Draw With Me – Favourite Books

My boys are very pleased to see that Draw With Me is back on “This Mummy Loves” blog after over a year’s gap. Draw With Me is a monthly linky for children and this month the theme is favourite books.

Both the boys love drawing. They tend to mostly draw characters from their favourite games, books, movies and tv programmes and then cut them out and role play with them. So favourite books is right up their street. And surprise, surprise, they both chose Minecraft books this time.

So Son1 has drawn Steve, complete with a diamond sword, which he tells me is the best. His favourite Minecraft books are the handbooks. He has Beginners, Combat and Redstone.

Meanwhile son2 has drawn a Minecraft Bear. His favourite book is Stampy’s Lovely Book.

All ready for him to cut out and join the rest of his Minecraft gang for some fun.

I’d love to hear what your children love drawing or their favourite books.

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This post is an entry to Draw With Me.

Creative Wins Round-up

Having just received an email today for my first win of 2015, which was 3rd prize for my jewellery post, I thought I would do a round-up of creative wins from last year. I did a similar post last January looking back at 2013.

I know that some of my readers regularly enter my giveaways, but have you tried creative competitions too? They are fun and usually have a lot less entries too. I’ve been lucky with photo, cookery, video, blog post, pinterest and instagram competitions in 2014. And there are plenty for the children too, although I have to say that my boys have been a lot less interested in drawing and colouring this year. They usually prefer to spend time playing on their ipods but they still make time for fun activity based competitions. However they’ve got clever now – when I mention a competition, they ask me what the prize is and then they decide if they want to enter.

Starting with the boys.  Here are  their winning pictures.

Son2 won a “Bright Stanley” book for his fish picture

Son2 was very proud to receive his prize at school in the John Lewis story competition

Son1 won a comouflage suit for his flowers

And the boys regularly took part in This Mummy Loves Draw With Me monthly linky and struck lucky in September winning a box of crafting goodies. Sadly it looks like the linky has now stopped.

The boys had great fun doing the Warburtons Half & Half Term Games sports challenges and we won lots of sports kit for this photo of the boys doing the short jump.

Doing the Short Jump

We won £100 of Amazon vouchers for our photo of son2 as a #sunaware superhero. He then also featured in the #sunaware video.

Son2 as a #sunaware superhero

We won £50 of Co-op vouchers for this fun photo where son2 refused to look at the camera as he didn’t want to see the heart he was holding.

Our Local Loved Trusted winning entry

A top tip is to always take several different photos. Son2 won a set of Sue Hendra books and a Mr Potato Head costume for this photo of Mr Potato Head that he made.

Son2 hiding behind his Mr Potato Head

Plus another shot of Mr Potato Head won him a runner’s up book in a different competition.

Son2’s Mr Potato Head

We also subsequently entered the photo of him hiding behind Mr Potato Head into another competition for which he won a magazine subscription. So three prizes for making Mr Potato Head, not bad.

Son1 won a runner’s up Nature Explorer backpack containlng binoculars and other goodies for his Robot #rollmodel. Son2 also entered but wasn’t so lucky.

Son1’s robot #rollmodel

The boys won some toys for their road safety creativity.

Road safety

And son2 is still waiting for some books he won last month for drawing Hairy Maclary online. The boys both seem just as comfortable drawing on either a computer with the mouse or on a tablet with their finger as they do with a piece of paper.

Yet Another Blogging Mummy started last year with yet another win with Mission Deli Wraps having done very well with them already in in 2013. This time my Elf wrap won me some festive DVDs which we waited until this Christmas to watch. The boys loved The Grinch best. And as far as I could tell, nobody else even entered this one.

I won DVDs for my ELF wrap

My recipe for Mini Garlic Pizza Wraps won 3rd prize in a Gourmandize competition, which was a month’s subscription to Bonjour French Food, who kindly then gave me a 2nd month free as they had a spare box. We really enjoyed these, so I purchased a gift box for a close friend for Christmas.

