christmas cupcake art

We have had some crazy weather lately... wet and cold, then hot, then full blown storms... we got stuck with one late last week and so I needed an indoor activity to amuse two littles.

The request was for cooking so we somehow found all the things to make cupcakes :)

Amahli was more than excited to help with pouring and even cracking the egg was fun this morning :)

Jared was keen to help but his role was more about making sure the oven was on, finding patty pans, fixing the timer. It was great to see them working together to get a job done.

Once the cupcakes were cooked, we let them cool and I had a great idea for decorating them. I iced them with white icing ( icing sugar and milk, I made it really thick) and let them go solid in the fridge for half and hour.

Once hardened, I gave them some food colouring and cotton buds so they could paint on the top! The idea was that they were going to paint Christmassy things but they were just more keen to paint :)

I left some for Jumeirah to do once she got home from school. She really enjoyed decorating them... but all three enjoyed eating them more.

Well, at least the icing anyways ;)

the beginnings of Christmas

I worked it out :)

That weird, disconnected feeling?? Its because I TOTALLY was. I was fussing most of the day with washing, tidying, cleaning, retidying.. never really getting anything done and not spending any time at all with the littles I love.

When I fixed that ( clean only for an hour in the morning) by settling with them by 10am and playing until we had finished ( anywhere from half and hour to 2 hours) I felt so much better in myself and was able to clean with a purpose instead of just filling time.

So to fix it, I started by setting up the tables the night before with some activities that they could sit and do with me.

Yesterdays activities looked like this:

Letter boards and story stones

Marble transfering

And we began our Christmas craft :)

The christmas tree shape activity I designed myself in about 2 minutes in a word doc, printed it out, cut the triangles out and we were ready to start.

Amahli and our little Monday friend really enjoyed sitting and working out how the triangles went. Jared flew through his with minimal help, and he didnt even really flinch at the glue :)

I love a productive morning.

Stay tuned tomorrow when I show you our new addition to the Mumma Made It clan.... ;)

taking the time

It was happening again.. that yuck feeling of not really achieving anything in my day, spending bits and pieces of time with my precious littles, half finishing lots of things.... when it happens, nothing seems to flow, nothing seems to work, and NOTHING seems quite right.

So I recentred, refocused, got OFF the computer, and played with the two people who needed me most, Amahli and Jared.

I set up the table with a few different things to do... some candle painting, a simple Christmas threading, and the letter boards, and invited them to join me. Both were really keen, which goes to show that I have been a bit absent of late.

Amahli was straight into the threading, not really wanting to do the Christmas colours, but to make a rainbow. I was happy to oblige and she was more than keen to sit and chat whilst she threaded.

Jared wanted to have a go at the candles but wanted me to light them. After creating a dripping picture, he painted over the raised wax dots on the paper. This he did alot! He then wanted me to paint a "J" for him to drip down. All these ideas I was totally shocked at.... he had heaps of different ways to use the paint and candles and I just tried to keep up!

40 minutes later, both had finished and wanted to build a cubby so we grabbed some sheets and got to work. They told me to go clean the kitchen, so I left them to create, feeling so much more connected and focused and able to actually get things done :)

I love that in making time for them, I had time for me too. Time to reconnect, to take those few precious moments to bond, but also that in doing that I was able to stop the rush of " doing" to just be :)

all about the feets

Yesterday I spent much of the day making cute little baby shower cards for my Sister in law. Shes giving me a new nephew in about 2 months :) So I obliged and make these gorgeous little feet cards to invite her friends to celebrate this little boy whos almost here.


After making them, Amahli was keen to make her own footprints with her hand like I did and so I set it up for her and Jared to have a turn.
He would have none of it, but he humoured me with this awesome picture of a dinosaur. Sometimes he shocks me in his able-ness. I think sometimes he acts like he cant do anything cos I get off his back... hmmmm.....



But Amahli was well keen so I showed her how to make a fist, then print that fist on the paper to make the foot. then using a little finger, make the toes! She loved it and soon I had a table full of tiny footprints.

We talked about what feet do, how they help us, and how we look after them. She then wanted her toes painted to celebrate them :)

So it was pink piggies all round :)

credit card painting

Lately Ive noticed a slight but decent move on Jareds part.... hes starting to become more involved in crafty things. Especially if it looks interesting and he hasnt done it before, he seems much more keen.

So I have been racking my brains to try and find new ways to do the simple stuff.

Today we used credit cards to paint :)

( well theres no money in them so they might as well be used for something!!)

It didnt quite work to plan but he still really enjoyed it.

You need:

some old cards ( probably one per child)

some paint and some paper

Allow the child to squeeze a small blob of paint onto the paper. We tried a few different things from ordered lines, to trying to create rainbows, but it seems to work best in the blobs are in a line.

Then, holding the card on an angle, drag it through the paint blobs.

The aim is to blend the colours together which kind of worked.

