If you’ve read my blog from the very beginning (four years next month!), you’ll know that it originally started off as a kids crafts and activities blog. Back then, when I only had two children and one of those was quite happy to sit in his highchair eating crayons, I used to get the paint and glue – and even glitter – out on an almost daily basis. Harrison would usually need a hose down in the shower afterward but the mess was usually fairly contained.

Four years later, and with another child to add to the mix, crafting doesn’t happen quite as often as it used to. The paint comes out maybe once a week as a treat, and the glitter – well, that’s a banned substance in this house! I love the idea of sitting at the table making all sorts of lovely things, but in reality, I can’t cope with the mess that a full on crafting session entails.

I’d been umming and ahhing about starting up a new kids craft section on my blog because it always used to go down really well with readers, so when Marigold got in touch and challenged us to do some Halloween crafts, I figured it was a good way of dipping my toes back in.

I spent hours mooching about on Pinterest for some ideas, with visions of decorating the dining room in pumpkins, witches, spiders and all sorts of spooky stuff. The first thing we were going to do was apple stamped pumpkins.

It’s also probably the last.

The idea was straighforward. Cut the apples in half, dip them into orange paint, stamp onto paper. Once dry, decorate them with black felt tip pens and googly eyes, cut out and hang up around the dining room. Sounds easy, right?

Well, the first issue we encountered was the lack of newspaper to protect the table. We recently had to chuck our wipe clean table mat away, and haven’t got around to replacing it yet. The table top itself is rather ‘well-loved’ (e.g. a mess and needs replacing, but not until the kids are older!) but I still didn’t fancy orange paint everywhere. Never mind – we had Marigold ‘Oops Away’ cloths and roll to clean up any spills.

The next issue: no paper plates to put the paint on, so I ended up digging out an old dinner plate to splodge it on.

Once all the bits and bobs were on the table, I showed the kids what to do and left them to it. Cue orange mayhem. They were stamping their little hearts out with the apples, but instead of being lovey clear pumpkin shapes, they were big blobs of orange on the paper. Ben was just smearing his everywhere. But, interpretation and all that, right?

Once they had finished, we popped them to one side to dry (except for Alex, who decided to put his on top of each other – that ended up well!) and I got started on the cleaning up. There was paint all over the table, the back of the chair, the carpet and on the door handles going to the bathroom. Thank god for the Marigold bits and pieces! The ‘Oops Away’ cloths are like reusable kitchen towels. I dampened them to wipe the paint off the table and then put them in soak in the tub we use for cloths. They were more absorbent than usual kitchen roll and better for the environment because they can be washed and used again. The ‘No More Elbow Grease’ scourer was great for getting rid of the splodges of paint that had landed on our slate table mats and dried before I noticed – they’re much better than the spiral scourers and last five times longer.

You may be asking what happened to the ‘pumpkins’. Well, they came to a soggy end when a cup of squash was sent flying over them. Still, at least we had the Marigold cloths to hand, and the kids had fun!

*We were sent these products free of charge for the purpose of this review. All words and opinions are our own.