This week little Lucy turns 7 so we decided to have a special day out.

Lucy is a Sylvanian Families collector and so she asked for her birthday treat to go with her friend Mai-Li to the Sylvanian Families shop in London.

Inside it is filled from floor to ceiling with Sylvanian Families, playsets and special Japanese imports (very exciting).

There was a great central display which has given us lots of ideas for how to display Lucy’s collection at home. The small pieces were all glued down. Emily checked! :0

Above the display were several hot air balloon floating with little figures waving from inside the baskets. We love hot air balloons and thought this was a great project for another day.

We had a great time and Emily was very chuffed with her new friend (no, you cannot buy these).

Lucy chose a lovely school for her Sylvanian Family children, Emily was treated to a rowing boat complete with picnic and rowing raccoon while Mai- Li chose the lovely deer family.

We were feeling a bit peckish so we headed off to get some afternoon tea. We had a reservation at The Tea Rooms in Stoke Newington which is not far from the Sylvanian Family shop (you could walk through Clissold Park if the weather is fine).

The Tea Rooms have only a few tables (reservations are advised if going between 3-5) and it has a lovely feel. The vintage china and cutlery is very pretty. There are doilies on the plates and all the cakes are homemade.

The girls tucked into the yummy sandwiches and cakes. Lucy’s favourite were the scones with clotted cream and jam. Delicious.

Instead of tea the girls opted for pink lemonade in their tea cups, I had a pot of Earl Grey and the girls were fascinated with the tea leaves and strainer. No tea bags here.

After our filling tea we packed the new School and friends into the car and drove home singing songs the whole way. 🙂

 

 

Even though we have a field of lambs around the corner from us we decided to head over to Odd’s Farm with some friends during the Easter holidays.

One of the main attractions is the slightly crazy lamb feeding…

Lucy found it hard to hold on to the bottle as the lambs were very eager to have their milk. Charlie took over and having just been telling Lucy to hold on was quite taken aback when he discovered that the lamb was strong, very strong.

Emily watched the proceeding as we didn’t think she was going to be able to hold on to the bottle.

After feeding the hungry lambs we took our little bags of animal feed and fed some other animals. Lucy was very brave and showed Emily how to hold her hand very flat. Given how much Emily likes to suck her fingers I thought maybe she should give this a miss.  She loved watching the animals though.

I think Charlie’s friend Ollie wanted to take this little lamb home. I am not sure his mummy was so keen.

We all fell in love with the piglets. How sweet is this little fellow? Such lovely markings.

After saying goodbye to all the animals and washing our hands we headed over to the play barn.

Emily’s friend Amelie practised standing up in the ball pond…

but this was far too tame for Emily who ran off after her brother and sister, grabbed a mat and hurled herself down the slides having the time of her life. Little Emily is 1 going on 6. Unstoppable.

Everyone had a fantastic time.

P.S Apologies for the quality of these photos. I forgot my camera and had to take these on my phone.

Remember these images are protected by copyright, they belong to lottie nottie and are not to be reproduced without prior permission.

So far this Easter holiday we have been pretty stuck at home due to everyone being ill in turn. Today we were finally all feeling much better and so we decided it was time to head to the woods for a bit of den building.

We have lots of woods near us but the best is Wendover Woods, high up in The Chilterns. When we arrived there were still patches of snow on the ground, thankfully we had wrapped up warm.

All the children wanted to do straight away was build a den. This meant they had to find some big sticks….

These massive sticks required great team work to bring them back to the den…

The large sticks had to be very carefully positioned (under the supervision of Lucy who has plans to be an architect)…

Then the insulation has to be placed…

After all their hard work the children all enjoyed a quick snack before we ran back to the car as it was FREEZING!

P.S Lucy’s Red Polka Dot Bows and Mai Li’s Pink Classic Bow were the perfect accessories for master den builders.

We love having visitors so last week when the doorbell rang and we all ran to the door with much excitement. Sylvain the cottontails rabbit had come to stay.

Now this is Sylvain\’s first trip away from home and the girls were keen to make him feel at home so they had dressed appropriately to greet him. We think it made him feel welcome immediately.

We all had a lovely meal of carrot soup and then as Sylvain had been travelling he decided to have an early night. Now though we have an empty hutch we had decided that he would sleep in Lucy’s room. The next morning Lucy woke up to find Sylvain and Poppy rabbit were happily reading in bed by the morning sunshine. Poppy thought that Sylvain would enjoy her favourite book Moon Rabbit.

In fact it is a very popular story in our house and so Lucy and Emily joined the little rabbits.

We had a fun weekend planned and first off we were going to go with Charlie to the climbing wall. It was Charlie’s 8th birthday this week and he chose to go to a climbing wall with his friends for his birthday treat.

Sylvain confided in me that though he could jump very well he didn’t think that this was an activity suitable for a rabbit. He would leave the climbing to the squirrels (and Charlie).
The following day we decided that we would have a more grounded day so we all headed to Waddesdon Manor.
There is an exhibition of modern sculpture there at the moment and so we thought that as Sylvain is on his Grand Tour this would be appropriate.

