This morning a friend of mine posted on Facebook a really good idea!
A fun and sensory rich no mess painting activity.
I like paint… And I like no mess so this is a big win!
Fill a sealable sandwich bag with different colour paints, seal them shut and let your toddler mix the paint with their hands (or feet as Willow chose to do) to make cool patterns. Willow also used her nails to scrape patterns into the paint.
Lots of fun 
The bags can also easily be kept for future fun.
The weather is starting to get warmer now, and the days are staying brighter for longer. The smell of BBQ is filling the air and kids are digging out their super soakers and paddling pools… and it’s still only APRIL!
My home grown vegetables and fruit are growing well, and becoming more and more exciting every day. We are spending more time outside in our garden and I have already had my first embarrassing patch of sunburn on my chest, thanks to Sunday’s car-boot.
Willow loves spending time in the garden and her favourite activity is watering the plants. We only had a very small children’s watering can for giving our seedlings a drink, and I often found myself using an old milk bottle with holes jabbed into the top to water the plants when Willow was hogging the teeny tiny watering can.
Now that our green fingered adventures were getting more and more important in our family life, it was deffo time to bring in the big-guns. we needed more water… and fun… STAT.
Hopping over to Swell UK we found the perfect hose for us. We wanted a hose that could be easily stored, was portable for use out in the front garden and out in the back garden, as well as being easily used by the garages. We haven’t got a large garden, but it is quite long and filling up a kids watering can 1000 times just to soak a few grow bags was getting a little painful on my nerves so a good garden hose with great length was a must.
We decided the Hozelock compact cart with 30 metre hose would be perfect for us. The hose and cart was easy to assemble with simple instructions and was soon set up and watering in no time. It isn’t big and bulky and is very compact making storage very easy. The cart has wheels too which makes transporting the cart around the garden very simple and light work.
The hose cart has some great features including an easy rewind handle, which you just turn with ease to wind the hose back into its case…. no muddy hands! Win!
The cart also features this useful viewing window, so you can clearly see the hose inside making it easy to check for any tangles, or just too see how much length you have left.
The handle has a snazzy little clip to hold your hose so you don’t have to put up with it hanging on the floor and getting scratched, and it stops the hose dripping all over the place after you have used it.
Willow soon set to work watering the garden… the veggies… the garden toys… me… her dad… her sister… oh, and the car!
Overall a fantastic product that has now become a huge help in our garden. It makes me wonder how we coped before last week without this nifty little hose and cart. It was super easy to set up, had everything we needed to get it connected, and makes our garden feel that little bit more ‘perfect’. All I need now is more sunny days, some bigger grow bags, another few bags of compost and an extra set of hands.
Apologies for another Silver Cross related post. OK, I’m not sorry… Not one bit.
The old elastic loops on the apron that held the hooks to place the hood up into ‘stop-your-child-getting-frostbite’ mode were perished and frayed. The first time Olive went out in the pram she decided to place her teething gums onto the hooks tearing the elastic out… Bad Olive!
I decided to try and replace the elastic myself last night.
I purchased some plain black elastic from Tesco, found my glasses, stabbed myself a few times, unpicked some teeny tiny stitches, swore a lot and in just 20 minutes I had both hoops replaced.
Now, blowing my own trumpet here but… God I’m goooood!
My best friend Judith had a surprise waiting at her house for Willow at the weekend… It was all top secret and I was itching to know what she had waiting for us!
Well, nothing prepared me for what I saw waiting by the door. Let’s just say I cried… A little bit! Willow was fast asleep and we had to resist poking her awake to show her what she was missing.
It was a beautiful dolls pram. To be more precise it was a beautiful 1980′s Silver Cross navy blue model. She picked it up for a steal at just £10 from a man on a FB selling page!!
The chrome is a little rusty and the wheels are discoloured, but that’s just more fun restoring!
Willow soon woke up and decided to push the pram to the local shops and park. She loved every step she took and every turn of the wheel!
My kitchen now proudly displays both prams side by side. I couldn’t be happier!
This time of year kids go crazy… for chocolate!
And not just kids but mums, dads, your nan, well EVERYONE!
And what could be more fun than eating Easter eggs? Making your own yummy chocolate Easter eggs of course.
So Willow set to work… melting the yummy chocolate, setting them in the moulds, leaving them to set (this was incredibly hard for her to do), eating the left over melted chocolate (this was incredibly easy for both of us to do) and then finally decorating her finished eggs.
Safe to say, they did not last long without being gobbled down.
You can request your own Easter egg kit from the lovely guys over at Stay In Devon. 