Austin about to take the cake for The Most Tolerant Cat Ever award…

Alphabet Cat!

“You’re going to put this on the internet aren’t you.”

More on the log blocks…

Lining up objects is still big at our house.

In the front room beside the bowls bag.

More old curiousities from mum’s place.  I have always remembered this doll, I think it’s the print on the fabric, and s/he’s also like my sleepy dolly that I had (and still have) when I was little.

She is a little worse for wear, sadly.  Though she has been well loved.

I was interested to see how she was finished where she was closed after stuffing, straight down the back.  Not what I had expected.

She’s on the vintage yoyo blanket…

A pumpkin!  Or it’s probably actually a squash!

I love autumn, and pumpkins are so very autumn.  The best ones are those that come up by accident, out of garden compost…  this one is in the soon to be garlic bed.  If there’s room.

Ramona’s pretty excited too.

Isobel and Iris.

We’re pretty lucky here, we live just 5 minutes drive from a beach, it’s a city harbour beach, and it’s one of our favourite places to go after dinner to see the sun go down.  We had some heavy cloudy days last week, with thunder and showers.  It all makes for a moody looking harbour.

Besides watching the gulls, Luna set-to and immediately began collecting wood to build a fire.  She had a good plan, the wood was accompanied by some green sea weed, there had been a bit of a wash up of wood and weed after the storms.

And a couple of spare crab nippers.

I’m so very grateful to live so close to a beach, and that we have the time and space in our lives to go there and just wander it.  Or build fires and huge sandcastles.  This kind of play opens up converstaions too, we are all learning the names of more shells, about ecology, and have talked about collecting wood for our fire before winter comes, what you need to build a fire…

This is one of my favourite times of the day, I love the beach, and there’s something healing about watching the sunset.

I have been reading here and there about the benefits of keeping toys to a minimum, choosing toys that are simple, and keeping play fairly unstructured.  I’ve never really liked single use toys, or educational toys (that sing the alphabet, count to ten or whatever..) so things have kind of just worked that way with us, though we have been gifted so many toys, I try and limit the plastic, and gendered toys (Disney Princesses and the like) we have made some of our own toys, and picked up some good old second hand blocks and so on over time.  Though, I do still feel there is too much, and I think there probably will always be.

And the books… don’t even start!  But that is another story, and don’t mention my toys…

It’s the creek!  Says Luna.

We like simple toys here, and it’s not original, but we had a few logs lying around in the back yard after taking out some undesirable trees (so these babies are not made from lovely friendly willow or anything..) and we had had a few rainy days, so I suggested we make some new toys…

Simple is definitely best for kids to really play.  We just cut the logs in short lengths, maybe between 20 -80 mm, Rob cut a few ‘half’ logs.  These are great for making trucks!

Old Austin was not that keen on it all, I pulled out some stones, and the pine cones.

I also enjoyed setting up some imaginary worlds…

I pulled out the felt pieces, which are often land or water for plastic animals…

Good fun!

The day the sun came out!

Got a few nice snaps of the girls looking at some delicate fungi on our last day in Katikati…

Ramona and Audrey..  ”These are so ephemeral are they not?”

“Why, yes!”

“Wohoo!  Sunshine!”

“Look at these ones, tiny aren’t they?”

From us all, “Good bye Katikati, hello sunny Auckland!”

I thought this was very Abbey Road.

Above the girls/kids as Luna calls them are relaxing on their beach towels, the beach is a piece of felt, and there is a piece of ocean near by, but no-one is swimming just now…

We had a few days of stormy weather after we had started heading out to the beach ourselves, so this was nice for Luna, I hemmed up some ‘towels’ for them and we packed their bag.  Kept Luna busy for ages.

Then everyone got tucked into bed, more cuteness.

We don’t get the blocks out that often, these days we dash outside (or I let the kids out!) as soon as everyone is dressed.  Every now and then the days start or end with some block towers or a city is built by Luna, Blake seems content to observe and stand the occasional single block up.

Blocks are one of the simplest and easiest of toys to play with, and our blocks have been second hand shop finds by the bag, so mostly random and unknown until we got them home, plus some pretty painted and musical sets from friends.

Luna’s cities, she tells me are made up of museums, art galleries, libraries, houses and shops, cafes, and airports.  I find some of the structures really interesting, and do build along side her at times.

These are some photos of a couple of recent projects, I enjoyed learning about the kinds of cities Luna creates, and really enjoyed the kind of star platforms she was making here.

I’m slowly working working through some projects I’ve had unfinished for hmm, maybe two years and it’s great.  Last weekend I finished this cuddly cushion sea star that had been waiting to have it’s top sewn on, I was also dreading fitting it to the base, the top is smaller and so I was all worried about it being gathered and not look authentic..

You see, it based on a blow up of a tiny sea star that I made for a mobile for Luna, all those years ago, and so it had to look just like the real thing, only well, huge.  But I sewed it all up, and it’s a bit gathered in places, but it looks great, I’m pretty happy with it after all.  Here’s the underside, I hand stitched the felt pieces on and didn’t bead it because I know how long it takes to sew beads on a felt star fish!

By the way of you ever see a sea star upside down like this, quickly see if it’s ok and turn it over so it can get going…

I was thinking about making some more to sell, it’s actually very comfortable and you can kind of squish it into your side or behind you, and it’s really snuggly too!