Day 4 and Day 5 of Toddler Activities: Love Bubbles and Salt Rainbow art

We’ve had such fun with these two activities, thought I’d share them in one post though as I’m not getting to my computer too much at the moment.

Day 4 we did some rainbow salt drawing

that I first saw over at Learning 4 Kids. Mom had fun sticking the coloured paper together and drawing in the salt before handing it over to my monkey for some fun. I used a big paint brush for Layla to draw with and she’s loving it, and such an easy activity! (the trick I think is not to use too much salt otherwise the lines don’t appear so well..)

And next up was growing ‘love bubbles’ which turned into great sensory play for my little monkey. I’m not sure what the official name for ‘love bubbles’ are, but basically you get them from a florist and they are used to decorate vases that you put flowers in. They start off as tiny little balls and after they’ve been in water for an afternoon or so, they grow to be the size of marbles, but are soft, squishy and a little slimey, but so devine to put your hands through, trust me… and my toddler who has carried her bowl of love bubbles around with her for a few days now…

This is what the ‘Love Bubbles’ look like when you buy them… these are red ones obviously and not the clear ones we used below!

 

And this is what they look like once you’ve put them in water and they’ve grown

 

 

And this is what a happy little girl looks like playing with them 🙂

 

 

Have fun xx

Rainbow Carnations

Hands up who remembers doing this experiment back in junior school. I remember it clearly, and it was no where near as awesome as this with all the colours. (I remember the teacher using blue ink that came from the school supply room!)

 

 

And just cause I can… some more rainbow flower prettyness…

(Image Source: Tumblr)

Image Source: Flikr

 

 

A is for Awesome, B is for Bold and C is for Colour

Our little monkey goes to school in January and on one hand I’m so excited and on the other, I know I’ll be a complete wreck when the time comes… It’s going to be an exciting next step in our parenting adventure, made easier also by the lovely school that she’s going to. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about it next year though… but for now I’m wondering what they’ll think I’m one of ‘those’ parents if I send the following pictures through as some suggestions of what they could do at the school. 🙂

Imagine sending your kids to this school, and if this is what the school looks like, can you just imagine the actual learning that goes on inside. Pretty awesome I think…

 

And if you can’t make it happen at a school near you, then why not use some colour to bring a little bit of ‘all year sunshine’ around to a courtyard near you.

 

(Image from Apartment Therapy)

 

Day 3: Ice Ice Baby

Well I certainly don’t win any prizes for being the most consistent here do I, having not posted my day 3 of activies in about two weeks. Family visits, sick babies, reflux, and me generally trying to get this ‘being a mom to two kids’ right, are a few of my excuses…

Monday morning brings a whole new week and a whole new start. The sun was shining beautifully earlier today and we spent most of the morning out in the garden together. The activity for today was my monkey playing with ice, which she loved.

Basically I got some little plastic animals and froze them in ice cubes a few days ago. I added some food colouring in to the water before they froze and today we enjoyed seeing the animals appear as the ice melted. Which kid doesn’t love playing with water on a hot, spring day.

 

 

Enjoy your special time with your little ones today 🙂

Day 2 Activity with my Monkey – Salt Dough hand and foot prints

Day two’s activity was making salt dough hand and foot prints, and we had great fun. It’s been raining for most of the day, so we set up camp on the kitchen floor where the mess could be swept up. My monkey loved measuring and pouring the salt and flour into the bowl, and of course adding the water, and then all of a sudden she become a little bit of a princess and wasn’t keen when her hands got a bit messy. She’s normally quite good with messy play, bet we’re all allowed our princess days aren’t we!

The recipe I used was half a cup of flour, half a cup of salt and a quarter cup of water. Mix it all together and baked in the oven for 3 hours at 100 degrees Celsius. Now here’s the school girl error I learnt…. and should have read the recipe better… remember to put the dough onto some baking paper before going into the oven, otherwise you get a great footprint, but can’t get it off the baking tray, which happened to me 🙂

Some pics from the morning..

Making and mixing…

 

The final product after the baking…

 

 

 

30 Days of activities with my Monkey: Day 1

Life’s been beautiful, crazy, time zapping, confusing, frustrating, but most of all a real blessing. Our little guy is growing nicely, new born niggles and all (read: help! I often have no idea what’s wrong and feel like I should!), and the big sister monkey is adapting like a super star all things considering.

I have to admit that one of the biggest issues since Miles has joined our family is the guilt I feel not having as much time with my biggest monkey. We’re so incredibitly lucky to have the most amazing Gogo to help out in this regard but I still have days of feeling desperately guilty of not being able to split myself in pieces for Miles, Layla and of course my man.

