we're going on a bear hunt...

we found some!!!

today we went to the Bear Factory, a well planned and looked-forward-to trip, and the children blew all their birthday money on these two suspicious looking bears!

It is a great experience, you first pick your unstuffed bear, then take him to the stuffing machine where stuffing zooms across the 'factory'/shop above your head through see-through tubes and into the enormous stuffing machine. there a man asks what level of cuddliness you want your bear to have and fires stuffing into the bear using a foot pedal to control the machine, and you can even have a go (I did!) then you go select a heart, kiss it to fill your bear with love, then have it stitched into the bear and all his holes sewn up, and voila.

except then you must go grab a crazy costume (red indian with mirrored sunglasses, whats wrong with that???), take it back to the lady who stitches, and get her to dress your bear.
thn there is just the birth certificates to collect, boxes for your bears, and part with all your cash, and off you go.


Esme in particular enjoyed this trip a great deal and now has the tricky task of naming her bikini-clad bear (pattie, bella, blackberry?). Laurie liked it too, but was more impressed I think with his free burger-king toy after lunch (boys!!), looks happy enough here though!


we also stopped in Queen street to watch some of the street entertainment, we saw Mimbre do a show, who were brilliant, combining acrobatics/balancing and dance/modern clowning (hard to describe), plus a few walkabout acts as well.

as you may be have noticed, I forgot to take my camera out with us today. I must admit to hijacking that pic from their website.

and hey, we even got a few mummy shops in before we caught the train home. what a day.