Alexander’s birthday present

Emily seems to do well out of my creations and I’ve been thinking what to make Alexander for his birthday. I have seen on Pinterest of storing toy cars on knife holder magnetic strips. Unfortunately the metal in modern toy cars is negligible and this doesn’t work. I toyed (ha ha) with the idea of attaching magnets to the cars and doing it that way but thin strips don’t have the grip to hold the weight of the card and bigger magnets means you can’t drive the cars anymore.

So next idea was hot glue Velcro strips to the cars.

I originally put the strip lengthwise but that means the cars slide more than roll but if I just put it on the middle section that was enough.

I found a canvas (the last one! Time to buy some more they’ve been so useful) and Emily got to painting. Green for grass and A’s favourite colour.

My first idea was to lay ‘roads’ using felt but I didn’t like how it looked as my felt wasn’t long enough to do a length without a join and because I had cut it thick it just didn’t represent my idea.

I changed ideas and because Alexander us interested in maps I printed out maps of where we live, the new house and other significant places i.e. grandparents’ houses.

I glued this on with Mister Maker’s gloopy glue – craft glue mixed with water. I let dry and over a period of couple of days ( while A was at school) E and I covered the maps with 2 layers of gloopy glue.

I then used the felt to make an A in the middle. Unfortunately this is where I stuffed up. I glued the A on upside down, ie the maps are now the wrong way round.

Here is the finished result. I am pleased with it, I hope A will be.

The banner at the top is perhaps for his cake but I am starting to think it is too big and looks good draped over the canvas.

Girl’s hair and jewellery organiser mk II

We are going to a birthday party tomorrow and the invitation specified no gifts but I asked if it was alright if E and I made something for the birthday girl. With permission I gathered together all the materials I had on hand from when I made Emily’s organiser. Thankfully I still had extra cup holder hooks so this did not cost anything since all the materials were lying around the house.

I had a small canvas because when I did the sibling tree craft the canvases came in groups of 3.
I covered it with scraps of batting that otherwise would get thrown out for not being useful. I knew I was holding onto them for a reason. 😉 it was a jigsaw putting the pieces together but I didn’t take any photos this time as u had E helping me.
We covered the canvas in craft glue and stuck down the batting. We then went through all my material and she picked out the sand material as hers.

This tune I think I managed to do the corners better, I didn’t cut but instead folded and stapled.
E helped me stapling in that she held my hand.

She then picked out the ribbons and this time instead of placing the ribbons horizontally I stapled them vertically with E choosing colour order.
I decided to staple them vertically because for hanging things like hair bands and other things they slide down. This way the hooks aren’t all used up but the ribbons can be used for more than just hair clips.

Emily and I then screwed in the cup hooks and voila all done! Cheap, cheerful and very quick.

Because we had time we also made some bracelets to hang.

As you can see I have a carabiner with E’s hair ties.

Easter Egg Hunt

This is definitely an old post but thought I would still post about it.

We did a scavenger hunt for their Easter egg surprises this year.  I bought plastic eggs and we put clues and sometimes a little chocolate easter egg in the egg and stashed them around the house.

We gave them the first egg and they followed the clues around the house.  I had bought them some gum boots because we are coming into winter and wet season and they needed to get some so I thought I would include it as part of their Easter surprise. I wrote and drew the clues so both Emily and Alexander could try to solve it.  The rule was they had to do it together holding hands.

 

It’s a bit hard to see but it is a picture of our mailbox with the words Go Here!  Also a bad picture of a dog and a dog bowl with the words where Jacky eats (this is where we put their gumboots and the clue was inside one of the boots).  A picture of our BBQ, just the words where our wii games are (wasn’t going to try and draw that one – though I suppose just a rectangle would have done with a slit).  And the last clue was a picture of the fridge saying Time for Breakfast and this is where their Easter basket and eggs were.

 

 

Emily’s Birthday Fairy Cake

I was 90% pleased with Emily’s cake.  Of course I know and see the flaws.

Anyway I had a couple of websites where I got the inspiration.  Garden of Delight Cake for the base idea, fairy toadstools and fairy topper were the inspiration for the outside and for the inside were from these sites – Australia Day Cake and this site which showed you how to make a checkered cake.

OK this cake took a few nights work due to the colouring of the fondant.  I buy my fondant and the first night I settled down to make the fairy topper.  I decided to make her purple and I dyed the fondant and added the tylose powder.  That was the first night.

That was the colour my hands turned but by the next day they were back pretty much to normal.

