Body Parts and Stickers

heehee, no, this is not an episode of CSI. Body parts and stickers make for great fun and a great teaching opportunity. You can play this game with babies from about 9 months, but it's still fun when you're much older and need to know those more unusual parts, like ankles and heels and wrists and earlobes...

All age groups love it when you stick a sticker on your nose or anywhere and say, "I don't have a sticker on my nose? Do I?" Pulling off stickers from a silly Mommy will get great laughs. Or, put a sticker somewhere on toddler and say "Where did I put that sticker?" If they don't answer, say the wrong body part name (Is it on your _____?). That usually gets a giggle and if you're lucky, a correction. You can really have fun with this and follow your child's lead.

And for another sticker idea...lying on the table in front of Little One in the picture below is a piece of orange felt. He really enjoys sticking stickers onto felt - it has for some reason always held more appeal to him than sticking onto paper. I got this felt idea from The Imagination Tree, a wonderful blog filled with many baby and child activities. 

Little One is 2 years old in these pictures.  

Till next time, happy playing.

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.

lego head cup cake toppers

Inspired by lots of lego party ideas on Pinterest, I decided to make lego head cupcake toppers for Little One's birthday ring at school. 

I kept this very simple, as I had to make sixteen of these. I used a square punch to cut the squares quickly and a special little punch that rounds the corners. I added a long toothpick (not the usual short type) with sticky tape to each one.

I love how a simple decoration takes an ordinary cupcake and turns it into something quite special :).

PS. Yes, we have had a birthday! I'll be sharing our at home celebration with you in the next post. 

Play Dough Cookies (made with bottle tops)

You do know how I love bottle tops... :)

When we went away for a few days in the holidays, I knew it being Winter, that  we would possibly be spending a fair amount of time indoors. I packed the play dough (as I usually do), as I knew that this could entertain both kiddos if need be. I also packed an ocean themed bottle top memory match game I had made awhile back. 

Little One and I got stuck into the play dough one afternoon and I realized that we could stamp some sea creatures with our bottle tops. As we got stamping, the idea of cookies evolved. Make a small round ball (quite tricky for Little One to do and good for those hands) and then stamp it. Voila! A plate of sea creature cookies. They are pretty don't you think?

PS. Link to the bottle top memory match here and to the play dough recipe here.