Indoor Active, Roche, Cornwall

(Photo from indoor active website) 

Nana is babysitting for the first time so I needed to wear the Zebra out in the hopes she goes to bed easily tonight! 

We have been to Indoor Active a few times now and always have fun, so we headed over after her afternoon nap.

If you live in Cornwall take two forms of ID with you to get your locals card - it's free and will give you 20% off entry and 15% off food and drink.

Also make sure you log your registration number to get the free extended parking.

As the soft play centre works with the food outlets in the service station, they have a great range of drinks, snacks and meals. The down side is if you just want a drink carton it can take a while for the order to be brought over. 

Also, there is only baby change facilities - if you need the loo you need to leave Indoor Active and use the service station toilets. 

Once we were fed and watered it was time to play! The soft play is spread over several stories that get very high. The top part is certainly not great for anyone with a fear of heights! 

There are lots of different play pieces with a big slide running through the middle. It's a great, fast slide but is awful for giving skin burns so wear socks and keep arms in...

The centre is suitable for all ages. Although the the Zebra is only 18months so is able to get around most of the site.

Other parts she needs a bit of help with! 

Next to the soft play is the "clip and climb" room. It looks amazing! You can see the climbing walls from all the different levels and it's safe to say there are a lot of fearless kids out there! No one was climbing today unfortunately. 

It wasn't just the climbing that was quiet, we had most of the soft play to ourselves. We usually go early or mid afternoon and it is never busy, which is lovely! 

On the ground level is a smaller area for younger children and babies. 

This is where they hide the best bit - the ball pool!! 

A very tired Zebra ended her visit with a yummy cookie, which she wasn't too keen on sharing with mummy! 

We would always recommend Indoor Active as a fan soft play for any age 

Blueberry muffins

Today we are attempting blueberry muffins! Here is another another yummy recipe from BBC Food this time by the lovely Paul Hollywood. 

For the recipe you will need:

- 110g plain flour 

- 110g butter 

- 65g caster sugar

- 2 eggs

- 1½ tsp baking powder 

- 125g blueberries

- pinch nutmeg 

****preheat oven to 200****

It was only when measuring out the ingredients I realised I didn't have enough real butter, so we had to use spread instead. It's easier to mix but doesn't give the same end taste.

Add the caster sugar and nutmeg to the butter and give a good mix.

Pour in the eggs and beat well until the mixture is smooth.

Fold in the flour and baking powder until you get a good consistency.

Add the blueberries into the bowl. More than one generally works best.

Or you can just eat as many as possible until mummy takes them away!

Spoon the mixture into cases in a muffin tin

And don't forget to lick the bowl clean!

Pop in the oven for 20 minutes.

The Zebra was very pleased with her blueberry muffins, but she wasn't pleased they took so long to cool down!

Foam Christmas Trees

We might not have our tree up yet but we can start making decorations ready for it!

I bought a muktipack of green foam trees from The Range but you could also cut them out of green paper. I wanted the session to be more about exploratory fun for the Zebra so I found lots of different textures for decorations; Pom Poms, glitter, feathers, petals, and roll paint. Any colours can be used but I went for a red festive theme 

We used the roller stick of paint first. The Zebra really enjoys footprint painting right now so it wasn't long before her toes got into the action! 

When not distracted by Frozen, we used pritt-stick for the feathers

The Zebra used a paintbrush to get PVA glue onti the tree before sticking on the petals

The Pom-Poms were too small for the Zebra to stick on individually so she would drop handfuls onto the PVA covered tree 

Saving the best for last...time to shake-shake glitter onto the glue! 

Because of the variety of materials used today, the Zebra was kept amused for ages! 

I can't wait for the tree to go up and these decorations to hang on the branches :) 

Happy thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American mamas! Hope your having a great day :) 

I am very thankful for all that I have right now - although it my not be a lot materially, I have the sweetest, funniest, grumpiest Zebra I could ever ask!

Enough with the sentiments, and onto the crafts! 

Let's start with food, because we love playing with our food here! On the menu for lunch is a turkey sandwich with apple and cucumber feathers. This turkey is thankful for his pots of cheese, raisins and crackers.

The Zebra is thankful I remembered to take the googley eyes off before she started eating!

We had three different craft activities this afternoon, a wreath, a turkey and corn. 

The wreath was a very quick and easy make. The only preparation needed was to cut the middle out of the paper plate.

Spread glue all around the plate wreath

After you've finished tickling and playing with the feathers, stick them onto the plate.

It's also fun to throw the feathers up and let them land, before squishing them into the glue.

Once it's all dry, the wreath can be popped up on the wall! 

The Zebra did her painting for the turkey and corn all at the same time, and then mummy finished them off once she was in bed and it had all dried.

To get the corn and feather effect, I used yellow, orange and brown paint layered on the paper. Use Pritt-stick to glue bubble wrap onto a rolling pin, then paint on a colour.

I used brown first as it's the darkest colour and made a good base for both projects.

After that was the red 

Followed by the yellow. The Zebra had great fun applying the colour, it was a very quick and easy way to get the whole pieces of paper covered. The texture of bubbles and paint on the pin was also great for her to play and explore 

After we had several piece of printed paper, it was time for free play with the paints! 

Once the prints had all dried it was time for mummy to do her thing! 

To make the corn, cut one print into a sausage shape. Using some green paper, cut out the shape of the leaves. Stick it all together and your done!

For the turkey, cut out a template for the wing - it should be about 1/3 of a piece of A4 paper.

Cut out 8 feathers, trying to get the most coloured parts of the prints.

Using brown paper, cut out a peanut shape, with the top half slightly smaller.

Arrange the feathers around the body and glue on. Using scraps from the prints, cut out two legs and a beak. Pop on some googley eyes and use a feather for the snood!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!