Rocket Ships and UFOS

I love this and I was scanning what was newly posted and ideas on what to do with my son when I found this projectand my son was watching over my shoulder and he got excited about it.

The next morning when we finished off a carton of milk seemed the perfect opportunity, I cleaned the jug, tore off the label and put it aside for later.

Later
Could I find the jug? nope, I had put it somewhere safe so it wouldn’t go in the recycle bin and it was so safe I couldn’t find it. So I found an old water bottle and decided to recycle that.

First we needed to paint it and Alexander decided he wanted purple so I put in the red and blue paint and put him on the trampoline to mix it up! Mixing a colour lesson with a craft seemed like lots of fun and no matter how many times I had told him in the past that red and blue make purple it never seemed to stick but he remembered what paint we put in his rocket ship. Here’s a blurry pic of him jumping.

Here is him proudly holding the bottle now that it is purple. The best thing about this paint activity is he is wearing a brand new shirt and he got no paint on him!

In the original post she put sparkles in her bottle but I decided not to, I wasn’t sure if it would show up with the purple paint.

Alexander wanted a pink and purple rocket so I found some pink ridged card and I cut that out into triangles for Alexander to colour and decorate. I found some red felt for the flames and an old tube from the foil, which I cut in half. I also got out some circle stickers and we used them to decorate as well.

Alexander’s way of colouring is to do a bit of scribble and then he wants to do the next bit.

This is where I ran into trouble. I ran out of glue for my glue gun and being a curved bottle it was hard to stick things on. I tried double sided tape and it worked a little but not so great. I finally got some more glue but if the children drop it the bits do fall off but oh well easily fixed. Because of the curved bottle I stuck the lids with the more surface against the bottle.

I found an old fruit and jelly container to rest on the bottom to try and get the approval from my children that it looked liked the picture. Ooops have I not mentioned what we were using for a guide yet? We started with the blog but then we also used a book we have been reading a book calledThey have pointed out that Bud’s rocket has a nose cone and ours hasn’t, still need to work that one out yet.

So pictures of the front and back of our rocket, the rocket coming in for a crash landing and Bud’s rocket.

Bud’s Rocket is about a mouse who decides to visit the moon, the kids have fun counting down with him, he jumps on a comet, catches a star and then an alien steals his rocket ship. Thankfully a nice alien lends him his ship so Emily had a turn at making a UFO while Alexander decorated his rocket with stars. My idea was to put a paper bowl on a paper plate but I couldn’t find any paper bowls in the house so instead an old yogurt container and a paper plate were put together. Using the picture we put round stickers for lights all around the paper plate. Emily declared the UFO also needed windows so the round stickers went on the yoghurt container too. The pink crayon is for colouring as she too wanted a pink and purple UFO but it didn’t turn out too pink.

Using the book as her guide

Finally the finished product

Final Storey

The main bedroom and ensuite (the one and only bathroom).

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bed was the lid of an egg carton that the children had painted. I cut it down to size and then sticky taped the end of the bed back on.

The the mattress is my fall back on little bag of material, turned inside out, stuffed and then sewn up.

Bathroom
The bath is a box with the lid cut off. The kids painted it inside and outside.

The taps are the tops off straws – blue for cold and red for hot.

And there you have it. More to do but that’s a start!

2nd storey

The baby’s room

As you see I haven’t finished this room yet, the poor babies have no mattresses to sleep on. It is obvious which medicine bottle I cut up for this, basically I chopped it in half and used sticky tape to stick the sides together but the outside in and the inside out so we have a white outside. I will make the mattresses one day, easy to do, just a small piece of cloth sewn into a bag shape and then stuffed and sewed close. I saw some websites recommend using a sponge and then a cloth on top but I know my children the cloth and sponge will go seperate places so I want to keep it together.

The Dining Room

I had some egg cartons so I chopped them up and got the kids to paint them. I think next time if I do this I will use markers because my children love heaping the paint on and it took ages to dry and also the carton got a little soggy.

The chair seat was a scrap of material sewn up with some wadding. The baby dolls sit alright on the seats but bigger dolls need the padding removed so they can sit in the dip part.

The table was a box cut up the sides and covered in paper that Alexander coloured in with his crayons.

Second Floor done, third storey tomorrow when it is my turn to use the computer again.

