Sunday 6 April 2014

Our (not so) Secret Garden

If you've seen this post, then you will know that we usually spend our Sunday's - the only day each week that we are all free - squeezing in some fun family time at the park. 



Unfortunately, today's weather isn't great. It started off way too hot to go out, and now is wet and looking like it's on it's way to stormy. So after a big clean up this morning and some lunch, I figured it was time to decide on an activity for the arvo. 



This is what happens when Mummy and Daddy get creative. ;-)
I've been working on this idea for a few weeks now. And by 'working on this idea', I mean saving toilet paper rolls and hiding them (because my kids instantly have wonderful idea's on how to decorate the looking glass this time and steal the rolls before I get a chance to use them).

So today we made a garden, complete with three flowers, a bee, a butterfly and a ladybug. And Logan made an ant. I say 'we' intending to include the children, but if I'm completely honest, the kids only really got to paint. Cos I'm mean and was excited about our garden. Oops.

So here they are:






And then we made binoculars to look at the bugs in the garden:



Cute huh? ;-)

Sunday 16 March 2014

Felt food

I've been meaning to share my home-made felt food for a while now but I just cannot find it all because unfortunately the kids have lost so much of it. Anyway, I have decided to share with you what I can find and then at some point when I eventually find the rest I will share it too.

Enjoy.

Here is our tea set. I did make tea bags but thats one of the things that have gone missing.




Here is the junk food, it was chips and chocolate and popcorn but currently I can only find the chips. I made the table cloth too. It is for the kids little table in their home corner which I will share with you at another time.


And here is dinner, Noodles (the box is home-made from felt too), lasagne, salad and pasta. There is supposed to be eggs, bacon and cherry tomatoes too but all is missing.









The food was so fun to make! I will hopefully find the time in the future to make more. I was going to do cake and cupcakes but I found some adorable wooden ones which I ended up buying instead.

Squishy Balloons

Ok so I admit it, I've no idea what to call these, but aren't they cute? They are just balloons filled with flour and then Izzy has drawn faces on them. So so simple but pretty cool too.


Bay was excited about them, even the older two got into them when we got out a basket to toss them into. I think I have probably gotten them most use out of them all. I use them kind of like stress balls I guess, I just play with them all the time.

If you decide to give these a go with your little ones (for such a simple activity, they really are worth it), then you will probably end up wondering how I managed to fill them. 


I stretched the balloon's as you usually would and then because I don't have a funnel I got Logan to cut the end off a bottle for me and then I put the balloon on it. I filled it with as much flour as it would take - which isn't much at all - and then I used the end of a connector pen to push more in. Then all was left to do was to tie it up and hand it over to Izzy to decorate.


Simple projects sure are the best ones, especially when you have limited time but don't want to miss out on doing these things with your children.

I'll admit, when the kids were tossing them into the basket I was quite worried that they would pop and end up spreading flour everywhere but it turned out to be me who popped one last night!

Monday 10 March 2014

Icing Biscuits

This activity is always a hit, and not just with toddlers but with the older kids and mummies and daddies too! Logan is not one to get involved in our crafty activities, he tends to sit back and praise the kids handy work (he gets involved more in the physical activities) however even he joined in last time we decorated biscuits! 




There are a few reasons why I like this activity so much; 
  • It's quick to both set up and do - little ones usually have short attention spans and it can be rather frustrating to spend quite a while setting up an activity only to find that the kiddies are only interested in it for a few minutes,
  • It is pretty cheap - the biscuits are usually found for about $1-2 and icing sugar is about the same, and usually something people will have in the cupboard, just like sprinkles and food colouring,
  • And who could resist these cute treats? They taste so good!
I'm sure that most people have a go at this at some point in their lives however I find that I personally can be rather forgetful when it comes to different activities to do with the children and foods to feed them, I mean, this activity, like I said, is so quick to set up, it's cheap, and a quick wipe of the table and sweep of the floor and it's cleaned up, but we've only done it maybe 2 or 3 times as I forget about it all the time! For this reason, I have decided that I'm going to put even the simplest of activities here on my blog both so that I don't forget them, and so that you guys can be reminded of them too.



After decorating all the left over biscuits (there were more than pictured), we decorated a few sponge cupcakes to enjoy while the icing on the cookies set. Yum!