A handmade Christmas

We love a handmade Christmas.  I enjoy the feeling of giving and especially knowing I've made the gift.  I also love surrounding myself with handmade goodies for our home.

 

 

This year we made Christmas bark, rocky road and rosemary salt as gifts. 

 

 

 

For Miss Matilda's teachers I made ring bowls and personalised tree decorations.

 

A few clay decorations

 

 

A thumbprint Reindeer

 

 

 

I decided to make a wreath rather than buy one, using more of my clay decorations

 

 

 

and Santa hats

 

 

Holiday Fun List

Every school holidays we make a list of things we want to do, to make and to see.  Every holidays we forget half of it.  We either don't have the things we need to do the craft we'd planned or we just get busy.

So this holidays I decided that was to change.  I went searching for a printable that looked fun, inviting and we would display to get excited.  I found quite a few especially on Pinterest but the most gorgeous one we loved was thanks to the clever Bianca at a little delightful, you can find it here.

Miss M and I sat down and made a list of the things we wanted to do, make and see and popped them on the planner.  It's been great.  It meant that I could buy or gather the supplies in advance.  We went for craft which were low cost or from supplies which we already had.  It means we've planned our days and don't really wonder what we're going to do.  I also work two days a week even during the holidays so it gives us both something to look forward to.

Here are our ideas;

 ~ Grow grass heads (I had the seeds last holidays and totally forgot to do them)
 ~ Make pancakes with chocolate sprinkles
 ~ Make dance rings (thanks again to Bianca - see her Rainbow Rings here)
 ~ Make bunting - we're making alphabet and number bunting for M's school corner
 ~ Go to Story Time
 ~ Have Mummy/Daughter Pamper Night
 ~ Bake cookies for movie night
 ~ Movie Nights
 ~ Bake muffins and go on a picnic (if the weather turns bad we'll have a carpet picnic)
 ~ Decorate a library bag
 ~ Make paper plate rainbows with condensed milk
 ~ Make snow play dough (perfect in the lead up to our snow trip)
 ~ Board games night
 ~ Fly in a plane to the snow
 ~ Learn to ski
 ~ Build a snowman!

Along the way I'll share our little Holiday Fun List adventures.

A reading corner

If you follow my Facebook page you would have seen the little makeover I did on Miss Matilda's reading corner.

This corner has housed a rocking chair, a wicker chair and now a little soft space for her to sit in, read, relax and enjoy.  Having somewhere to read with Matilda is really important to us and although her room is small I'll always ensure we can continue these special moments.

I wanted something fun and yet peaceful for her so I began searching through Pinterest deciding upon a cloud/rainbow theme.

Having a look at what we already had in the house that I could repurpose, I found the large pom poms I used for my 40th birthday decorations.  I only had to buy the medium and small.

I did want to make wool pom poms but alas they're not how I remembered as a child.  So cotton balls strung on thread to create the look of snow is what we ended up with.  Simple and inexpensive. I also remembered seeing cotton ball snow on the lovely Bianca's A little delightful blog and followed her instructions.

This is how the reading corner looked just after we changed the cot for a big girl bed.

And now

I'm so happy with how it turned out, and more importantly so is Matilda.  It will continue to evolve, the snowballs may become raindrops.  The books are only a fraction of what she has but we'll rotate them every few weeks in the way we do when we have holiday themed book baskets.


As promised too, here are the stockists.

The pom poms are available in kit form from WA discount store Red Dot. The large were $7.99 for two, the medium $3.99 for two and the small $2.99 for two.  I know Spotlight carry the Martha Stewart kits but they're a little expensive.  You could also make your own without the kit, there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube which are easy to follow.

The bookcase was $7.00 from Crazy Clarks

The gorgeous cloud cushion is $12.95 and from Ollie Rose which we love love love!  We have another coming, this time with a little pink bow.

I found the print on Pinterest, I printed this at home as a temporary measure.  The pin took me to the designers store but she didn't have it listed for sale.  I've since contacted her to see if she'll relist them so I can have the real thing and to credit her as the designer which of course is the right thing to do.  After all the print is her hard work and should be recognised.


x Bec

Review ~ Funky Elephant

When I received an email from the lovely people at Funky Elephant I was super excited as Matilda loves to craft.

What arrived in the mail was a gorgeous box addressed to Matilda, I popped it to one side and got on with getting her ready for Kindy and well life got in the way.  So when I set aside some time to open the 'trunk' I wish I had done it sooner.

It's fantastic!

This particular trunk came with everything to make three activities.  Inside the lid are the instructions on what you need for each activity (all included in the trunk), a step by step guide, some general info ~ this one talked about role play.  It also had a cute little rhyme.

 

 

 

 

I laid out the protective sheet so we could get our craft on. Matilda loved everything about the trunk, she loved that it was addressed to her, that she could unpack it and could lay out all the items she needed based on the picture on the instruction card.

 

 

The finished product ~ for today that is...

 



 

What I loved about the trunk is that it's something we can go back to, these two little people are just a small sample of what we can do with what's inside the trunk.  The play can last days or even weeks. 

