Pottering about

Clockwise from top left: Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddleduck, Benjamin Bunny and Hunca Munca

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We've finally made a start on sorting out the spare room in an attempt to turn it into Emma's bedroom by Christmas. As I will be acquiring bits and pieces to decorate Emma's room, I wanted to do a few things in Lily's room too so she doesn't feel left out (Tom resists change in all its forms and doesn't like me to change his bedroom). Lily told me recently that she wanted pictures of animals in her room, so I have decided to 'Potterise' her bedroom with some Beatrix Potter pictures and accessories. I love the works of Beatrix Potter and the colours she used in her illustrations match Lily's pastel pink room beautifully.
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I bought these square pine frames from Hobbycraft a few weeks ago. To make the set of pictures, I simply browsed the Internet until I found some Beatrix Potter pictures of suitable resolution, printed them off and put them in the frames. If you get too close, you can see they were digital images, but they are good enough for our purposes. The advantage of doing it this way is that if Lily wants different pictures on her walls in six months time, I haven't wasted any money on prints. I'll simply print off something different and put them in the frames instead.
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What Lily sees when she's sat in bed.

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I hung the pictures while Lily was at playgroup this morning in order to surprise her when she got home. I told her I had done something nice in her bedroom and when she saw the pictures she exclaimed "I can't aleeve (believe) my eyes!". I plan to get a few more Beatrix Potter things to carry the theme further. I will get most of it on eBay as I don't think it is a good idea to spend too much on children's rooms since they change their minds about what they like so often. I absolutely love decorating the children's rooms though, so sometimes I have a hard job reining myself in!

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Toodle-pip

The Pip Jar..

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Tom loves apples. Given the choice between an apple and sweets, he will almost always choose the apple. His love of the fruit is fuelling his latest obsession...collecting apple pips. Every time he eats an apple, he now gathers the pips from the core and adds them to his 'pip jar'. He even came out of school one day this week with three pips in his hand that he had saved from his lunchtime apple. The pip jar, an old Avent baby bottle, currently resides next to his pillow, so all his pips are transported up to his bedroom immediately following their harvest. I think he plans to fill up the pip jar and then plant them all in the back garden. I'm pretty sure he doesn't realise how long it would take to grow an orchard, but he's having a lot of fun planning it! He's a very patient little boy!
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Snug as a bug

Baby sleeping bags are a fantastic invention. They can't be kicked off like blankets and prevent your baby from waking in the night from cold. As they get older, they also prevent your child from climbing out of their cot! I used sleeping bags for both Tom and Lily, both of whom slept in them until they were around three years old. I didn't put either of them in one until they were in a big cot though. Emma, on the other hand, is such a little fidget that I've had to put her in a sleeping bag at night even though she is still in the Moses basket. I'd put her to bed in the 'feet to foot' position and find her later in the night with her head touching the top of the basket and the blankets way down at the bottom. Thanks to her new pink sleeping bag, she now stays warm and cozy all night long, no matter how much she fidgets. Not to mention that she looks absolutely adorable in it!
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Remembering the traitor Fawkes!

Lily bundled up against the cold

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On Saturday evening, we bundled Tom and Lily up in their winter gear and Mark took them out to a local bonfire and fireworks display. At least that was the plan! When they got there, Lily was too frightened by the noise and the Podlings both decided they didn't want to be there. Lily has been frightened by fireworks the last couple of years, but she seemed so excited about going this year. Sadly it wasn't to be. Mark drove about a mile away from the display and the three of them watched the fireworks from the front seat of the car. This modification to the plan was apparently a great success and they really enjoyed it.

Tom in his winter gear. It is really hard to get an in-focus picture of Tom as he is chronically incapable of sitting still long enough for the camera to focus in low light! ..

Meanwhile, poor Cinders got to stay home and cook! Emma is obviously much too young to enjoy the fireworks, so I put her to bed at seven as usual and then prepared soup, crackers, hot dogs and chocolate covered apples to greet the rest of the family when they got home. The Podlings weren't as chilled as they might have been had they watched the display outdoors, but we all still enjoyed the warming food. Tom and Lily went to bed around nine o'clock having had a lovely evening, though not quite the one Mark and I had originally planned for them!

I made chocolate covered apples and dipped them in sugar strands to decorate. Tom doesn't like chocolate, but he was thrilled with his apple on a stick!
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My cozy autumn centrepiece - a scented candle surrounded by pine cones.
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Art by Lily

Daddy. Those large things at the side of his head are hands, not ears.

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Lily has always had excellent pencil control. At ten months old, she knew how to hold a crayon and which end she had to draw with and she now holds a pencil correctly without ever having been taught. I have really enjoyed watching her drawings develop and just recently she has started doing some lovely drawings of her family. Tom was never remotely interested in drawing anything other than squiggles (still isn't), so these childish drawings are quite new to me and I find them delightful. I particularly like her attention to detail. When she draws herself, Emma or me, we get a straight line for hair. Tom and Mark, on the other hand, get wavy lines because they have curly hair. These drawings have developed entirely without intervention and I think they are so cute.

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Tom. Note the curly hair.

Emma. For some reason the baby gets eyebrows!

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A portrait of the artist as a young girl. Apparently she doesn't have any legs!

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A Duck. This one is my favourite, but it was hard to get a photo of it as she drew it in pencil.

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Consequences

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Note to self: Don't get distracted whilst Lily is painting!

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You'd think I'd have learnt by now wouldn't you! Even after a long soak in the bath, she still went to bed with her arms tinged faintly red.

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Carpe Diem

I know that these mild autumn days won't last much longer and soon it will be too cold for the Podlings to spend much time playing outdoors. We are trying to make the most of these final pleasant days and get outside when we can. I took these photos at the end of our walk this afternoon as the sun was starting to set and the light levels dropped. I don't know what it is about these pictures, but I love them. I feel like I have captured a fleeting moment of their childhood on camera. I can't stop looking at the top one for some reason.
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