A Day at the Seaside

Goodness, it's been a while since my last post!  Not to fret, I haven't lost interest in my Sylvanian Families - quite the opposite in fact, as lots of things have been happening in Macadamia Grove!  We have recently been given a large table for the purposes of expanding the village - this has pretty much doubled the size of our display!  The downside being we had to try to get it into the (already quite overcrowded) room...  Much reorganising ensued.  Finally I feel that we have the room under control again (with new table installed!), so we are now in the middle of designing the layout for this new area.  Lots of fun (but time consuming!)

Anyway, in the midst of all this, there have still been Creative Challenges going on over at the forum, a few of which I have missed out on participating in, but one of the themes dealt with something we've been meaning to finish for a while now:  Ocean and Seaside!  So even though I'm very late to the party for this one, I thought I would go ahead and post my entry for it.

As I said, Caitlyn and I have been wanting for a while now to get the Seaside area in her bedroom finished.  The Lighthouse with its rocky hill and the edge of the ocean itself was done quite a while ago now (for more details on that, go to Caitlyn's blog here).  But some time ago, her Yapley chihuahua family moved to the seaside to open a Holiday Park, and her cat family also moved there to open an Icecream Shop, and we hadn't enough beachfront to accommodate them all. 

As you can see, there is now an extra stretch of beach, and also a sand dune leading down from the Lighthouse, so it looks like a proper little scene now!  The Holiday Park is off to the left of the Icecream Shop (it includes the Yapleys' caravan, a Hot Dog Van, and plenty of grassed space for visitors to set up tents etc).  We do want to add some more plants to soften the line where the sandy beach hits the grassed area (ie the green table), but if I wait around for that, these photos might never get taken! 

Anyway, to celebrate this area now being (almost!) finished, and as their way of saying goodbye to the lovely warm weather (Winter is starting to properly kick in where we live), my Patches dalmation family decided to take the train to the Seaside for the day.  They didn't swim - it was just a bit chilly - but they had a lovely day on the beach!

Sarah Patches busied herself making a most impressive sandcastle.  She imagined it filled with beautiful princesses, and dashing knights!

The boys went to investigate the sand dune - Zac enthusiastically started to climb it, while his dad opted just to watch.

After a while sunning herself on the picnic blanket they had brought along, Pippa began to feel a bit peckish.  "Ben," she called.  "Do you fancy an ice-cream?"

The men in her life did not need to be asked twice.  "Come on then, love - let's see what flavours they have this time!"