There are so many opportunities for crafting and learning; countries, flags, different sports, Ancient Greece, modern world v old world, the rings and what they mean, the history of the olympics, the meaning of the torch and endless ways to explore all of them.

Here are some craft sites:-

Activity Village.

Thinly Spread.

Red Ted Art.

Making Friends.

Information on the Olympics:-

Flags of countries competing.

Sports at the Olympics.

The Ancient Greeks and the Olympics.

The modern Olympics.

About the Olympics.

Project Britain Facts.

Activity Sites:-

Enchanted Learning.

Without further ado, let me introduce Maggy from Red Ted Art who has put together a round up of a fabulous toilet roll castle they did. I really recommend her blog – it’s everything I intended MuddlePuddle to be (and will be, it will!)

If you’ve been a long time user of the sadly neglected MuddlePuddle, you will know that we lost our baby son Freddie in 2010 when he was 11 days old. We’ll never forget him or stop missing him, but we are thrilled to have Baby Benedict in the house who arrived in January 2012. This year I’m really looking forward to enjoying Spring again and watching a little life grow up.

To celebrate I’m putting together a collection of Spring crafting ideas from our own home and the archives of our family blog, using craft kits from our businesses and collecting together ideas from round the web. Since MuddlePuddle was first created, more than 10 years ago, a huge number of craft bloggers have sprung up and the internet is an absolute wealth of ideas.

We’ve been making Mother’s Day cards using Fimo and scrapbooking embellishments; I love Fimo, it’s my favourite crafting clay and it is ideal for making card toppers. These days kids are so savvy they can probably order personalised cards online by themselves but there is nothing quite like a bit of sticking and pasting to add a bit of love to proceedings.

Spring is probably one of the best times for crafty topics to explore with young children. Valentines Day is great, a perfect opportunity for Hama Beads and giving well meant presents to all and sundry.

We’ve already had fun this year with St Patrick’s Day (new baby brain meant I got a bit confused about dates!) and made Fimo fridge magnets and a very cool hat. I think I need to work harder on educating Amelie, our 9 year old though, who said “What’s that story about St Patrick and the Leprechauns again?”

This year I’m hoping we’ll get our crafting beyond Fimo and Hama beads and explore Easter crafts, St George’s Day and some plant and outdoor themes in more detail. New baby will, of course, dictate how much I actually manage to be inventive about it all. However, if all else fails and my ability to send gifts and pretties out to send seasons greetings fails entirely, I know I can always fall back on Hallmark Greetings Cards instead. (Just don’t tell the children or they’ve never stick and paste for me again!)

Having a child is estimated to cost UK parents on average £10,000 a year. And that’s not really even taking into account what support and items mum might need along the way.

Preparing for a baby involves more than planning, baby-proofing the hard surfaces and corners, and trying to get your head around mealtimes, lack of sleep and ever-changing nappies.

There’s also the issue of invisible costs such as maternity clothing, which very often adds up if we’re not careful. There are several cheaper options on the high street available from places such as New Look and other high street stores.

Shopping at such places will allow you to stock up on a decent amount of looser trousers and tops that will see you through your pregnancy and be comfortable to wear in the months afterwards.

Prioritise hoodies, elasticated waistbands and stretch jeans. Maternity wear has become a bigger demand on high street shops in the last decade, so luckily most places have really put time and effort into designing attractive clothes that feel comfortable and make you feel good.

Another fantastic option – which is just not publicized enough – is to go for the ‘androgynous’ look. Or rather, save money on buying large trousers and borrow your dad/brother/husband/boyfriend/friend’s joggers, jumpers and t shirts for the days when you need something comfortable and flexible.

After all, whilst we all might want to look like Beyonce mere weeks after having a baby, the truth is that finding a personal trainer and a spare few thousand pounds to buy Alice Temperley dresses just isn’t going to happen.

