DIY Fridge Mats

I hate cleaning the fridge. Who doesn’t? With two little boys who like to poke around the refrigerator contents, spills and subsequent cleaning are frequent. Sick of the mammoth task of removing all the food, lugging and washing the massive glass shelves, I decided to have a go at creating my own fridge mats.

I found heaps of inspiration in cyberspace for DIY refrigerator liners. I settled on using thick  plastic placemats for mine.

I wanted a nice bright print and picked up these green chevron placemats and coasters at the Reject shop for $4 a set. 

As my refrigerator shelves are so wide, I needed 3 packs of placemats to do the job. I carefully measured and cut the placemats to suit my first shelf and used these as a template to complete the fridge. It really wasn’t that big of a task. It was a little fiddly to get the initial measurements right, then it was smooth sailing.  

I just love how clean, bright and fun the inside of my refrigerator looks now! Unfortunately, the pictures do not do the project justice. We are having horrible weather here and there is no light to photograph in.

The placemats have nicely ‘clung’ to the glass shelves and do not move around when shifting items. Now when a spill occurs, instead of having it turn into a giant cleaning task, I just remove the placemats, give them a quick wipe down and return them to their place.

I just love completing a small project that I know will save me time and energy. The fact that it has also livened up my fridge is a happy bonus.

Have a great day.

 

 

More Kids’ Activity Packs

Yesterday I showed you some of the activity packs I created for my two boys (see here). Today, I promised to reveal some of the other ones….

Colour Spelling. Match the paddle pop colour word to the correct coloured sleeve.

Threading. Using large coloured buttons, pipe cleaners and thread. A great activity to get the little fingers working and to practice colour recognition.

And my boys’ favourite – Fly Swat. I teamed a frog-shaped fly swat with collections of fly covered sight words, numbers and animal pictures. We have come up with lots of ways to play this game. My youngest has used the animal cards and as I called out the animal sounds, he hit the corresponding animal picture.  Last night, my eldest had me call out a number and he tried to hit it as fast as he could. So there are 6 activity pack ideas for you.  Believe it or not, I have created more Easter themed ones which I will blog about soon. Can you believe it is that time of year again!?

Have a great day.

Kids’ Activity Packs

Previously I have shared some of the activity packs I have made for my littlies (see here and here). They have been a Godsend as not only are they educational, they keep my monkeys entertained at times when I need it the most.

Last week I was out with a friend who showed me some ideas for some new activity bags. They got me so excited that I went out the next day to buy some supplies.  Once I started to rat around my local variety store, I was amazed at the inspiration I found sitting on the shelves. I went a little crazy – so unlike me. Ha!

Here are a few of the packs I have made up so far…..

Pattern matching – something Master O is doing a bit of now that he is in Prep. I raided the craft and sewing box to create this one. It is just some coloured wooden stars and velcro. I created some patterns in a Word document for boys to copy and laminated them to make them hardier.

Matchstick Colour Match. A great fine motor and colour match activity for my 2-year-old, made with coloured toothpick containers and craft matchsticks.

But this was the one the boys got most excited over, a set of coloured keys turned into a fishing game. With the addition of numbers on one side and words on the other, I have made 4 skill games in one set – motor skill, coloured recognition, numeral recognition and sight word recall. After fashioning two magnetic fishing rods, both my boys can play the game that suits their ability level.

Last night the boys didn’t even touch a toy or ask to watch their favourite afternoon show, all they wanted to do is give these a test drive.  Well worth the effort putting them together!

I have a few more packs on the go at the moment. I will share another 3 easy to create activity packs with you tomorrow.

Simple St Patrick’s Day Artwork

Last week I showed you a picture of the canvas print I picked up in the clearance section of a local discount store.The plan was to transform it into a simple St Patrick’s Day artwork with the kiddies.

After surfing the internet for a bit of inspiration, we came up with this….

The kids got right into the task with Master O helping to paint the letters and trace the shamrock.

Initially, the plan was to just paint the shamrock, but on drying we found that the paint was cracking. Not wanting to persist painting to have the same problem happen again, we chose to cover the shamrock in buttons. Master C loved picking out the green buttons from my button collection – I couldn’t have dreamt up a better fine motor skills activity!So this piece is now out on show and we are planning on some St Patrick’s Day treats for tomorrow.  We have made some hideous green cupcakes for morning tea and have planned a leprechaun treasure hunt with a horde of gold covered chocolate coins. It should be a bit of fun.

Happy St Patrick’s Day.

 

Bargain Buy Inspiration

It is no secret that I love a bargain. I am a bargain buy junkie – I get a complete rush from grabbing what I want at basement prices.

In the last week I have grabbed some little gems that I thought I would share with you.

I picked up these two Jamie Oliver bruschetta boards for $3 each at my local grocery store. I can see these getting a workout on the nights we fire up the pizza oven.

These lovely patterned bowls were only $2 each from the Reject shop….

Also at the Reject shop, I found this canvas print in the throw out bin.  As St Patrick’s Day is approaching and the kids and I have been talking about it, I thought we could fashion it into some sort of St Patrick’s Day artwork. Stay tuned….

I am always on the look out for cute partyware and these ice cream themed pieces just had to come home.

I have stocked the kids’ craft cupboard with two great items. The oh so versatile paper plate…….