The other aim was for him to enjoy a new paint experience which was successful :)

Anybody got any other non messy looking paint fun I can do??

jellyfish in a bottle

The last few nights I have been going to bed ridiculously late... I keep getting off the computer only to find yet another blog I havent seen or something I think my kids would like, or something else... crazy really!

But something I did find the other day was this blog Bhoom Play, and more particularly, this awesome little activity to create jellyfish in a bottle.

This morning, I showed Jared a cool thing they had done by making a jellyfish out of a plastic bag. we set to work... me snipping, tying, filling with water, retying, more snipping, slight cursing, more tweaking and then finally success!!, him encouraging, quick jump on the trampoline, back to encourage some more, a few snips, back outside for a hit with the ball, and then finally back to watch and beg for food... when I first saw this site I though it looked easy but I read under one of her photos " With some trials and errors" and realised that it was a bit tricky.. but like them, we got it finally!

And no one has let them go since :)

They are hard to take photos of but heres a few of our jellyfish in a bottle.

And a video:)

happy weekend!!!

shaving cream marbling

It hit me today that we are no longer in September.... strange I know, I but somehow October creapt up on me and it wasnt until I was pasting photos in a folder in the computer when Jumeirah says " Mum why are you putting them there? " To which I responded " Cos thats where they belong!". She quickly replied, " Oh. But its not September anymore." Bam. Oh. ok then!

So apparently its October and also, its now 3 weeks until that nutcracker of a cherub of mine turns 3. How did she do that???

And so today was a mad rush of working out whether to have a party, and then quick! we should invite some people.

So Jared, Amahli and I decided we would do some marbling to become butterflies for the front of the invite.

Both were really keen, even when I got the shaving cream and food colouring down!

( I think Ive posted this before but oh well, lucky you, you get to see it again!)

In a tray, squirt a fair amount of shaving cream, enough to cover the bottom. you will need to smooth it out with your hands so its an even layer.

Carefully, ( we used a medicine dropper) drop in either ink or food colouring in lots of spots over the shaving cream.

Using a skewer, carefully run the shewer through the coloured spots in large circles. I encouraged mine to do this slowly so it doesnt all become a big mess quickly. They did really well!

Once the patterns have been created, lay a piece of paper on the top and press down gently, you will see the pattern starting to show through the paper.

Lift off the paper, and using a ruler or carboard strip, gently scrape off the excess shaving cream.

You can then use your skewer again to make circles and patterns! You dont need new ink everytime, only once it starts to get really mixed up and loses the swirly patterns.

This is how it turned out! I love this art, its pretty, its easy and it smells great!

NOTE:This is where I should have taken the tray away instead of leaving it on the table. Mostly my kids are brilliant at not touching things cos they dont like it anyways but it obviously was appealing to Amahli. I watched as she pushed her hands through the swirly foam, excited at the fact that she did it on her own without me prompting her.... for exactly 4 seconds before she realised it was sticking in her and began to shake it off..... so now I smell nice and shaving creamy too ;)

Will turn it into butterflies tomorrow :)

squeeze painting part 2

Busy Bees :)

Today has been just BEAUTIFUL. Blue skies, a smattering of white clouds... just gorgeous. Is it too much to think tomorrow will be the same??

Today we finished off the squeezee painting from yesterday.

The black glue paint had completely dried this morning so I gave Jumeirah some watercolours ( food colouring) to paint in all the sections of the picture.

She didnt want to do her owl but she did do the swirly painting.The is end result!It looks really cool. I didnt push her to do the background, she liked it just like this. Kinda looks like Christmas lights! Id love to do a really big one, just for myself. Its just the type of painting this shockingly non-able to paint person loves ;)

have a great sunny weekend! And pray for sunny days for me too!

squeezee painting

Yet another wet school holiday day here... Im having a little bit of a meltdown as Im shooting my first "official" non family wedding on Saturday and the forecast is 90% rain. Oh crap. So today I spent much of the day bargaining with God that it can pour the WHOLE of next week if it can just stay fine from now until saturday at 5pm ;) See how that goes....

Today I got out a special activity for Jumeirah. Just something crafty for her as she spends as much time as I do in the mornings helping me tidy up before we start the day.

So today I got out some black paint and white glue to make a cool picture.

All that had to be done was for her to draw a picture, then I made the mixture with about a quarter full container of white glue with a decent addition of black paint. She then traced the owl picture she drew and let it to dry. Tomorrow we'll be able to watercolour the background :)

She also did some beautiful swirl style art that can also be watercolour painted the same way so Im pretty excited to do that too!

On seeing the fun Jumeirah was having, two other little people wanted to squeeze too. So I got some sauce bottles and filled them with paint.

It began as just squeezee painting, and we very quickly went through a huge amount of paint and doznes of pieces of paper that would NEVER dry.

Jumeirah suggested we make butterfly paintings which was met with a very excited " YEAH!!!!" and so we scooped off some of the paint back into the bottles and did some beautiful black and red butterflies. The results were amazing but what was more photo worthy was the expressions on seeing the result of their squeezing and folding..... :)

One very busy day :)

Stay tuned for the second half of Jumeirahs art :)