The Softest Playdough and Printable Playdough Fun

I started my Christmas holidays today and have been craving some Mummy and sons time, so I thought we would do some fun play.  As it is terribly overcast and humid here in Brisbane, we opted for some indoor fun in the air-conditioning.

Both my boys love playdough.  Recently I saw a recipe for the easiest, softest, most beautifully smelling playdough.  It only has 2 ingredients, one of which you would never guess, and takes only a few minutes to make. You must give it a go….

Soft Playdough

Mix 2 parts cornflour (corn starch) to 1 part hair conditioner.

Knead until it comes together in a soft dough. At this point you can colour it with food dye.

Play!

It really is that simple.  I picked up a cheap conditioner at the shops that had a lovely smell and pink colour, so I didn’t have to dye the dough myself. Obviously, this isn’t a playdough for little ones who might be tempted to taste their dough creations.

The boys have spent the morning playing with this as well as some free playdough printables I found on the net.  I printed and laminated them so they will survive the holiday season.

You can find these playdough mats at Tot Schooling .  Another place to look is Busy Little Bugs.

 

The Playdough puppets are found at the Nuture Store.

What a lovely, simple activity for us to start the Christmas holidays with.

 

 

Easter Themed Kids’ Activity Bags

Now that I have been on a bit of a roll creating the Activity Bags for the kids, I had to make some Easter themed ones. You can see some of my other activity Bag posts here and here.

There is an abundance of Easter themed crafting items about at the moment so it was really easy to create these activities. Take a look….

Easter Egg Word Creation. A 3 letter word and picture clue.

Easter Egg Colour Match. Match the top and bottom part of the egg to the picture.

Easter Egg Number Match. Place the correct number and colour of  pom poms into the numbered egg.

Easter Egg Colour Match. Place the correct coloured egg yolk into the egg.

Easter Symbol Sequencing. Match the sequence on the cards using the correct symbols.

These fun activities live in an Easter gift bag by the garage so we can grab it when we are heading out.

With Easter holidays starting at the end of this week, I can see these will get a good workout before Easter arrives.

Have a great day.

Amazing Hot Cross Buns

I LOVE Hot Cross Buns.  Unlike others who groan at their appearance in the supermarket on Boxing Day, I am excited.

In the past I have had a few attempts at making my own, but I have never been able to master the texture.  They have either been too dense or too dry.

Last week though I made the best Hot Cross Bun I have EVER eaten! They were light, soft and perfectly spiced. Full of fruit and delightful with some butter.

After hearing it’s amazing reviews, I used the recipe from the Thermomix Everyday Cookbook. Making them in the Thermomix made the task so simple – all the more reason to bake them all the time. If you don’t have a Thermomix there is no reason why you can’t make these in a stand mixer or with good ol’ elbow grease. You can find a version of this recipe here.

To make these little baked goods healthier for my family, I used spelt flour and stevia to sweeten.  Quirky Cooking also makes some healthy substitutions to this recipe which you can see here.

Seriously, if you like Hot Cross Buns, go make this recipe – NOW. You will not be disappointed!

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.

DIY Christmas Pocket Book

In the hope of avoiding  the shopping centre crush at Christmas time, I have well and truly begun my Christmas shopping.

In years past, my present buying had been a bit haphazard. This year I was determined to be organised by writing a list of gift ideas and items purchased, as well as keeping my receipts in one place.

I decided I needed a pocket book in which to keep this information. Instead of going out to buy one, I made one using left over craft paper from last Christmas.

The whole thing was really simple and quick to make.

I didn’t have any double-sided paper left, so I stuck some coordinated prints together to make three,  30 x 30 cm double-sided pieces of paper. If you wanted to do this,  you could use paper or light card and alter the size and number of  sheets to suit the size pocket book you need.

I folded the base of each sheet to make a little pocket.

 

I held down and secured the sides of the pockets with a glue tape.

I folded each sheet of paper in half, using a ruler to get the folds crisp.

I stacked the pockets on top of each other and used the sewing machine to bind them together along the fold line.

This configuration of folded sheets gave me a good number of pockets to place receipts or vouchers and some blank pages on which to write my Christmas present ideas.

I have divided each spread up for the different individuals or groups/families I buy gifts for.

