#SilentSunday 16/10/11

The day we met The Bopps...

You gotta love Twitter - I have made some lovely acquaintances, and a few good friends; kept up with some old friends and hob-nobbed with the stars, whilst in my pj's! Recently I found @KeithBopp, one half of NickJr musical duo The Bopps and, being the friendly sort of chap he is, we chatted about random stuff (mainly cake) for a bit before working out that we acually only live a few miles apart! And that Bopp Towers - The Bopps HQ was literally only a half hour bus ride away...

And then Keith invited me and the Little Man along to visit. Well it would have been rude not to!

It was easy enough to locate - it's across the road from the old building where I worked at my first proper job (between bands!) as a solicitors receptionist. An unassuming building, with no clue to the silliness that goes on within!
Keith let us in with a big beaming smile and I could see the Little Man was a little bit confused - where were the pink braces? The stripey t-shirt? It was KB but not as he knew him... Then he heard Stan's voice from the office down the corridor and giggled. We were in Bopp Towers!!

After a bit of chat and some cake (my lemon curd cake was, after all, the main reason I was invited ;-) ) the lads very kindly 'Bopped up', reappearing in full Bopp costume much to the Little Man's delight!!

be afraid....

high five!

it's a geeeeetar!

Honorary Bopp for a moment...

"I like that song...and that one...and..."

Then we got a tour of Bopp Towers including the studios where the Little Man got excited over the computers while I drooled over the mixing desk...

 This is where a lot of voice over work for various childrens TV shows is done. We also visited the post -production room and the most important room of the building - the table football room.

And I saw the squirrel suit. That's right, THE squirrel suit. I had to resist the urge to try it on.

Original models from the 'Little Red Tractor' series created for CBeebies

While Keith told me a little about the post production work they do here, the Little Man got up to mischief with Stan, giving him a crash course in the 'create' section of Nick Jr website - there was a lot of giggling going on...

Too soon it was time for us to go so Stan and Keith could get on with planning their live show (like the hard working couple of chaps they are ;-) )


Thank you to Keith and Stan Bopp for making us feel so welcome and for entertaining the Little Man and really making his day special. He has been enthusiastically telling everyone who would listen all about the fun he had at Bopp Towers!

He has also been enthsiastically listening to The Bopps cd. Over and over again. I now know ALL the words...

The Bopps are on NickJr at 7:35am every morning and hope to be appearing live at a venue near you very soon too!! You can follow KeithBopp on Twitter or join TheBopps on Facebook for news and general silliness. The Bopps also have their own website

 

Forest Flower Designs gets featured...

I have been working very hard over the past few weeks, gearing Forest Flower Designs up for the Christmas craft fair season. I have my first one - billed as a Christmas shopping night - at a local village hall on the 21st October (that's less than two weeks! *gulp* ) Last year's event was very successful for me, despite a relatively small turnout so I am looking forward to this year's event... I have lots of Rustic Country Collection mini bunting garlands (more about those in another post...) hearts and birds ready to go plus some fabric covered diaries and address books, cute wallets and christmassy patchwork table runners and place mats in the making. So many more ideas but so little time...

In other news I was offered a trial run with online boutique Gift Wrapped and Gorgeous, including their full pr package which included uploading of hi-res images of my products onto Press Loft. This is where all the journalists go to source product images for magazines - monthly membership costs something in the region of £200 so to have someone do this on my behalf, for free (for a limited period) has been tremendously helpful in developing Forest Flower Designs, as you can imagine. Especially when I received an email a few weeks back to say that one of my images had been downloaded by a journalist from Living Edge!

To say I was a bit excited is possibly an understatement

Then, last week I got another email with a pdf attached of a page full of red and white loveliness!!!

Honestly I am so proud to see something I have made in print, alongside all those other gorgeous things - every one of which I would quite happily give a home to by the way!

So many thanks to Alison and Amanda at GWAG for giving me this opportunity and to Leanne who does all the pr stuff for keeping me in the loop!