We all loved the Damien Hirst Mini. Sylvain thought this would be perfect to take him on all his travels.We saw many beautiful sculptures (including a pile of sunflower seeds by ai weiwei which we moved away from quite quickly) but this one summed up how Sylvain felt about all his new friends.

I am not sure if Sylvain was inspired by seeing Charlie’s climbing yesterday or if the sunshine had got him a bit excited but Sylvain showed his cheeky side and tried to take a dip in the fountain.

It may have been sunny but it was not warm enough for swimming. We decided that Emily better keep a hold of Sylvain just in case he got into any more mischief.

After a lovely walk around the grounds of Waddesdon we treated ourselves to a lovely cream tea. When we got home there was a rainbow in front of the house. A perfect ending to a perfect visit. Sylvain is setting his compass for he is heading north to Scotland. We stamped his passport, helped him pack his bag and he was ready to go.

We are very sad to say goodbye to Sylvain but we wish him well on his travels. He is welcome to come back to visit anytime. x

P.S To celebrate Sylvain\’s visit we are offering a 10% discount on all lottie nottie items (maybe rabbit hair clips). Just enter ‘sylvain’ in the coupon box at the checkout. x

 

 

We have had a lovely summer holidays and we had saved the best till last.

Yesterday we went to the amazing Olympic Stadium to watch Paralympic Athletics.

We had a bit of a bad start to the day travel wise but once on the Javelin train things got better.

When we got to the Olympic Park we found our seats (a bit late) and I was really pleased we were sitting so close to the cauldron as it really is very beautiful.

The first race we watched was the women T44 amputees 200m. Charlie loves the ‘blade runners’.

You can’t see them as I forgot that my camera had a zoom in my excitement! You get an idea of where we were sitting. We also saw some long jumping, discus throwing, shot putting and lots of other races including very impressive visually impaired relay.

Inbetween these races were medal ceremonies for the previous nights winners. We were very fortunate to see the wonderful Dave Weir receive another gold medal. I was blown away to be standing in the Olympic Stadium with the children, belting out the national anthem as they raised the union jack. Fantastic stuff.

Emily behaved herself very well but got a bit frustrated at the end. I think she wanted to go and join in.

After a quick lunch we headed home via John Lewis (well Charlie needed socks for pe) and there we found what was probably one of the highlights of the day for the children.

The Lego Olympic stadium!!!! Charlie and Lucy could have spent hours looking at this as in the crowd were various celebrities dotted about. We found Darth Vader and Harry Potter!

We all went home exhausted which was perfect as it was the last day of the holidays, early to bed and back to school this morning.

 

 

Sometimes we make special friends, they never let you down and are always there to give you a hug.

Lucy’s special friend is Poppy rabbit.

Lucy and Poppy met around the time Lucy was born.They were immediately inseparable, much like the thumb.

Poppy accompanied Lucy on her first holiday. It was very hot and they took refuge together in the shade for naps.

When Lucy was a flower girl at her Uncle’s wedding Poppy was there too. She helped out when Lucy fell asleep next to the band at the reception.

A well travelled rabbit, in this instance is was decided that for ease everyone should be strapped into the pushchair together. We have history of things being lost at airports (that is a whole other story).

When Lucy started walking Poppy was still by her side.

And when Lucy had an accident Poppy was there to make her feel better.

When Little Emily was born she got to meet Poppy on Day one (the handsome chap on the left is Charlie’s rab).

Poppy Rabbit is a real member of our family but she is Lucy’s Special friend.

P.S You may wonder how we have managed to keep Poppy for 5 years. Well, we have never lost one but for cleaning purposes and in case of emergancies I have had three on secret rotation. About a year ago my secret was uncovered and Lucy now has three poppy rabbits in bed with her every night. I just make sure that I wash them all on a sunny day.

You can buy your very own Poppy rabbit by clicking here at Polarn O. Pyret.

See our lovely rabbit hair clips and some of Lucy’s favourite clips here.

I know that it is still the summer holidays but we are having an ‘at home’ day today and I am just getting a little bit sorted out for going back to school.

Funnily enough Lucy has a fantastic collection of hair clips (she is assistant creative director of lottie nottie after all). Now she does have a habit of taking these out when watching tv and leaving them on the sofa or putting them next to the bath before hopping in. This means that Emily picks them up and tends to ‘re-distribute’ them around the house.

I have been making my hair clip tidies for a while, they are very popular, and I thought you might like to see Lucy’s red strawberry hair clip tidy.

Lucy’s school uniform is grey and red so we like to have red clips and bows for school. This is her collection for this year.

Red apples on red hair clips, watermelons on red spotty hair clips, red ribbon flowers on red hair clips, strawberry spotty hair clips, red polka dot bows, red ice-creams on red spotty hair clips, classic red bow, white stars on red hair clips and lastly our favourite cherries on red spotty hair clips.

There are also a few small red felt flower hair bands and a couple of grey ones. I think we are all ready (apart from the hundreds of name labels that I still have to sew onto all the new bits of uniform.)