The front cover was screaming out for a little prettiness so my youngest helped me glue some buttons in a wreath shape on the front.

This little book now lives in my handbag. I am never without my ideas list at the shops and my receipts can be stowed safely inside straight away.

How do you keep your Christmas buying organised?

 

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!

Father’s Day Present: DIY Personalised Plate and Mug

For whatever reason, in Australia we celebrate Father’s Day on the first Sunday in September.  So in the last few weeks, my  thoughts have turned to what the kids and I will give the fathers in our lives.  In addition to a gift, the kids usually create something for their father and grandfathers.  This year for my father, we decided on a personalised plate and mug for him to use in the office.

To create this project I picked up a plain white plate and mug from Target.  After giving it a good wash and dry, I used a Sharpie to label the plate and mug, ‘Grandy’s Biscuit Plate’ and ‘Grandy’s Coffee Mug’.

Initially the plan was to let the kids go crazy on the crockery with coloured Sharpies, but they wanted to use paint.

Using acrylic paint, the boys painted on some biscuits/cookies and finished them off with some choc chip dots.

They did a pretty good job of these, so I didn’t need to fix anything.  I did have some rubbing alcohol on hand, just in case I wanted to remove anything.

To fire the crockery and allow the print and painting to remain, I placed the crockery in my cold oven, turned the oven on to 350 degrees farenheit/180 degrees celsius and baked it for 30 minutes once it reached temperature.

And viola! Here is the finished product.

The plan is to bake a batch of his favourite biscuits, melting moments, and bundle these up inside the mug.

You could use this technique to create all sorts of fantastic pieces for yourself, or those you love. How about beautiful monogram plate to place on the mantel, or use a stencil to give your crockery some flair? The options are infinite. I am already itching to have a go at something else.

What would you do?

Pizza Oven and Hanging Herb Garden Update

We were doing a whole heap of work about the garden on the weekend and I realised that I never posted about our finished pizza oven. You can read about the start of the project here and here.

The completed pizza oven, and accompanying hanging herb garden, brought a 3 year plan to fruition and we couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out!

Here is what the area looked like before.

And here is the completed pizza oven and hanging herb garden (please forgive the awful shadows in the pics).

 

And some pics of it in action….

In  the end we bought a pizza oven kit and hubby, with the help of a bricklayer friend, assembled it over a series of weekends. It wasn’t as big a job as they anticipated.

We already had a slab down and some besser brick pylons so with a little more block work and a poured concrete top,  the base was constructed.  This left a sizable space underneath for us to store wood and other patio essentials.  The oven kit was really simple to piece together and after some curing, the whole thing was ready to paint.

After some hit and misses with how best to fire up the beast and cook a perfect pizza, hubby now has it down pat.  In fact it has become his little ‘thing’.  When the pizza oven is being fired up, he does everything,  including making the dough. Hooray a night off for me!

The plan was to use this for all sorts of cooking, like roasts and breads, but we haven’t really got into that.  As the weather warms up here in Australia, we will have to perfect these other dishes too.

This weekend just gone we fired the oven up for pizzas.  At the moment we are loving this prawn, prosciutto and basil pesto concoction my husband put together. Yum!

Pop by later in the week to see some other changes we have made in the garden to make it a more useable space for the whole family.

Sometimes I Just Hate being Short….

The cold weather is upon us here and I had to go out and buy myself some new winter gear.  You’d  think that would be exciting, hey? But winter means long pants and jeans and I am short.

Apparently, my 5’3″ height is short even by ‘short length’ pant standards, so all my pant purchases need to be re-hemmed.

After procrastinating for about 2 weeks, I finally altered all my new purchases. It wasn’t as difficult as I had remembered the task to be…..maybe my sewing skills have come along a little??

Before altering  my jeans I revisited two helpful tutorials at Do it Yourself Divas and Just Something I made.  These gals show you how to reuse the jean hem in your length alteration.  So simple and no need to worry about ruining the look of your distressed jeans with a crisp looking hem.

My next alteration task is shortening the cuffs on a jacket.  While my sewing skills have come along, I think I am still a way off doing cuffs.  Perhaps that is a job for a professional.

Do you have any helpful alteration tips for the vertically challenged?