Traveling toys: cars

Soon we are going on holiday, I will not be packing many toys, just a few. This is one of them. One of my "traveling toys", this one is usually in the children's church bag and thanks to it T. has made a new friend :)

So far the children have not really used the road I've made, they prefer to drive freely around. Maybe later on when they are older.

Little N.'s second birthday!

How time flies! I can hardly believe that my little girl is already two years old! 

And she got loads and loads of presents! You can see there and there what I had prepared. But there was a change of plan. Indeed when packing I realized it was an awful lot. So I kept three small presents for Christmas (two of the pasta boxes and the chocolate box).

The suitcase is part of the present. It is called "Trunki" and is meant to be a hand-luggage on which the children can roll and play while waiting at the airport.We used it already the day after her birthday and she just loved it! It is the perfect luggage to keep children amused while waiting.

One box of pasta, the mini mouse box, the pencil case and a an ice cream set! All that in addition to a small kitchen and all sorts of presents that she got from her two families :) I guess we can say she was spoiled ;)

Travelling toys - N's birthday presents again!

As I have mentionned before, I have been working hard on making little N.'s birthday presents. I am now pleased to say that I am completely done (just working on my niece's present now) and I just need to wrap everything :)

The two themes for her presents are: * felt food and * travelling

Here is what I made to keep her busy when we will be waiting at the airport in August:

* A pencils and note-book case (here is where I got the inspiration from)

 * And a mouse in a tin-box with her teddy bear (here is the link)

 

 They are not as good looking as on the website I found, but I like them well enough. I must confess that I made them very quickly one morning before my children woke up, i.e. half an hour or so!

I find it very hard to wait until next month to give N. all of her presents! I will show you the last thing only after her birthday so as to not spoil the surprise for her little friend' mother - he is getting the same thing as her... ;)

Travel wallet

Finally I get on posting something new! I am sorry for the delay but I am not very well these days so things are taking longer, plus Baby N. is growing quickly now (crawling all around the flat and sleeping much less!) so there is little time left to write very much but also to even sew something! But here is one of the last things I managed to make (in a hurry).

 

Up to now I had never bothered taking things out of my wallet when travelling abroad, but around Easter my father-in-law got his wallet pickpocketed which made me think twice about it when I travelled again. One has so many things in one's wallet! Most of them are not needed when you are not in your home country, so since I was travelling on my own with Baby N. (by plane), I decided to take the bare minimum. The only "problem" was that I did not have anything of the right size to accomodate Baby N.' passport. That was solved rather quickly by taking some fabrics (I do like checking the fabric section in Ikea, they often have remains which they sell for a euro or so), press-studs and the sewing-machine, cutting and sewing in a few hours (hence the poor finished-look by the way!).

First step: making a sample with paper to check the idea(s), then cut and sew for real. One of the pictures does give you the dimensions of the different small pockets (without seam-allowance!) - but the whole thing (if memory serves - forgot to write it down) is 15cm x 30cm (again without seam-allowance).

 Here I added (pretty much at the last minute) an extra pocket for my driving-licence. I wasn't sure whether I would need it on my trip or not.

 Everything on this wallet closes with a press-stud. I had no time to think of something 1) prettier 2) easier to use.

The dimensions

 A couple more pictures to see it as a whole:

 To summarise:This wallet can accomodate 1x passport, 1x ID card (French format), coins, 4x cards (here 2x credit cards and 2x health insurance cards), 1x parisian transport ticket (or more), 1 x german transport ticket, 1x driving licence (French format) and various papers (boarding pass or luggage check-list for instance). All this in a rather supple wallet that fits easily in an over-full mummy's handluggage.

 Would you make something similar for yourself? :)

P.S: all the small folds and straps are explained by my fear (maybe even phobia) of losing anything. I always worry that things might just slide out of the wallet. Only for the transport tickets (on the left side) do not have the planned straps because I managed to pull myself together and accept the fact that I could lose them, it would not be a very big deal.