Can't see the orchard for the toilet rolls?

It's 6:30 am and I am woken to the call of the wild; "Mummeeee, I need to make a tree-eee". And then more ominously; "Can I look in the recycling bin?"

"Wait for me", I plead through a yawn.

As I stagger from my bed, an empty toilet roll is thrust in my face; "With THIS mummy, I want to make a tree with THIS!"

At 9am that morning we were in full swing. The house filled with coffee smells and the noisy chatter of She-Who-Worships-Pink speaking entirely in exclamation marks.

By ten we were done and this was the result. Toilet roll centers are nifty things indeed.

We drew and cut out shapes in green paper and then snipped the sides of the toilet rolls to partially embed the foliage. The first was pretty basic until I realised you can make several snips spaced out and at different depths to get a better 3D effect.

Our Pink Worshiper drew fruit, cats, dogs and birds and these made their way into the action. We cut one roll in half and made two shrubs, then she started on the flowers, lots of pink ones of course.

"You cut them out MUMMY! My fingers are getting TIRED!"

 But the end of our early morning craft blitz we had scarecrows (Mr & Mrs), a little bear from a biscuit box and a ladybug as well.

She'd even drawn Orange Dog peeing and he was glued to the bottom of a tree too. Then the whole orchard was added to our last major craft build:

The One and a Half Tissue Box House with Nespresso pod box furniture:

Tissue box house- One and a half tissue boxes and using plastic from take-out containers for window panes .

For the house interior we used half a Nespresso pod box, toothpicks, scotch tape, paper, a salt-grinder cap and a medicine bottle lid to make the coffee table.

Little Miss Pink has done a superb job designing the art-deco rug and the TV screen. :0)

Oh and one more fun thing we've done with toilet roll centres this week was for morning news at school where the topic was coral reefs:

The dude clad entirely in black is a diver (cop those crazy swim-fins!)