Crafting by not a very craft mummy - first anniversary card

I am fortunate to know lots of very creative people. It is inspiring. A few of them have made cards for their friends' first wedding anniversaries - appropriate as traditionally it is paper.

I fancied a go, as some good friends of ours got married last year. I got to be a bridesmaid and Big E was a groomsmen.

Ages ago I'd seen a lovely idea to use the score of the couple's first dance as a backdrop to the card. Our friends' first dance was "Your Song" by Elton John. I searched on Google and found the sheet music! Now...the website seemed legitimate and open access, but I am sorry Elton John if I have downloaded your copy righted material!

Their wedding colour scheme was green.

Step 1: Choose your colours and song sheet. It was easy to fiddle with the print size of the song, so I could make it the right size.

Step 2: Stick the layers together. I just used a standard glue stick.

Step 3: Cut out a little heart shape. I then decorated it with gold pen with their names, but you could just put the date or whatever you fancy.

Step 4: I left it at this stage for ages, but as I was putting in it an envelope, I added their wedding date to the top.

I hope they like it. :)

Crafting by not a very crafty mum - marbled paper cards

Marbled paper tutorials starting appearing on my Pinterest feeds. Some of them were so beautiful and it sounded easy. With Easter approaching it was a chance to try it out. The final result turned out better than I thought, considering I completely fudged the process!

I read through quite a lot of tutorials that I googled. They all used shaving cream, but they varied in what paper, paints, etc they used. Shopping is getting harder with Little E. He is nearly 2 and a half and my corridors echo with "I don't want to!" Nipping out for some shaving cream can turn into a half an hour battle to get his coat on.

So, I thought I would have a go with what I had in the house. I had foaming hair mousse, some left over finger paints and standard white printer paper. That'll do...

I have no photos of the process, as there was foam and paint everywhere to contend with! Little E also lost interest quickly. He loved the hair mousse (as always), but he didn't understand why we weren't playing with our Arctic toys in the foam like we usually do. I didn't mind. It was finally a sunny spring day and afterwards we went outside with his Artic toys to splash around in buckets of water.

I'll try to explain what we did, but I recommend looking up some proper tutorials.

First step was the only prep I did. I lined a baking tray with foil. Ours has a nice deep edge to it, so I thought that would work well.

Step two was to let Little E play with the foam and fill the tray. He liked this!

Step three was to squeeze paint into the foam. The finger paints I had were in little tubes, so Little E enjoyed giving them a good squeeze, even though he was confused why we were doing this.

Step four is then to swirl the paint around in the foam to make patterns. This is where my process fell down. The mousse didn't support the paint and it mainly sunk to the bottom of the tray. We did get some paint brushes and mix it about, but Little E couldn't really see what was happening, so I am sure this is why he gave up.

Step five is to press your paper onto the foam and soak up all those beautiful swirly patterns you have made. I thought mine wasn't going to work at all. However, I could see the paint was lurking at the bottom, so I just pressed down firmly until the paper made contact. I could easily see the paint soaking into the paper. The foam was so wet that the colours were transferred easily. Fortunately, I had baking parchment paper standing by to transfer our soaking wet paper onto. I made two sheets. Little E enjoyed watching me do this part and seemed impressed.

And...it didn't look too bad! 

Certainly not some of the fabulous patterns I had seen online, but I was pleased. It was definitely something I could work with.

When the paper was dry, I used a template to cut out bunny shapes. I placed it over where there seemed to be the best mix of colours. I felt the centre was too uniformly red.

Stick them to card and add an appropriate pun...

My final thoughts are that the process of marbling was easy and fun. I am sure it is something we will try again. Little E is still young and I'm experimenting with ideas that I have never heard of. I would definitely try with proper shaving cream next time. Making the cards took no time at all and I made a bunch in probably 15 minutes. I still have loads of left over marbled paper to make more if I need to.

Toddlers - keep it simple, stupid!

"Keep it simple, stupid."

Wise words from my medical registrar when I was struggling with the complexities of lymphomas and leukaemias. As soon as I realised it was her job to worry about that stuff and mine to get on with the day to day ward work, it all got a lot easier!

I liked the phrase and it has been a useful concept over the years.

