When Christmas craft goes wrong

My Christmas flag

I mention in my profile that some of the art and craft projects that I do with my eldest daughter don't go well and this is one of those. It bombed big time!!

Cakey and I had a wonderful time making pretty pink market stall flags a little while ago so I thought she would enjoy making some Christmas flag decorations... I was completely wrong. I spent a fair bit of money buying Christmas fabric, ribbon, gold braid and jingle bells. I then spent a couple of evenings cutting up the fabric and tying the jingle bells onto gold string. Cakey spent a total of 5 minutes making one Christmas flag. Arghhhhh

Cakey's Christmas flag

With a little hindsight I think this is what went wrong...

1. Much to my distress I think the biggest problem was that there was no pink and purple involved. Cakey is really rebelling against the traditional Christmas colours - she refuses to accept that Christmas colours are mainly red and green and tells me repeatedly that HER Christmas colours are pink and purple. This is annoying and I hope the pink and purple phase (at the exclusion of all other colours) ends soon.
2. I interrupted an episode of Diego to do this activity. What was I thinking?
3. When she was in the mood to do this activity I wasn't ready and when I was ready she wasn't in the mood.
4. I really wanted this activity to go well as I had spent time and money. I don't know why but these highly planned and prepared activities are often failures.
5. When she showed little interest in making the flags I pushed rather than just packing it away and trying again another day.

Oh well, I had fun making my Christmas flag and I think my little niece might like to make use of our Christmas flag supplies because her favourite colour is red.

For more Christmas craft ideas check out my Christmas Pinterest Board.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Paper flower gift for grandma

I am away from home at the moment struggling with a significantly reduced craft kit... I might post about this in a bit but for now here is a post about something we did before we left home...

Cakey has reached the age/stage/phase where she wants to make gifts. Before this, she was happy to receive gifts but did not want to part with anything she had made. I used to hassle her to make, or at least draw in, cards for family members but gave up after one too many disinterested scribbles were produced. If she doesn't want to, why force it? And now gift giving has evolved naturally.

It was her grandma's birthday recently and Cakey wanted to make some paper flowers for her. We didn't have a lot of time so we used the simple method of poking coloured paper patty pans onto wooden skewers. I have seen this done with straws which are safer for little fingers but I didn't have any. It turned out that Cakey really liked the sensation of poking the paper patty pan onto the skewer. She only pricked her finger once and then figured out how to avoid doing it again.

Go, that wooden skewer! And then into the playdough filled vase.

While she was making the flowers I found a plastic cup to use as a vase. I weighted it down with a couple of rocks and covered them with a blob of playdough. Cakey then pushed the skewers into the playdough. All of her pretty paper flowers were decorated with a glitter glue pen - don't you just love glitter glue pens?

Ahhh, glitter pens - glitter without the mess.

The funniest thing was while I was getting ready to go to grandma's, Cakey packed up her paper flowers by dismantling all of them and crushing them into her tiny bag. I tried not to show my disappointment as she was pleased with her packing effort. We re-created the paper flowers when we arrived at grandma's house. They were a little worse for wear but grandma loved them anyway.

Pretty paper flowers before they got dismantled.

For other paper flower ideas check out these fabulous posts by Hands on : as we grow and Paint on the Ceiling.

Travelling with kids (mini post box)

We are off on our first big trip as a family very soon. I have never flown overseas with children before and I am nervous – 10 hours on a plane with a 3.5 year old (Cakey) and a 16 month old (Boo)... I pity the people doomed to sit near us.

I have been looking around the shops to buy some little toys for Boo that might keep her occupied but everything was either too expensive or too bulky. So I have made her a miniature posting toy because she loves putting things in containers and then taking them out again.

Miniature post box

To make this, I found some colourful postcards and glued them onto cardboard with pva. When they were dry I cut them into little squares. I then found a little box and cut a hole in the lid so she could post them. I let her test it out to see whether this was going to be a successful toy – it was a winner, she played with it for ages. Now I have it hidden in my suitcase hoping it hasn't lost it's novelty value. The beauty about this is that if pieces get lost under the airplane seats it doesn't matter.

I glued postcards onto cardboard and then cut them into squares

I let Boo have a test go to see whether she liked it – she did.

Cakey loves mail too – she is constantly asking if any of our letters are for her... "nope, just bills" always comes the reply. Anyway, I have put together a little mail kit for her too. This is very simple but I think (hope) she will enjoy it. I collected some interesting promotional postcards you find in cafes. I teamed each postcard with a small white card and a mini highlighter pen and sealed them all in an envelope. I plan to hand these out one at a time on the flight.

