44 Things To Do This Summer

With just two weeks of official summer left, I'm in a mild panic. When the school holidays first started we all sat down and made a list of things we wanted to do over the seemingly endless summer days in front of us (inspired once again by the totally wonderful Lou of Little Green Shed and her list – I almost definitely maybe will stop talking about Lou now after writing a whole post in her honour last time).

This was our list of '44 things to do and see'...

All 44 'things' were decided by the children, except for two (clue: if they involve vintage shopping and crochet they might be mine). The rule was that, apart from travel, the things shouldn't cost very much money and we should be able to do them together.

We've done about 27 of them so far, but that leaves 17 without a red tick. And because we don't own a car, some of them are pretty tricky.

One thing we have done though is make a circus big top tent for a puppet show.

... we used a giant cardboard box that I had clogging up the hallway ...

... stapled in a stripy black-and-white curtain door ...

... covered the entire box with pink stripy paper bags ...

... used a red fabric pen to draw circus stripes on the big top canvas ...

... made a flag from washi tape ...

... poured bunting all over it ...

... installed a ticket office manned by the not-really-very-scary-at-all-Lion ...

... and added a performance area at the back to stage puppet shows.

The first show starred Julien as a Pirate Dog wearing a fabulous handmade paper hat and scarf pirate costume ...

... and was extremely well reviewed by Nearly Teen and other theatre critics in the audience ...

After all that, though, I realised making a circus big top wasn't even a 'thing' on our list. Grrrrrr... Maybe I can go back and pencil it in when no-one's looking? And surely the ticket master means we can cross off 'See A Lion'? Even if he's a not very scary at all one.

But even counting Mr Lion, that still means there are still 16 'things' left and only 13 days to go. Oh dear.