Christmas Day is creeping up on us. I always seem to find that the gap between opening the presents and visiting the family quickly becomes quiet & boring for the little ones so I put my thinking cap on to try & think of ways to resolve it. Thankfully a few nights ago I came up with a solution!

I came up with a poem to leave on a letter from Santa at the ends of their beds on Christmas Eve night. They will awake in the morning to see the letters & wah-lah! we have a solution for the empty time space - a candy cane hunt around the house in our PJ's!

I have left a 2 blank designs below, both the same but with different pictures, but you can make your own of course! We have our printed out on a 4x6 matte photo card because we couldn't find any special Santa Paper - maybe this is a job for next years 'Christmas To-Do List' ;)

Each poem reads:
I have just finished delivering toys,
To all the good little girls & boys,
I left some candy canes behind,
How many of them can you find?

 
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Easter is a colourful exciting time of year for a child - and parents aside from the expenses. Every year I try to find age appropriate Easter themed craft for the kids to help them understand the basic 'hallmark' of the Easter holidays and eveyr year colouring Easter eggs always makes it to the list.

There are loads of ways you can colour an egg, the internet is full of methods, some use vinegar, some don't, some use food colouring, others use clothing dye - it all depends on how vibrant you want the colour to be on the egg. When colouring our eggs, we leave them raw and intact - can get messy with clumsy kidlets but it means that the eggs aren't wasted by being drained and avoids them going smelly if we were to boil then colour them, it also means we can use them for things like scrambled eggs or baking which is great!

Before dying our eggs we draw patterns on it with white wax crayons. The wax crayon creates a resistance to the dye so that when the egg is submerged in the dye, where the wax is, the egg remains it's natural colour. You can also use sticky tape or rubber bands to create patterns as well, even create a marbled effect by dripping hot wax over the egg before submerging it in the dye. The dye mix we use is 1/2 cup of water to 2 teaspoons of food dye - this is a pastel kind of dye that is kid friendly, if you want a more vibrant colour to the egg add a teaspoon of vinegar to the dye mix. To get the best results we usually try to leave the eggs submerged in the dye for at least 4 minutes.
              

Video Tutorial - How To Colour Easter Eggs.

Happy Easter Everybody!

 
If there is one thing my son loves more than food it's definitely trains! So this year for his birthday I decided to do a train themed birthday party - however - I didn't want a licensed or character party so had to avoid the massive range of Thomas the Tank Engine & Chuggington. Because of this, I made all my decorations by myself :)

We'll start off with the biggest decoration of all - the pinata! I made this bad boy with 3 pieces of large poster cardboard, some tissue paper for decoration, masking tape to hold it all together, some string to tie it up with & glue. I miscalculated my measurements so I had to tape some extra cereal boxes lying around to add length & I used a toilet roll for the chimney of the train.

Here is the before decoration & finalized.
For the games we are doing simple ideas because the little ones will all be around the 2-5 year old mark. So we have chosen the pinata & a small game of pass the parcel. I was browsing through the shops the other day searching for pass the parcel goodies that fell into the theme of trains but couldn't find anything I liked that would suit both boys and girls. Just as I was about to leave I came across these pop up books which were on sale for only $1 each! I thought they were perfect but way too heavy for little ones to pass around 15 pop-up board books so I improvised. In each layer of the pass the parcel there is 2 candy rolls & a little note tied around them that reads "Choo Choo Choose A Book! :)" They will then at the end of the game go to the table where the books will be set for them to choose one of the 3 types of pop-up books available.
And below we have his cupcake toppers made with a 2" circle cutter & a sheet of printed circle designs. All you need to do is cut out what you would like on the top of the cupcake then use a hot glue gun (or any sturdy glue) to stick the cut out onto a toothpick or lollypop stick for you to place into the cupcake after you have iced them. Next is a decoration I made to stick into the ground - It is just a train cutout hot glued to some bamboo skewers. And on the end we have the front door sign - something simple, just a paper printout with some ribbon decorations.
Below is the self explanatory stuff - the cups, crayon boxes, colouring in sheets, party hats, the birthday banner & the snack containers.
Finally the take home party favours - I kept it train themed & made a DIY Train Track Candy Bag - It contains 6 m&m's, 2 strips of licorice and 6 chocolate coated licorice bullets. They look like the picture on the left & get set up like the one on the right.
The rest of the party remains a surprise until after the party on the 16th of February. :) There is loads of food fun & decoration ideas to share with you after that! :)