A Very Special Play Date

The children had a play date today and I had a really good catch up with my dear friend Reneé.

We had been invited to a family playtime brunch event. It was no ordinary bloggers’ event. Before we arrived, I honestly thought the line-up of activities looked over-ambitious and probably too good to be true. It was as good as it looked on paper, better even!

After a dreadful night and very little sleep, I could barely keep my eyes open on the train, but luckily, I was greeted with coffee as soon as we arrived.

The children were ecstatic to see their friends and they got started on the activities available minutes after I had dumped all our belongings (how much do we carry around, seriously?) on Reneé’s pushchair. They started looking for clues for an activity trail organised by Tractor Ted. That gave them an opportunity to visit briefly all the rooms they would be in today.

They were then involved in a fun and interactive workshop with children’s TV presenter Lloyd Warbey.

They were all really focused for forty-five minutes, creating Halloween lanterns and helping each other. That gave Reneé and I some time to chat. Perfect!

We then discovered ‘the snow room.’ The clever people at Crystal Ski Holidays had turned a small room into picturesque alpine sensory room, using a giant picture of a ski slope, a deck chair and fake snow. Hours of fun were guaranteed for my little ones! Snow fell, snow angels were made, snow ‘castles’ were built (they are still in summer holiday mode!), winter coats and goggles were worn. How I long for a ski holiday…

Crevette won a mini Hornit at the raffle, and if you have not heard of these wonderful horns for bikes and scooters, look them up; they are fab! These mini horns, created by friendly Tom, come with lots of sound effects and bright lights.

I then spent ages chatting with Fran at the HomeSense stand, and the girls were desperate to take all the cute decorations she had carefully displayed (sorry, Fran!). There was a pretty reindeer in the room, and it was asking for cuddles, so Jumpy obliged him. She really wanted to take him home, bless her.

Mini Nom Noms provided us with delicious, healthy tajine and butter chicken and the children loved creating their own spice blends.

When I take Jumpy to events, I always bring a bag full of food she can actually eat, since it is quite tricky to cater for her allergies but today was refreshingly allergy-friendly.

She could have a range of snacks (Pop Chips, Bear Nibbles, Coconut Crisps, Heavenly Squishies), drinks from Rebel Kitchen and ‘real’ food as well! She devoured the portion of butter chicken the lovely ladies at Mini Nom Noms gave her and asked for more.

As I was chatting to a few people, Crevette got really enthusiastic with Love Face Art and Steph’s body art workshop. I kept seeing him trying the stencils and various colours on a lot of children and adults alike. Nobody seemed too annoyed and he was in his element.

As for the girls, they were enjoying a bit of storytelling.

The day ended with a lively, fun Drama workshop with Matt (Perform). All children were captivated the whole time. Impressive!

Reneé and I had a nice conversation with Sally, who organised the whole event, and complimented her on the level of organisation, food, range of workshops and the fact it was by far the most child-friendly event we had ever attended.

The day was not only filled with activities aimed at children. There were sessions about blogging and parenting. Return to Glory were offering neck ad shoulder massages as well as manicures, but I did not even manage to make it to them before the end of the day (sigh).

Oh, and we were given a goody bag so heavy I had to ask Hubby to pick us up at the train station. We discovered its contents as soon as we got home. We were given a cookbook (Olive It), snacks, Bananagrams, a Tractor Ted DVD and keyring, Jim Jam spread, lots of beauty samples, La Roche-Posay sunscreen…)

Thanks for inviting us, Talk to Mums. Brilliant day!