Valentine's Day

I love Valentine's day. A chance to show all the lovely people in my family how much I love them and use pretty china, flowers and hearts as I do it. Win Win for me!

Happy Valentine's Day!

💖

Valentine's treats for the Podlings greeted them in the morning. There may or may not also have been doughnuts for breakfast as a special treat.

I made these little Valentine's treat boxes for the Podlings. Ladybirds for the boys and roses and lace for the girls. They are filled with Love Hearts.

Presents for the dolls, the little heart shaped boxes I made were filled with Love Hearts and given to the dolls with a bouquet of paper roses.

Our Valentine's tea (the picture is very dark for some reason)

Heart-shaped fairy cakes with pink and white icing, pink glittery sugar and red and pink roses (I loved making the roses!). They couldn't be more perfect for a Valentine's day tea! 

Valentine's Fun

Valentine's day is always a good opportunity to have some themed fun and gives us something lovely to focus on as the winter drags on. Cold, wet and windy weather makes our usual outdoor adventures less appealing, but indoors we can be cosy and warm as we enjoy some Valentine's themed crafts and activities together. Here is a selection of what we have been getting up to this month, with plenty of other things that never got photographed. It has been so lovely!

A simple Valentine's pre-writing sensory set up for Alex. It is just table salt coloured pink with copious amounts of pink, purple and gold glitter to make it really sparkly. Spread in a tray with various bits and pieces to make marks with (not pictured are the straw, fork and spoon he also played with. 

Making heart shapes with a cookie cutter

He played with this for ages, first drawing and making marks with objects, then drawing in it  with his fingers and then completely burying his hands and pouring and playing with it like sand. It ended up with Playmobil figures in it too! So much fun from such a simple set up.

I bought some water beads in Valentine's colours and put them in a bowl with some pink foam heart shapes. I have never bought water beads before, so this was a first for the Podlings and it went down a treat. Alex and Emma in particular played with them for ages and, naturally, Alex had to add some cars in too!

The water beads were a huge hit with all four Podlings.

Emma loved the water beads

The Valentine's sensory box before I added in all the extras. The Podlings really enjoyed mixing the colours together!

I loved putting this Valentine's sensory box together. I coloured rice red and pink and added in shiny heart-shaped confetti, red glass pebbles and red ribbon roses. I finished it off with the little Valentine's peg people which I painted myself. It looked so pretty!

Fun in the Valentine's sensory box

Painting cardboard heart wreaths and little heart-shaped boxes

I really loved the wreath that Lily made. She is so creative.

A snowy Valentine's photoshoot with the dolls

Emma (Bridgewater)

Emma's class are learning about local history for their project this term and today is their project launch day where they get to go to school dressed up and have lots of themed activities during the day. Emma wanted to go as the ceramics designer Emma Bridgewater as they share a first name and, of course, her factory is in The Potteries. She spent time last night happily drawing multi-coloured spots on a paper plate and the name badge we made and we teamed it with a spotty party dress. She looked so sweet!

Christmas Day

Opening their stockings

Lily is almost always the first one awake in this house and never more so than on Christmas morning. We have a 'not before seven' policy which means they are given short shrift if they show up before seven in the morning. I heard little feet trotting down the corridor several times from half past six (and Lily says they were awake much earlier than that!) as Emma kept coming to check the time on Mark's alarm clock! On the dot of seven, two excited girls and a sleepy little boy who had been woken by aforementioned girls appeared in my room with their stockings. It is hard to be quiet when Father Christmas has filled your stocking whilst you were sleeping! We always have the stocking opening in our room before going downstairs to open the presents from us.

Much excitement (and mess!) ensued downstairs with the present opening and the Podlings were all pleased with their gifts. As usual, I didn't take many photos later in the day, but we had a really nice, relaxed Christmas. Mark's parents came over in the afternoon to spend the day and enjoy Christmas dinner with us and we had a really nice day together. Another wonderful Christmas to add to the store of family memories.

Someone was pleased with his chocolate Santa!

Waiting for Daddy to come downstairs.

One very excited little boy!

When I told him they were all his!

Waiting to start!

Lily is Harry Potter mad and her favourite present was the complete Harry Potter wand collection.

Carnage!

We are not big fans of traditional Christmas cake, so I made a Christmas Victoria sponge instead.

The Night Before Christmas

The Podlings on Christmas eve (Tom opted not to be photographed) 

Christmas Eve is so magical, far more so than Christmas Day. The excitement, the anticipation and the sense of magic in the air as the children go off to bed makes it one of the best days of the year for me. As usual, we went to church for the children's Nativity service and then we went back to Mark's parents house for tea and the Podlings got to play with their cousins Grace and Poppy. Then home and into new pyjamas. I am so in love with the nightdress I chose for Emma this year. She is unicorn-obsessed (she was raised by unicorns apparently), so was over the moon when I found this very special nightdress for her. We laid out a mince pie for Father Christmas and a carrot for the reindeer, read 'The Night Before Christmas' and then sent a group of very excited children off to bed.

Alex had a final reading of 'Lucy and Tom at Christmas' by Shirley Hughes before the day itself. It had been his favourite story book for all of December and I always have to read it as 'Emma and Alex at Christmas'. I love Shirley Hughes' books and it is a testament to her charm that although I had to read that book every day (often more than once) for an entire month, I still love it!

It was many more hours before Mark and I got to bed. Thanks to a nasty stomach bug tearing through the family the week before Christmas, I was behind with my wrapping, so it was a late night for us. It is always worth the effort though when the children wake up on Christmas morning and see all the pretty parcels waiting for them. Magical!

That nightdress though! It has a smocked panel of unicorns and has dainty lace at the frilled collar and cuffs. It is so traditional and pretty.

Ready for Father Christmas. 

Wallington

Ah, Wallington! What a delightful place! A National Trust property in Northumberland, Wallington consists of a beautiful Grade 1 listed house set in 13,000 acres of land and we barely scratched the surface of the estate on our visit. The house was simply wonderful and I could have spent hours here. The dolls house collection alone would have occupied me for ages. I would dearly love to go back to the house again.

The weather was not great the day we visited, but that didn't stop us from taking a Thermos to the adventure play area. The Podlings are not bothered by rain showers! It was late in the afternoon and it kept raining, so we had the place to ourselves! The play area was fabulous, but we did eventually have to admit defeat with the weather!

I was utterly captivated by Wallington and it now ranks as one of my favourite National Trust properties, along with Cragside (also in Northumberland) and Lanhydrock House in Cornwall. We will definitely be returning here in the future.

The side of the house. I neglected to take a photo of the front

I loved the carpet in one of the bedrooms