I had a sweet little find on Trademe, four lovely little 1991 Strawberry Shortcake dolls, not complete, and needing some tlc, so one of those fun finds.

Still true to the 1980s design, I love that these girls have really long hair, and the faces are still quite sweet.

Fun times ahead!

We love A A Milne’s Winnie the Pooh here.  These two can be found tucked up on book shelves or under chairs around the house.

These two tiny bears are one of my favourite projects from when I was a kid, I think I was about nine or ten when I made them, on a holiday at my nana and poppa’s place.

They are taken from a Women’s Weekly magazine and I made them from the paper pattern, just not sized up, as it was intended to be used.  You probably know I love working on crazily small scale projects, and I loved this one, because the bears were so cute, I loved the longer limbs, the fabric was an off cut from nana’s curtains (which she still has up) and was really nice to use, one side is pink, one side is orange, hence the combination of colours…  they are stuffed with the off cuts from making, and all hand sewn as you can see.

I had thought these were lost, but found them about a month ago at mums, horray!  Here they are with Audrey..

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!”