Monthly Archives: October 2012

Monster Muffin

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I never seem to have the right size patty pan for my muffin trays. It is inexplicable.

Just like forgetting to buy something from the shop when you only went in for one thing. Yes, you do come out of the stop with stuff, just not the one thing you intended to purchase. Inexplicable inexplicable inexplicable (sounds like a spell from Harry Potter).

The situation is that I wanted to make muffins for the kids to have for school. But exasperated by the inappropriate patty pan conundrum I went for an ‘out of the box’ idea I recently read on a forum (thank you Lauren from New Zealand).

Now I am a true convert and want to share my joy with the world (or as much of it I am reaching with this little bloggy blog).

It is so simple and lovely.

Method:

1. Pour your muffin mixture into a cake tin (isn’t it good so far?). I line my tin with baking paper to make the whole baking process as quick and easy as humanly possible.

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2. Bake! Just keep checking with your skewer as you would a cake to determine when the monster muffin is ready. Then out she comes onto a wire tray after being left to stand in the tin for 5 minutes.

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3. Try not to eat it all before the kids get home. This one is banana and white chocolate chip. Mmmmm.

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4. Let the kids have some before bagging the rest up and putting in the freezer for school.

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5. Job done.

For me, It just seems so much easier than fiddling around with paper muffin/patty pans. And it seems to taste better too. It was definitely faster than the “old” way.

If you try it, let me know. I would love to hear from you :)

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DIY Love Heart Wrapping Paper

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DIY Heart Wrapping Paper

This is another frugal wrapping paper activity. The best kind! Utilising one of the most familiar household items – the toilet paper roll.

The girls really enjoyed this – it is always fun for them to see how we can re-purpose everyday things into FUN craft activities.

Last time we used yarn and duplo blocks to make some stripey patterned wrapping paper which you can read about here.

To make the heart wrapping paper we used:

  1. 1 toilet roll/cardboard tube
  2. paint for stamping 
  3. large pieces of heavy blank paper (we used IKEA paper that is sold in rolls)
  4. a palette of water colour paints

The stamp making is like watching magic in action. In only a few seconds you can shape the end of the roll into a love heart. It is really easy.

First, push down on the roll, for the whole length of the roll. This helps keep the love heart shape in place.

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Then adjust the end you are using for the stamp into the style of heart you prefer.

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Once the stamp was made, I invited the girls to sit down at the table and start stamping.

The girls decided that Ebony would do all the stamping and Zoe would do the ‘painting in’.

Ebony was determined to fill in all the gaps. Typical first child behaviour :)

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Once the heart outlines were dry, Zoe came to the table and starting painting the inside of the heart shapes. Zoe did lots of blue to start with as this particular paper was for Daddy and his favourite colour is…yup, blue.

I think the paper looks gorgeous.

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Next time I will remember to take a photo of a present wrapped in the pretty wrapping paper :) The presents did look adorable and Daddy was very impressed.

I hope you enjoyed this craft. If you did I would love for you to share it or to hear from you in the comments below. As always, thanks so much for dropping by.

The next edition of the DIY wrapping paper series will be all about Christmas. Can’t wait, I LOVE Christmas.

Spontaneous Saturday

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Warm weather in your neck of the woods?

Kids wanting to get outside but say they have nothing to do?

Well you might like to try this. It’s quick. It’s wet. And best of all – it’s messy.

In other words – perfect (for outside!).

This wasn’t a planned activity – the girls were outside, in the shade, playing mud pie cafes together.

Then Ebony called out for me to “come and look at her mud footprints”.

There really isn’t much to it. Start with a large container of mud delicacies.

Then insert feet that are itching to make an impression.

Then groove around whilst making nice muddy footprints on the ground.

When finished, soak your feet in lovely cool clean water. Extra points for wearing my sunhat :)

Quick, fun, spontaneous mud footprint art. So post-modern.

Thanks for dropping by and joining in on our Saturday.

Hope your family is having a wonderful weekend!

Friday Afternoon Fun – Hidden Notes

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Hidden Note Hunt with Mudpies and Sunshine

Friday afternoon means the end of another long week of school.

