Most excellent marble run

Most excellent marble run - only £2 from charity shop, a photo by nyssapod on Flickr.

This marble run was only £2 from the local Treetops Hospice charity shop. 

It is probably the best £2 I have ever spent, because my 4 year son and I have enjoyed playing with it together.

I love the colours too - orange, black, silver and red. Much more sophisticated and stylish than the usual colours of children's toys.

Linking up with Magpie Monday at Me and My Shadow and the Op-Shop Show-Off at Blackbird has Spoken.

Rediscovering Duplo

This week, my four year old son has been rediscovering Duplo. 

We had actually packed this away for a few months because our house is up for sale at the moment, but my son asked to play with his big Lego again and said that it was "just like having new toys".

He seems to be more creative now in how he is combining bricks from different sets. I was really impressed with the model shown in the photo above. I love the way that marbles have been placed on the circles on top of some of the bricks. It also includes two cactus bricks, a flame and a brick in the shape of couple of loaves of bread! See if you can spot them.

Linking up with Little/Big Builders at Mummy Mummy Mum

Playful parenting

This weekend I made a den for my son out of a couple of bedspreads and a blanket (originally purchased from charity shops). It was a big hit with my little boy, so I took the photo above and recorded an audioboo about it.


If the Audioboo player below doesn't work, please click here to listen to it on the Audioboo website.

listen to ‘Playful parenting’ on Audioboo

Recycling Christmas cards into gift tags

When I was little, I remember my mum making gift tags out of of the previous year's Christmas cards, using pinking shears to create a lovely zig-zag edge. 

This is an old idea but a good one. As well as being a great way of recycling, this also means that you can select the gift tag to match the preferences of the recipient.

Following my mum's example, I have made gift tags in the same way this year.*

Here are some photos of my gift tags:

I'm linking up with Recycled Christmas at Lulastic and the Hippyshake. This is a great idea for a link-up. It is very easy to spend too much money at this time of the year, so it feels good to recycle instead of always buying new.

* Of course one thing that has changed since I was a child is that people send fewer Christmas cards. So instead of just using cards from last year I have used Christmas cards received over the past few years.

No-sew lavender sachets made from odd socks

How to turn odd socks into lovely lavender sachets:

1. Gather together all the odd socks* left over after you've had a clear out, and ensure they are all clean before you start.
2. Use a dessert spoon to fill each sock with dried lavender (or you could use mixture of lavender and dried rice). Ask your four-year-old to help you with this for extra fun and educational value!
3. Tightly tie up the top of the sock using narrow ribbon.

So there you go, low cost and almost instant lavender sachets made from otherwise useless odd socks - and no sewing machine required. 

These lavender sachets are particularly good for putting in shoes to freshen them up a bit. I've put two of them in my red sandals (see photo below) and now the hall cupboard smells lovely.

* Where do all the odd socks come from? No matter what I do, we always seem to end up with some lone socks!