FAMILY WEEKLY UPDATE: 13TH – 19TH JULY | Leo's Leaving Assembly, Wild Things at The Lowry & Handmade Teacher Gifts

Family Weekly Update

This week felt like a lovely mix of family milestones, creative projects and days out. We attended Leo's leaving assembly at school, enjoyed another trip to the Trafford Centre, finally got my Cutting Stacker set up, spent a fantastic morning exploring the new Wild Things exhibition at The Lowry and rounded off the week by making personalised teacher gifts together.

Here is this week's Family Weekly Update, sharing everything we got up to during the week.

🏡 Monday – Editing & Weekly Catch Up

Monday was one of those quieter days that gave me the chance to catch up on work behind the scenes.

As usual, I spent most of the day editing last week's weekly vlog before writing my previous Family Weekly Update blog post. Although these are probably my most time-consuming posts to write, they've become one of my favourite parts of the week as it's nice looking back over everything we've been up to as a family.

By the time I'd finished editing the vlog, written the blog post and sorted a few jobs around the house, the day had flown by.

🎓 Tuesday – Leo's Leaving Assembly, Trafford Centre & Family Games

Tuesday was a really special day as Lawrence and I attended Leo's leaving assembly at school.

For anyone who has followed our family for a while, you'll know that Leo often finds assemblies overwhelming and doesn't usually attend them, so seeing him confidently taking part and joining in with all of his classmates made us incredibly proud.

Watching him stand up with the rest of his class and take part in the celebration was one of those moments that reminds you just how far he's come over the past year.

After the assembly, Lawrence and I decided to make the most of having a little time together before collecting the children from school, so we caught the bus to the Trafford Centre.

Our first stop was the Disney Store inside Selfridges. I always enjoy having a look around whenever we visit because the stock changes so regularly, but although there were lots of lovely things to see, nothing quite tempted me enough to make a purchase this time.

Afterwards, we headed to one of our favourite lunch spots, Pesto.

We've become quite regular visitors recently and once again decided to go for the excellent £13.99 lunch menu, where you can choose three dishes each.

I ordered my usual favourites — chicken wings, spicy sausage and a pepperoni pizza — while Lawrence chose the spicy sausage, arancini and lasagne. We also shared some garlic bread with cheese and enjoyed a Diet Coke each.

Everything was absolutely delicious and it was a lovely little midweek treat.

Once we'd finished lunch, I popped into the Haribo shop to pick up a couple of bags of sweets that you don't normally find anywhere else. This time I chose a bag of the red and white sweets along with a bag of the Strawberry Softies, both of which are favourites of mine.

We then walked across the bridge into Trafford Palazzo to have a look around Primark and Primark Home.

There were so many new Disney items in both stores that I couldn't resist filming another Disney Come Shop With Me video while I was there. It's always fun seeing what new Disney products have arrived.

Before long it was time to catch the bus home to collect Alice and Leo from school.

Once everyone had changed out of their uniforms, we all sat down together and played several rounds of Uno followed by Matching Pairs.

It's become a bit of a new tradition after school and we've all been enjoying it so much. It's such a simple thing, but spending half an hour playing games together has quickly become one of my favourite parts of the day.

After dinner, I finished editing my Disney shopping video ready to upload.

✂️ Wednesday – Finally Setting Up My Cutting Stacker

Wednesday was one of those really satisfying days where I finally got around to doing something that had been sitting on my to-do list for months.

I finally unboxed and set up my Cutting Stacker, which I'd bought quite a while ago but had never actually found the time to use.

Thankfully, everything worked perfectly straight away and after doing a few test cuts I knew it was going to make future crafting projects much easier.

I've been wanting to create my own range of theatre-themed stationery for quite some time, so I spent the rest of the morning designing my first collection of notebooks.

By lunchtime I'd created five different theatre-inspired notebook designs and I'm really excited to start turning them into finished products over the coming weeks.

After school, Alice and Leo immediately asked if we could play more games together, so once again we had several rounds of Uno and Matching Pairs before dinner.

Later that evening, I made a start on editing the first of our three London vlogs, which brought back lots of lovely memories from our trip.

🎶 Thursday – Speech Therapy & Alice's Ukulele Concert

Thursday was definitely one of the busiest days of the week.

After dropping Alice off at school, I took Leo to school before heading home for a quick breakfast.

Not long afterwards, it was time to head back to Alice's school to pick her up as she had a speech therapy appointment.