Sometimes Friday afternoon also means tired, grumpy children coming home and pushing each others ‘buttons’. This is tiring and frustrating for everyone involved and in order to nip this in the bud I like to make Friday afternoons a bit special. A time for the kids to look forward to. And me too.

I find that a happy Friday afternoon often leads to happy Saturday morning. Yay for that.

My plan is to start a series of blog posts all about making Friday afternoons fun.

This, the first one, I really enjoyed. So did the girls. It involves hidden treasure!

Here are the treasure envelopes and the treasure. The bead is really worth a $1 to the girls – it is part of our chore system which you can read about here.

Just before I picked the girls up from school, I ‘hid’ the envelopes in a tree close by.

As we walked into the area where the treasure was hidden, I asked the girls to put their bags down.

“Why Mum?” they said.

I explained that it was time for a treasure hunt. I told them what they needed to look for….and then they were off!

After a little while I gave them a little clue – “look in the trees”.  This helped alot.

Ebony reached up to get Zoe’s envelope for her.  Normally, that would have caused a little ripple in the relationship (it’s mine, let me do it etc). In the face of imminent treasure, Zoe was not fussed.

What is in this treasure envelope we wonder?

Yay for being able to read :)

And super dooper yay for surprises!

Kids LOVE happy surprises don’t they? This activity was quick and easy to prepare, 2 or 3 minutes all up, including hiding the envelopes. I think I enjoyed it more than the kids did.

If you give it a try I would love to hear about it!

New Blog Theme & Teacher’s Gift Ideas

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A girl is entitled to change her mind right?

Hope you like it!

To soften the blow  -  a link to some great ideas for Teacher’s Gifts.

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More relevant in the southern hemisphere where we are all around 8 weeks away from the end of the school year. I will be posting more on teachers gifts later on in November.

Enjoy browsing as there are lots of amazing ideas to be found on Pinterest.

P.S. In the comments below, could you please let me know if the font is a good reading size for you? It would be much appreciated!

Kids in the Kitchen – Going with the Flow

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One of my favourite places to relax with the kids is in the kitchen. Or, if I can, relax with a cup of tea a little way aways from the kitchen. It’s much safer there.

Kids love being independent and even more so when it comes to cooking.

The kitchen is also a marvellous opportunity to demonstrate one of life’s great truths.  The good old ‘Nobody’s Perfect’ truth. It needs to be said that making mistakes is normal. But in some cases kids don’t know that.  Kids NEED to know that making mistakes is healthy. Very healthy. It is so crucial for kids to be aware of the normality of mistakes.

Why? So they don’t berate themselves, constantly engage in negative self-talk and eventually try nothing new from fear of failing – of not being perfect.

In some cases parents model making mistakes at home to prevent perfectionism developing in their under 6′s. Some kids just want to please Mum and Dad so badly they develop super high expectations of themselves.

So if like me, you could use a little help in this area – I would suggest starting in the kitchen. Cooking is always messy, regardless of who is doing it.

Our little Zoe loves baking. She is not quite ready for lasagne so baking is the obvious next option.

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Zoe is programmed to put half the flour into the sifter, the other half will find a new home atop the counter top or down on the floor.

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I love the slightly perplexed look the camera captured here. She is wondering for the 100th time how is it that the flour won’t seem to stay in the sifter? This is actually one of her more accurate efforts.

So it’s funny. It’s messy. It gets alot messier but it’s not bad. It’s a great way for kids to get used to the idea that as mess is part of cooking, accidents and mistakes are part of life.

I’d hate for the girls to be scared to make messes while they are cooking or doing anything that they just can’t help. Or to silently berate themselves for not getting everything perfect, first time.

For their little souls sake, it pays to go with the flow :)

And just like them, we parents can only do our best!

Scratch cards – the craft kind

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We bought some scratch cards on holiday a while ago and when I got home I thought we should have a go at making some of our own.

If only making (winning) lottery scratch cards were as easy as this.

