Attracting some nature to our garden

We have made a new addition to our garden which is proving to be very popular. Popular with Princess and Grapie, and popular with a load of feathered friends too. We have added a bird feeder to our garden and it ia a big hit all round! 

We hung it on the fence close to our house so that we can see the birds having a sneak through the window, even when we are not in the garden. We have quite a few regular birds in our garden anyway, and one by one they are starting to find our feeder. Firstly the big wood pigeon found it, you can see him in the above photo, and he is so tame that he will stay where he is even if we open the door and go outsisde!

Next a pair of blackbirds found it and in the last few days I have seen a bluetit and a robin having some food too. Its great for the girls to watch and they had a book for Easter about garden wildlife, so we can identify our feathered friends too!

Fun in a DIY Teepee

We have loads of toys in our garden (ok, lots of them are from the pound shop, but still loads!) But still they want more, more, more! Every time they look at the Early Learning centre catalogue they spot about 20 things they fancy. But apart from not having an endless money supply, I don't want them growing up spoilt and always needing 'things' to make them happy.

So this weekend, inspired by here come the girls, we made this teepee and it was pretty easy to make. Start with 4 beanpoles and push them into the ground in a sqare shape. How far apart you put them will depend on how big you want your teepee to be.

Then tie the tops together with some string or ribbon if you happen to have some (we didn't so garden twine it was).

Next comes the walls. We used a blanket, which gave the teepee a cozy private feel, but sheet would work well too, and that is what we will be trying next. Wrap the blanket or sheet around the poles and use pegs to hold it in place. Depending on how you peg it and the size of your sheet you could have flaps for a door or leave one side open, or what we have which is half a door leaving a crawl-in entrance.

And that is it, hours of teepee fun created in about 5 minutes and without buying anything new! Perfect for hiding in, curling up with a pile of books, peekaboo or just having some quiet time. And when the girls are not using it, the cat has taken to hiding in it too! 

A day out at Longleat Safari park

We went to Longleat Safari park last week and had a fantastic day out. We started our day at Postman Pat world, the girls both love Postman Pat (as do I!) so there was no way we were going to be able to start anywhere else and they both loved it. In fact, it was the only thing out of the whole day that we went back to a second time! 

The girls loved pressing the buttons and seeing their favourite characters come to life, and also loved posting letters through the letter boxes of the Greendale houses (top tip, ask at the shop for some letters to post, we only discovered this after seeing someone else get some!)

Next it was to the animal part of the park, where we got up close and personal with some of the animals. We stoked a lizard, touched a stingray and Princess fed some fish to a penguin.

After lunch we took a spin on the teacups ride (Grapie's first time on a ride!)

Then onto the main event, the safari park. This was fantastic and was well worth visiting the park for in itself. I had been to longleat once before as a child and I remember the monkeys being brilliant but only seeing the lions and tigers at a distance. But this time we got amazingly close to the big cats, who were all awake and prowling around.

And the monkeys were as brilliant as ever, jumping on the car, much to Princess's delight (and Grapie's horror!) One of them even did a big poo on my windscreen, which was obviously hilarious. Ans even better, my car survived the ordeal too! Great fun!

A walk in the woods

The sun was shining and Grapie and I went for a little walk in the woods the other day. Well, not the woods exactly but a little copse close to our house. We were on our way back from dropping princess off at preschool, and Grapie was in a good mood (she's usually ready for her nap when we get back, thanks to getting up sooooooo early!)

We are very lucky to have a lovely green area so close to our house but it's been so boggy recently that it's been impossible to go in with the buggy. It's dried out a bit now so I took the opportunity to show Grapie some nature.

She loved being free to explore and touch things. We talked about how things felt and Grapie learnt lots of new words, like rough and hard, and it was lovely to have some quality one on one time with her, as often, even though she is with me all the time, we spend our time rushing from one thing to the next before it's time to pick Princess up again! 

It was short and sweet and simple but we had a really lovely time!

Autumn fun at the park

The weather has really turned cold now, and winter is really here, but we were lucky enough to have a lovely autumn day at the park before the cold weather set in. We are fortunate enough to live walking distance to an excellent park and we do go there most days.

 We had a great time stomping in the fallen leaves, then we found a big pile of acorns that had fallen. We played football with them first (or at least attempted to!), then we made them into the letters in Princesses name.

We then played with sticks, drawing in the ground with them, throwing and fetching, hockey and sword fighting.

After that, Princess fancied playing crazy golf, so we hired a golf club for her and had a go. We have never played it properly before and Princess wasn't too keen on playing by the rules but she did have a lot of fun!

All this time, Grapie was asleep in her pram (which is rare for her!) So Princess and I gor to spend some quality time together. Hopefully we will have lots of days if winter fun to look forward to soon.