Here we are again, we’ve had a lovely chilled week off school and we’re almost at the end of our first week back…and it’s only six weeks until the Christmas holidays!! We do break up a full week before Christmas this year though so we’ll have a bit longer to wait for the day itself.

Toby’s photo this week was taken during the holidays – he was learning how to sew a badge on his camp blanket for one of his Cub badges. I was actually very impressed with how neat it was when he was finished. A bit more practice and he can start sewing the badges on his uniform too!

Like I said, we had a few chilled days at home during the holidays. The boys did go to their Street Monkeys holiday camp on one day, and on Friday we went to the World Museum in Liverpool which was great. We had been there when Toby and Gabe were 4 and 2, and they didn’t really remember much about it so there was plenty for them to enjoy.

Our first day back at school was Halloween – we don’t normally do anything for Halloween, I’m not a fan and the boys aren’t really bothered about it either, but this year Gabe had Beavers on Monday night and they had said the children could dress up so we had to do something.

I didn’t want to buy a costume so I had a quick think – Gabe already had black joggers and a black t-shirt, so I convince him that he could be a spider and it wouldn’t take too much effort from me. I am really proud of the finished costume, mostly because I managed to put it together from 3 pairs of children’s tights, a bedsheet, some elastic, a fleece had and some googly eyes! The best bit though was that I didn’t cut or sew anything – I just stuffed the sheet into 2 pairs and of the tights, tucked them into one another and used the third pair to tie them onto Gabe’s back. Then I tied elastic onto the arms so they would all move at the same time.

The best bit was the whole thing came apart again afterwards so all the parts can be used for something else and we don’t end up with a costume that will be worn once and never again!

I hope you’ve had a lovely school holiday whatever you’ve been up to…

This is my ninth year taking part in this linky celebrating childhood, based on a poem by Kahlil Gibran, “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth” .

If you’d like to see the rest of my Living Arrows posts you can find them all here.