Play Town

Like the previous year, I limited my Christmas makes to one thing for each of my little girls. This time round though, I decided I would claim all creative credit for myself (rather than the elves), and let the girls flick through Oliver and S, Little Things to Sew, and choose something they'd like me to make for them.

Christmas morning - "Oh look! It's a monkey, Mummy!"

This turned out to be a lot of fun to make - and, if not for the fact it was made on Christmas Eve with obvious time constraints in place, I would have gone to town a bit more (ha, ha - get it) over this with a few extra buildings.

The cake shop we love

It was the request of the two youngest girls - and so, I took inspiration from some of their favourite places (and let's be honest, mine too).

The high point of their week is still going to the Arcade for sweets

Luckily for the girls, Father Christmas also shops at the old fashioned sweet shop in the Arcade in Bedford. Just as well, as sweetie necklaces were high up on their lists, so the tradition of their favourite sweets before breakfast on Christmas morning could live on.

The love of elephants goes on, and so I used the teeny tiny scraps I had left from a T shirt to make an elephant building. I had to hold my tongue when the intended recipient informed me in a very irritated voice that she didn't want the elephants to have an upstairs. Tough crowd to please, small children. Especially when they have very definitive ideas about how they want their imaginary elephants accommodated. A few sharp words were exchanged, and I think she is handling the disappointment and learning to be slightly more gracious about it.

"Hello, Mr Monkey!"

A monkey house - in honour of the car jumping monkeys at Woburn Safari Park. Wouldn't it be great if houses in real life could have Joel Dewberry designs all over the exteriors?!

Suggestions for additional buildings have already started coming in - including a Sainsburys, a school and a library. I think I'll wait and see how much this little lot gets played with first!

The houses came together pretty easily, though - even the cutting up of large foam blocks with the bread knife (which I had been dubious about) was fine. The play town is `such fun' to make. You can be as creative as you like over it, especially if you have young helpers making plenty of suggestions for you - the only real limit in my case being time!