My Vine #willitgrill video won 3rd prize, a barbeque and even better, I was supporting Cancer Research by entering. With son1 undergoing chemotherapy, I try to do all I can to support cancer charities.

Having got an iPhone this year, I tried my luck at Instagram competitions and won £50 of John Lewis vouchers for my #iloveadvice photo.

My winning Instagram photo

There are always plenty of creative competitions at Halloween for costumes and pumpkin carving. These are probably a little more popular than most creative competitions, so we were pleased that our pumpkin won us tickets to Harry Potter World. We are looking forward to our trip there sometime this year.

Our winning pumpkin

My Green Pancakes recipe blog post won £100 Sainsburys vouchers and my tyre safety blog post won £250 John Lewis vouchers. And who would have thought that just eating biscuits could net us a prize. But it did, I won £100 John Lewis vouchers for my 42 Days of Summer blog post.

I’ve also tried entering Pinterest competitions and my board for the #VCLifeHacks competition won me a £50 Amazon voucher.

Other creative wins were a photo of my Asparagus Frittata which won me a spices hamper. And enhancing a photo of son2 using the Appy App, won us some juice. And a photo of me munching on a cookie I made won me a personalised recipe folder. And I submitted my existing Christmas Lights blog post from last year to a competition. I didn’t win the main prize but did get a £25 lighting voucher. I also won £100 Red Letter Day voucher for a photo of myself covered in post-it notes. Gosh I did look silly but the prize certainly made it worth while.

And I can’t end without a word of thanks to SuperLucky Di who has inspired me to focus my comping on creative competitions. Sorry Di that we didn’t win the Autumn/Winter 14 Blogger Style Challenge, although we did make the shortlist.

Draw With Me – Favourite Pastimes

My boys are very pleased to see that Draw With Me is back on “This Mummy Loves” blog after a summer break. Draw With Me is a monthly competition for children and this month the theme is favourite pastimes.

When the boys looked at Boo’s drawing of Minecraft, they initially both wanted to draw Minecraft too, as that is also a favourite hobby of theirs, but I suggested they do something different for variety.

So they opted for drawings related to some of their favourite reads. They both love reading and you can see their latest vlog here, plus a book giveaway which is closing later this week.

Son1 loves reading his Beast Quest books and has done a drawing of some of the beasts.

And both boys love reading the Beano comic. We have a huge box of old Beano comics from about 30 years ago. So son2 has done a drawing of some of his favourite characters. There is Dennis the Menace and Gnasher, Lord Snooty, Ivy the Terrible and Minnie the Minx.

This post is an entry to Draw With Me.

Get Your Skills On Challenges

Tots100 have teamed up with Robinsons Fruit Shoot and challenged bloggers to try 10 new skills with your kids over four weeks, including at least two new activities from each week’s list.

So from week 1 both boys chose to walk for 15 seconds balancing a bean bag on their heads. Son1 even did it backwards.

And Dad was great at doing a head stand. Son2 tried but couldn’t manage it.

Then for week 2, both boys wanted to hop, jump or run around the garden like their favourite animal. Son1 was a dinosaur and son2 was a penguin.

They also had great fun making a brilliant den in the garden, using rugs and chairs.

And son1 tried throwing a flip flop as far as he could.

And from the list for week 3, son2 made his own musical shaker. And then had fun playing it.

Whilst son1 tried swinging as high as he could. He is not particularly keen on the motion of swinging, but he gave it his best try.

And of course, they chose to build a sandcastle on holiday.

For week 4, son1 dribbled a football around the obstacle course at a play area.

And the boys did a three-legged race together very well without falling over.

On our trip to the museum at Kings Lynn, both boys tried out an old fashioned version of skittles. Here is a photo of son 2 giving it a go. He knocked down lost of the pins.

I also taught son1 how to skim a stone. The stones mostly plummeted to the bottom, but he had one successful skim, however I wasn’t ready with the camera to capture the moment. So we completed a total of 12 of the challenges.

