Tag: Manchester Bee

Father’s Day Gifts for Music Loving Dads

As a mum, one of the many things I do it help facilitate the buying of suitable Father’s Day gifts. In the past we’ve given socks, or hampers of goodies, but as my son is getting older, father and son are spending more and more time listening to music together. It’s nice that they can spend time together enjoying this shared interest, so it makes sense to find a gift they can enjoy together. Here are some ideas for Father’s Day gifts for music loving Dads.

Father’s Day Gifts for Music Loving Dads

Slipmats and retro record prints

Gail Myerscough is a renowned surface pattern designer and illustrator. Her mid-century inspired designs are utterly beautiful and would look amazing in any home. Gail’s recent collaboration with Tim Burgess, lead singer of The Charlatans brought her work to a whole new audience, together they created some exiting record prints and a gorgeous and highly collectable turntable. Her online shop features a number of gifts suitable for music loving Dads, including this colourful slipmat. Slipmats are the best way to customise your turntable setup, and this turntable upgrade is available for just £15.

records slipmat copyright Gail Myerscough

If you liked the look of that, she has a whole collection of record inspired products, including prints, cushions, phone cases and notebooks.

Get him some gig tickets

Live music is always a bit of a treat. Is one of his favourite bands touring? There are thousands of venues, large and small, up and down the UK who have live music on, there’s bound to be something which will appeal. Here in Manchester we have an annual tribute festival, featuring loads of brilliant tribute acts at a fraction of the price of seeing the real deal. If you’re local to Manchester, you need to check out Festwich 2023!

Upgrade his headphones

Dad’s music isn’t always appreciated by everyone in the house, so treating him to a decent set of headphones for him to listen to his favourite tunes on, is a great idea. Beats headphones are some of the most popular headphones on the market, available in a range of colours with lots of different features to choose from, there are headphones to fit all budgets. We liked these Studio 3 Wireless Over Ear Headphones, which are a bit top of the range, but worth it if you wear headphones a lot. They’re designed for comfort, have a long lasting battery life and deliver a really clear, high quality sound.

Father's Day Gifts for Music Loving Dads

Big up the band t-shirt

Every self respecting music loving Dad has at least a couple of band t-shirts lurking in their wardrobe. Whether they’re the originals from the 90’s, or more recent purchases, there’s always room for another t-shirt. Band t-shirts are widely available, but if you’re looking for something a little different, Etsy has a good and varied collection to choose from.

Music mugs

The Manchester Bee Company make all kinds of great things, but their collection of music mugs could be just what your music loving man needs in his life. Choose from; Northern Soul, Music Snob, Put the needle on the record, or my personal favourite, Choose Vinyl. They also have a selection of music inspired keyrings available to order too!

Father's Day Gifts for Music Loving Dads

Records from the local record store

Despite all the promises in the 90s that CDs were the future and vinyl records just needed putting on a bonfire, vinyl has gone from strength to strength. There’s a brisk trade in original vinyl records, re-issues and newly pressed records. If your Dad loves a bit of vinyl, I’d encourage you to seek out your local record store and either take him on a shopping trip, or buy him a voucher so he can choose what he wants in his own time. My local record store is (Mr) Sifters Records, you might have heard of him?

Is a smart speaker a smart choice?

It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but a smart speaker is an easy way to listen to music. We have a couple of Alexa smart speakers around the house. We find them handy to have for when we want to listen to something quickly, without having to search for the CD or record in the house.

Whatever you choose to give the music loving Dad in your life this Father’s Day, I’m sure he will love it.

Crafts: Make Your Own Ladybird Flower Pot

This summer has been an absolute belter. We have loved having some actual summer for a change, but it hasn’t been that great for the garden. My lawn is brown and my plants are looking a bit sorry for themselves. We’ve been trying to keep them watered as well as we can using waste water from the bath and shower, but they could do with a really good drink. We’ve been doing a few garden crafts, such as these pretty cupcake case flowers and we’ve been painting some pots for inside the house, like this Ladybird Flower Pot.