That said, she looks fantastic so let it be an inspiration to other expecting mothers out there. Enough with the negative energy and nightmarish visions of being covered in vomit everyday for the next two years.

Sure, having a baby is tough, it costs money, and above all else it requires all your energy, love and commitment, but what you’ll get from it is something invaluable.

]]> http://www.muddlepuddle.co.uk/mpblog/2012/02/18/maternity-clothing-%e2%80%93-and-how-to-save-money-on-it/feed/ 0 http://www.muddlepuddle.co.uk/mpblog/2011/05/20/patch-of-puddles-blog-nominated-for-mad-award/ http://www.muddlepuddle.co.uk/mpblog/2011/05/20/patch-of-puddles-blog-nominated-for-mad-award/#comments Fri, 20 May 2011 11:22:05 +0000 Mrs MuddlePuddle http://www.muddlepuddle.co.uk/mpblog/?p=447 Alongside this website, we’ve kept a family blog for the last 9 years, detailing the ups and downs of our life as a home educating, small business owning family. Our family has grown from 5 people, to 7 people and back to 6 people on that blog as it chronicled not only the pregnancies and births of Amelie, Josie and Freddie, but also Freddie’s short life and death at 11 days old.

The blog is filled with our educational exploits, crafting ideas, the different ways we’ve home educated and lived life and all of that alongside building and running our online business, trying out school, coming back home, moving house more times than is reasonable and finally becoming not a work at home mother family, but a family which relies entirely on the income the business brings in.

This year we’ve been nominated for two MAD Blog Award categories, the Best Family Life Blog and Most Inspiring Blog Award. All of us are thrilled and for me, it is something good to have come out of a truly terrible year; to win one of these awards in Freddie’s memory would mean the world to me.

You can find out more about us on our blog, Patch of Puddles and if you’d be kind enough to take a moment to click through and vote for us, I’d be incredible grateful.

We’ve been discussing Books for Kids with masses of ideas for children aged 9-14 to read. This was a follow up to a post from several years ago on Classic Books for Children to Read and it was great to see how much really great material has been written in the time between the two posts.

We’ve been grateful to our reader for ideas on how to shop locally and more thoughtfully, something which our children have developed quite an enthusiasm for over the last couple of years.

Fran, the Pud of this site originally, is now almost 13; still home educated, she is stretching her wings in a big way. This week we’ve been helping her explore the world of business with a small foray into the world of bracelet making.

Finally, I’m putting together a round up page on MuddlePuddle of our art days; we’ve been doing a focused approach to art skills and history with another family for around 9 months now and they’ve been fantastically successful. We’ve used very simple ideas, a few books and ideas from the internet and had an absolute ball. You can see our most recent day, on using perspective in drawing, over at our blog.

I’m gradually updating the Chinese New Year pages over on the right hand menu.

We’ve also put a download of Kandinsky inspired Hama beads over at BeadMerrily. It is completely free for non-commercial use.

Here at MuddlePuddle Central, things have moved on too; Pud, the original MuddlePuddle chick, will shortly be 12, Moo is now 10 and Splat is nearly 8. But we still have a 5 year old, who never managed to get a MuddlePuddle name. Grumps would possibly be appropriate.

We hope you’ll enjoy the new content; our plan is to keep all the Early Years stuff in one place but add some older age group resources too so that it remains relevant to our family.

This rebuild is in memory of our beautiful boy, Freddie 2/4/10-13/4/10, who was due the day after i finished the recreation of this site. Born 2nd April and lived for 11 short days before slipping away from us.

Night night, sweet little son. You were so much wanted.

How the Edit will work.

For now i have moved lots of content on to the new system, just as it was and very roughly, with the associated problems of dead links and mixed up formatting. A great deal needs updating, correcting and perhaps even removing. What i plan to do is work through, adding links from the green bar to pages which are 2010 correct. If the link only appears in the sidebars, it is old content awaiting an update. Hopefully doing it this way will keep it organised and inspire me to add new content too.