Me & Mine - A Family Portrait Project 2015 - July

If I sneak these ones in, very quietly, maybe no one will notice and just think that they have been here all along....? Well, it's worth a try!

July's family portrait was taken on Studland beach, Dorset. And despite Wiss's face, we all were enjoying a glorious week of camping, yes even my husband enjoyed himself under canvas! It was so good to spend time together as a family, and be able to just relax and let the kids play. Wiss found a new level of confidence and made friends with so many children on the campsite and beaches, while little Miss practiced her downhill crawling every morning and she can get some real speed going now! So much so, that she's had blisters on her hands from so much crawling.

Us grown-ups also hit a new milestone this holiday - we finally became members of The National Trust! I don't know why we took so long - there are so many amazing places run by the National Trust to visit, and they put on some fantastic special events throughout the year too. Studland Beach is stunning but it also offered den building for kids, and open air cinema screenings. We can't wait to explore some more!

The seaside is my happy place, and I'm glad to report that it seems to have been passed down in the genes to Wiss and little Miss too. Such fond memories in this photo already!

See you in a couple of weeks for August's Me & Mine, and I'll do my best to get it up on time :) You can check out all the other family shots taken by other bloggers by clicking here:

Graze Box Hack - Whitstable Crabbing Game

If you're a regular reader of my blog you'll know what a wonderful time we had in Whitstable a few weeks ago (there's a post all about it here.)

One of the things that Wiss enjoyed most was crabbing on the beach. He was taken under the wing of a very experienced 9 year old crabber who showed him the ropes, and he caught 5 crabs!

I wanted to make something that would remind Wiss of our holiday and so the 'Wonderful Whitstable Crabbing Game' was invented! We made it together in an hour or so and it's been played with every night this week. Beware, it can get very competitive!

To make the Wonderful Whitstable Crabbing Game you will need:

I stuck a photo of Wiss on the beach on the lid of the Graze box, and a sea bed image inside the base. I used the same image to make half of the card disks, and the other half were just plain white.

Onto the plain card disks I drew 10 crabs, 8 seaweeds & two extra bonus disks - some pirate treasure and... a cake, of course! (This was Wiss's idea) Finally I drew some bacon to add to the crabbing line as bait. This is the magic ingredient - all crabs find raw bacon irresistible! While I drew, Wiss coloured them in.

To make the counters you will need to sandwich a piece of the magnetic strip (or you could use a paper clip) between a disk with a drawing and a disk with the seabed. I used double sided tape on each disk for speed but glue will also work .

Next make the crabbing lines for between 2-4 players. 

Now you're ready to play!

The rules: place all the counters in the Graze box with the sea bed image showing (they should camouflage with the box). Take it in turns to lower your crabbing line and see what you catch.

Depending on the age of your child, you can alter the ways to win. The easiest way is whoever has the most crabs, or whoever has the bonus counters. For older children you could assign 0 points for seaweed, 2 points for a crab and 5 points each for the bonus counters.

Happy crabbing and happy holidays!

If you'd like more ideas on upcycling your Graze boxes check out my previous post. And if you do make any Graze Box Hacks yourself then please share them with me, I'd love to see them!

Wonderful Whitstable - our holiday in pictures

A couple of weeks ago we took a little family holiday to Whitstable, Kent. You can never guarantee the weather on a UK holiday, so I had prepared lots of activities and researched the area just in case. There is a castle to explore, the downs for walking and kite flying, an indoor swimming pool, and even more to do in the surrounding areas.

As it turned out, the weather was amazing! We ditched all other activities in favour of the beach. Every day. And in the evenings too!

I adore being near the sea and it seems Wiss has inherited this love. He was so happy just digging around, collecting stones, pouring water, paddling, crabbing and even swimming in the sea. There are tons of gorgeous independent coffee and gift shops and lovely restaurants in Whitstable (and we are keen to return to check them out properly) but we didn't want to leave the beach so we opted for packed lunches and take away dinners eaten on the beach, followed by ice cream for dessert as the sun went down. Bliss!

We finished off our holiday with a stop off at one of Kent's many pick-your-own fruit farms. It was so hot that it felt like we were in Italy amongst the vines! We picked strawberries, blackberries and raspberries and bought an extra punnet of cherries for good measure. We showed Wiss how to choose the ripe ones and he happily spent nearly an hour searching for the best fruit (and looking for bugs!) We had fruit salad for dessert that night, berries with breakfast and still had enough for blackberry granita and 2 pots of jam. Yum!

Apologies for the photo heavy post this time but the pictures really do say more than words could. And if you want even more beach pictures you can see my other posts here and here!

Happy holidays wherever you are :)

#SilentSunday

#SilentSunday