours taking it all in. Opeie was pretty eager to get to the natural history museum though and who could blame him, our last visit had been such a great day out and Opeie and his friends had found it fascinating. We'd only been in the museum 5 minutes when we noticed a chap with a tray of beetles, as expected Opeie was super excited so we went over for a chat. Darren had us completely mesmerised from the moment he started talking. An expert in all things 'Dung beetle' and so passionate about his field, I think we could have sat and listened to him all day. I love a 'come on! lets sit on the floor and chat' kind of person too.

Darren had me and Charlotte standing in the middle of the museum pretending to be trees as he explained why dung beetles were so important and Opeie loved every minute of it. I asked him where the best place would be to go and see a large Coleoptera collection and he said 'Here!' then continued to explain just how many beetles they had behind the scenes. Thats when he said 'Meet me at the main doors in 20 minutes and I'll take you backstage and show you some beetles', well it was like Christmas from that point. Opeie was so excited, I was trying to stay calm but was doing cartwheels inside and Charlotte had picked up on us nerdy boys getting into it and was loving it all too.

Darren took us to his office and showed Opeie some beetles under his pretty impressive microscope and even had Opeie help him identify some of the beetles that had been sent to him using an extensive collection of books on dung beetles from around he world. This is the sort of thing that would never haver happened so organically had it not have been for home ed, and being in the museum midweek. It was lovely to take a step back and watch Darren really take the time to talk to Opeie and explain in detail what it was that he does and how he got to where he was, with stories from his own childhood and his interest in beetles.

One of the things that really stuck out for me was when Darren told Opeie that he hadn't really done very well at uni but his passion for Dung beetles got him to where he was. From a home ed point of view that really summed up how I feel about Opeie's education. Ive always said from day one that if theres one thing that I want Opeie to come away with from this, its a passion for something, whatever it is. When I left school I had no passion or motivation for anything because not a single thing had inspired me.

After identifying some interesting beetles Darren took is further into the backstage area of the museum to where there were an insane amount of cabinets full of beetles. From the always impressive Goliath beetle to a beetle that was the size of a pinhead, it was fascinating and I would love an afternoon there going through each and every cabinet looking at each tray of beetles. This for me was the Most perfect (and unexpected) home ed day.

As we left, Darren gave Opeie his card and said that if he ever wanted to chat about beetles or if he was struggling to identify one then we could email, which I thought was so kind. After such an amazing visit to the museum we wanted to do something to say thank you. Opeie wanted to write a letter and Charlotte (absolutely loving being a part of a home ed adventure) asked Opeie to draw a beetle picture so that she could print it onto a travel mug at her studio to send to Darren as a surprise.

A gift from us wouldn't be a gift without immortalising the awesome chap in LEGO, a full on team effort by the three of us. Complete with a dung beetle and ball of pooh to roll around. I'm not sure that all of Darren's talk of rummaging through pooh has got Opeie to that point in his beetle loving adventure yet, but his passion and excitement has definitely pushed him that little bit further.