These four packs cost me 60 cents.

I also grabbed this 15 metre roll of contact for $2. I have pinned some great craft ideas using contact, so I can’t wait to use it.

So there you have it, some of my favourite bargains of the week. What have you picked up for a song this week?

 

Organising Children’s Art Supplies With Tupperware

A while back I gave my pantry a makeover.  With the addition of the Thermomix in the kitchen, my pantry underwent a change.  There were a lot less cans and processed foods and a whole lot more basic ingredients. I desperately needed more storage containers and I was just not prepared to drop a grand on Tupperware to house it. As I hate to miss-match, the Tupperware I did own, came out of the pantry and went into storage.

Looking at the Tupperware taking up space in my storage cupboard today, I decided I had to make use of it.  I went to my most hated storage solution, the kids’ craft tub and decided that Tupperware might just save the day.

The old craft tub was huge and filled with a million bits and pieces. The half empty packets and the buttons and  beads laying loose made finding what I needed a challenge.

After a good purge and some help from the littlies to sort, we filled most of my spare Tupperware containers.

If our little collection of craft supplies should exceed our Tupperware collection, I will just pick up the super cheap knock-off version you can get in Kmart.

I love that I regained some space and made good use of the once wasted Tupperware.  I think that craft time will be a lot less painful with this storage solution. 

Injecting Colour: New Year Sales

With the start of a new year, I often feel like a change about the house.  It is  the perfect time to do some mini makeovers as everything is on sale. I have certainly taken full advantage of that!

So, with a sweltering summer upon us here in Australia, I felt like the house need some fun summer colours and prints. I love a pop of colour about the place, but up until now I have played it pretty straight with a little bit of red.  This year, I am going all the colours of the rainbow!

Today I thought I would show you the first mini makeover I did – the bedroom. I forgot to take a before picture, but previously I had a set of 3 mirrors hanging above the bed and a nautical-ly inspired blue and white striped duvet. Very understated.

For the makeover I decided to go for a navy and white printed duvet and crisp white sheets.  I usually go for lighter colours in the bedroom, but I loved how this looked. initially, I was so satisfied with this little change that I wasn’t going to do anything else with the bedroom, but then I remembered my desire to inject some colour into the house.  So I decided to go bright and chose sunny yellow to be the colour ‘pop’ in the bedroom.

Before hitting the sales, I shopped my cupboards and found a yellow throw and  cushion (similar to below) I had bought some time ago at Adairs.

To complete the mini makeover, I picked up a bold striped cushion and a few wall art pieces from Freedom.

So here is my very mini makeover….

The room looks bright and cheery and I spent next to nothing, which is perfect because come Winter, I will no doubt want another change.

 

 

Back to School: Easy Freezer ‘Baking’

In our part of the world, kids return to school this week for the last term of the year.  In an effort to cut down on lunch preparations, I always do a bit of a cook up of treats for my husband and the boys’ lunch boxes.

I picked out four recipes I could freeze and doubled two of them.  These should last me a while!

I made Banana and Choc Chip Muffins (recipe here), Muesli Slice (see my post here), Lemon Slice (recipe here) and Homemade LCM bars (see Thermomix recipe here, regular recipe here.

Lemon Slice, Banana and Choc Chip Muffins, Muesli Slice

Homemade LCMs

What made this task so easy was the last three recipes were no-bake. So, in just under an hour, I had made enough treats to see me through to at least half  term.

I did have a few eager taste testers around to nibble on any piece that looked like it wasn’t going to be packed away.  The consensus was that everything was super yummy.

Do you do a big bake up for lunch boxes? I would love to hear what are your favourites to make.

 

 

 

Halloween Treats: Frozen Banana and Lollipop Ghosts

Yesterday being the 1st October, the kids and I thought we should pull out the Halloween decorations and spook the house up a bit.

After all that decorating we decided that we deserved a special treat. In keeping with the Halloween theme for the day, we made Frozen Banana Ghosts.

These are a really quick and easy to make.  I trimmed the end off a banana and inserted a popsicle stick. We dipped the bananas in melted white chocolate and use a combination of regular and mini chocolate drops to give the ghost his features.  Then we popped these into the freezer for a while to make them firm up.

Delicious!

After making the banana ghosts we had a little melted white chocolate left.  I made lollipop ghosts out of it by spreading the chocolate over a popsicle stick placed on a piece of greaseproof paper.  Very cute!

These are such easy Halloween treats to make and the kids just love them. Do give them a go.

Kids Craft & Fun: Fishing Game

After a little holiday at the beach last week, where we caught a lot of fish, the boys were itching to go fishing again.

Stuck in the house, I had to resort to some crafty, fishing fun.

I had on hand some cardboard fish cutouts.  I let the boys go wild with these, some glue and a whole heap of paper confetti.

Once they were sufficiently decorated and dried we went about making our artwork into a fishing game.

I attached a large paper clip to the mouth of each of the fish.  I then fashioned a fishing line out of some string and a large magnetic clip.  I chose this magnetic clip over any other magnet because it was large and heavy, making it easier for the kids to wield and ‘fish’ with successfully.  This was also the safer option of all the magnets I had around the house – I didn’t want to use one that was small enough to be swallowed by the kids or our dog.

The kids love playing this game.  It kept them entertained for ages!