Colouring, doodling and drawing

My 5 year old is at home today having a days rest after a few days with a sore throat and fever so we thought we'd share an awesome colouring and drawing book that she was given for her birthday a while ago- it is such a great book (and huge!) so we thought some of you might be interested in it for the school holidays or for a christmas present.

Girls' World Doodling and Colouring

Here is Amelie...  "I like the book because I love the fancy pictures in the book and the very, very cool arty crafty page. I am going to share some of my favourite pictures from the book."

It is very buttony

 

I like seeing monarch butterflies

 

I like flying my kite

 

I like growing flowers with my family

 

I like stacking babushka dolls

 

Those pictures are very fancy

 

I like hanging my bunting

 

I love seeing some hot air balloons fly

 

That is a very, very cool art page

There are some more books in the series as well- more to add to my book depository wishlist!

Boys' World

Winter Wonderland

Fashion World

Christmas

Cupcakes, cookies and candy

Megan and Amelie xx

I ♥ lego

Growing up we used to have a huge bag of lego that I have very fond memories of playing with- (always making houses from memory with those cute little shutter windows).  So it was pretty awesome to be offered to review a new lego game 'Lego Creationary' and share it here- there was much excitement in our house when it arrived! It is such a cool concept- think Pictionary but with lego instead of drawing.  The game comes with heaps of lego pieces and cards to play the game based on skill level. The game says it is for 7+ and I would have to say from the cards that even on the easy skill level you'd have to be pretty good with lego to make some of the things so this would definitely be a great game for older kids- my two enjoyed making things with the lego, especially my 5 year old, but the cards were a bit beyond them (and me to be honest- I need to work on my lego building skills I think! (This website I found via pinterest will be great for that...http://letsbuilditagain.com/index.php).)  So if you have older children this would be a fab game to add to your family board games, especially with school holidays coming up, or even for christmas...check out http://www.facebook.com/LEGOGROUP too.

Product name: LEGO®  Creationary- you can buy it here

Product description: Roll the LEGO® Dice to select one of four exciting building categories: vehicles, buildings, nature or things. With three levels of difficulty you can show off your building skills, while theothers guess what you are creating. A great game for family and friends to test your imagination, creativity, building and guessing skills to the max.

Contents: • 1 buildable LEGO Dice • 1 LEGO minifigure • 1 LEGO microfigure • 338 LEGO pieces • 96 cards • 1 rule booklet

Age: From 7 years.

RRP: $    69.99 

Playing with lego again reminded me of a few things I've seen on the web lately to do with lego, and I also did a search on pinterest so here are a few more fun Lego things I've found...

Lego sweets from Crazy Candies on Trade Me

Lego Drawstring Sack Tutorial - we had one of these made out of denim when we were little- such a great idea!

Great post about some serious lego organisation 

Rhiannon's simple and budget friendly lego party
and had to share this....

http://pinterest.com/pin/279363983106307523/

Happy lego creating!
Megan x

Spring flowers + a DIY

Yay Spring is here and we've actually had a few warm (ish) days lately which has been lovely after a very wet and cold winter. We don't have alot of flowers in our garden but I noticed yesterday that we actually had a quite a few flowers around the house so I thought I'd take some pics.

Daffodils from the Tauranga Farmers Market hubby and the girls went to yesterday morning.

 

Daphne - my favourite flower for its scent- I planted two plants last year so this is their first year flowering

Wild jasmine picked from the side of the road

 

Lavender and daisies from our garden

And this lovely line of trees is at a community garden just down the road from our place where people can buy lots and grow their own vegetables, herbs and flowers- a man there said one more week and these trees will be bursting with blossoms so will have to take another pic then!

 

This flower was in someone's plot- isn't it stunning- can anyone tell me the name of it?

and I made these little felt 'flowers' the other day after seeing a big vase of them in the Moochi store here in Tauranga- you just cut three hearts for each flower out of felt and stick them onto a twig- there's a tutorial on the Moochi blog I discovered via pinterest. 

And here's a couple of lovely Spring themed art works from the artist Katie Daisy- I love her work. Check out her website or Etsy store and she's on Facebook too.

'Bird Chirping Weather' print

Daisy Field print

Love this 'Wonderful World' print too, especially after seeing this youtube clip I shared on my facebook page last night

'Wonderful World' print

Happy Spring (or Autumn for you northern hemisphere readers- love that season too!)

Megan x

Family movie nights

I am loving that two of our three kids are old enough (5½ and 3½) to have family movie nights together- I have read about these on lots of blogs and always thought how fun it would be when we can finally have our own!  We've watched a few movies so far  (along with the obligatory bowls of pop corn) so I thought I'd share them with you- I asked the girls to help choose a rating for each movie. I really like old fashioned movies and movies from books so that's what we've been mostly watching so far, with a few new ones as well.

Mary Poppins 9/10- Both girls loved this and I absolutely loved that a movie made in 1964 could still captivate my girls today (can't wait to go to the musical in Auckland soon too!!)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 8/10- we watched both the original Gene Wilder version and the new version with Johnny Depp- both the girls and me enjoyed the original more- I think younger children sometimes prefer less special effects maybe??!!

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang 7/10-this was a great movie with a neat story line- loved the children in the film and the whole other era of when the movie was set- the girls did follow the story and enjoyed most of it but did not like the 'child catcher' at all (there were tears) so might be better for older children!

Fantastic Mr Fox 5/10
This was one of my favourite books when I was little..however I thought the movie was a real disappointment- the style of the movie was way over the heads of my girls and neither hubby or I really enjoyed it either!

The Lorax 6/10

The girls enjoyed this movie but I wasn't that fussed on it- it felt like a pretty simple story really dragged out in movie form to me (haven't read the story though)

Toy Story 8/10-we all really enjoyed this movie- so clever and I love the characters of each toy especially the dinosaur :)

The Smurfs 7/10
We all enjoyed this movie although there are a few 'scary bits' if you have young children...

The Borrowers 7/10- this was a great family film

Bee Movie 9/10-This is nearly our favourite movie- me and the girls loved it- Jerry Seinfeld was the perfect choice for Barry Bee. Great story line and we loved the music too.

The Muppets  10/10
Our favourite so far! This is such a great movie for kids and adults to enjoy together, and the music really makes it so memorable and fun to watch. It has been so neat to see the kids getting into the muppets songs and we've been watching some of the old Muppets series on DVD which has been fun too. (Going to write a separate post about The Muppets soon!)

If you have any family movies to recommend please leave a comment as I'd love to find out about more, especially kids or family movies that have stood the test of time!
Megan x

PS: Finding the original movie posters for this post reminded me about the website 'AllPosters.com' - I used it years ago to buy the 'Amelie' movie poster that I got block mounted. I love vintage/retro movie posters so I'm thinking one of the ones above would look so cool in the girl's bedroom- although I think the one they would really love is this muppets one! A fun christmas present maybe...

Muppets movie poster at All Posters.com