Talk like a pirate day "Arrrr!"

 

 

I am getting excited about "talk like a pirate day". My daughter and I have been watching a little too much ABC4Kids and there has been a lot of promotion for Friday's programming with all the pirate-y shows planned ... this Mamma needs a tad more sleep, but its impossible with a newborn and a toddler. 

So I decided to make us pirate eye patches! Arrrr! 

Here is a visual step by step process:

 

 

 

After drawing/cutting a cardboard template it was easy to cut two matching oval pieces of felt, to make two eye patches.

I used a basic running stitch to join the elastic and folded the oval over the elastic to create an eyepatch shape.

I used the same basic running stitch to join the halves of the felt together and hid the elastic join underneath the felt. I used white crochet cotton, because it was easy to grab, I think the contrasting stitches look pretty awesome.

Tada!

 

"Arrrr" one very pirate-y pillow!

 

All completed!

 

Now make another one! But don't accidentally twist the elastic and sew it all together before you realise what you have done {like I did}.

Tada! All ready for Talk like a Pirate Day!

Note: An older child could easily make something like this while supervised. Have fun with your eye patches activity!


 

Cardboard box craft: Cameras

After growing up in a big family, one of five children, I am used to having a lot of noise around me. Since having our first daughter we have music or television on in the background while we go about our everyday tasks and activities.

I was always a little unsure about introducing television too early to a little person. I did a bit of research, aka google-ing, and the majority of reputable governing bodies claim that little persons under two years old should not watch television... Hmmmmm. I was a little anxious reading these recommendations as I already had exposed my little one to television, but I felt a little better when I realised she didn't actually watch it very often. Although we have it on in the background, in general the only time she actually watches television is when a song starts on ABC4kids, she dances and then goes back to the activity we were doing. 

Now that she is older, she sits and watches little programs, Play-school, Sesame Street, Peppa pig, Octonauts, Tinga Tinga. We have only just started watching disney movies but they need to be supervised and themes softened {disney villains and dastardly deeds can be very scary for little ones}. After my earlier google-ing I made a decision that watching television would be an interactive activity, it would be a chance for us to learn new words, concepts and social relationships.

One of the shows recently introduced on ABC4kids "Big Teds Adventures" is great for this! It is a short offshoot program from Play-school, where Big Ted goes to the zoo, basically the program introduces an animal, explains  a few interesting things about a animal, the actors and Big Ted take pictures and have a bit of a song at the end. My daughter loves pretending to take pictures with the actors and we always sit together, talking about and exploring what's happening and right at the end we go "click click click".

After seeing how much my little one enjoyed taking pretend photos I wanted to be able to give her a little pretend camera to play with. Trying to keep costs down on purchasing toys that may never get much play, I decided I would make one. It cant be too hard to construct a box out of felt/fabric, sew on buttons, stuff it and such. A few weeks went by and I never had the chance to craft something.

Eventually I came up with a brilliant idea that we would make cameras together out of recycled soap boxes, paper, glue and pens. It meant we had a fun craft activity and we would have a purpose for the item when it was completed! My daughter loved it, she never wanted the activity to end, had to use up all the spare pieces of paper and glue as much as she could manage. 

I didn't think the cameras would last very long, but after five weeks, we still have two cardboard cameras floating around the lounge room and every time Big Teds Adventures come on my little one runs for her camera and gets ready to "click click click"! She has also taken lots of photos of mummy feeding her new little sister, a few pictures of her dollys and some pictures of Daddy. 

Egg Carton Easter Baskets

Easter is approaching and its time for craft! Time to pull out the poster paint, egg cartons, painting tarp and get messy! This year we are making Easter Baskets for relatives and friends, which we will fill with chocolate eggs and goodies. I set up a tarp over the old coffee table that I had in storage in the garage and it was the perfect height for my little one to stand at and paint. It was so fun to see how enthusiastic she became mixing colours and decorating her egg carton masterpieces!

 

 

 

 

Can not wait to visit everyone and let my little bunny share her treats with everyone!

Easter crafts and individual peculiarities

My husband did crafts with our little one today, it was nice that he was able to have some special art time with her. Since Easter is coming up and we have copious amounts of cotton balls (more than any person may go through in their lifetime), a fluffy bunny picture was planned.

I left my favourite pair to their crafting fun and got some gardening done. I was surprised to see my little one peering out from the window to watch me gardening soon after I left and wondered how crafting with Daddy was so quick. It made me giggle to think of impossibility of our toddler being rushed through the fun of smooshing things in glue.

Later once my task in the garden was done I searched out my little family and I asked how their crafting went. My husband laughed and explained that it was going well until our little one accidentally got glue on her hands and then some cotton ball fluff attached itself to her. He explained she got so overwhelmed wiping the fluff off with one hand only to have transferred it to the other that she was stuck in an endless loop.  

Baking Fruity Muffins with a toddler!

I have been trying to think of more activities to do at home to keep my little one entertained and decided to make fruity muffins. I am not a fan of baking nor am I particularly good at it, however my little one loves being in the kitchen and helping whenever food is involved. She often gets shoo-ed out of the kitchen when dinner is prepared because she does not have patience for waiting or understand how hot appliances can be. I thought baking muffins together might let her experience being in the kitchen in a safer, more interactive and fun way. She loved it!

My little one loved mixing the ingredients and became possessive of the spoon, she was so patient putting the patty pans in the muffin tray, she enjoyed pointing to which patty pan needed filling with muffin mixture and then sat staring intently at the oven door while the muffins baked.

One thing I should mention is how fast baking is with a toddler. There is no dilly-dallying around otherwise flour ends up all over the table and morning tea is added to the bowl. Lucky for us, morning tea was just pieces of additional fruit that had not been eaten yet.

Another note: Goods baked with a toddler are not intended to be shared with anyone who is squeamish about eating something the toddler has put their finger into (toddlers are expert taste testers)

If you want the recipe for these particular fruity muffins, just scroll to the bottom of the post (after all the photos). 

Fruity Muffins

Ingredients:

1 1/2 Cup of Self Raising Flour

1/4 Cup of Sugar

60gram of melted butter

1-2 Cups of finely chopped or purée fruit ( I usually use a 1:1 ratio of solid fruit and purée fruit)

1 egg

1/2 Cup Milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 Degree Celsius 

2. Combine Self raising flour and sugar in a bowl.

3. Mix through melted butter

4. Add finely chopped fruit and stir through purée fruit

5. Whisk egg and milk and add to mixture

6. Bake in individual patty pans in oven for 20minutes or until a skewer comes out of the muffin clean

Play dough fun!

I have been putting off play dough play for a little while, not just because my little one would eat it but because I did not have any little accessories {cutters, rolling pins, etc} available. I picked up a set of play dough accessories while we were grocery shopping today and this afternoons activities were set!

Within seconds of putting all the play dough out my little one lifted it to her mouth and bit into it. Play dough must not taste very nice so she did not eat any. Yay!

Apparently I didn't need to go to the effort of buying play dough bits and pieces for play, because my little one thought it was more fun to pull the play dough into little pieces or cuddle it up next to her cheek. Too cute!