Crafts: Make Your Own Ladybird Flower Pot

The ladybird flower pot does take a couple of craft sessions to do, mainly so paint can dry properly in between coats, but it’s worth it, it’s a very pretty pot and would make a nice gift with a little plant in it.

How to make a Ladybird Flower Pot

You will need – 
A small terracotta pot
Red paint
Black paint
A paintbrush
A pencil with a rubber on the top
Bostik White Glu
Bostik Glu Dots
A black foam circle
Googly eyes
A black pipecleaner
Sticky tape

How to make your ladybird flower pot:
Firstly, paint the outside of your plant pot all over with red paint, leave it to dry. It might need a few coats of red paint, so make sure you leave time for the coats to dry.

Crafts: Make Your Own Ladybird Flower Pot

Once the red paint is dry, take a fine paintbrush and paint a black line from the top to the bottom as neat as you can. Taking the pencil with the rubber top, dip the rubber into the black paint and carefully dab spots around the pot. Do as many or as few as you want. Leave the pot to dry, the black spots may take a little while to dry off.

Once all the paint is dry, paint the whole pot with PVA glue, this will stop the paint from running off if the pot gets wet. It won’t make it 100% waterproof, but it will be splash-proof at least.

Crafts: Make Your Own Ladybird Flower Pot

Once the glue has dried, make a pair of ladybird antennae out of your pipecleaner. Fix your googly eyes onto the circle of black foam with a glu dot, this will be your ladybird’s face. Stick the antennae to the back of the foam face with sticky tape and then stick the face onto the plant pot with some of the white glu. Leave it to dry.

Crafts: Make Your Own Ladybird Flower Pot

Once it’s all dry you can put a little plant in your pot. What a lovely, cheery little gift to give someone, or to keep for yourself.

If you enjoyed this, you might also like these bee and butterfly crafts.

Crafts: Make Your Own Ladybird Flower Pot

Disclosure: We are Tots100 Bostik Bloggers and we were sent a box of craft items to use to create this post.

Easy Crafts: Make your own Manchester Bee

This month we’ve been busy getting ready for Didsbury in Bloom. We’ve been sprucing up our front garden and helping to build a bug hotel on our road. This year Didsbury in Bloom celebrates our connection to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) which was founded in the village and we’ve been learning about how we can help encourage birds and bugs into our gardens. 

We have plans to build our own bug hotel and we are collecting the materials we will need to put it together. We’ve also been searching in our garden to see what bugs we could find, with all the rain lately we’ve seen a lot of slugs and snails!

Rather fittingly, this month Craft Merrily have challenged the Bostik Bloggers to create a creepy crawlies craft. I wanted to do something simple, and knowing I had some kids to entertain on a play date, I sketched up these templates, one of a Manchester Bee and the other, a butterfly. I then printed them out and set the boys to work.Easy Crafts: Decorating Butterflies & Bees

To make and decorate your butterfly and Manchester Bee  you will need –

Templates printed out – they’re sturdier if printed on card
Colouring pens
Glitter or other embellishments
Bostik fine & wide glu pen
String or ribbon
A hole punch
Scissors

Download these templates for FREE here.

Easy Crafts: Make your own Manchester Bee decorations

Method –

This is a ridiculously easy craft. Just set the kids to work decorating the butterflies and bees however they like given the colouring in materials you have, then get the kids to embellish them however they like.

Easy Crafts: Make your own Manchester Bee decorations

I encouraged the boys to colour them in first, then to scatter glitter and stick on the paper flowers however they liked best. They came up with some lovely creative ideas, but my favourite was the yellow and black Manchester Bee.

Once they’re decorated how you want them to be, I’d leave them to dry for a few hours before cutting them out, or getting a grown up to cut them out for you.