I've been thinking about the simple things recently.

It probably started when we got some big cardboard boxes. It was exciting thinking about what I could make and I got really interested in making a castle. Loads of images on Pinterest are, of course, really quite elaborate creations.

You can also buy them ready made...It's all a bit intimidating.

When we first got the boxes, we purely used them as tunnels, which Little E loved.

However, they were losing their structural integrity, so one nap time, I opened them up and made a big circle. It looked pretty lame, but no time for anything else.

Little E came down from his nap, his eyes lit up and he cried out "A castle!" He played with it for days and we still get them out from time to time.

We also have a box full of packing pellets leftover from Christmas, which I don't think we ever leave my house. 

This has been a sensory toy, something to hide in, fake snow/rubble for the diggers, "leaves" to sweep up and currently...a bubble bath!

We also have a cardboard tube from a roll of wrapping paper that Little E loves. It even makes it into bed with his cuddly toys. It's a sword, a magic wand, a tunnel for cars, a trumpet... We have done nothing to it to make it these things, it just transforms in Little E's head.

It's made me realise that sometimes when we try too hard and make something for our children, we are ruining it for them! A box can be anything, but a cardboard car is a cardboard car.

Keep it simple, stupid!

Toddler activity - when your little one has other ideas...

Today's episode starts with my beloved flower wellies.

My sister bought these for me about 15 years ago. They have done me proud, but couldn't withstand the amount of puddle jumping I've done with my toddler. They were leaking and I needed to move on.

I didn't want to just throw them away, but what could I do with the them? The only recycle idea I found was to make them into a planter.

Little E likes digging, so I thought planting some flowers would be good.

So, I made this! Little E picked the flowers out from our local shop.

I got most of my inspiration from this blog... Baby Routes. She is a great blogger. Walking and nature with little ones.

http://babyroutes.co.uk/how-to-make-flower-pots-from-old-wellies/

From her video...her kids got stuck in. Aww...sweet.

Little E did not...Sigh.

At first I was disappointed. I then realised the reason he wasn't helping, was because he was too busy filling a bucket of water up with soil. He spent ages doing that. He then wanted to tip it all out. He discovered that he had created mud! I can only imagine this is how Man must have felt when he discovered fire.

I think he played with this mud for the next hour and we had a whole "mud kitchen" thing going on.

Now...this was hard for me. I am not a particularly "cool" mum. Big E is also not fond of mess and mud. When Little E started painting the gate with mud it took all my will power not to shout "Not on the gate! I'll have to clean that up! Your dad will be upset too!" 

Then I thought...it's mud! The rain will wash that away.

Thankfully it was all a lot of fun. An added bonus...Little E didn't throw any at me.

If being a mum has taught me nothing else, it has helped me to be more flexible. Little E knows his own mind and really doesn't want to be told what to do. I have to learn to create a space for him to do his own thing. I must be mindful that these projects are what I WANT. Hopefully he can then use them to do what he wants.

It's easy to get obsessed with picture perfect parent blogs with happy children joining in with brilliant activities. We probably all need to learn to go with the flow (and mud!) a bit more.

When messy play gets messy!

Oh dear...

Not everything I try goes well and this didn't go well at all...

I thought I would share this, as you can end up looking at lots of blogs with happy, smiling, well behaved kids and think, "What am I doing wrong?" You aren't doing anything wrong, people are only sharing the stuff that went well!

We go to a lovely toddler group once a week that always has a messy play station. One week, it was cold, cooked spaghetti. Little E loved it and I squirrelled it away as an idea that I could do easily at home. How messy can spaghetti get?

Really messy...

My rookie mistake? Forgetting Little E likes throwing. He threw it everywhere! I think we'll be finding spaghetti down the back of radiators for a week. When he started throwing it at me, I'd had enough and ended the game.

Picking cold, sticky spaghetti off the floor takes a long time.

This is why I have always been concerned about messy play. I have limited energy and I really didn't want to clean that all up on top of everything else I have to do. Worst of all, Little E didn't want to help the clean up and had a tantrum.

Sigh...Felt like a failure...

Then I reflected...

Until then, we'd had a really nice time.

