Mindbomb Monday

In the 1970's the founders of Greenpeace came up with the idea of using electronic media to communicate revolutionary ideas, they came up with the tactic "mindbomb" whereby they would use simple images, delivered by the media, that would "explode in people's minds" and create a new understanding of the world.
On some Mondays I hope to share an image that might be considered a "mindbomb" that could get people thinking throughout the week ahead.  I won't include any words with the image as I hope the image alone will speak for itself.  Sometimes I will use images found online, other times it will be my own photographs and they will reflect something that has spoken to me from the past week.  It might be shocking, inspiring, confrontational or uplifting.
If you would like to join in please share your "mindbomb" in a comment.

Best Friend Scrap Book Pages

Recently my best girlfriend turned 30, the day before I turned 31.  We have been friends since before I can remember and I am so thankful to have her in my life.
For her birthday her lovely husband came up with a brilliant idea to create a "This is Your Life" style scrap book containing photos and journalling with fun and happy memories from our life.  I couldn't wait to get started, especially because I don't get to do much craft these days because I have so little free time, what I do do is usually for other people.
In an ideal world I would have had photos of us as children but they are all at my parents house so the pages contained fairly recent photos.  
I used scrap booking papers from my stash, a few flower embellishments and some tags for journalling.

Fun things to do with toddlers - Teddy Bear's Picnic

If you go down to the woods today you're sure of a big surprise,

If you go down to the woods today you'd better go in disguise,

For every bear that ever there was,

Will gather there for certain because,

Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

Today we had a little teddy bear's picnic in the living room, inspired by my friend Vicky.  Boris was sleeping when I set up the picnic.  I put down a plastic mat (in anticipation of spills) with a blanket over the top, and laid it with Boris' toy tea set and several teddies.  I boiled the kettle and made tea (cooled down with cold water) in his tea pot, filled the jug with some watered down almond milk and put a bit of sugar in the sugar pot. I put on a CD with the Teddy Bear's Picnic song on it then woke him up with a whispered "something is happening in the living room!"

He was very excited to see the picnic set up on the living room floor, although we have pretended to make and drink tea with his tea set before he wasn't sure what to do so I made a cup of tea then he had a go pouring the tea from the tea pot through the strainer, adding milk and stirring in sugar.  Of course being a toddler he didn't make tea the "proper" way, he poured tea into the milk jug, poured all the milk into one cup, poured all the sugar into one tea cup, poured the tea from the tea pot via the top rather than the spout and slopped all the tea leaves from the strainer onto the rug.  But he seemed to enjoy it and liked making sure that all the teddies had some tea, I certainly enjoyed the magical feeling of it all and the pleasure on Boris' face. 

This was a useful activity for improving Boris' fine motor skills.  When he is a bit older this will be a great activity for learning about turn taking, sharing and table manners.
Have you ever had a teddy bears picnic with your toddler?  I will definitely be doing this again in future, maybe in the garden next time and maybe with food.

Our tea set is this one from Amazon