Any way, it is what it is, and instead of feeling guilty about it I thought it would be a good idea to come up with some ideas of quality time that I can spend with Layla for the next 30 days. Instead of finding myself with half an hour of free time and then not knowing what to do with it, I’ve written down a few ideas and will see how we goes.

 

(Image source: Pinterest)

Day 1 tied in nicely with our ‘stand in’ Granny coming over for some tea and because I’d kind of missed her birthday last week we decided it would be good to throw her a tea party… with us decorating Marie biscuits for the tea (I was going to do cupcakes but ran out of time and the biscuits were perfect actually). Hats off to Vicky for actually eating one of these biscuits covered in too much icing and pretty sprinkles).

Layla loved this activity. It was just long enough to hold her attention, and of course the yummies that went with it were an added bonus, testing the ingredients as we went.

All we needed was some marie biscuits, icing sugar, sprinkles and smarties. We put the table outside because of the stickiness factor and the fun started..

Here are some pics of us having some fun… (pics taken with my phone!)

 

 

 

Love the chubby little fingers with all that colour!

 

 

 

Decorating…So much concentration…

 

 

Hmmm I think I’ll just test one before the tea party starts 🙂

Not quite how ours turned out, but couldn’t resist posting the pretty colours of these cupcakes (plus the recipe of course)!

Cool photography

Now I’m no photographer, in fact, the camera on my phone is as far as I go, but seeing such a cool picture on Bored Panda kinda makes me want to become a photographer just for 10 minutes or so…

According to this post, you can get this picture

 

by doing this…

 

Surely the options must be endless… ie, pretty flowers, etc?

Feel inside (and stuff like that) – Flight of the Conchords

The guys from Flight of the Conchords have always made me double over with laughter, plus in their own way they are just quite cool. I haven’t heard much of them over the last year or so, and so when my husband said they had a new video our we were on Youtube in no time. Their new project will make you laugh, cry and generally leave you feeling good inside… take a look here and support this amazing project where Flight of the Conchords linked up with a New Zealand children’s charity to raise funds to make kids better! – you can read more on the project here.

Check the video out where they first interview kids at a school and then turn these interviews into a song, raising over $NZ1.3 million already.

You can do your bit and feel good inside (and stuff like that) by purchasing the tune here with the money going to the charity. Love it when guys like this take on causes like this, cause let’s face it, we would all love a world where little kiddies don’t get sick!

Our Family of Four

Remember me… I’m the chick that used to blog just about every day here… anyway, I’m the same chick, I just don’t get here that much at the moment, I’ve made my excuses in previous posts, so for now I’m just going with the flow and trust I’ll be back here more frequently when the time is right…

So many of you have been so supportive in our journey as parents though, and so I did want to share our latest news with you, and yes, I am so very proud of my family that I’m taking all opportunities to share our special blessings with the world.

So… without further ado… let me introduce to you little Miles John Foulston. Born on the 21st August, by C-Section, in Durban, South Africa. 3.02kg and 48cm of perfectness for us. Watching him sleep right next to me I am amazed daily at what a miracle each and every birth is and just how amazing God is to provide us with our son.

My biggest little monkey is being an amazing big sister so far, with lots of cuddles and helping hands. She’s test driven his bottle and dummy and there have of course been moments when she’s had her wobbles, but over all she’s a great big sister and still the apple of our eye.

Here are a few photos from a photo shoot we did with the amazingly talented Megan Hancock this week.

 

 

xxx

 

A Magic Wand anyone?

[BLUSH]…. where have I been!!! Sorry for blatantly ignoring my blog these last few weeks, truth is I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with what has to be done in the next 4.5 weeks before baby 2 arrives, and kind of feel like I need a magic wand (or a kick up the butt) to get through my to do list… Here’s what I found in the magic wand department, so might go with one of these…

This one from Dear Lizzy is made with pretty yarn, cookie cutters and glue…. kind of magic itself

 

Love this idea from Can’t Stop Making Things– comes with wishes attached even!

 

 

Here’s another tutorial from Natural Kids to make these pretty wands from felt and other bits and pieces

 

 

Who says you can’t cut your cake and eat it… when it comes to magic wands there’s just no limits

 

(Image from Sugarcraft.com)

Or follow this tutorial to make your own magic wand biscuit with sparkles and all.

 

or these from Princess Sharon events

 

So here goes….

Hope you all have a magical day today 🙂