Rainbow Party Playdate

Bubble had one of her friends over for a play date today and she was very excited about it. I asked her yesterday what she would like to do for the day and she answered with "a rainbow party" (rainbows are a bit of a big deal around here at the moment). At first I was going to say no, parties are for birthdays not for playdates, but then I thought ... well, why not? Not a presents and cake all out type party, but why not put up some decorations, pick a theme and do some special activities?
So a rainbow party day is what we had and all three of the girls had an absolute ball. I put up some tissue paper poms that were left over from a BBQ at the park, blew up some coloured balloons and put some rainbow themed activities in the middle of the table. We made coloured salt dough necklaces and colourful bead bracelets, dressed up as butterflies, drank fruit milkshakes and made some rainbow cookies. We then headed to the park and blew bubbles and made some brightly coloured dancing wands. It didn't hurt that the weather today was so beautiful too, just perfect for a happy little rainbow celebration.

These poms are so easy to make and the bright colours were perfect for our rainbow party today.
For instructions on making your own check out this link.

I made up some simple salt dough from this recipe and created some bright colours for the girls to use. We used playdough utensils and skewers for making the necklace holes in the top.

Bubble made a handprint with some of her dough.

One of the baked salt dough necklaces - I overcooked them a tad but they still looked pretty good luckily!

Milkshake time - the girls made their own using colourful fruit, yoghurt and milk.

Yum!

We played a game with some colourful pompoms - using masking tape we made a start and finsh line on the floor. The girls loved using straws to have races blowing them across the tiles.
Game inspired by this post on House Of Baby Piranha.

The girls enjoyed dressing up in wings and jewellery, as well as anything else they could dig out of the dress up boxes!

The balloons were a hit (when are they not :-D).

The girls made colourful bead bracelets while we waited for our cookies to bake.

I followed this recipe to make rainbow cookie dough and the girls created their own colourful masterpieces to bake. They were really yummy!

Chasing bubbles at the park.

I asked the girls to collect a stick each so that we could make some dancing wands. They took their time finding just the 'right one' :-)

We used some reels of ribbon and a pack of colourful clips from the dollar shop to make our wands with.

We simply attached the clips to the end of our sticks and tied the lengths of coloured ribbon to them. Easy and fun!

Bubble taking her rainbow dancing stick for a spin.

“Come over to play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up”

Christmas Playdough

For Day 4 of our Count Down we made some Christmas playdough today. Bubble helped me cook a big batch of white dough then we divided it into three balls. One we left white but added some silver glitter and scented it with vanilla oil (I was going to add shredded coconut for a sensory element but we were all out of it!), the second we coloured green and scented with peppermint and the third we coloured red. We then pushed some whole cloves into the red dough ball and left it covered for a few hours to get the wonderful scent through it before removing them.
The girls had a heap of fun playing with them today, although Squeak was not impressed with the smell of the green peppermint playdough at all :-D Luckily the glittery white dough was interesting enough to keep her involved for a little while!

Blueberry Loaf

Ok, so this recipe is actually for muffins, but I made it into a loaf (because my muffin tin died and I havent got another one yet) and it was really nice! So this is really a recipe for Blueberry Loaf/Cake/Muffins. Although, since you can use anything you want - not just blueberries - it's really a Miscellaneous Loaf/Cake/Muffin recipe. But, you know, I don't want to get all technical or anything :-)
This is a recipe my Mum gave me for a 'One Bowl Muffin Mix' and you can just add in whatever you have; in our case one and a half punnets of blueberries that weren't going to look too great tomorrow and had to be used.

One Bowl Muffin Mix:

3 cups self raising flour
1 cup caster sugar (white sugar)
2 eggs lightly beaten
1 cup milk
90g melted butter
Whatever you want to add (banana, berries, toppings, chocolate chips etc...)

Preheat oven to 180'c.
Sift Flour into a large bowl, add sugar, combine and make a well in the centre.
Add eggs, milk and butter and mix until just combined.
Add your 'whatever' to the mix. Stir to combine but don't overstir.

For muffins bake for 15-20 minutes, for cakes and loaves Im not sure sorry - I just kept checking on it until it looked yummy :-D

Food Paint

After the success of our eggplant painting yesterday we did a take two today with a couple of other colours added. There is really unlimited possibilities for this activity, we just used what we had in the fridge. Both girls had a lot of fun with it, the strawberry paint was Bubble's favourite because it smelt absolutely delicious!

WE USED:

* white paint
* mortar and pestle
* cardboard
* marker
* food to colour the paint.
YELLOW: orange peel/zest
PINK: strawberries
PURPLE: blueberries
GREEN: spinach

Bubble counting out some spinach leaves.

Painting with the spinach paint.

Three blueberries and some white paint.

Bubble squashing blueberries and Squeak 'helping' with her foot :-D

Doing some purple blueberry painting.

The strawberry paint smelt so good!

The photos dont show the colours very well unfortunately, but we ended up with some great results. The sun is yellow paint made from orange zest.

Yellow orange zest paint and strawberry pink paint.

“Come play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up”

Rainbow Skewers

This is a fun (and tasty!) way to teach children the colour order of a rainbow.

WE USED:

* mini wooden skewers
* strawberries (red)
* orange segments (orange)
* banana (yellow)
* green grapes (green)
* blueberries (blue)
* purple grapes (indigo/violet)

I deliberately put the colours out of rainbow order because Bubble knows them already, but if your child is just learning you could either put them in order or draw a rainbow picture for them to use as a template.

Bubble making her rainbow by putting the fruit in order.

A plate of yummy rainbows :-)

Chocolate Chip Cookies

The girls and I made some chocolate chip cookies today (well, I made them while the girls ate the ingredients ;-D) and we followed this recipe from the Taste website. They were very easy to make and turned out wonderfully, even if they didn't have as many chocolate chips in them as they should have by the time they went in the oven!

Recipe copied directly from taste.com.au:

Preparation Time

10 minutes

Cooking Time

20 minutes

Ingredients

• 150g softened butter
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 3/4 cups plain flour
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate bits
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate bits

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Line 2 baking trays with non-stick paper. Beat 150g softened butter, 1/2 cup caster sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1 tsp vanilla extract for 1-2 minutes or until smooth and well combined. Beat in 1 egg.

2. Stir in 1 3/4 cups plain flour in two batches. Stir in 1/2 cup dark choc bits and 1/2 cup milk choc bits until evenly distributed. Spoon tablespoonfuls of the mixture into balls and place on the lined trays. Press down slightly.

3. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until light golden and cooked. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Store in an airtight container for up to 1 week.