Cakey's mail kit

These two ideas are obviously not going to cut it for a 10 hour flight so I have also been stockpiling ideas thanks to some fantastic bloggers who have hit the sky and/or road with kids in tow and lived to tell the tale. So if like me, you are planning on getting away over the coming holidays I am sure you will find something your kids will love in one of these posts:

• Toddler Approved has a whole bundle of ideas for flying – all gathered from experience!! I particularly like the letter hunt game using the inflight magazine and the barf bag puppets.
• My creative family has outdone herself with ideas for mess-free travel activity bags designed to occupy kids while driving long distance with a child to adult ratio of 2:1.
• Sun Hats and Wellie Boots has enough ideas to occupy kids for an entire camping trip. I love the individualized activ ity packs – each designed to make something different. Any kid would be enchanted.
• Let Kids Create has ideas for a long car trip such as taking baking trays to use for magnet boards and creating backseat pipecleaner creations.
• Hands on: as we grow has a neat 3 year old friendly version of I spy.
• Kitchen counter chronicles making use of the humble clip board on long car journeys, and the art of the secret toy.
• Dinosaurs and Octopuses shows you how to make a geoboard – they aren't going to let you take it on a plane but it would be great for a car journey or on a camping trip.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS, google+ or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Peg babies put to bed

We were really scratching our heads today for something to do. All the games I suggested got shot down in flames. Just before despair hit, Cakey found two dome-shaped lids that had come off takeaway milkshake cups. I was keeping them because I thought they would make good robot eyes. Instead we turned them into little cots – filling them with scraps of coloured material to make them comfy.

Cakey stuck little round faces on a couple of pegs and then wrapped them in material – making very cute peg babies. She gave one a crying face and one a smiling face.

Cakey put her little peg babies to bed covering each of them with a little blanket and that was that!

Linked to Thrifty Thursday

Unicorn garden

Here's our second post in the 'Little Worlds' category – the unicorn garden. Cakey loves flowers, rainbows and unicorns and this project included them all – 3 year old heaven.

One morning we were unpacking the shopping and Cakey found some boxes that our cat food came in. She declared that we should make something with them – and that something should be a unicorn garden (influenced by another 'Dora the Explorer' book).

Luckily, I had recently read a beautiful post by Christie at Childhood 101 about her daughter creating a fairy scene using pebbles and flowers – just gorgeous, please have a look. Using Christie's post for inspiration I shuffled us both outside to collect pebbles and flowers for her unicorn garden scene.

 First up, Cakey decorated the inside of both boxes by gluing down some brightly coloured paper and adding some paint. We slotted one box into the other to make a little garden scene. Cakey added some aluminium foil for a pond and some pebbles which were then painted. I helped her make little trees by gluing ivy leaves onto paddle pop sticks and standing them up with the help of playdough. Cakey always gets glue on her fingers so the leaves preferred to stick to her fingers rather than the sticks – maximum frustration for her. I keep a damp facecloth handy so she can wipe the glue off her fingers when this happens. Last but not least, Cakey arranged some fresh flowers in the garden.

our little ivy tree

The unicorn garden was missing something – the unicorn. Cakey drew a unicorn on purple paper and we propped it up in the garden... but apparently that wasn't good enough. Cakey wanted a toy unicorn to put in her garden. She caught me on the hop, we had created this garden for a unicorn but we didn't have a unicorn. So I agreed to go to the toy shop. Cakey found the only unicorn in the shop, I forked out the cash and she chuffed happliy out of the stop with her gleaming new unicorn..... now that is crafty!!

Oh no! She doesn't want to draw

Cakey used to draw all the time but in the last few months she seems to have lost interest. She went through a similar phase when she was 2 (she is now 3.5). All of a sudden she went from happily drawing to just sitting at her drawing table asking me to draw a 'car', 'boat, 'cat' etc. When I asked her to try drawing a 'car' or any other object she would refuse to try.

We got over this hump when I stopped drawing actual objects and started to draw at her level which at that time was a lot of coloured patches, various scribbles, the occasional circle and lots of lines. It only took a short while before she couldn't resist joining in and she was away again in the drawing department.

To get over our latest drawing roadblock I needed another sort of intervention – and it was handed to me on a plate! Cakey spends her life asking questions, one of these questions was about the dolphin logo on a plumber's van. The conversation went something like this:

• C: Why is that dolphin there?
• Me: It is a logo for a plumber.
• C: What's a logo?
• Me: A logo is a drawing that people use to identify their businesses.
• C: Do I have a logo?
• Me: No.
• C: Why?
• Me: Um well, you don't have a business to advertise.
• C: I want a dolphin logo.
• Me: Oh ok.
• C: How do we make one?
• Me: Well we have to draw lots of different dolphins and then you can pick your favourite one to be your logo.
• C: Can we do that?
• Me: Absolutely.

As soon as we got home, I found some small pieces of paper and we each drew some dolphins. We used one of her toy dolphins as a model. We talked about how to draw each part of the dolphin's body. Once we had a little pile of dolphin drawings, we laid them out and talked about which drawings we liked best and why. I, of course, picked one of Cakey's drawings and she picked one of mine. We then added some extra details to the dolphin logos. Cakey drew on mine and vice versa – we were a creative team re-working and improving our logos!