Dolls House Furniture

We were gifted with a beautiful wooden dolls house sans furniture. What to do? What to do? I started browsing the internet to get inspiration and this is what I found…

Some websites I browsed for inspiration
Dining Room Furniture
A box dolls house
I didn’t use these ones but just found it and I might use it for more inspiration
dollshouse furniture out of cardboard
Make your own dollshouse and furniture

Then I looked around my house to see what I could find. I found egg cartons that we’d been painting, I found some random boxes and some material and I got to work.

It is still a work in progress but here is the house so far:

The Living Room

The couch is made from a box that a power adapter came in with an extra piece of cardboard to make the back a bit higher because the dolls kept falling back off the couch. The seating part is some felt I had which I sewed (hand sewed with basic running stitch into a bag – if I can do it anyone can!) into a bag shape, turned inside out and put some wadding in and sewed close and voila!

The table was a lid from a milk carton hot glue gunned onto an empty cotton reel (you can see it is a bit skewiff but it doesn’t matter when right side up)

The Kitchen

I still haven’t made the stove or anything for the kitchen. The fridge is a little incomplete. The plan is to not throw out the junkmail and cut out a picture of a fridge and stick it on the inside. I do have a freezer shelf so if we get minature food it can go in the freezer. The fridge is a tall medicine box, just sliced a door and then cut it 1/4 way down to make a fridge door and freezer door. Some decorations by me and some by son. Oh I also wrapped white paper around the fridge so it didn’t look like a medicine box but a fridge.

Kitchen sink.
I realised that the photo of the kitchen actually had the bathroom sink in the picture and the kitchen sink was in the fridge so here is a picture of both of them. They are made out of egg cartons, some cardboard taped around them to help them stand up and the top of a bendy straw to make the tap.

That’s the bottom floor for today… I will do the other two floors another day but have someone wanting their turn on the computer and time for me to do something else.

More on the garden

I actually planted that garden over a month ago at the end of June. Winter not being a prime growing month the plants are slowly getting established. We had quite a wet July and now we are getting a warm August.

I remembered the name of one of the plants which is pratia white but cannot remember the other one yet.

Here are more recent photos of the garden. I have been having trouble making the furniture. The children love watering the plants and my glue from my glue gun seems water soluble so the chair back keeps falling off. Have to figure out something else so the furniture is a bit more robust.

The other day I made some figurines and inspired by the Magic Onions blog I made a swing for one of the figurines to put in the garden.

Everywhere we go the children want to collect rocks and shells, they are only allowed to pick out one or two favourites each and then we put the rest back for others. The swings is made from an interesting broken shell with wire wrapped around it and then the loop is hung over the tree. As you can see there are a few other shells dotted around the garden.

I am still streamlining my figurines. The two sitting on the chair are made from wire 10cm long and bent in half and twisted with a bead for a head. One is wrapped in a small ribbon, the other in embroidery thread. Embroidery thread is used for their hair as well. THe original instructions I found said use raffia but I wasn’t sure how that would go wet and these dolls will get wet. The figure ont he swing is a 12 cm piece of wire and I cut up a ribbon to wrap around it, which is why it looks so frayed.

So that’s the update on our garden.

Minature Garden

I was inspired by this blogFairy Gardens to create a magical minature garden with my children.

I decided to take the failed vegetable garden (something attacked the zucchini plant) and turn it into a garden for the children to play with. I followed the ideas from here HOw to make a Garden

So I headed to the local nursery and bought some “step upons”. (I will have to try and remember the name of the variety I bought) I wanted the plants to be able to put up with handling and also make the children’s hands smell nice after touching the plants. Marigolds were on sale so I put them in my basket. I could find any rolls of moss so I gave that a miss and headed home with my plants and children in tow.

Next I heaped in the soil and decided where to put my little pond and to plant the plants. I decided to keep in my mystery vegetable plant to be a “tree” for the garden. It could be a capsicum but who knows, something was eating it too. I also planted one of the marigolds to stop whatever was eating my plants to discourage them to go away. In my garden I discovered moss so I dug that up and transplanted it and tucked it in the garden. I found a few worms this way too and they were transplanted to play in our new garden.

The children had lots of fun helping me plant the plants and finding the stones to put in the garden to created the garden path. They keep collecting rocks and putting it in the garden making it more of a rock garden than a fairy garden.

We also had made some ladybugs out of egg cartons so for a little while it was our ladybug garden but the ladybugs went for too many swims in the pond and got soggy.

The pond was made out of an old lid from a fruit container.

Here you can see how much fun the kids had putting the stepping stones in

Now we just have to wait for the garden to grow.

Here’s my little fairy