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The Art of Staying In
As winter settles in, it’s time to celebrate the art of staying home. From creativity to connection, this reflective post invites you to rediscover the quiet joy and wonder found in a cozy, creative season.
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🎃 Our Little Friday Letter (Friday, 24th October, 2025)
In this week’s Friday Letter, I’m chatting about the ebbs and flows of motivation, confidence, and energy—and what happens when self-doubt creeps in. There’s also a cozy candle shop update, all the latest from the blog (including our Halloween deep dive!), and a lovely shout-out to a beautiful, calming Instagram account I think you’ll love.
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Fizzy Glittery Playdough / Gloop – Super Sensory Fun!
A group of fantastic bloggers from the Kid Blogger Network (of which I am a member) are running a year long linky called “12 Months of Sensory Dough”. Each month there is a theme for the dough and bloggers are encouraged to experiment with the theme and share their experiences (good and bad). We love sensory play and make a lot of playdough and love to experiment with new recipes. So, as it was raining heavily this morning I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to experiment with fizzy dough, this months theme!!!! The Bloggers hosting this fantastic project are: Lemon Lime Adventures Look! We’re Learning! Glittering Muffins…
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Beach Themed Invitation to Play – Small World Play and Sensory Play
A Beach Themed sensory play activity was on our 100 Days of Summer Bucket List and this week we had we had the opportunity to cross it off our list and have a whole lot of fun doing it! So, what is an invitation to play (you may have seen this term used on this blog and elsewhere before)? Simply, it is arranging an activity in an attractive manner that will encourage a child’s curiosity, allow opportunities for exploration, independent play and participation in a meaningful, purpose and sensory way. It should invite the child to want to play and use their imagination. Of course it should also be age…
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How to Make a Fairy Tale Castle – Outdoor Summer Fun for Kids!
I don’t know about you, but when I was a child I absolutely loved to build houses, tents, dens, castles, clubhouses etc. My two monkeys are exactly the same and when our chickens and their coop arrived last Sunday (more about that later!) they were far more excited about the two huge cardboard boxes the flat pack chicken coop came in than their 3 new feathered friends! Honestly, so was I! I immediately started to conjure up all sorts of ideas for what we could create with the cardboard – I probably should have been more interested in Mr G as he expertly constructed the chicken coop – good job…
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Summer Butterfly Collages: An Invitation to Create – using materials as a stimulus
I love to wander around “Euro” or “Pound” shops looking out for bits and pieces to use in art projects or play activities. On one such trip recently I found these card butterfly cut outs. I’m not a huge fan of using templates and cut outs but I find if they are used in the right way they can be very useful for creative process art projects. Often I use some sort of a stimulus for our art activities – a book, an item, a picture, or even a piece of music. I also use the actual art materials as a stimulus, which is what I did for this…
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Easter Art for Toddlers and Preschoolers
We finally got around to starting our Easter artwork today. I’m sure that we will manage a few more seasonal projects over the next week or so. Today we have 2 to share with you. Potato-print Easter Chicks: These were so much fun to do.. Doodles and Oodles love printing so there was great excitement when I handed them potatoes and Lego/Duplo to print with today. What do you need? Potatoes, cut in half and allowed to dry for a couple of hours Lego or Duplo blocks Paint Paper Instructions: Have fun! We used the bricks to create our grass Our chicks were made by printing with the potatoes. We…
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Our Top 5 Messy Play Ideas from Pinterest
When it comes to play in this house, the messier the better! I am constantly for new, fun and MESSY ideas for Doodles and Oodles to try. These are 5 of our favourite most recent finds from Pinterest! Check out my group board – Outdoor Fun and Messy Play ideas on Pinterest, follow it and I’ll send you an invite to pin on it if you want! Baking Soda and Vinegar Eruptions – this is a real favourite with Doodles. He never tires of creating these mini volcanic-like eruptions, great fun, easy to do, requires very little preparation. We got this idea from Live, Play, Imagine, a really brilliant…
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(Kids) Rainy Day Survival Plan (and a little moan!)
Just when I thought Spring was well and truly under way, the storms returned. It is dark and dreary, very wet and windy outside! We got soaked running from the house to the car and car to school on the school run this morning! Doodles and Oodles were delighted as they got to use their Mickey Mouse and Peppa Pig umbrellas! I am dreading going out again shortly to take O to her “Mummy and Me” music class, but she loves it and I know that I’ll enjoy it too once we get there. To top it all off, I’m tired, very, very tired this week. All my plans to…
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(Kids) Gloriously green play dough fun- St Patrick’s Day Festivities
St Patrick’s Day is Monday, 17th March. It’s our national day here in Ireland. It’s a weekend of fun and frolics and a celebration of all things Irish. It also means a day off school and work! In preparation for the weekend ahead we’ve been having a little fun with some St Patrick’s Day themed activities. Today’s fun included exploring with green home-made play dough and very messy outdoor antics with gloop! First thing on the agenda was to make the play dough. Usually I let the children make it themselves but we were a little short on time today as we had a trip to the library scheduled, so…