We used:

  • normal white paper (white card you can buy from newsagents and places like Kmart would work well too)
  • crayons
  • black paint
  • bamboo skewers

First I gave the girls an A4 piece of paper each and invited them to colour it with as many colours as they could – little bits at a time. Ebony’s looked like a patchwork quilt with 2cm x 2cm squares of different colour all across her page (please use your imagination as there is no photo!). Zoe coloured in with larger chunks of colour.

Then they painted the page with black acrylic paint. I had to paint another coat while they were at school as the first layer wasn’t quite thick enough.

Once the second layer had dried, I cut each page into four pieces. Four different pieces is always going to be more fun than one larger piece right?

So home from school they came. They were delighted it was all ready and they wanted to start straight away.

Zoe thought her name needed a bit of scratching. Don’t mind the ahem slightly dishevelled sleeve Zoe is wearing. Finally I got around to retiring that top from active duty. Not soon enough some might say :)

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Ebony liked drawing pictures with her scratch cards.

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The result – a happy one.

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DIY Pretty Wrapping Paper #1 – Duplo blocks and string

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Art is wonderful for art’s sake.

Art is also wonderful if you can use it.

We love making our own decorative wrapping paper around here. It serves quite a few purposes :

  • it has a personal touch
  • it gets the kids engaged in craft
  • it helps the kids get excited about the special person’s celebration
  • kids feel a sense of ownership when they contribute to a present
  • I see lots of love going into my girl’s efforts when we make wrapping paper which makes me smile the most.

We create our own decorated wrapping paper in lots of ways.

Today we will look at our latest efforts.

We used :

  • butchers paper
  • large duplo blocks
  • yarn/string
  • paint

Firstly I invited the girls to wrap some yarn in a haphazard way, round and round one large duplo block each. These blocks are perfect for this task as the crevices between the bumps hold the yarn nicely in place.

Next they dipped the flat side of duplo block into a prepared paint tray and started stamping away!

Here is Zoe showing us her stamping block.

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Ebony made her paper with pink paint. Pink for girls, blue for boys. That’s how black and white things are when you are under 10.

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There was alot of paper to cover. I had at least two cups of tea while they did this craft ;)

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Both girls had lots of fun and were very proud of their artwork. Here is the finished blue paper:-

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In my next wrapping paper post we will be using toilet rolls. Fun and cheap :)

Thanks for visiting and leave a comment if you wish.

Gloop Recipe

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We had a quiet Sunday, home after a big trip and preparing for a new week of school.

But where is the fun in that my friend?

Enter – gloop.

I could not believe how quick and EASY gloop is to make.

GLOOP RECIPE

Corn flour

Water

Food colouring for pretty colours

Three ingredients – easy peasy :)

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I have to admit – I didn’t do any measuring or follow a recipe. I just put a ‘nice’ amount of cornflour in the bowl and poured in roughly a little less water.

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So that made it too runny.

So I added more cornflour. Too much more as it happens and this is what it looked like when I mixed it together.

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So then I proceeded to add a little more water & a big drop of food colouring.

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And after a quick stir, the mixture seemed just right.

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Yay, result! So less water than cornflour is all I can tell you from experience.

However Mr Google tells me:

2 cups of cornflour (to)

1 cup of water.

I would also advise that the mixing needs to be quite strong and steady as the mixture tends to want to form hard lumpy bits in quiet corners of your bowl if you’re not careful.

And here are the girls simply enjoying the gloop in the bowl.

Zoe’s first examination of the texture.

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Yep, she loves it.

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Then her big sister had a go. Ebony is 9 years old and thankfully doesn’t feel like she is too old for FUN.

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Look how gloopy it gets…

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Old or young – your kids will enjoy gloop.

At our house there has been talk of a gloop-bath in the future. Off to the shops I go to buy cornflour in bulk…

Next up, I plan to show you one of the ways we make our own wrapping paper.

Thanks for visiting!

Contact Paper Mosaic

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This is one of my all time favourite ‘go-to’ crafts.

All you need is contact paper and….

…anything!

In the photo you can see our container of cardboard and paper bits and pieces. However you could try creating a Nature Mosaic from leaves, small twigs and anything else that takes your little one’s fancy. The options are endless!

Having such an open ended craft fires their imagination, allowing their natural creativeness to blossom.

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Enjoy!