Originally I wasn't planning on sending her into school beforehand because she was only going to be there for around fifty minutes, but the school asked if she could attend first, so that's what we did.

After her appointment, I took her back to school before heading home for a quick lunch.

Then, before I knew it, I was back at school once again for Alice's ukulele concert.

She did such a fantastic job.

She joined in with everything, played beautifully alongside the rest of her class and looked so confident throughout the performance.

Lawrence and I were incredibly proud of her.

Once the concert had finished, Alice was allowed to come home with us a little early, so we collected Leo from school before heading home together.

The children were desperate to carry on our new tradition of after-school games, so this time we played Hungry Hippos followed by a game called Windy Knickers, which had everyone laughing.

It's been such a lovely way to spend time together and it's something we're definitely hoping to continue over the summer holidays.

Later that evening, once the children were in bed, I carried on editing Day 2 of our London vlog series.

🌊 Friday – Leo's School Trip to the Beach

Friday was a really exciting day for Leo as his class headed off on their school trip to the beach.

While he was busy collecting shells and enjoying the seaside with his friends, I spent the day finishing the final edit of Day 3 of our London Vlogs before making a start designing some of the pages for my theatre journal.

School pick-up turned into a little bit of an adventure.

Leo's coach unfortunately got caught in traffic on the way home and ended up arriving around an hour later than planned.

I collected Alice from school as usual before heading back to wait for Leo, who eventually arrived home at around 4pm looking very happy despite the long journey.

He proudly showed us everything he had collected during the day, including shells, interesting stones and several sticks that he'd decided were too good to leave behind.

After hearing all about his adventures, we finished the afternoon with another game of Matching Pairs before I settled back down to edit a few more videos.

🦁 Saturday – Wild Things at The Lowry

Saturday morning was one we had all been looking forward to as we were invited to the launch event for Wild Things, the brand new family exhibition at The Lowry.

My dad came with us and, because the trams aren't running to The Lowry at the moment, my mum kindly dropped us off opposite the Imperial War Museum North before we made the familiar walk across the bridge.

We arrived just after 10am and headed upstairs to the Circle Bar where there was already a lovely atmosphere.

Families were being welcomed with face painting, temporary tattoos, live illustration sessions, colouring and activity sheets for the children, along with refreshments while everyone waited for the exhibition to open. Alice and Leo each chose a juice carton and a chocolate muffin while Grandad enjoyed a cup of tea.

We then joined the queue for face painting.

Alice decided to become a magnificent lion, while Leo, who has never been keen on having his face painted, opted instead for a colourful rainbow and butterflies painted onto his arm.

Soon afterwards, Michael Simpson, The Lowry's Director of Visual Arts, welcomed everyone, told us a little about the exhibition and what visitors could expect before inviting us through to experience it for the very first time.

Rather than rushing straight in with the crowd, we stayed behind for a few minutes while an artist created beautiful personalised animal illustrations for both children.

Alice chose a lion and a snake, while Leo requested a giant butterfly.

Watching the artist work was probably one of my favourite parts of the morning. I've always loved drawing and painting myself, and seeing someone create such wonderful illustrations from a blank sheet of paper reminded me that it's something I'd really like to start doing again.

As we entered the exhibition, the children were each given a free notebook where they could write and draw their own animal stories inspired by everything they discovered inside.

The exhibition itself was absolutely fantastic.

Based around an A to Z of animals from beloved children's stories, every area was bright, colourful and packed with things for families to discover together.

One thing I particularly enjoyed was learning lots of fascinating facts about the different animals featured throughout the exhibition. Even I came away knowing things I hadn't known before.

Alice's favourite area was definitely the furry wardrobe filled with animal costumes.

She spent ages dressing up before deciding that the tiger costume was her favourite and immediately began chasing Grandad around the gallery pretending to be a tiger.

Leo was completely drawn to the creative drawing spaces.

Small desks had been set up with colouring pencils and postcards where children could draw different animals before pinning their finished pictures onto large display boards.

He proudly created both a giraffe and an X-ray fish before carefully pinning them onto the display boards.

We also spent ages playing at Vera's Veggie Delights market stall, while Leo and I particularly enjoyed a matching game where you had to pair the correct collective noun with different groups of animals.

Before leaving the gallery, we had a look around the small exhibition shop, which was full of books, animal-themed gifts and some very tempting soft toys.

Although we didn't buy anything this time, both children had already started making lists of what they'd like to get when we visit again — including a giant inflatable Elmer the Elephant!

