A bit of cake colouring and a parcel

Big Girl was off school last week with the flu. She'd only just gone back to school after having a week off with a sore throat and cold, then ended up with this, bless her. When she wasn't sleeping, which she did a lot of, we thought we'd do have some quiet, crafty time at the kitchen table.

Have you heard of Dotcomgiftshop? They are a fantastic online shop, selling lots of retro, vintage style gifts. I guess it was because of the 'in thing' that is adult colouring books, that they very kindly made available some free colouring sheets. 

So we settled down with biscuits, cups of tea, and my very special colouring pencils. My mum got me this lovely set when I was doing art at school, so they must be at least 25 years old! (Makes me laugh when I read about things being 'vintage', and they were things I had when I was little!).

Even Little Man joined in, but he had to make do with crayons. I think he's going through a black/blue phase! It always seems such a waste buying little kids colouring books, as all they do is scribble, but I guess they have to learn. Not as much fun scribbling on a blank sheet of paper is it? He enjoyed himself anyway, so that's all that matters, and he seemed quite proud of his artwork....

But he pretty soon got bored of that and moved onto his fruit pie. This is a great idea to teach kids colours, sorting etc. Plus if they use tongs to sort the fruit they are developing their grip for holding a pen/pencil in the future. 

Here it is if anyone is interested. It says age 3+, but Little Man plays with it fine. He does find the tongs a bit bulky for his little hands, so I gave him some t-bag tongs (is that what you call them, for squeezing your t-bags?!). 

It's been a long time since I did art at school, but I tried to teach Big Girl shading and blending etc. I think she did a great job shading the chocolate chips....

I never got to finish mine, I must do one day, but here are our masterpieces ;-) ...

So onto the parcel. We got home yesterday to find this in the mailbox. Would you like to know what it is?....

Woohoo!! Squishy, wooly balls of pure pleasure - hours of entertainment in one small bag! Ok, I'm easily pleased. Even more so because being outside of the EU I don't pay VAT, so even with postage (which at £4.99 for up to 2kg of wool isn't bad) it costs me less than buying it in the UK with free postage! That's one of the excuses I make to OH anyway, I'm saving money ;-) Never mind I have to pack it all up and cart it back to the UK with me - I'm saving money! And I get to squish them, smell them, line them up in pretty patterns and just look lovingly at them in the meantime!

These were in the parcel too, two knitting patterns for Little Man. I'm dying to start one, but I don't like lots of projects on the go at once as I forget what I'm doing. So I have a few things to finish first. Guess it will give me the incentive to push on and get them finished!

Have a good weekend

Xxxx