Wellies & cardboard animals

This is my trusty pair of Hunter wellies that my mum bought for me to take on my week-long 6th form geography field trip in 1985.

At the time I was pretty embarrassed as all my friends had bog standard, plain black wellies and I felt very self conscious in my 'posh' green pair!

Not surprisingly the soles have become worn and they don't grip as well as they used to, so I decided that after 25 years I was justified in buying myself a new pair!!  I chose Hunters again, because if I get 25 years out of the next pair I think that'll be pretty good value for money.  Incidentally, a little shopping around saved about £15 on the Hunter list price.

So these are my new wellies - much more attractive than the old pair.  Interestingly, they don't have 'Made in Britain' stamped into the rubber like the old pair, so presumably they're not.

I had to laugh when my daughter (almost 13) borrowed them to pop round to her friend's house - literally for 5 minutes.  She complained that they didn't go with what she was wearing.  Eh?  They are wellies for goodness sake!!  Maybe if they still just came in a choice of black, black, black or green things would be easier?

On the subject of good quality purchases, my younger daughter (age 10) spent some of her recent snow days making animals using this set that she bought in Edinburgh.  She bought it with her own money and at £8 I was surprised that she was willing to splash out.

There are a lot of cut out and make type of products around, but I can highly recommend this one - well worth the dosh.  The animals are printed on good quality card with an interesting design on the back.  The instructions are very clear and they are relatively easy to make.  I ended up doing the cutting out as she was scared of accidentally removing some essential body parts, but as a joint effort it was lots of fun with really good results.

Having been housebound by the snow for several days we also made lots of naughty cakes and traybakes - every cloud has a silver lining :)