The Great Alviti Bake Off - Birthday present

With birthdays this week I decided to make the children a small joint present. It's one I've been thinking of for over a year now but never found the time (that old excuse). 

We're lucky in the fact that the children will play for hours together. Last Saturday is a perfect example of this. It rained all day and I was soft and didn't kick them outside. But they played the whole time with Lego, not a cross word spoken all day and a whole world created. 

Another favourite is "playdough bake off". They get the play dough out, my wife and I set them a task and theme then judge what they create.  One day I went off to do some work for a customer, set them a task as I left, came back over 8 hours later they were still playing (with different task and had lunch in between). 

So I decided that a bake off box would be ideal. I made it with some local sustainable sweet chestnut (from say it with wood).

In the top is a spinner that choses what type of task - technical, signature and showstopper. Then there is two compartments, one for the theme (we had fun putting these together) and another for the week it is (e.g. pastry week, cake week, etc). 

The top is hand carved then painted.

I know how I built it could possibly cause some expansion/contraction issues as I routed the top in, but with a little box like this I'm willing to take the risk! 

Hopefully it should provide a bit of fun for them and have some good ideas for their playing together.