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”

Handprint Tree Skirt - New Traditions

I love starting family Christmas Traditions, we have a few that we've done since Bubble was born and a few that have been added every year since then. This year I've added this to our little repertoire - handprinting our tree skirt. This isn't actually my idea, I saw it listed as a yearly tradition by someone on a parenting forum a few years ago and have been meaning to do it ever since! It took a couple of minutes to paint the girls hands and print them onto a corner of the skirt, then add the date with black laundry marker, I can't wait for a few years time when we have a few rows of little hands all lined up.

WE USED:

* Fabric paint that contrasts well against the colour of your tree skirt (we used white)
* Laundry marker
* Tree skirt

Plate For Santa

Day 8 of our Count Down today - time to make a special plate for Santa's treats on Christmas Eve. I took the girls to our local Salvation Army op shop and Bubble took her time choosing a white plate that she liked, then we brought it home to decorate. We were going to use ceramic paint but the only ones I could find last week were hideously expensive, so we used permanent markers instead. I'm going to go over the top of it tonight with a clear resin to seal it all in and protect the design, hopefully we can build a little collection of Santa plates over the coming years :-)

WE USED:

* white plate (we got ours from an op shop)
* permanent markers
* clear resin

The plate Bubble chose was lovely and heavy and cost a whole 0.50c

Bubble drawing her Christmas pictures for Santa.

The orange drawing was Squeak's addition - isn't it cute :-) I'm impressed with her straight lines!

The green drawing is a Christmas tree, the round orange circle is a present and the red drawing is Santa - great job girls!

Clay Necklace - Teacher Gift

It's already day 7 of our Christmas Count Down, I'm so excited at how quickly Christmas is on it's way. Today we made a gift for each of Bubble's teachers, I wasn't sure how they would turn out but Bubble did such an amazing job that we ended up making five necklace pendants, a few extras for the Grandmas in the family :-)

WE USED:

* air drying clay
* jewellery findings
* beads/buttons etc...
* small circular cutter (we used a mini flower pot)
* water (small bowl)
* placemat, craft mat or chopping board
* spatula/flat knife or similar (we used a playdough spatula tool)
* wax paper
* clear varnish

Working on craft mats I rolled some clay out and Bubble cut round shapes using the top of a mini flower pot. After wetting my fingertips with water I then smoothed and rounded them and laid them on wax paper.

You could use any kind of finding attachment you like but we were using these ones pictured above (no idea what the proper term is, sorry!). I slid the findings into the pendants careful not to pierce either side, leaving the ring exposed so it can be hung on the necklace later.

We set up our workplace with mats for working the clay and wax paper sheets to lay them on while Bubble decorated them. We kept a small cup of water near the mats so we could keep our fingers and the clay wet.

Bubble's clay pendant creations - I love them! We will leave them to dry for at least 12 hours on each side before coating them a few times in clear varnish to finish them properly. They will then be hung on necklace strands using jewellery loops.
I will post an update when they are all finished and ready to go.

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

Christmas Cards for Teachers

Our Day 6 Count Down activity of making cards involved lots of fun stamping. The cards themselves only needed two stamps but the stampfest continued all afternoon and covered quite a few newspapers and exercise books!
Bubble goes to Pre School one day a week and really enjoys it thanks to her fantastic teachers. The Christmas cards we made today were all about saying thankyou as well as Merry Christmas, and tomorrow we will make a gift to go along with them. We went with the old teacher classic of apples, if you'd like more card inspiration check out these great links :

Oesch & Doots
My Delicious Ambiguity
The Organised Housewife
Be A Fun Mum

Will post more links as I come across them :-)

WE USED:

* cardboard (we recycled some muslie boxes)
* coloured paper
* scissors
* glue
* 1/2 an apple
* paint pad (dampened sponge in a shallow dish)
* paint
* felt
* photos

We cut the sides from a muslie box to create our cards rather than use bought card.

Bubble is very much into letters and writing at the moment, so I thought it would be nice for her to add her own words. Rather than write the whole word for her to copy I cut up each individual letter and put them out one at a time, so she could concentrate on each one separately.

She needed my help to steady her wrist with the 'nks' part, but she was so proud to write a whole word that wasn't her name! :-)

Doing some test stamps with our apple.

Two apple cards for Bubble's two teachers.

I cut a stem and leaf from felt and when the paint was dry we glued them on to complete our cute little apples.
I used Photoshop to resize and make copies of Bubble's writing for the front of the card (I just took a photo of her work and then edited the size so it would fit the card).


For the inside of the card I cut two pieces of coloured paper and glued them in (to cover the writing on the cardboard :-D), then added a few personal touches.
On the left is Bubble's handprint in white paint and a photo of her (for the purposes of the Blog it is blurred, so looks a little strange, sorry!) and on the right is a photo of one of Bubble's drawings of Santa and a message for her teachers.