He'd love it. Chopping, cutting, serving me bowls of spaghetti, sticking his hands and face in it! He cut it up with scissors and I showed him how to use scissors with one hand. It was great.

Yes, he had a tantrum, but I stood my ground and in the end, he came back and helped me tidy up. Yes! 1 point to mummy!

So...will I do spaghetti again? Maybe outside for the time being or until he is old enough to stop throwing things!

I'd definitely recommend having a go if you think you can contain the mess...or have a dog to eat it all up off the floor and walls and chairs and ceiling....

Toddler activity - ice world

I had all these high ideals of Little E not watching TV.

Guess how long that lasted...

I am so lucky to live in a world with CBeebies. High quality, fun and educational programmes on a dedicated channel from 6am until 7pm. At least I can be confident that when I turn the TV on there will be good stuff. He's learnt a lot.

The only problem...Little E LOVES TV. I think he'd watch it all day if he could. We had to bring in strict rules about turning off the TV. Cue tears and tantrums. It was hard. Now he'll turn off the TV, but looks at me as if to say, "Now what?" He'll play with his toys, but unless he is really interested, we can end up with him sitting on the sofa, shouting at me to turn the TV back on.

If the weather is good, no problem. He'll happily play outside for ages. But on bad weather days, the afternoons can drag on with him demanding TV over and over unless I keep distracting him.

It helps if I have some ideas of ways to entertain Little E. Hence, one soggy day, I pulled out - Mini Ice World.

There are loads of ideas like this on Pinterest. People call them mini-worlds, sensory bins, etc. I'd seen an artic one and thought it looked so pretty, so had been collecting items - some left over polystyrene from Christmas, glass pebbles from a charity shop, Schleich polar animals and some hair mousse. I got out our baking tray and covered it in baking parchment to try to protect it.

Little E gasped when he saw it and was engrossed for about 45 minutes. Result!

I had frozen some ice cubes, which I added as well. Little E wasn't that bothered to be honest, but I've seen other ideas when you freeze all sorts of shapes to make ice floes for polar pears, etc, so I might try that in the future.

He loved the foaming hair mousse! An old memory dredged up from my past. I used to sneak into my mum's hair kit and spray tiny amounts of hair mousse on my hand. I loved to watch it puff up too.

He kept pointing to where he wanted me to squirt some next. I dropped some of the animals in the foam and said they were hiding. This amused him. When he found them, he wasn't happy that the foam had stuck to them. "Dirty!"

Guess, they need a bath then! Little E is a "water baby". He'll mess around with water until the cows come home. So, I got some out.

After their bath, he poured most of the water into the tray! We were all very soggy by the end, but it was good fun. The baking parchment did not survive!

Little E began making the penguin and seal swim through the water. He said they were eating. I asked him if he knew what they ate. At which point, I remembered we had more items we could use for our icy world! A duplo fish and polar bear. In they went.

It was amazing how much there was to talk about. The animals, the experience, the polystyrene floating, the glass beads sinking...We both enjoyed it.

When he was done, I tidied the animals, polystyrene, pebbles and mousse away into a shoe box and hope to bring them out another time.

If you fancy a go, there is lots of inspiration on Pinterest. However, lots of them are pretty complicated with lots of ingredients and things you need. I don't want to spend too much money and end up with more junk in my house, so I aimed to reuse and recycle. Always great to hear anyone else's ideas.

Time to experiment with some more mini worlds methinks!

Crafting by not a very crafty mum - finger print thank you cards

Christmas was coming, the goose was getting fat, so it was time to sort out Christmas thank you cards.

I was so pleased how fast and effective this one was. Check it out.

These are all our thumb prints. I've seen things with baby/toddler footprints, etc, but I thought it would be lovely to include the whole family this Christmas.

I bought a finger printing set which had brown paint and just added some red stickers as noses and drew in some details with a biro. If I'd had some black stickers, I would have done black for us parents and red for just Little E, but red was what I had in stock!

Again, I put this on a postcard that I printed out as many times as I needed, but if you have agreeable little ones you could make them all by hand. Not likely with our Little E! One good thing about making them as postcards was some of the borders that were available were lovely and I felt really added to the final outcome.

I think I've had the most positive feedback about this thank you card.

And yes...I have big thumbs...for keeping people under, y'know.