Holiday Activity Bags

lt has become a little holiday tradition for me to fill a bag with a few activities for Bella and Angus and give it to them right before we leave for wherever we are going on our holiday. I wrote about it here before our trip to the Cotswolds last summer and these bags are very useful things indeed. This year I decided it was high time they had new bags as the old ones were looking tired (and I really wanted to do some applique) so I ordered a couple of these bags and had fun getting creative with fabric scraps and felt. 

The fabric for Bella's name comes from my blogging friend Ada Bea from Vintage Sheet Addict. A while ago we had a crafty swap - I made her daughter a t-shirt and she sent me some fat quarters from her vintage sheet collection. Along with the fat quarters, she popped an envelope bursting with leftover scraps from her stash into the parcel. Ada - thank you! I knew I'd find a use for them.

Angus's name is made up of a mixture of scraps from my fabric stash.* I attach the fabric with bondaweb then straight stitch around the sides to stop them fraying, and make it look nice. I just love this kind of sewing. 

Filling these bags is fun. It's a bit like doing a summertime Christmas stocking, looking for things which are small and inexpensive but entertaining too. I've been putting these bits and pieces away for a few months - sticker books, snacks, pens and paper, toys - and try to find a few things that will keep them amused throughout the holiday, not just the journey. I'm especially please with Bella's Village in a Bag, both she and Angus will enjoy that a lot.

Yes, the snacks are not healthy, but it's a holiday. I'm aiming for "treat" not "lunchbox" here. I'll put an apple and banana in each one on Saturday morning.

It was interesting to read through my post from last year and see what has changed, in particular my comment that Bella and Angus don't travel that well. Things have improved here -  mainly as they are both one year older and so can converse and understand things better, and give us more than two minutes notice for toilet breaks. But also it's because we stopped using the in-car DVD players. There were too many demands for different films, too many awkward, back breaking twisting-around-to-adjust-the-settings moments for the passenger, so many competing noise levels. Now they sit and look out of the window, look at books, talk to us and each other, day dream, sleep. Sometimes they are bored but I think that's ok. It's good for them to be a bit bored sometimes. And we can inflict our taste in music on them too. 

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*My fabric stash is getting out of hand. It's full of scraps and small folded pieces - like maybe twenty types of fabrics in each colour, it's a messy rainbow in there - but the pieces aren't big enough for an actual project so I still need to buy more when I want to sew something. I feel a project coming along, of the quilt variety. I really fancy making a hexagon quilt. I've been watching Charmaine and Sandra create beautiful things with hexagons lately and I am very inspired.