Granny’s New Life

Hello again to my regular readers and welcome to any new readers, look at this link (not the photo, I just couldn’t get that in the right place)  http://www.thedailybuzz.com.au/2012/03/20-things-to-do-with-toilet-paper-rolls/, I am number 19 ! I had over a hundred hits  in one day from this link. I think the article has been copied onto another site and I am getting a lot of hits from there at the moment, so if you are new to this blog please do leave a comment to say Hello.

Anyway I suppose I should try to raise the creativity of my creations, the sports cars were probably one of the best things I’ve created to be honest.  But that will happen next time, this is just another post with an uninspired idea….

My mother in law retired on Friday from her job of many years in a primary school. I think she had been planning retirement for a while, but in the end her reasons for retirement became more pressing and she retired a term earlier than expected. I decided we probably should make her something to mark the occasion so the children and I created ‘Granny’s Box of Ideas’. We glued lots of pictures onto a box and covered it in sticky-back plastic, my 7 yr old daughter than thought of a few things Granny could do when she has ten minutes or so spare… I was hoping they’d turn into aspirational life improving ideas, such as ‘Do something to make you laugh’ or philosophical questions, such as ‘What is beauty?’, but these ideas were turned down. Even my ‘go on holiday’ idea was dismissed with a ” How’s she going to do that if she’s only got ten minutes?” So there are ten mundane but pleasant (almost all pleasant, there is a ‘Kiss Grandad on the lips’ suggestion in there) ideas for Granny to do. unfortunately I don’t know her well enough to add some of my own in there. I’m hoping she will add things she would like to do and save them up for another time. Well I’m sure she’ll like it anyway.

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Ups and Downs

Since the start of term the usual piles of organised mess in my lounge have been transformed into this…

Everything from the playroom/dining room except the pinball machine has been neatly piled into any available space. My husband has spent his last few evenings and all of this morning laying a new floor in the emptied room.

With a little help from a helpful four year the floor is nearly done, and things can move back in soon…. Only for the lounge to be filled up again with the contents of my kitchen cupboards, ready for a new kitchen.  Oh well will be worth it in the end. 

Enough moaning. This week’s post is more about what happened when I gave my four year old a choice between making something or playing a game one afternoon.  As you can guess, he choose both- and this is the result.

A very unique Snakes and Ladders game. The placing of the squares and snakes and ladders were left entirely up to my son, which lead to a very interesting numbering system. There are also some squares that take you up two ladders if you land on them.  It’s playable though. Hope it gives someone a crafty idea to amuse their little one.

Catching the sun

Hello,

Sorry for the slight blogging delay, will be back to normal next week- and its a going to be a great craft idea then….

This week I went for simple but beautiful- much like life. As you can see a week filled with camping, fossils, hotels and musicals has left me in a very relaxed state of mind. These suncatchers seemed ideal.

Using my favourite faddish resource – a graze box- I took out the inner (which is a piece of cardboard with 4 rectangles in that looks like a window).  I then taped a  sheet  of stiff, clear plastic (in this case they were OHP sheets that someone had donated to the toddler group) to the back. I then glued torn up strips of tissue paper all over it

 

 

It looked like this:

Held up to the light it looks like this:

Very nice, I can imagine that done in blues and yellows it will look very summery this one looks a bit stormy.

Enjoy your weekend.

 

Ten Minute Tasks

When my children were tiny I had a mental list of Ten Minute Tasks, things I could get done in the rare ten minutes when my children were napping or playing on their own. It was small household tasks like tidying the lounge, cleaning the sink or loading the washing machine. If you know me you will know I didn’t often get many free Ten Minutes.

The list has changed now, and the Ten Minute Tasks have become things my 3 year old son can do in the ten minutes before we are due to go out and I am otherwise occupied. His tasks, invented by himself quite often involve water and mud- or on a good day both.

In case you can’t tell his clothes are soaking and very muddy, this all happened in the 15 minute gap between coming home and having to go out again to school.

Other things on my 3 year old’s ten minute task list include: unrolling a toilet roll, creating a course to play Total Wipeout in the lounge and turning a piece of chocolate cake into crumbs.

