6 Lego Essentials For When Your Kids Love Lego

So, your kids love Lego! Great!! It's a toy that encourages creativity and imagination, plus if your kids can play independently you might find that they'll happily play with Lego for hours on end.

Our son became a fan of Lego during the Duplo and toddler days. He would build all manner of different things and when the time came for him to move onto to Lego, his creativity and imagination just grew and grew.

Now 5, he continues to be a huge fan of Lego. We've been incredible lucky to have been handed down a huge stack of Lego and we've bought a few extra sets along the way, mostly superhero themed!!

But, with so much in our house we've learnt there's a few items that are essential if you're kids love Lego!

Tidy Stuff - 5 Ways To Store Lego

Lego is a wonderful creative toy. Kids can spend hours and hours playing and building amazing things, but lets be honest......it can be a nightmare to store and clean.

Tidy Stuff - How To Wash Lego!

We love, love, love Lego!

Don't get me wrong walking on it isn't my favourite thing to do, but Lego is one one of out favourite toys. It gives the opportunity for creative play and a huge amount of imagination. Lots of play though can mean the Lego gets grubby. Sticky fingers, uncaught sneezes and crumbs can make it dirty but it's not all that easy to clean. 

Legoland Windsor

Based in Windsor the Legoland resort offers 55 rides and attractions. Aimed at children from 3 to 12 it offers a range of different themes, including vikings, ninjas and Star Wars.

30 Minute Quiet Time Activities To Do With Your Child

So, you're kids are over excited about something, hyper after school, wired on sugar after a friends party, or maybe they simply want your attention, but they are loud and need to settle down.

Maybe you've had a long, tiring day and you'd like to have a few minutes of quiet time too, or maybe you just want to sit alongside your child, cuddle them and do something together.

Well, here's a few things you and your child can do together for a quiet 30 minutes.

Puzzles
Jigsaw puzzles are something I used to do a lot of as a child and our son also took a shine to them from a very young age. 

Mini Ice Hockey

This a great little activity. It's super cheap and can be used as an indoor rainy day activity or on a sunny day for an outside game! You'll probably have all the things in your cupboard. You just need to decide the night before if you want to do it so you can make the ice.

You will need

• Large dish or baking tray
• Tap water
• Lego/duplo/building blocks
• Bottle top
• Spoons

Movie of the week!

Our 3 year old, Joseph, has a new found love for dinosaurs and Lego style movies. Put the two together and what do you get? 

The Toy Companies Letting You Recycle Your Toys

Just a few years ago old toys were often destined for the landfill. Recycling was kept to household items and the life of toys didn't go much past passing them on as hand me downs or to charity shops. 

But now if your toys aren't quiet right to pass on, maybe a little rough round the edges or to tatty for the charity shop, you can pass them back to their creators.

Wondering who's part of the toy recycling movement? Here's the toy companies letting you recycle your old toys!

10 Creative Lockdown Activities

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This time last year the UK was entering it's first lockdown and now we sit in our third. It's been a hard slog for many of us. Many of us started with a huge amount of good intentions.  

Long walks. Healthy eating. Reading. A creative activity here and there. Then, well, we got bored. It got a bit repetitive. A bit samey. We started running out of ideas. 

As we continue into lockdown I've put together a list of 10 Creative Lockdown Activities for you to try. Some are for kids. Some are for grownups. There's a bit of something for everyone. 

Live Lagom - Living Sustainably - The Final Blog

When we started on this journey back in the autumn I never expected it to change our lives. I was the person that signed up in the hope of saving money and the joy of being given £500 to spend at Ikea! But it has honestly changed our lives. It's changed our house into a home. It's made us more aware of where things come from and if it's from a sustainable source. It's made us recycle more, which I didn't think possible. It's made us declutter, donate and share on. Somehow, it has given me more confidence, more faith in myself and what we, as a family and individuals, are trying to achieve.

Yes, we have saved money and yes, we got to spend £500 but the task the team at Ikea set themselves, to teach about living lagom and sustainability teaches so much more than that. 'Living Lagom' is about living just right. With just enough, not too little or too much. With that comes an awareness of your waste and how wasteful you can be. Our waste was in food and energy.

5 Things You Need To Battle The Chickenpox

Disclaimer - I'm just a mum trying her best and am in no shape or form a medical professional. If you're concerned about your child's health please seek professional medical advice.

It'll be no surprise to those of you that follow me on Instagram that my latest blog post is about chickenpox!!

