Bottle Top Snowmen Creativity

I have an idea in my head when I start a project. My boys have their own ideas! I love that. Yes, it does mean that my craft ideas don't always come to fruition, but I choose to see my ideas as "prompts" for their wonderful creativity. 

So when I glued these bottle tops together, I envisioned bottle top snowmen ornaments, like you see in the photo at the top. Yip, that's my attempt. (I used a glue gun to glue these tops together by the way.)

But, when my boys saw bottle top snowmen, they saw this...

 

 

and this... Little One's creation below. Little One often takes the lead from big brother. :)

This activity kept them busy for more than an hour. A great success in my book. I'm sure you love your kiddos' ideas too... have they ever "bettered" your idea? 

This will be my last post for the year. We will be returning to my home town for Christmas and the New Year. I do wish you a blessed and beautiful Christmas time with your families and friends. If you are traveling, be safe. Take care, till next time.

Georgia x

Christmas Ornament Alphabet Game

 

Here's an easy and fun way to practice the alphabet.

Type out and cut up the letters of the alphabet. If you have an alphabet puzzle or any other alphabet toy, which has all the loose letters, that would work well too. 

Hide each letter with a Christmas ornament around your home. Then send your little person to look for all the ornaments. When they find the letter and the ornament, they must tell you what the letter is. You can extend this activity by asking them to shout out a word starting with that letter.

After they have found all the ornaments, they get to hang them on the tree. Simple and fun.

Hope you are enjoying this lovely time of year. Till next time. 

Christmas Cards 2014

 

 

I love the idea that we make our own cards. The boys aren't always as keen as I am. :)

This year we went for something more arty looking. 

Long time ago, we made our own Eric Carle style paper. To see what I mean, you can read this post. There was still lots left over over in the craft cupboard and it came in very handy for the idea I had.

    So to make these, we used our own handmade paper. We cut out the background scene and the trees. We then used a punch (Little One loved doing this) to make the decorations and the snow. We had a small production line going on the dining room table, with each of us doing a different "job". 

I love how they turned out. 

Till next time, enjoy this wonderful season. 

Getting crafty with Shopping Bags

 

 

I really like Woolworths' re-usable shopping bags. Besides using them for shopping, I use mine as going-out bags to throw in extra clothes for the kids and I also love using them as beach/swimming bags. I have even made a few as Baby Shower gifts for friends, because with baby there is always so much stuff to carry around. And, I don't have a picture, but I once gave one as a teacher appreciation gift - I chose a black bag and added a nice red felt apple.

   

You can even decorate your bag to match a season or a special holiday.

All the designs here were cut out from felt (except for the bunting - I used an old pair of jeans for that one) and glued on with my glue gun. Really easy and fun to create. :)

Have you ever decorated or embellished a re-usable shopping bag? I'd love to see it. 

Till next time. 

PS. The Christmas tree template you can find here at Whimsy Couture Sewing Blog and the bunny here at Punkin Patterns.

Christmas Crafting

 

In the past few months my private practice has taken up more of my time and I worked far into December. It meant not having so much Christmas crafting time, but we did manage to sneak in some fun before the big day. 

At the top - our Christmas cards. These were printed with acrylic paint onto white cardboard. We used a round pencil eraser to make the red dots; an edge of corrugated cardboard to print the stars; and, a spaceship sponge - a modern take on a starry theme. 

This was our version of gingerbread houses - tennis biscuit houses :). They were pretty easy to put together. You need tennis biscuits, lots of icing and some sweeties to decorate. Next year, maybe I'll have a go at making actual gingerbread.

Homemade Christmas gift tags made by Big One. Every gift had a personalised tag.

Homemade wrapping paper by Big One.

This year Little One made this awesome handprint tree at School - all the children made one and it served as a forest - the backdrop in their small Christmas production. I decided to turn it into a ten day countdown tree to Christmas. Each day we decorated the tree with a sparkly pom pom and on Christmas day we added a star to the top. 

And lastly...a Christmas Elf made from a Lipton Tea Box. We spent the afternoon creating with some friends - it's become a lovely Christmas tradition. The idea was to create gift boxes from the tea boxes and this was Big One's creation. 

I hope you enjoyed these. See you back here in 2013! 

Christmas Moments

  Wishing all my readers a truly blessed and beautiful festive season. Isn't Christ's birthday such a special time? It truly is my favourite time of the year - hot weather and all.

