Magpie Monday - Russian Dolls

When I first saw this set of five nesting Russian Dolls on the shelf in the Cancer Research Shop yesterday I thought they would make a great gift. Then I decided that I could not bear to give them away!

The proper name for these is Matryoshka. They are thought to represent motherhood. I just think they are very beautiful! With raspberry red shawls and teal skirts, they combine two of my favourite colours. And of course my son is enjoying playing with them too. And they only cost £3!

I am getting back into the swing of thrifting after the chaos of moving house. There are some really good charity shops near here. But I have promised my husband that I will only buy things I really love.

Linking up with Magpie Monday at Me and My Shadow - it is lovely to feel part of an online community that cherishes pre-loved finds!

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

Decluttering toys

My husband has always been a bit of a minimalist at heart, whereas I am much more acquisitive and untidy.

But a couple of months ago, I realised that the volume of clutter in the house was starting to get me down. There was so much stuff and it was so disorganized that we couldn't even use anything properly.

The toys were irritating me most of all. For example, all of my son's jigsaws were mixed up in the same box. This made it impossible to do any of the jigsaws. I have now sorted all the jigsaws out into separate ziplock bags and put them in the correct boxes. It took ages, but it was worth it.

There was usually at least one train set spread out on the living room floor and nowhere to put things away properly. The big fabric toybox I bought when my son was a baby was still full of baby toys, even though my little boy is now 4 years old.

So we took the baby toys to the charity shop. We also got rid of the toybox because it was too deep to store train sets, Lego and Playmobil - the small pieces would just have got lost at the bottom.

We bought some underbed storage boxes from Argos to replace the old toybox. We chose the blue storage boxes as these go with the blue carpet in my son's room.

These storage boxes are absolutely perfect. They are the right depth to be usable without small items being impossible to find. We can tidy everything away after my son has finished playing. And the really amazing thing is that my son even helps with the tidying up and tells my husband off if things are not put in the right boxes.

So we have a tidy living room we can actually live in at long last!