Oh no it's a Gruffalo

Four years ago Rebecca started school, Sophie missed her sister and we were struggling with challenging behaviour from a bright two year old. I decided to re-visit the idea of sending her to playgroup. My search led me to Stanmore Baptist Church Playgroup, I liked it's style, the time they gave to the children and the genuine care that they showed.  Sophie started mid-term and she loved it from the start, so much so that we abandoned plans to send her to the school nursery. She finished her two years and went  onto school a confident and well adjusted child.

So it wasn't even up for discussion when it came to Annie - she couldn't wait and looked forward to playgroup days.

  
It is hard to believe how quickly the two years have passed. When I completed my Goldilocks story sack I took it into playgroup - they loved playing with it - so the idea of creating one for the playgroup as our parting gift was born. The story that they chose was the Gruffalo. It's a great story and lent itself to the story sack idea well.

The sack featured owls which fitted in with the story but was also bright and fun, the letters I printed out, then traced them onto 'Heat n Bond' iron on adhesive. Once ironed on to orange felt I could then cut out the felt letters and iron them on to the sack.

Three of the puppets were created  from felt -I sketched out the image then used the sketch to cut out the pieces which were sewn together with blanket stitch.

The snake was created from a sock ( my husband now has 41/2 pairs of stripy socks!!) - I used cardboard to stiffen the mouth onto which was sewn a felt tongue. the eyes were created from circles of felt which were lightly stuffed to make them stand out.

I thought about creating the Gruffalo however was not convinced that I could reproduce a very specific character well so I purchased the soft toy.

The backdrop was challenging - mainly trying to keep it lying flat when attatching the trees - within the backdrop I created three pockets in the houses of the story characters so the puppets can return to their houses at the appropriate places in the story. With more time and more experience with my sewing machine - (we are not friends!!!)  I would have liked to back it with cotton  - maybe next time!

  

The flashcards are from a great site called Primary Treasure Box    

There were a number of Gruffalo resources available. I chose sequencing cards as they were most useful for pre-schoolers but included some word flash cards and a pairs game.

 

I included some Gruffalo resources, a domino game, a snap game and the Gruffalo song cd which has great songs for a number of Julia Donaldson books - the 'squash and a squeeze' song  however should never be played on a long journey - it's far too addictive and you end up singing it for weeks.

I was pleased with the end result and hopefuly lots of children will enjoy playing with it.

 

 

 

 My next cunning plan is to produce story sacks for some key bible stories - but trying to be realistic I am going to start with Christmas!!

Wonky Wedding

A year ago we had a wonderful day celebrating my sisters wedding - It was an amazing day and went beautifully - which with 12 bridesmaids and pageboys under the age of 12 is no mean feat!!!

One of the lovely things about decorating cakes is that I have been able to make  my siblings wedding cakes as my gift to them. Beth  didn't know what she wanted - then she found wonky wedding cakes and that was it - so just had to work out what she wanted - it turned out to be flowers and beads - lots of flowers and beads - so for weeks my dining room table held flowers in varying stages of production and my bead box travelled with me  for those odd minutes when I could get a couple of strands made.

The cake itself was very simple decorated with varying widths and shades of blue ribbon.


The flower bouquets took a while to produce, they wrapped around polystyrene spacers to give the effect that the cake was sat on the flowers.

 

It took a while to get used to the idea of it being wonky, but I was pleased with the end result.

I set it up before the wedding and it was only during the official photos that I realised I had put one tier the wrong way round!!! It gave Beth a chuckle and though no-one else in the room had noticed I knew and so it needed to be put right!!! So a quick pause in the photo taking and all was right again!!!

 

 So all that was left was to dance the night away!!

 

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It's in the rules....

Did you know birthdays have rules?  welll they do according to my children - what they mean is there are certain things that must happen on a birthday - obviously presents and cards - opened altogether on the morning of the birthday, birthday tea  on the day of their birthday - including Mum and Dads birthday, candles and cake on the day of their birthday and at some point a party planned months in advance!
(They still are not sure about the grown ups not having parties idea!!)

Birthdays are a big thing in our house - and I guess that is my fault - which is absolutely fine, you see for me birthdays are a celebration of life, a celebration of another year of knowing my precious children.






I think I probably always did birthdays but when Rebecca's birth went so drastically wrong and we came so close to losing her - it changed things, it changed us.





So when we came to her first birthday we had reason to celebrate - she was alive and well, she was growing and holding her own - somehow it became even more important to mark these milstones so we celebrate and thank God each year for each of our naughty, noisy and incredibly amazing girls.