Just over a week ago we spotted the first few spots on JJ as we started to get ready for his friend's birthday party. As the afternoon went on there were more and more and soon enough they were everywhere! We had a really scary experience with JJ a few months ago were his temperature was out of control and he was monitored through the night by a GP via the 111 service and was very nearly admitted to hospital. With this in mind I was keen to get things under control and keep him as well as possible.

Using advice from the NHS website and from those that had recently had it themselves or children had, we complied our essentials for battling chickenpox.

Wondering If You'll Get A Holiday This Year? A Family Road Trip Might Be The Perfect Alternative!

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Right now, we're all stuck inside for the foreseeable future, mostly on reduced incomes and tight budgets. So, if the chance for a holiday does arise, what can we do? 

A road trip is a great low cost idea for a family holiday, and it’s the perfect way to explore a new country. You could even stay at home and take a road trip around some nearby spots that you haven’t visited before. When you are driving instead of flying, you get to see so much more of the country and discover exciting new places along the way, so it’s perfect for adventurous families that want a different travel experience. It also means that you don’t have to deal with flying with kids, which can be very stressful. 

Planning and preparation are key if you want your road trip to run smoothly. If you are planning a family road trip, here are a few important things to remember. 

Tidy Stuff - Toy Car Storage

We've all got 'stuff'. Whether it be books, shoes, handbags, collectables or toys, a house can soon become cluttered. A good declutter is often the way to reduce down the stuff in your home but parting with things can be hard.

Personally, I'm a fan of the Marie Kondo method and if it hasn't got a use or doesn't 'spark joy' it goes either to be recycled, upcycled, donated or binned. But what about the stuff you're left with? How do we store it and where do we keep it?

Well, my tidy stuff posts provide the answers and we've already covered how to store bras, keeping the cupboard under the sink tidy and the best ways to clean and store Lego. Now it's time for toy cars! 

Toy cars provide our little boy with hours of fun but he has hundreds, mostly hand me downs from Daddy and they can easily be untidy! So, how do we keep toy cars tidy? Here's some ideas!

30 Crafts & Activities You Can Do If School Gets Cancelled

There's lots in the news right now about the possibility of schools closing for a few weeks, with recommendations that people stay home. For those with children this could cause a bit of a gasp!

Two weeks indoors with children can he hard. My son had chickenpox last year and we were stuck inside for weeks. It was hard keeping him entertained, not being bored or going stir crazy.

So, from experience and as a 'crafty mum' here's 30 craft and activities you can do if school gets cancelled.

Returning to work? How being super organised can get you through it!

Your returning to work after maternity/parental leave and your new parent anxiety is at a new high. Not only are you leaving your little bundle at nursery/childminder/grandparents, your going to be mixing with people. Real people. Not Mr Bloom and the Teletubbies. Actual real people! 

You'll go from changing tables to office tables and back from water-cooler chat to making bottles.

Keep calm when returning to the office with my top tips. 

The highs and lows of working part time

I'm one of the lucky mummies that since having my little one has been able to reduce my hours and work part-time. Don't get me wrong I'd much prefer to not work at all but that isn't financially viable for us at the moment and part of me, a very tiny, incredibly small part, likes to go to work now and again.

There's a lot of pros and cons with working part-time.

Movie of the week

This week's movie of the week is actually a selection of shorts. Featuring some well loved and known characters, but in a Lego animated format, these shorts are the type of film/program you can pop on when you want to pee in peace or make a cuppa. 

This week's movie of the week, and therefore the thing we are currently watching over and over with our two year old son, is Frozen: Magic of the Northern Lights.

A Very Snowy Christmas - 25 Weeks For An Organised Christmas Week 15

Another week has passed so it's time for A Very Snowy Christmas, 25 Weeks For An Organised Christmas Week 15!!

This week we're looking at two items you need to buy before it's too late!

5 Things To Do With Old Toys

Toys. Toys. Toys. And a few more toys. That's what piles into your home when you have a child. Soft toys. Wooden toys. Plastic Toys. Toys bigger than your baby. Toys that are noisy and need batteries. Toys that hurt when the little apple of your eye throws them at your head!!

These things start to pile up. Birthdays and Christmas come and bring more, as do grandparents and anyone else that likes to treat your little ones. 

But what can you do with them when it's time for a clear out? Time to put the baby toys away? Switching Duplo for Lego? Not sure what to do with the old toys?

Here's 5 things to do with old toys...........

Tidy Stuff - Soft Toy Storage

We've all got 'stuff' and we can't all live minimalist lives. Sometimes it's just about how to store that stuff and keep it neat and tidy!

We've dealt with Lego, toy cars, the cupboard under the sink, even bras but now it's time to tackle the soft toy mountain!!