Activities

Kids Activities – DIY Succulent Crystal Garden

Since we moved back to Australia, we have taken a keen interest in gardening and growing our own vegetables, herbs and flowers each Spring. It is just so nice to have our own small piece of green space and to teach the kids a little more where food comes from in the hope they may eventually eat vegetables… ( still waiting for that!)

This has also translated to indoors as well and this year the boys and I have finally worked out how to take care of some succulents which we bought at our local fabulous sustainable nursery, New Leaf.  We have gone from killing our succulents to watching them thrive! The boys (and I !)  now know that their plants need watering once a week or longer and not every day… It has been a learning curve for us all.

We have also been discovering crystals and learning about gems this year after being introduced to them by a close friend. We found out a few months back that one of our fave shops in the area, Little Paper Lane now stocks crystals and gems, so we went to check out what they had and the boys came away with a clear point crystal quartz and circular rose quartz. The boys have been cleansing them at full moon and loving learning about their healing effects.

Lastly on a road trip up north in July, we visited the incredible Crystal Castle & Shambhala Gardens, which is close to Byron Bay. This place is sheer magic; the whole area is imbued with beauty, peace and the crystals make you feel so energised and renewed( this is coming from a former skeptic!) The boys absolutely loved it there and we added to our crystal collection with an agate, amethyst and labradorite. In chatting with the staff up there, we bought some large rough hewn amethyst and rose quartz as well they were on sale (hehe love a bargain!) and we thought we might use them one day in our garden.

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Kids Activities – Crepe paper art

The boys and I decided to get a little creative this week in preparation for Father’s Day coming up in September. We thought we would gift their Dad some awesome art works that we could then hang around the house.

I had a spare few canvases floating around and using Pinterest as my inspiration we decided to try some tissue paper art! I worked out pretty quickly thought that our tissue paper didn’t bleed as much as we liked so I found some spare crepe paper which worked a treat!!

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Kids Activities – DIY cardboard computer

We did a change up with our playroom last month and as a result there is now a little cubby area. Well technically it is meant to be another desk/craft area but Hudson has taken it as his little den.

As a result he decided he now needed a “Spy computer” for his new secret area! He has such a creative imagination that I just can’t resist when he asks me to make him something and well, as I have such a love affair with cardboard I thought, why not!?

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Kids Activities – Rainbow Craft

rainbow-craft-for-kids

Inspired by the brilliant kids book “My Color is Rainbow” by Agnes Hsu of the awesome Hello, Wonderful blog, the boys and I created a little rainbow craft for kids.

The book’s message is about kindness, love and acceptance of all. Through the text and illustrations the child understands that it is through their own actions and kindness that can help make a difference to another.

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Kids Activities – DIY Geo Board Fun

I can’t believe how quickly this year is flying and that I haven’t had the chance to share with you the cool DIY Geo boards we made last school holidays.

I happened to have some spark cork board tiles which I picked up from Bunnings as I had been inspired to make a cork board wall (still a work in progress!). I had seen cool Geo boards on Pinterest so I went and bought some brightly coloured rubber bands and push pins and with a ruler and pencil that was all we needed to start our activity!

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Kids Activities – Valentines Day 2017

Ahh Lovers Day around the world, may love and happiness unite!! We don’t celebrate it all that much as I think everyday should be the day you say “I love you” to your loved ones. But it is still nice to think about your loved ones on Valentines day and how much they mean to you.

We made a little heart shaped dream catcher out of our Kwik Stix to celebrate Lovers day but also to help capture any bad dreams that my boys are having, which of late seems to be quite a few!

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Kids Activities – Kwik Stix – awesome mess free painting!

With the start of school this week in Australia, I thought I would get into the school mood with my next few posts!

I know a lot of parents don’t like to attempt too much art and craft at home because of the mess. They prefer to leave these messy creative activities to when the child is at preschool, day care or school so they don’t have to manage the mess themselves!

I totally get it as with toddlers in particular, after you have taken 15 minutes say to set up, they have painted their picture in 2 seconds and moved on to the next activity! Mummy, keep up, I have moved on from that paint session and now I want to play with blocks or lego or play dress ups…

Yep I totally understand it and find creative sessions can get messy and a little stressed filled with paint, water, sparkles or feathers flying all over the place.

So what would you say to a fun creative painting session with your child but completely mess free? Yup, uh huh, I am telling the truth here, no joke and its name is, wait for it, Kwik Stix!! Oh sorry did I mention it was quick too! Of course it is.

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Candylab Toys Town

The boys were extremely lucky at Christmas to be gifted some incredible Candylab toy cars from Keld Industries, the Australian distributor of these awesome US designed cars.

We are long time fans of Candylab Toys having helped to crowd fund their second campaign by buying up the second edition of cars that they designed in 2015. We have added to our collection over their 3 Kickstarter campaigns and we are hoping for a 4th campaign this year, c’mon Vlad and team!

As it is summer school holidays the boys and I thought we should give our cars a new home, so we started to create a garage town out of cardboard boxes and paint. And yes, they may have racing stripes on the garages as well as the car numbers on the side of the garages, just so we know which garage they live in!

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Omy Design & Play

I am always on the search for amazing gifts, hey it’s my job right? I found French brand Omy Design & Play a few years ago when I discovered their large scale colouring posters and I mean LARGE scale and fell in love!

They were one of the first, if not THE first company, to produce them back in 2012 and I adored that they created pages of some of our favourite cities like London, New York, Paris and Sydney.  My sister gave one of the London box sets to my eldest son for Christmas in 2014 and we have had so much fun colouring it in since then.

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