Our final re-worked logos

I don't know whether this activity sounds a bit odd but logos are everywhere and kids ask questions about everything so I figured I might as well explain what logos are. Even more importantly though, it got her drawing again.

If you want to know more about kid's drawing development have a look at this post Children's Drawing Stages – 6 Things to Look For on the Planning with kids blog.

No-sew market stall flags

Our market stall

Cakey loves going to our local markets. And when we get home we always have to set up our own market stall and pretend to buy stuff. One weekend we decided to make some market stall flags to decorate our stall. This project could not have gone better. Cakey and I both made our own flags, she loved it and so did I. The end result actually looked good which surprised me as I try to be all about process not product.

There was a little bit of preparation – cutting up different scraps of material. I used the kid's old clothes that weren't in any state to hand down. I also cut out the flag bases (rectangles and triangles) from some lovely thick pink material.

Using generous amounts of pva glue and a paintbrush we stuck down all the different shaped and coloured scraps of material on our own flags. This project actually spread out over two days – rectangular flags on Saturday, triangular flags on Sunday. The result – beautiful flags without a stitch of sewing.

Once they were dried we hung the flags on the coffee table (with sticky tape of course) and played market stalls to our heart's content.

The following week I asked Cakey's dad to sew the flags onto ribbon to make them easier to hang. Now they get taken out and used for all sorts of games and imaginary play.

Ok maybe a little bit of sewing... but not by me!

Yes I am hanging my head sheepishly – Cakey's dad can sew and I can't. In fact he won't let me use his sewing machine as it quivers in fear when it sees me approaching. I would like to learn how to sew but if I do then I guess he will make me take up my own jeans!!

Note: As this was so fun I tried making some more with Cakey in a Christmas theme – it didn't go so well, you can read about it here.

Flowers and Rainbows colouring sheet

I find colouring-in sheets useful waiting for a doctor's appointment, on long car journeys and on plane trips. We have a long plane trip looming so I have designed a colouring-in sheet for Cakey, which was loads of fun for me to do too. It is called 'flowers at the end of the rainbow' and if you like it you can download it here.

The inspiration came from a fabulous piece of 1970s curtain material that I picked up at a garage sale. I am planning on turning the material into a quilt – I just need to learn how to sew!!

The colouring-in sheet has been tested by Cakey and it got the thumbs up – I really hope that the kids in your life like it too.

Cakey's version

My coloured in version, yes I cheated and used a computer

For other free printable resources have a look at my Printables Pinterest Board

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Help! What can I do with the baby?

I was reading Alissa's blog Creative with kids the other day and came across her post 10 ways to guarantee you will hate doing kids crafts... and I laughed and laughed. I have made every single mistake on her list but I am a repeat offender on number 6 "don't plan anything for the baby". I am constantly under-prepared for Boo (15 months), always assuming she can just noodle around on the floor playing with her toys while Cakey (3) is gluing, painting, drawing etc. Not surprisingly, Boo is not on board with this plan so I spend the whole time trying to stop Boo from grabbing the scissors, ripping apart whatever Cakey has created, eating glue or paint or playdough or paper or pipe-cleaners or googly eyes etc. End result: Cakey is unhappy, Boo is unhappy, I am unhappy. 

So my strategy is to wait to do craft when Boo is asleep. This has the major disadvantage of sacrificing Cakey's rest time to do craft, so I never get my peace and quiet either. End result: Cakey is very happy, Boo is asleep, I am very unhappy.

Alissa's post has spurred me on to get a better strategy, so first off, I have created a Boo craft kit with the following:

• Scissors that she can't easily stab herself with
• Old textas that have long dried up so she can pull the lids off and on
• An empty glue stick with lid (she loves those lids)
• Some chunky chalk to draw with on dark paper
• I did have crayons in the kit but she kept eating them

Of course this kit only keeps her entertained for so long, so I have had to try some other things as well:

• When we are painting, I have tried putting Boo in her highchair and giving her paint and paper. So far, this hasn't been hugely successful. She hates being confined and makes a massive mess in a very short amount of time.
• Doing a few more crafts where Boo can get involved. We recently went back to the good old paddle pop sticks in playdough activity. Boo really liked this and didn't try to attack Cakey's creation. I added some poms poms into the mix and Cakey spent most of her time trying to make single sided tape into double sided tape donuts so she was satisfied too.

So I have made some improvements but I am still struggling – any suggestions for doing craft with more than one kid, particularly if they are different ages, are very welcome.

If you are interested in the update to this post visit Crafting with two.

If this is your first visit to at home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along through our facebook page or subscribe via email or RSS. Cheers Ali



Linked to Sunday Parenting Party