Christmas came with a wag and a woof! Surely the highlight of this December was introducing a Jack Russell puppy to our family.

 Don't you love the second little puppy - he's as cute as the real one don't you think?

It's so much fun receiving a parcel in the post, but extra special at Christmas time. A beautifully packaged parcel arrived all the way from Indiana - Thank You so much Katherine! Our friendship is a true testimony to the wonderfulness of blogging :). I also got to taste Peeps for the first time - oooh they are yummy.

I promised to post some more "Teddy on the Shelf" photos on Facebook and I didn't post any - my apologies. To make up for it, I'm sharing some more here with you.

You may recall in the last post that Little One wasn't too fond of our mischievous teddy Nicholas. That changed a bit when he came bearing some gifts.

Sometimes he just sat around.  

 

Other times he was quite busy being carried around. He even went on a outing with us. He went missing for a few days and we thought that he may have got lost, but, thankfully, he had just found his way into the washing basket :).

Drinking Little One's favourite juice. 

His favourite book "the three bears" ...who would have thought ;).  

Next year I'm sure the children will be very excited when he comes out of the Christmas box - it was so much fun starting this new tradition. 

It also really made me smile to find these. 

Spontaneous Christmassy play. 

Top pic: Big One

Bottom pic: Little One 

When I asked Little One why the blue gift was on top of the tree and not next to it, he told me that "Mr Bean" put it there. Gotta love how they think.

On Christmas Eve we got SPARKLY. One of Little One's favourite things about this Christmas I think.  

And we played with gifts of course. Big One's best gift this year -the Perplexus Maze Puzzle .

He removed the gift wrap and started playing with it while it was still in it's box - Addictive! 

Next post will be the little bit of crafting we got up to. This season always goes by too quickly for me. 

Till next time...

Teddy on the Shelf

Have you heard about or seen the elf on the shelf  ideas all over the web? I saw the little elf for the first time last year and think it's a really sweet idea - having a mysterious little elf arrive in your home and him getting up to all sorts of antics while the children are asleep. And he is really cute.

Anyway, we had an old Santa toy that broke last year - you know, those NOISY, dancing Santa dolls - I'm thinking that maybe it was broken on purpose by the Dad person - hehehe. Well, I couldn't let a good Santa suit be thrown away, so I found myself dressing up one of Little One's teddies in it. That's when the idea of a Teddy on the Shelf came to mind - our cute substitute. 

 

 

Our little teddy was named "Nicholas" by Big One and has been getting up to all sorts of mischief. Little One has had me giggling - he has really not been impressed with this teddy. He has told me that he will "kick him out of the house" (harsh words from a four year old!) and I have found Nicholas "locked up" in a cardboard box - apparently this was him in jail. It appears that there are some serious consequences for getting up to mischief in our house :). 

 
To see lots of elf on the shelf ideas and fun...here are a few links:

lilsugar

Complicated Mama

SheKnows Parenting 

Till next time. 

Christmas Treasure Hunt

Usually in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I have a few small surprises for the children. Last year one of them was a Christmas Treasure Hunt to look for some small gifts in the garden. I ran out of time to write about it, so I thought to share it with you this year.

I found these wonderful Christmas cones over at Mr Printables and used them to create a fun and fairly simple treasure hunt. Little One was only three and a bit at the time, so it had to be easy to follow. The kiddos loved it.

First up was a boy cone, who had a note saying:
Find a tree
Find a tree
Hee hee hee

Next up, a Christmas tree, with a note saying:
Where can Rudolf be?

Rudolf has a note too:
The Easter Bunny is here!
Oh dear, Oh dear, Oh dear

I decided to call the snow bunny, the Easter bunny, to get a few smiles. His note said:
I love Christmas, 
I can't help myself.
Such yummy treats.
Now can you find an elf? 

The elf's note says:
Santa's got a surprise for you!
Just find him. 
That's all you need to do.

Santa has the gifts and a note saying:
Ho Ho Ho
Way to go! 

This was so easy to put together. If you click on the Mr Printable's link above, it takes you to the post where you can download and print out these cuties. Simply cut them out and stick them together. If you don't know the Mr Printables website, well then, consider this information a small Christmas gift from me to you ;). It is a wonderful site, full of incredible freebies to print out. Have fun!

What Christmas surprises do you get up to during the festive season?