Easy Crafts: Make your own Manchester Bee decorations

To turn them into tree decorations; using the hole punch, make a hole in one of the wings and thread through some string, tying a knot in the string to form a  loop. I think these would make really great bunting too, just punch two holes in and thread the string though each hole to hang it on the bunting.

Easy Crafts: Make your own Manchester Bee decorations

As you can see, they look really effective and several of the neighbours have commented how lovely they are. They’re not rain-proof, but they are quite fun to hang out on sunny days, especially when the Didsbury in Bloom judges are walking past.

Easy Crafts: Make your own Manchester Bee decorations

What other crafts can you think of to make with these Manchester Bee and butterfly templates?

Easy Crafts: Make your own Manchester Bee decorations

Note: I am a Bostik craft blogger and I was sent the materials to create this craft from Craft Merrily. 

Check out my other craft tutorials here!

Manchester, so much to answer for (and all of it ace)

Mancunians are a pretty special kind of people. I know I’m biased because I am one, but its clear from talking to incomers to the area just how much this fine city gets under your skin. Manchester is a beautiful city, inside and out. Its people have more heart that they know what to do with and I’m blessed to have been born and bred here, and I’ve always felt that way.

Mancunians are a breed apart, different in outlook and temperament to their cousins in Liverpool and across the Pennines into Yorkshire. The rivalry may be fierce, but it is for the most part good humoured and affectionate. 

Manchester is an industrial city. It blossomed, bloomed and boomed during the industrial revolution and was known as Cottonopolis. From Manchester came the first passenger railway, the first computer and the invention of graphene. It was the birthplace of the Pankhurst’s and Karl Marx lived here for a time. We created a whole genre of music, and we’ve got famous actors, poets, writers and artists coming out of our ears. But what makes Mancunians special (apart from absolutely everything)?

Manchester, so much to answer for (and all of it ace)
© The Manchester Bee Company, 2017

We bloody love Manchester. We really bloody love Manchester. We’re incredibly proud of where we’ve come from and what a glorious, inclusive, cosmopolitan, historic, forward-thinking city it is. We love that we’re good at music, sports, science and the arts. We love our industrial heritage and our industrious nature. Manchester is awash with entrepreneurial spirit, we are grafters, thinkers and doers. We are rich in social history and compassion. 

Manchester is a city filled with many different kinds of people. City fans, United fans, indie kids, goths, we have a beautiful LGBT community who bring more to Manchester than I think even they realise. We have people from all over the world coming to live and work here. We have several huge universities and it seems that most people who come to Manchester to study never really go home again afterwards.

Mancunians are not generally intrusive people, but if someone is looking lost, upset or in trouble, we will step in and offer to help if we can. We are an incredibly kind people, sharing what we have with those we meet with no expectation of a reward beyond thanks.

We make eye contact on public transport, we talk to our neighbours and our neighbour’s neighbours. We’ll nod hello to strangers on the street. We rally round when people need us, we join together to show the world our collective strength. We are Manchester. 

Mancunian women have a reputation for being strong, some people call us battleaxes. Well, we are strong, we can be fierce, but we’d do owt for anyone and woe betide anyone who looked at our kids the wrong way.

Manchester is a diverse and wonderful city. Its people are full of good humour, with notable funny Mancunians including Les Dawson, Steve Coogan, Victoria Wood and Caroline Aherne, to name just a small handful.

Music has always been important to us, but we’re not *just* all about Oasis and The Stone Roses. The Halle Orchestra are resident here, and we have the world famous Chetham’s School of Music in the city. But yes, you’re right, we do love a bit of indie around here – Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths, Happy Mondays.

Tony Wilson is often quoted as saying “But this is Manchester, we do things differently here.” And we do.

We have beautiful green spaces, great parks, botanical gardens, wonderful architecture. We are a city and a people looking forward to the future, whilst embracing and taking pride in our industrial past. 

