Summer Pinterest for sunny and rainy days

I absolutely love Pinterest and so does Sunnyboy, so we were honoured to be asked to take part in the Pinterest UK launch "Pin It Forward UK". Pinterest is an online place to pin pictures and create vision boards of useful and lovely things! It's perfect for finding, sharing and collecting inspiration and a great way to plan projects and save links to find again when needed. We have found so many good ideas on Pinterest and have used it for all sorts of different purposes, from planning a picnic and designing a mud pie kitchen to saving tips on decluttering and homemaking and finding books we want to read.



I especially love using Pinterest for inspiration on sunny (and rainy) summer days and these are a few of the summer projects from sunnydaytodaymama that we have shared on Pinterest.















If you'd like to join Pinterest you can sign up here and once you've signed up you'll also be following our Sunny Days board.



Here are some more of our favourite Pinterest boards with ideas for Crafts,



Home Education resources,



Nature Study links,



Play ideas and activities,



Sunnyboy's pins,



and our group board for sharing Summer Projects and inspiration including seasonal thoughts, pictures, activities, crafts, recipes, books, art, nature study, celebrations and more. (To contribute to this board please let me know in the comments or contact us here.)

Sign up here to join Pinterest and find lots more summer useful and lovely things!

You can see a list of all the participating #PinItForwardUK bloggers at the Pin It Forward UK Kickoff! It's my pleasure to introduce two more blogs where Pin It Forward UK will be hosted tomorrow. The imagination tree is a wonderful blog with hundreds of ideas for creative play and learning with young children and We Fell In Love is a fabulous wedding blog.

Picnic Party: nature walk

Last weekend was Sunnyboy's birthday picnic party. After we'd eaten the picnic and handed out the nature walk gift bags we set off on a nature walk around the Country Park.





First we stopped at Hall's Pool for some pond-dipping,



then we walked around Dickerson's Pit and met a smartly dressed "wild animal" handing out gifts for the nature walk gift bags.













Each nature walk gift bag had a little card that said You will need: a stone, a stick, a leaf. We used the leaves to do leaf rubbings with crayons and we used the sticks for a game of Pooh Sticks on one of the bridges between the lakes. At the end of our walk we decorated the stones with marker pens to take home in the gift bags as a memory of the day.

Picnic Party: invitations and nature walk gift bags
Picnic Party: food (and summer recipe links)
Picnic Party: nature walk
and Picnic inspiration on Pinterest

Tutorials:







If you have a post about a summer picnic and/or party, or any post with a summer theme, we'd love you to link up at our All Year Round Blog Carnival: Summer, which is open for new links until 31st August.



More Nature Study inspiration on Pinterest.


Click here to see the play, crafts and learning ideas blog link-ups we share at.

Picnic Party: invitations and nature walk gift bags

For the past couple of weeks we've been preparing for Sunnyboy's birthday picnic party. In previous years we've just had a small tea party at home for his birthday but this year we wanted to invite more of our friends and family so we decided to have a picnic party at the Country Park.

We decorated a pack of plain invitation cards with stickers to give them a nature/picnic theme.



After the picnic we'll be going on a nature walk around the Country Park so I thought it would be nice to make nature walk gift bags for our guests. I used pages from an old atlas to make the bags.







Inside each nature walk gift bag is a nature journal (made with notecards for the covers, plain paper pages and string stitching),





and a pencil (I covered these with paper from the atlas so they match the bags).





Each bag also has a toy bug or frog,



and a parcel with chocolates, sweets and a box of raisins (I used the index pages from the atlas to make these).





Nature walk gift bag contents:
Nature journal
Pencil
Toy bug or frog
Parcel with chocolates, sweets and a box of raisins
Pressed flower keyring
Map of the Country Park
A little card that says You will need: a stone, a stick, a leaf

During the picnic we'll be blowing bubbles so I covered a bubble tub with a leftover page from the atlas.



Sunnyboy's birthday picnic party is this weekend and I'll be posting after with pictures of the picnic and nature walk, and the other activities we have planned. I'll also be explaining the reason for the little cards in the nature walk gift bags.

Picnic Party: invitations and nature walk gift bags
Picnic Party: food (and summer recipe links)
Picnic Party: nature walk
and Picnic inspiration on Pinterest

Tutorials:







If you have a post about a summer picnic and/or party, or any post with a summer theme, we'd love you to link up at our All Year Round Blog Carnival: Summer, which is open for new links until 31st August.



Click here to see the play, crafts and learning ideas blog link-ups we share at.

A new use for an old globe

We get a lot of great ideas from Pinterest and I especially love finding new uses for old and broken things. We had a globe that had broken in half so this idea for a globe centrepiece was perfect! I glued on a plastic milk bottle top to make the stand. Now we have a bowl to display the dandelions we've picked from our garden.



Here's the globe from Better Homes and Gardens that was pinned on Pinterest.




#Pinaddicts Challenge no.4 at "But why Mummy, why?"

If you have a post with a spring theme, we'd love you to link up at our All Year Round Blog Carnival: Spring, which is open for new links until 14th May.

Lego inspiration

A while ago we signed Sunnyboy up to The Lego Club and he was delighted when his first free Lego Club Magazine arrived in the post a couple of weeks ago. Sunnyboy currently makes several Lego models a day and after reading the Lego Club Magazine he made this model to enter into the Lego Club Building Challenge. It's a tracking device.







Lego and playmobil are some of Sunnyboy's favourite toys. He loves to try out the secondhand sets at the charity shop where we work,



and we often visit the toyshops in town to look at the new sets.



I have also been inspired by Lego recently and when I saw this DIY Lego Travel Box on Pinterest I thought it was such a great idea I decided to make one as a surprise for Sunnyboy. I made a Lego travel box and a Lego tray to go with it. Sunnyboy is really pleased with his new Lego travel set.



Here's the tutorial at finley & oliver.



More Lego on Pinterest


#Pinaddicts Challenge no.3 at Sew Scrumptious

Click here to see the play, crafts and learning ideas blog link-ups we share at.

Pancakes

Radiation Cookery Book (For use with the REGULO NEW WORLD Gas Cookers), Published by Radiation Ltd.

More pancakes on Pinterest