 

As hubby suggested, Funky Elephant trunks are perfect for time poor parents who can't travel from shop to craft shop gathering supplies.  Just subscribe and forget about it until the trunks start arriving and then get crafting. 

They're fab too for Grandparents who are looking for the perfect gift that's not another soft toy!

Now, for all the details;

The trunks are tailor-made for 3 to 7 year olds. 

They work on a subscription basis, from 2 months to 12 month subscriptions.  And they have a siblings option where they add extra materials to a trunk. 

Funky Elephant Trunks are available online

 

I'll definitely be adding this to the Christmas/Birthday wishlists.

 

 

I was not offered nor accepted money for this review.  The honest opinions are my own.

 

 

Felt Play Box

I found this really great idea on Pinterest (of course)

Something to keep Miss M entertained on the plane or in the car.

So simple.  You need a wipes container, a sheet of felt and you can either make felt shapes/animals etc or do what I did and borrow the 'bits' from a set Matilda already had.  Oh and either a hot glue gun or spray adhesive.

 

Cut the felt to size, glue to the container, add ribbon around the outside and Ta-da!! Just don't look too closely to the glue work!

 



 



Halloween Round Up

A little late but here is our Halloween round up.

Miss Matilda had a few friends around for a little Halloween crafting session.

Nothing too full on, just some paper plate ghosts and pumpkins.

I first started with the paper plate, cutting a circle from the centre.  Keep this and use it to make the ghost. 

 

Cut out a circle of contact a little larger than the centre plate you cut.  Remove the paper, turn over the plate and pop the contact onto the back. Turn the plate back over and cover the contact centre with the paper (make sure you put the paper shiny side down or the paper will stick to the contact).  Using contact is so much cleaner than glue.

 

 

We used orange tissue paper for the pumpkins and cotton balls for the ghost.  Matilda missed out on a contact plate so she had fun with glue instead.

 

The girls had so much fun making their ghosts and pumpkins but it was over way too quick with one girl dumping everything on her plate!  They enjoyed themselves though and then it was time for snacks.

 



A little decorating around the house.

 

 

I am ok with the spiders if they have smiley faces..no scary Halloween here!

 

 

Printables thanks to Amandas Parties To Go (formerly Shindig) and The Girls at Eighteen25

 

 

 

Each little girl received a drink cup to keep. 

 

 

The snacks were the best part, if you ignore the smudged pumpkin face (these are fruit jelly cups). 

 

I love the rice crispie ghosts! 

 

Halloween can be lots of fun, no scary stuff here and no trick or treating.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sand Card Fun

We met the lovely Jo and her gorgeous kids while we were all on holidays in Monkey Mia and got talking about her business.  The Sand Card Company offers kits of beautiful cards which you colour using sand.

When Jo offered to send me a kit for Matilda and I to play with I jumped at the chance.

The kit we received had a super cute Bambi design with sachets of coloured sand.

The idea is to peel off layers of the card to reveal the adhesive backing, one layer at a time. 
You then colour the card using the sand.

 

 We peeled off the sky and Matilda chose the dark blue sand to sprinkle

 

Then the ground.
We tapped off the excess sand in between layers.

The smaller layers were a bit fiddly for Matilda so I got to have my turn. 

This is where you can see it really coming together. 

 

 

The finished product.  Now this was seriously sweet until Matilda insisted on playing with the black sand.. Still cute though and the greatest thing is we had so much fun doing it together.

 

 

Would I get more kits?  Definitely.  I think these make great Christmas or birthday presents or just for a crafternoon of fun.

Would I do anything differently? I'd probably find a different way to sprinkle the sand (the instructions did suggest a spoon which we'll try next time) as it was a bit hit and miss but the best thing is...practice makes perfect.  I'm off to order some more kits.

The Sand Card Company also offer kits for corporate events, fetes and birthday parties.  Check out her Facebook page for examples of other cards.

Thanks so much Jo x

This was a sponsored post but the opinions and fun are ours.

 



 

Cloud Dough Play

Matilda and I had a great day at home yesterday, we stayed in our pj's for most of the day, we watched Wizard of Oz.  We also played.  I found this idea on pinterest (of course) and given how cheap it was to do and how it would be a great indoor activity I went for it.

The recipe on pinterest said to use 8 cups plain flour to 1 cup of baby oil.  I used around 6 cups of flour to 3/4 cup of baby oil.  Baby oil can be toxic so I wouldn't be doing this with kids who are likely to put it in their mouth but Matilda is well past that age.

I mixed it for a few minutes making sure the oil was thoroughly mixed with the flour and held together when squeezed.

Matilda had a great time with it and played for a lot longer than I thought she would.  She built sandcastles, ran her fingers through it (while enthralled with Wizard of Oz) and we made huge snowballs with it..so much fun for around $2! Perfect!

Easy to mould

Our perfect snowballs

Watching Wizard of Oz while playing

I've popped it into a ziplock bag so we'll see how it lasts, if it doesn't,

 it was so cheap we'll just do it again.

You could also use cooking oil to replace the baby oil but it won't smell as nice