This blog post is an entry into the Tots100/Robinsons Fruit Shoot Get Your Skills On competition.

Draw With Me – Space

Last year I found a nice kids drawing competition on “This Mummy Loves” blog which my boys enjoy taking part in. It is a monthly competition and this month the theme is Space. Last month only son2 took part and this month we have reversed and only have an entry from son1.

Son1 has done a very detailed drawing which he tells me is the “Fly Me to the Moon” special assignment from his Lego City Wii U game.

lego city special assignment fly me to the moon

He started giving me a very detailed explanation of his drawing, so I suggested we do a video instead.

This post is an entry to Draw With Me.

An Alphabetti view on Children’s Books Week

Tots100 have teamed up with Heinz and challenged bloggers to recreate a quote from your favourite children’s book using Heinz Alphabetti for Children’s Book Week.

This sounded a great way of making meal time fun. So I made sure to buy a tin of Heinz Alphabetti on my weekly shop and then asked son2 to choose a line from one of his favourite books. He initially wanted to do something from his Angry Birds book but I persuaded him to choose something more mainstream. He then selected the quote “The turnip got bigger and bigger” from the traditional Russian fairy tale The Enormous Turnip, (original author unknown).

I tipped the Alphabetti out of the tin and spread it out over a chopping board for him to then search for the letters he needed. I kept my fingers crossed that he would find 5 G’s, but we were fine. The only problem came afterwards when he didn’t want to eat a proper portion. He only wanted to eat the quote.

The turnip got bigger and bigger

This blog post is an entry into the Tots100/Heinz competition to support Children’s Book Week.

Draw With Me – Design a Plate

Last year I found a nice kids drawing competition on “This Mummy Loves” blog which my boys enjoy taking part in regularly. It is a monthly competition and this month the theme is a little different from usual. The children have been asked to design a plate. Son1 was planning to do a lego Chima design, but never got round to it in time.

Son2 decided to do some of his favourite characters from Thomas the Tank Engine on his plate. And although I carefully explained to him that he shouldn’t draw too close to the edge of the circle, my words fell on deaf ears, and he even went beyond the edge.

He has told me that he has drawn Thomas, Toby, James, Edward, Percy, Henry and Gordon on the railway, including their engine numbers. Cranky the crane at the side. Jeremy the plane and Harold the helicopter at the top. But he says he can’t remember the name of the boat that he has drawn at the bottom. I don’t either, but I see he has numbered it 17. So can anyone help us out with a reminder of the name of boat 17 from Thomas the Tank Engine please?

This post is an entry to Draw With Me.

Draw With Me – Under The Sea

Last year I found a nice kids drawing competition on “This Mummy Loves” blog which my boys enjoy taking part in. It is a monthly competition and this month the theme is Under The Sea.

Son2 painted a very detailed drawing including an octopus, seaweed and fish. I am very impressed with his effort. Meanwhile son1 cut out a fish shape and decorated it with a mottled effect.

Under the Sea by son2

Fish by son1

This post is an entry to Draw With Me.

Draw With Me – Family

Last year I found a nice kids drawing competition on “This Mummy Loves” blog which my boys enjoy taking part in.  It is a monthly competition and this month the theme is Family.

Son2 put quite a bit of effort into his drawing of our family doing it twice, as he declared that he was too big on his first drawing. And son1 initially said he was going to a family tree of our extended family including grandparents and cousins, but changed his mind and spent only a couple of minutes drawing us a stick family.

Our family by son2

Our family by son1

This post is an entry to Draw With Me.

Draw With Me – Spring

Last year I found a nice kids drawing competition on “This Mummy Loves” blog.  It is a monthly competition and this month the theme is Spring.  This month we decided to be a little more adventurous than just using pens and paper, so son2 has painted a chick on a paper plate. And son1 started with a paper plate centre and has added petals and seeds for his flower.

Son2 and his chick

Son1 and his flower

This post is an entry to Draw With Me.