Evacuate!

I'm getting quite good at this school dress up day thing, yes I'm swiftly moving away from that feeling of utter detest each time the school mentions it, but don't be fooled; I'm not yet loving it...I'm not sure how or when I got more enthusiastic about it...perhaps it was just the simple case of having more than three weeks notice this time. So there was no flat panic, no rush trying to throw something together and there was plenty of time to decide what was needed, what we had  and what could make do. The topic this time: World War Two Evacuee's.

Getting Monkey-Moo off to the library really helped, he may have cleared out the entire World War Two section of books, but it really paid off. Not only did we get a clear picture of what he need to look like (yes I did a Google image search too) but he managed to find a book that had tons of art and craft ideas all centred around WW2. He decided to make his own gas mask.

I think he did a really good job. Apologies that I didn't get a photo of it without him holding it in place.

Here he is; an old white shirt he used for a wedding years ago (looking slim fit but still useful) a pair of tailored shorts (last seasons fashion trend), school socks and shoes and a plain grey v-necked jumper picked up in the local supermarket, all topped off with (the now trendy) flat cap!

Final touches to finish off the look- simply a tag and his boxed gas mask.

And with that dress up day success under my belt, I have just learnt that both Monkey-Moos will be needing to don 60's themed outfits at the end of the month...watch this space for those creations....right now I'm off to Pinterest to work out how to tie dye fabric...

World Book Day DIY Dress UP

Now if you've read my blog before, you will know how I feel about school dress up days! Hate is a strong word, I think detest is probably a little  more accurate!

Putting my feelings to one side: it's World Book Day, and naturally the Monkey-Moos have to dress up as their favourite book characters. All fine and dandy, but my two head strong monkeys refused to use the pirate outfits we already have (Pirates next door) or the Peter Pan one we had from previous years and instead insisted on Greg (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) and Mr Snow (Mr Men series)....here in lies a problem...white...boys want to wear white...NOOOOOOO!!!

After running around desperately trying to locate White jumpers for the Fussy Monkey-Moos to wear (it is after all still too cold to do t-shirts) and coming up empty handed, I managed to find the last white long sleeve t-shirt in Monkey-Moo #1's size but nothing for #2.

Being as crafty (in the sly sense of that word) as I am, I set about planting seeds to chang Mr Snow to Mr Bump. #2 took some serious convincing. But I won in the end! Yay me!

So with a £3 Blue Jumper, two bandages and a sheet of black felt, I got to work!

A bit of sewing, a lot of pinning and a little cutting.

Tadah..
We have our little MR Bump!

After all that sewing and re-pinning...they seemed to have a life of their own those pins.... Greg aka Wimpy Kid was a simple 20 minute job!

Getting Monkey-Moo#1 to decided on a facial expression wasn't nearly as easy as it sounds. After several changes we settled on one (which changed again at the last minute), located some card, an old polystyrene pizza round some double sided tape and got out a trusty marker pen. Ready set go!

Sketched, drawn and then cut, added details and left a small "neck" so Monkey-Moo could hold it up.
Hello Greg!