He also took ten minutes to create this wonderful paper plate ladybird at toddlers today. This idea was taken from a book my (dear) sister gave me for Christmas. The paper plate is cut into 3 pieces and masking taped to a strip of card. It is then painted.

He very carefully painted the antennae and  wings  red with not too much going on the newspaper.

Isn’t it amazing what you can achieve in ten minutes?

Believing in princesses.

Royal Wedding tomorrow, so we made flags at playgroup. They are made out of my old wedding invites, the card we used for the Valentine party and white paper. Pretty straightforward, but interesting to make, most of the flags did not much resemble mine!

The other picture is my daughter with the princess hat she made at school, the school had a street party in the playground in the afternoon and did activities like maypole dancing, biscuit decorating and hat making in the morning. The shape of the hats surprised me, it is a long time since I’ve seen a conical princess hat. Life was much simpler when I believed that all princesses wore hats like that.

I wonder if my daughter will be disappointed by the reality of tomorrow’s princess making.

The things my son has done….

The list of things my son has done this week is endless, most of it involves digging in mud or finding tiny amounts of rain water in the garden and adding them to his bucket of baddie  juice. Baddie juice is an interesting concept as it kills baddies, but not goodies (it tastes so horrible only baddies would drink it). Baddies only drink horrible things, of course. Sceptics amongst you should note that I do not have any baddies in my garden anymore.

He has also been busy making a Mothers Day card and a handprint plate at Toddlers.

I know handprint plates are supposed to have a set of perfectly clear handprints on, but somehow I think this design is better. For those of you waiting for the rubbish/recycled element this week the plates were from my old place of work and on the list to be thrown out. The cards were from my gran’s cupboard, I think she might have been about to throw them out (maybe).

Our other project this week was an Easter Bonnet for the pre-school Easter party.

Poor love, the things we subject them to!!

The hat is made out of a paper machied balloon left over from my daughter’s party and some yellow paper.

See you all next week!

Uninspired!

Usually I can’t wait to update this blog weekly, but I have had  a few weeks of uninspiring ideas so today’s blogging has taken a backseat to everything else.

Luckily after a lovely few days with my family I have come back with some brilliant things to use and some more exciting ideas. Hopefully the joy will be back in this blog next week. Till then here’s a picture to cheer you all up.

Yep it is impossible to get all four of them looking at the camera at the same time.

Valentine’s Day

We had a mini fundraising session at toddlers this week, everyone was asked to dress their child in red and give the group a £1. I’m not too sure how they felt about it but we raised some money and so might be able to buy some much needed new toys.

Obviously this week’s craft was Valentine based.

 This is my son’s card,  cut up wrapping paper stuck on a card. I left my example there this week- now means I have to make another card for husband (or maybe buy one).

These were the other craft, lovely messy handprints which I think have turned out really well.  Might do some more handprints another day as it’s something even the very little ones love.

Simple ideas again- next week’s is even simpler, sticking shiny things on a box, but hey you have to do what the children enjoy doing (nothing to do with me running out of ideas).

See you all soon.

That time of year again….

Yep, time to start making Christmassy things, we made calendars this week. Mine is one the left, my son’s on the right.

We used washing up sponges cut into rectangles and triangles to stamp the shapes and put glitter on afterwards to make them sparkle. The calendars were then stuck on when the paint was dry.

Easy.

Everything in one place

Well here we are again, camera, lead, computer and time!

Here are some photos

These are the snakes made by stamping a selection of bottle tops onto paper. Messy, fun and allowing a lot of creativity!

Last week’s craft was a shaker, a toilet/kitchen roll  inner filled with pasta and covered in paper. A bit too complicated. Originally these were going to be lighthouses with yogurt pots on for the light until I realised under 5s wouldn’t really know what a lighthouse was. So the idea evolved to a noisy toy.

This is my son’s shaker, looks a bit like a firework.

And then this week’s craft:

 Which is just Muller Corner yoghurt pots with eyes and hair stuck on to make puppets. Easy with a lot of scope for personalisation.

Well managed it, all updated- Ok until next week.