I am currently building a new website using create.net which I am really enjoying working on. It is much more geared towards the creating of a great online shopping experience for my customers and much easier to use than the MrSite package I currently have. Hoping to re-launch by the end of October and I will be posting some exclusive 'blog readers special offers' so stay tuned!!

Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom DVD Review & Giveaway

"Somewhere hidden amongst thorny brambles is a Little Kingdom of elves and fairies. Everyone who lives here is very, very small..."


The Little Man loves Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom (although he insists on calling Holly, 'Horny' which was funny at first...) and watches this BAFTA award winning show regularly on Milkshake (Channel 5) and Nick Jr, so he was pretty excited to get stuck into this DVD when it arrived.

Ben Elf and Princess Holly get up to all sorts of adventures in the ten episodes featured here - including a trip to Santa's workshop (The Elf Factory), a search underground as everything goes missing (The Ant Hill) and on a treasure hunt with a real pirate (Redbeard the Elf Pirate)!

If your child regularly watches Ben & Holly then, sadly, there is nothing here they haven't already seen. There are no extras on the DVD although you can use the 'Magic Shuffle' option that plays the episodes in a different order (keeps 'em on their toes!) However it does run to nearly 2 hours which represents pretty good value and I find these DVD's are particularly good to take away on holiday where regular TV may not be available.

Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom : The Tooth Fairy was released to buy on October 3rd 2011 (cert U, Entertainment One RRP £12.99) but Entertainment One have very kindly supplied one copy for me to give away to one of my lucky readers!

All you have to do is tell me the name of the Pirate that features in the 'Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom: The Tooth Fairy' DVD.

For an extra entry 'Like' the Tales from Mount Pleasant Facebook page and leave a comment to tell me so!

Or if you are a tweeter tweet "I'd like to win a little magic! Ben & Holly DVD giveaway from @forestflower23" with a link to this post.

This competition is open to UK residents only and finishes at 9pm on Monday 17th October.

Good Luck everyone!

**This giveaway is now closed**

There are more Ben & Holly activites over on the Nick Jr website and they even have their own website LittleKingdom.co.uk with games, stories, clips to watch and things for your little ones to do.

#SilentSunday 02/10/11

Summer's final fling...

Thanks to an unexpected little block of high pressure, after a less than summery end to the Great British Summer we are now basking in what has to be the best weather we've had for months. So whilst all the magazines are touting Autumnal treats, presenting us with chunky winter woollies, tweed and boots and shops are starting to promote their Christmas deals, we are all slapping on the suncream, lighting the BBQ and filling up the paddling pool one last time.

We made the most of this good weather by taking a stroll around Soudley Ponds...

The sun is much lower in the sky at this time of year and the play of light through the leaves and across the water is very different to 'high summer'. I love it - it lends a very atmospheric, almost fairytale feel to the surroundings...

Paying attention to the undergrowth reminds us that actually it IS Autumn... (I think these ones are edible - I must go on a  'mushroom hunt' with an expert!)

The Forest of Dean is a popular tourist spot because it has all these wonderful places to visit. How lucky are we to actually live here?

...and finally, a beautiful end to a beautiful day...

Make the most of this glorious weather folks, we all know it won't last!

Just because...

You know how sometimes you do something, say something, create something that you makes you feel incredibly pleased with yourself and, hopefully without coming across as too big headed (it's just not British...), you want to share it with everyone and their dog?

Well, the other day I posted a picture on Twitter. I was going to save it for Silent Sunday but I loved it so much and was so proud of it I just wanted to share! Lots of you loved it and I thank you for your comments :)

The subject is Rudbeckia - so I'm told. Mum gave me a small plant in with some others she'd grown. I'm sure she probably told me at the time what it was but it was obviously classified as 'it's not really life or death is it?' and dropped into the bottom drawer of the last filing cabinet that is my memory bank.

All I know is that it has got much bigger than I expected and the dark red flowers are just stunning!

So here is the picture again, along with a couple of others.

Just because...