See what I got!

One of my younger sisters, The Slightly Mad Quilt Lady, has sent me a piece of gorgeousness for my birthday.

Have a look.....

It's a beautifully made felted wool sweater bag. Fully lined, with fabric handles and a rosette of flowers and leaves artfully sewn on the front.

It is fabulous, I couldn't stop smiling when I opened it up, it's just yummy on so many levels!
Useful, recycled, beautiful, unusual....sheesh, it makes me feel like I really need to pull my finger out and get stuck into some projects. Which I do, of course.

Quietly putting aside the fact that I am behind on family birthdays by more than one or two months...


Get thee to they sewing machine!

How to make a robot from old computer parts

My four year old, H, is on a sudden robot kick.

Not the sort of robot you can make from cardboard boxes and tinfoil and bottle caps and pipe cleaners which we already have, but the REAL robot sort. The sort that talks and walks, or preferably flies. This came about after reading Wendels' Workshop, a kids book about an industrious little mouse character who is an inventor, and of course, he invents robots.

If you want to check out the Wendel story being read in a plummy British accent, feel free to watch the clip below....






Or if you don't want to be spoken to as if you are a 3 year old, you can see the book here.


I quickly made the obsession worse by looking up robots on Youtube which has all sorts of walking, flying, soccer playing, wrestling, violin playing robots. So H is under the impression that robots are the easiest thing in the world to make and can we go out and buy parts and make one tomorrow please?

Crikey.

You don't want to burst their enthusiastic/mummy-daddy can do anything attitude but......

So hubby comes up with idea of making a scrapheap robot, as Wendel does, but the only scrapheap we have is a pile of old computers that are waiting to be taken to a recycling depot.

No problem, H is suddenly all fired up again, yeah, yeah a scrapheap robot!

A good scrounge reveals all sorts of appropriate bits and a glue gun holds it all together. Yes, a glue gun. No it doesn't walk and talk, although once a battery is found for the fan, I mean the lethal spinning limb severer, that is positioned on his right arm it should spin lethally (not really) and in that excitement the walking, talking and flying requirements seem to have been put aside.

This guy is seriously cool. He even has teeth!

And he was made by Dad, aka hubby, so he's even cooler.

Carpentry for the kids

I had an inspired idea a few days ago, or at least what passes for an inspired idea in my kid-centred world....

(Why was it inspired...because it was another FREE activity....my favourite sort!)

My boys love hammers and nails.

These things are hanging round after our ongoing but nearly finished house renovation, but as my hubby is not into carpentry (or renovating, actually) we don't have anything convenient to hammer aforementioned nails into.

So I rang round a few hardware stores asking about free wood off cuts and was invited round to a local Home Timber and Hardware store to have a scrounge. 
Bunnings Warehouse, it turns out are involved in a recycling program to "give something back to the environment" (their words) so kudos to them, but no good for me.

So the boys and I gathered up a few armfuls of scraps, raced home and dragged out the hammers, nails and the erm, felt pens. Not sure how those ended up in the mix, but it all made for a very engaging afternoon.

Tomorrow we might get the paints out for a bit of wood decorating, although I need to be in the right mood for that, as it invariably involves painted children and clothing as well as whatever object was designated to receive a coat....