Pride is important to us. We are Proud Mancs. We’ve always been Proud Mancs. We are proud of our roots, our achievements, our attitude and our compassion. We are proud to be from this amazing city. This gorgeous, gleaming metropolis we call Cottonopolis. Its streets packed with history and hidden gems, its eye always on the future. 

I asked my friend Bob about what he thought made Mancunians special. He gave this lovely answer…

“Going to Love Train at the Ritz. Rubbing shoulders with goths and beardy old leather-clad rockers in Jilly’s back in the day. We’re such a strong community, even the venues have their own personalities. They come and go, Jilly’s and Hacienda have gone, but still loved and never forgotten. The city itself is our extended family. The City of Manchester stadium as the train pulls into Piccadilly. Beetham Tower on the horizon as the bus approaches Salford. It’s iconic from every angle and every time you pass a ‘Welcome to Manchester’ sign it’s a homecoming, whether you were born there or are adopted by the city, its people and its heart.”

Mancunians. We’re brave, bold, funny, kind, loving, we have heart and soul in spades. Int that right r kid?

Simple Pleasures – My ManBeeCo Busy Bee Mug

The simple pleasures in life are often underrated. Thick vellum paper and the flourish of a fountain pen, birdsong in the garden early in the morning, drinking good coffee out of a perfectly proportioned and well loved mug.

As long as I can remember I’ve had a special mug, handmade and hand painted, it’s been the only mug I’ll happily drink coffee out of at home. There’s something special about drinking out of a hand thrown pottery mug. It’s hard to describe but it definitely falls into the simple pleasures category.

busy bee mug

As a born and bred Mancunian, I’ve been a supporter of the Manchester Bee Company since they sold their first mugs three years ago. I think I was one of the first people in Manchester to have a brew in a worker bee mug. Whenever visitors come for a brew they get it in that mug, it’s an ideal opportunity for me to deliver my now famous lecture on the origins of the Manchester Bee.

The “Busy Bee” mug from The Manchester Bee Company (ManBeeCo) is handmade in Scotland by Tea With Jud. It is a natural glazed mug with a hand painted bee on one side. Each mug is individually hand crafted, so each one is slightly different and totally unique.

The Busy Bee Mug is both microwave and dishwasher safe, and holds 350mls of a proper brew. 

busy bee mug

This is my new favourite mug and I use it every day. It’s beautiful. It looks small but it’s like the tardis of mugs and it really is a simple pleasure to use it every morning. It’s been in my service now for a few weeks, been in and out of the dishwasher daily and it’s as good as new. 

I’ve coveted this mug for ages so I’m delighted it’s now in my cupboard next to it’s original worker bee cousin. For any Mancunian or bee lover, the Busy Bee Mug is the perfect gift. I know it’s just a mug, but like a fountain pen on vellum paper it’s a simple pleasure which makes life just a little bit lovelier. 

busy bee mug

You can find the lovely ManBeeCo products in the Royal Exchange craft shop, the People’s History Museum shop, the Manchester Museum shop, Visit MCR and the Tourist Information Centre in Piccadilly Gardens. The People’s History Museum have a limited stock of the hand made mugs, but they can be ordered online here. 

My Sunday Photo 12.6.16

This week I had a bit of time to play with my camera. A couple of years ago I inexplicably bought myself a “Photo Studio Kit” for £25. The studio is a box made of white material and has a couple of lights and a little tripod to put your camera on if you want.

I’ve no real idea why I bought it when I did but I’m glad I did. I’ve been practicing some of the things I learned on my photography course last month and I’m pretty pleased with some of my snaps. I know I’ll look back in a year and see that they’re actually rubbish, but I wasn’t in auto and that’s a great big start for me.

Here’s a picture of a picture of my new favourite mug from the Manchester Bee Company. 

12.6.16

Still lots and lot more practicing to do, but getting it all out of the box and having a play is not a bad first step.

Happy Sunday!