I'll start off by saying my son had no input into this hat whatsoever. To put it bluntly he could not have been less bothered about the Easter bonnet parade his school was holding or making his hat. Instead he said "okay mummy, you do this, me and daddy go golf?".
And as much as I'd love to say I sat him down told him it was his bonnet and he had to help me. I didn't, mainly because I knew I'd have 100% more fun if I did it alone rather than trying to get a sulky child to assist me.
Basically I've finally learnt that my son is not crafty.
But I had a CRACKING time! First of all I scoured pinterest for ideas. Then I ran the ideas past Lil man and his daddy to see which ones we liked. Then I went to home and bargains and spent a small fortune on supplies [I'm not going to say how much because quite frankly its embarrassing]
Anyhow the basic concept was a bunny rabbit diving into a pot to get a carrot!
Luckily I managed to find a stuffed rabbit with its own stuffed carrot so that saved one job!
The hat was a simple straw one, the grass was part of a multi pack and the ladybirds had little sticker pads underneath. The small rabbit and the chick we already had in the house from previous Easters. I have a sneaking suspicion that the chick may have been from my sister on Lil mans first Easter. They are both sewn onto the base of the hat!
The eggs were those plastic eggs that have sweets and a disappointing toy in, my initial thought was that I might let Lil man eat the sweets but after he abandoned me for golf I ate then as a reward for making the dammed thing. I decorated both of those eggs with sharpie pens to make them look a bit more Easter, and luckily for me they had holes in the base so I could sew them to the hat.
The rabbit is secured into the pot using thread and a LOT of sellotape. In fact this whole concoction is held together with sellotape, glue , thread and prayers. I then stuffed the rest of the flower pot with bin liners to look like "soil".
This all sits in a big old flower pot! which is sewn to the base of the hat and made me use six different swear words!
The grass is a mixture of card and felt and covered the join of the hat to the flower pot. The flowers are buttons [from his godmothers Nana] attached to pipe cleaners. they boing around quite nicely.
I know it looks like a lot but the whole thing maybe took me an hour and a half? I brought a lot of stuff pre-made.
There are a few things I'd do differently next time though.
- smaller flower pot and bunny rabbit. In hindsight these might be a bit big for the head of a five year old.
- make it less top heavy. I personally can balance it perfectly on my head but I spent my childhood balancing books on my head to give me good posture. Lil man however struggled and had to hold it with his hands!
The one thing that did work really well was having a straw hat because it meant I could sew things onto it!
So yes we went to the Easter bonnet parade. It was lovely, long but lovely and there was lots of singing and dancing and some really cool bonnets! But the this part was that Lil man came second with his hat! Yes second! Which means he won and Easter egg [All the Easter egg prizes were donated by our local Tesco which is pretty cool!] And naturally he was chuffed to bits, and it made every time I stabbed my finger with the needle worth it! Plus when he stood up he got a big cheer from all of his friends, which was really lovely to see!
The only issue is what on earth am I going to do next year?
Much Love
Frankie
xxx