I digress - so back to those rules! Rebecca's birthday this year fell at a particularly hectic time - and it was the day before her party - her party was sorted and I just had her moshi cake to finish - when she walks in and asks if her cake would be ready for tea ahhhhh how could have I thought I would get away with no cake for her birthday tea!!! I explained that it wouldn't - she just smiled a knowing smile and went out with Daddy - you see in her head she believed I could not possibly fail to produce a cake - it's in the rules!!

So I took the off cuts from her moshi cake - arranged them to form a butterfly,
armed Sophie and Annie with icing and let them get on with it - while I worked on moshi  - I helped them with the finishing touches but it was pretty much their own work and they were as proud as punch of it and Rebecca loved it - you see the rules simply say a cake - it didn't need to be huge or flash or perfect just made with love on her birthday.

I have made hundreds of cakes and you know I think this one might just be my favourite! 

I'd love to hear from you  - maybe your family have bithday rules or traditions you might like to share?

Monster Mayhem

This year Rebecca chose a Moshi Party for her birthday - for those not in the know Moshi's are computer  characters - you choose a character and design their room - they vary from cute and cuddly to truely bizarre you then chose your activities from challenges to puzzles to games.

Rebecca's monster is Katsuma, fortunatly this is one of the main characters so lots of stuff out there.

 The monsters all have the same eye and one of Rebecca's favourite puzzles involves counting eyes so the eyes feature in several ways - cut out eyes decorated the hall and the sides of her cake - her cup cakes featured the eyes though with hindsight the children actually preferred buttercream to the fondant icing.

In addition to the eyes the hall was decorated with moshi characters purchased from party pieces  - what I hadn't realised is that these came on two sheets of plastic and all needed to be cut out!!

I used craft artist to create the letters of her name from a computer wallpaper image of Katsuma which worked well amongst the eyes.

 I had very clear intructions when it came to her cake - this year I even got a diagram!! it was to be round and flat - with her Moshi on top - this also had to be flat!!! She did design it with daisies round the edge but after some negotiation we agreed on some of the moshi plants that grow in her garden!!!

 The sides were made by adding a purple sugarpaste band  then using varied sizes of circle cutter to create the eyes.

 Katsuma was created by printing a pictture from the internet and using this as a pattern to form the character.

 One of the games the girls enjoy is the 'Ice Sceam shop' so this was included in the plans  - we served ice-cream for pudding and Rebecca helped serve the toppings - we even managed green sauce with the cunning addition of green food colour to some squeezy syrup.

The children were all placed into Moshi  teams when they arrived and had the chance to decorate their own moshi masks , we then had several rounds of timed activities - these were varied to allow children of different ages and abilities to participate: they included crosswords, wordsearch, treasure hunt, mazes amongst others but the favourite by far was the create a mummy round!

The time went so quickly and the children were dispatched full of sugar!! with a moshi activity book - a great deal from the Book People and the sweets and przes they had won during the rounds of puzzle palace.

Beautiful buttons!

I have to thank my sister-in-law Rachel from Dreaming of the Country http://vicarswifeintraining.blogspot.co.uk/  for the inspiration for this present for my neice's 11th birthday present.

I have always written Ambers name with a large lower case 'a' rather than a capital 'A' so I wanted to use this for her cushion - 5 weeks of sewing on buttons later a skinny capital 'A' may have been a better plan!!!!

Hindsight is a great thing!

The buttons were a mix called 'wake me up before you go go' from Felted Fancies Supplies, a facebook shop that supplies beautiful ribbons, buttons and felt.
 https://www.facebook.com/FeltedFanciesSupplies

If you are inspired Rachel has step by instructions on her blog
http://vicarswifeintraining.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/diy-gifts-personalised-button-cushion.html

Now just to wrap it and send it to her - Just hoping she likes it!!!!

All quiet on the blogging front!!

Hi , it has been a while since my last post. I am currently upto my eyes with projects on the go all over the place -  I am in the middle of a Gruffalo story sack for playgroup, an initial cushion for my neice's birthday in April - thanks to Rachel  http://vicarswifeintraining.blogspot.co.uk/ for the idea - just a little late with that one!, organising a activity afternoon for the end of term, planning Rebecca's birthday party - all things Moshi and sorting out holiday bible club for July! the good news is that I will have lots to blog about soon, the bad news is they all have to be done by the summer - or before!!!
I have to confess I have  bought cards for the June birthdays - and paying for them reminded me as to why I started making cards in the first place!
So back to work then!!