U is for Umbrella

Another in my "I'm-very-behind" alphabet series.

In South Africa our children learn the phonetic pronounciation of a letter, so "u" as in "umbrella", not "u" as in "unicorn". 

  At the blog 3 dinosaurs you can download some super alphabet printable packs. I used this great picture of an umbrella to do our first craft. Little One had to decorate the umbrella with fingerprints. 

(The link to this printable is not working at the moment. I will try to fix it.)

This cute umbrella cupcake idea comes from a Woman's Value magazine party supplement, April 2004. In their version, they used blue and cream icing (half/half) to represent the sand and the beach. I went the easy route - my cupcakes came from Pick n Pay. :)

"If all the raindrops were Smarties and Jelly Tots, Oh what a rain that would be! "

Using bendy straws and paper cupcake liners, Little One created some cute umbrellas. And the rain... well that was Smarties and Jelly Tots of course.

As you can tell in that last picture, the sweetie rain went down a treat. You think he may have some in his mouth? :)

Till next time, have fun.

C is for Car

Earlier this year I kind of promised you an alphabet series. One should never promise such things. The year has raced on and Little One will be going into his last term of the school year tomorrow. The spring holidays are over, sniff, sniff. On the upside, it's count down to the Christmas holidays. 

I have shared these in the series so far:

A is for Astronaut

O is for Octopus

S is for The Very Busy Spider

I'm not very far, am I.  

Let's see if I can catch up a bit.

Little One won an awesome prize at his school carnival and this week we went down to the Zwartkops Race Track and both boys got the opportunity to race around the track with racing driver George Smallberger. It was such a cool afternoon.

Perfect timing for this post. So here I share not only our car activities, but also some pictures of our afternoon.

This cute letter "c" idea is from this post.

These are inspired by these Teddy Racing Cars. 

(I used small Bar Ones, Smarties and some icing.)

A chocolate traffic light treat, or robot, as we call them here in South Africa. 

(Kit Kat, small Bar Ones, Smarties and icing.)

Both my boys (aged 6 and 12) loved creating this car banner for the bookshelf.

If you children love drawing, creating a banner is a great boredom buster.

 

Little One in the car, all ready to go. 

  

Those little fingers make me smile. 

 Can you spot him?

Another alphabet post coming up soon. 

Till next time. 

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! 

Orange and Blue Vintage Truck and Tractor Party

Little One recently turned four and as promised here are some pictures of his birthday celebration that we held at home.  We invited three little friends and truthfully, after years of "bigger" parties, I can now really vouch for keeping the numbers small. The children played, the Mommies chatted...it was a whole day affair.

I had so much fun making the celebration special with lots of personal touches.

The details:   

The theme evolved as I worked on the details of the party, but the colours were very much inspired by a wonderful orange and blue party I saw at On to Baby.

The cake, a red velvet cake, was kindly baked by a friend of mine (thank you Julia!) and I made the bunting. It was made from paper (a printable I found at a lovely blog called Allsorts), glued onto some white string and then attached to skewer sticks. The marshmallow treats were also very easy to make. I melted chocolate and dipped marshmallows into it and then into sprinkles. Big One loved helping me make these.

I was very lucky to find the blue Chevy truck a few weeks before the party. I had wanted to put it on the cake but decided on the simplicity of the bunting and candles. All the wooden blocks were part of our collection and I simply repainted them blue and orange. I also stamped the letters of little one's name onto them with dark blue paint. This idea was inspired by some blocks I saw at a party at The Dorsey Life.

I made a traditional pin the tail on the donkey game, which I downloaded (for free) and printed from Family Games Treasurehouse.  I was really thrilled to find this and all the children, the older ones too, enjoyed the game. 

The very cool tractor - we hired it from Kiddie Rides, who are based in Cape Town. Little One has already placed an order for a vintage motor bike for next year :).  

In the very last picture you may have spotted bigger bunting hanging on my cabinet. That was thanks to a really nice tutorial at Odessa May Society. I think smaller pegs would have looked nicer, but I used what I had.

I hope you enjoyed sharing these memories of a special day. Take care, till next time.

Christmas Tree Biscuits

A few weeks back Little One brought home a Christmas Tree biscuit from school, similar to this one. I knew we had to try these at home too.

I used a very sharp knife to cut the biscuits (store bought Tennis Biscuits), but they broke very easily. I tell you this, because little people can find this upsetting. A small tip, when they do break, tell your little one that it's a puzzle and you will fix it (or they can) on the plate. Once the icing is poured over, the biscuit is far stronger. My little guy's teacher mentioned that they also spoke about division, halving, triangles and squares...so a nice little maths lesson can be had too :).

Once you have laid out your tree on a plate, the decorating starts...the best part. Oops, I forgot, the eating is the best part :). I'm not a Tennis Biscuit fan, but I even polished off a few of these. Yummy!

Thank you Tracey for the inspiration!

Sharing this at:

Baking School

Who would have thought that baking some biscuits could be so much fun and educational at the same time! It's a super sensory experience, uses fine-motor skills, and we added shape and colour recognition, as well as counting into the mix!

Nope, no cookie dough in my mouth Mommy...

PS. I'm linking this to: 

For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholars  

Tot Tuesdays @ My Delicious Ambiguity 

High Paw @ the best toys for toddlers

Sweetie Art

Beacon Sweets has a competition running at the moment in which you can win a fancy iPod, by sending them a photo of a "wacky, weird and wonderful" creation using only Liquorice Allsorts. You can check out all the rules and some awesome creations at www.beaconallsorts.co.za

I just LOVE this idea...sweetie art! I had so much fun creating these. The only problem was not eating my art supplies!

PS. I have linked this to:
Show and Tell @ ABC and 123
Tot Tuesdays @ My Delicious Ambiguity