After playing on the beach and in the sea at Bournemouth, we introduced Charlie to the wonder that is Harry Ramsdens which has always been a favourite of mine and I think it’ll be one of the boy’s too judging by the look on his face when we told him he could have chips.

We also went with the purpose of visiting the aquarium there. As he really liked the one at Plymouth earlier this year, it made sense to take him to another one. He loved it even more mainly because hes more aware of whats going on but also for the fact that he can now stand up against the tanks himself for a better look.

Happy birthday Charlie Chops x

“Upcycling is the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value.“

I love the cake that Fi made for Charlie. It went down very well with him and all his friends. You can’t go wrong with sugar when it comes to kids as everything got hoovered up by little mouths in record time only to have half the guests on a sugar high shortly afterwards which was fun to see.

It is indeed amazing how small you can make yourself when you want to climb into a kids tent to take a photograph.

With lots of friends to play with and plenty of nice toys to enjoy, little Charlie had a great day and I hope everyone else did too.

Phew! Who would have thought that a one year old’s party could be so exhausting.

We all emit a small electrical charge from our bodies and its this charge which touchscreens utilise. Unfortunately when we wear thick gloves, the material acts as a barrier prevent the charge from reaching the screen. So I needed some way of making the fingertips of my gloves conductive whilst using materials that wouldn’t scratch the screen.

I achieved this by sewing conductive cotton at various points along the finger and thumb and although I was just experimenting, it worked pretty well as this video shows.

I am having trouble finding the best place to sew down the sides of the fingers and thumb so that the finger gestures work well. I will need to play about some more to get this right but in the meantime I’m happy with my first attempt.

I did (and still do) hate sewing the handles on, they’re such a pain. I am getting better and quicker at them though. I like the size of the bag, ideal for the beach and if pockets were added on the inside, it would make a great baby changing bag. Another idea to add to the growing pile perhaps?

To accompany the bag, a rather clever card was discovered in one of the shops in town. The front of it contained a section of watercolour paper for you to put your own design on it - what a great idea. As they are all fans of Wall-E I had no trouble in deciding what to draw.

My idea involves sewing one side of the bag with a fine copper wire which when connected to a small battery will allow a current to flow through the bag. If poppers are then sewn at various points along the copper wires you would then be able to clip things to the bag’s side which will use the power for whatever purpose.

What I think would work really well are felt flowers which house small LEDs. On the rear of each flower would be corresponding poppers which will allow the flowers to be fixed to the side of the bag and lighting the LEDs as a result. The flowers can then be arranged in any position providing theres poppers available.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult to get the flowers flashing or make flowers with different features like flashing lights of varying colours or even a radio. You then select what flowers/features you want and then head out to start your day.

Just click on the image above to download the larger version.