🐝 More Family Fun Around The Lowry

The first thing we did after exploring the exhibition was take part in the Wild Things Animal Safari. After picking up one of the activity leaflets, we set off around the building looking for ten pairs of hidden animals. As we spotted each pair, the children excitedly ticked them off in their booklet.

Leo absolutely loved this activity. He enjoys anything that involves searching for clues and was determined to find every single animal before we left.

Our next activity was Queen Bee's Hive Drama, a 25-minute interactive drama session inspired by Queen Bee's Day Off, which takes place in The Lowry Bar and Kitchen.

The children buzzed around pretending to be busy bees before joining in with a game of Queen Bee Says, which is very similar to Simon Says.

Alice absolutely threw herself into the session and joined in with every activity, while Leo found it a little overwhelming. After about five minutes he decided he'd rather come and sit quietly with Grandad and me, which was absolutely fine. One of the things I really like about The Lowry is that there's never any pressure for children to join in if they don't want to.

As we left the drama session, we spotted Elmer the Elephant making his way through the building.

Of course, Alice and Leo immediately wanted to follow him and were delighted when they got the chance to meet him and have their photograph taken together.

Our final activity of the morning was one of the storytelling sessions in the Storytelling Corner.

This time the story was We're Going on a Bear Hunt.

Once again, Alice loved joining in, acting out the different parts of the story and following all of the storyteller's instructions, while Leo was happy to sit quietly nearby, listening and watching everything unfold.

Before we left, we remembered to pop into The Lowry Shop to collect the children's special Wild Things stickers after successfully completing the Animal Safari. They were both really pleased with their reward.

By this point it was around 1pm and we were all starting to feel hungry, so we decided it was time to head home for some lunch.

Mum came to pick us up and, once we got home, we had something to eat before spending the afternoon relaxing together on the sofa watching Monsters, Inc. followed by Monsters University on Disney+, which was the perfect way to wind down after such a busy morning.

Overall, we all had a fantastic time at Wild Things. There was so much more to experience than just the exhibition itself and it really felt like a full family day out with plenty to keep children of different ages entertained. We'll definitely be back for another visit during the summer holidays.

☕ Sunday – Making Leo's Teacher Gifts

Sunday turned into a full day of crafting as Leo and I worked together to make some personalised teacher gifts ready for the end of term.

Leo had the lovely idea of making each of his teachers their own personalised mug, so he started by drawing lots of pictures before carefully writing each teacher's name.

Once he'd finished, I scanned all of his drawings into the computer and separated each character into its own individual image so I could arrange them into a mug design.

After showing Leo a few different layouts and making a couple of little changes together, we were both happy with the final design.

I printed everything onto sublimation paper before carefully cutting each design out and taping them tightly around the mugs.

Each mug was then placed into a shrink wrap sleeve before I used my heat gun to shrink the plastic tightly around it. This creates the pressure needed for the sublimation process to work properly.

The mugs then went into my dedicated crafting air fryer, which is only ever used for sublimation projects. Once an air fryer has been used for sublimation, it can't be used for cooking food, so I always keep this one just for crafting.

After eight minutes at 200°C, it was time for the moment of truth.

Thankfully they all came out perfectly.

Using the same drawings, I also created matching personalised pens for each teacher.

These were sublimated using the same process, although they only needed five minutes at 190°C.

The whole project took us most of the day, but it was lovely working on something together and seeing Leo so excited to give his teachers something he'd helped to create himself.

Hopefully they'll love them just as much as we do.

💭 Final Thoughts

Looking back, this week was full of moments that made us smile.

From attending Leo's leaving assembly and watching Alice perform so confidently at her ukulele concert, to family games after school, creative crafting projects at home and a brilliant morning exploring Wild Things at The Lowry, it was one of those weeks that reminded me how much joy can be found in spending time together.

I'm also really pleased to have finished editing all three of our London vlogs and finally got my Cutting Stacker set up, so I'm looking forward to getting started on some new stationery projects very soon.

With the summer holidays now just around the corner, I'm excited to see what adventures next week brings.

🎥 Watch This Week's Family Weekly Vlog

You can watch everything we got up to in this week's Family Weekly Update over on my YouTube channel.

This week's vlog includes our trip to the Trafford Centre, setting up my Cutting Stacker, our visit to Wild Things at The Lowry and making Leo's personalised teacher gifts.

I hope you enjoy watching it!

https://youtu.be/o1lsZz8Hi_Q