The next night was my red and pink night for making flowers and butterflies.  Then the next was green, yellow and black for making the leaves and flower stems and bees and lady bugs.  Oops I must have done some more red. This site gave me some idea on how to make my ladybugs but I didn’t make them so miniature.  I couldn’t make the second video on bees work but I got an idea.

I used a cake carrier to protect them and keep them sorted.  So the day before the party I got my 3 cakes out of the freezer.  I had made pink, yellow and green.  I had used 8 inch pans but I had not used up all my basic butter mixture to fill them up, I made a couple of cupcakes with the left overs.  SO my cakes were not quite the same height but near enough.

I use a biscuit cutter to cut out the middle and quickly learnt DON”T push it all the way through all it will get stuck half way.  I used it to give me something to trace around for the other two cakes.  I used a bowl to trace around for the middle circle.

I used icing to rejoin all the layers, so the icing was around the outside and also around each insert, very handy when an outside circle cracked and I “glued” it back together with icing.  So around each circle I put icing around it before inserting it.  Then I used what icing I had left over to cover the cake.  I had many compliments for my icing. I am not a big fan of butter cream icing and I prefer cream cheese or what we use in my household where the kids don’t eat dairy, tofutti icing.

Tofutti is found with the cream cheese but it is actually tofu but it is lauded as being better than cream cheese.  I find it awful but once you add sugar it is lovely!

I use a tub of tofutti, about 1/2 cup of nutalex (dairy free margarine), 2 cups of icing sugar, a squeeze of lemon and a1 tsp of vanilla essence.

It was a bit uneven since the cake layers weren’t even but with fondant over the top it looked fine!

Once this was done and the kids were in bed I got out the rest of the fondant and the blue icing colouring.

Unfortunately my butterflies were a little heavy for the florist wire I had them sitting on.  I had made many more butterflies but decided four flying around was enough.

Then time to cut – to see if it worked!

So that was lots of fun to make and I got some lovely comments and Emily LOVED it which was the important thing!

Why I won’t be in a hurry to use plaster of Paris again!

For Christmas Emily received a make your own fairy snow globe.  It actually was a late Christmas present and by the time she received it we were planning her fairy birthday so we thought it would be a good activity to do at the party.

It was sitting in a box and then I realised I should get onto making the models for the girls to paint at the party as they took a couple of days to make.  I blithely followed the directions without starting at a clean OUTDOOR space.  The liquid I had mixed promptly filled the model, dripped out the bottom and into the kitchen sink.  Do did the second lot!  I fear for my kitchen sink now (I sent down ALOT of HOT water).

After this I decided it was time to pack it in and try again another day after some research.  This research showed me that it is about 2 parts powder to 1 part water.  Further research decried the product, saying waste of money etc etc.  Anyway heart in mouth I tried again, OUTSIDE, with a tablecloth (plastic) over the outdoor furniture.  I then mixed with half the amount of water listed in the instructions and IT WORKED! Yay!  So after a big mess involving plaster setting  before I could pour it into the mould and just plaster everywhere I ended up with enough moulds for the party.

The kids had fun painting – some put more effort into it then others.  Next time I think I will just buy a kit where the plaster is already made and the kids can just paint.  Though now I have the moulds I am thinking I will make the bicarb dough and press them into the moulds and then bake.

2 c. baking soda
1 c. cornstarch (cornflour)
1 1/4 c. cold water

I wouldn’t recommend using plaster of paris with young kids.  I made all these without assistance because of the risk of breathing the dust in and just the plain mess of it all.  I think EMily may have stirred one batch but that is about it.

Finished!

Here is the original post about this organiser.

I put this under sewing but there was no sewing involved! There was material though!
I went to the hardware store and bought cup hooks in two different sizes. I debated how many hooks to put on and in the end decided every space between ribbons I would put a hook. I put the two larger at each end and the smaller ones in the middle. We ended up filling all the hooks with her bits and pieces.  All I did was wiggle the hook to create a hole and then I just screwed it around and around (sorry no pics of this)

Here is the finished result hanging in her room.  She has enjoyed taking the bits and pieces off and wearing them and then resorting them to different hooks!

I hung everything on it and then Emily took everything off to wear.

I hung it on the wall with the Velcro strips that supposedly come off the wall when you are done.

Luckily I have an idea of something to make for Alexander’s room since he requested one but a boy one. I also wonder do we need more hair clips to go on it?

Entering Food at an agricultural show

Again I say I am definitely no expert.  This is just what I learnt on the weekend and I have more to learn.  I should have put the cooking first as that was the exhibits we did first.

One thing I taught a friend on the weekend was the difference between entries and exhibits.  Entries are the entry form you fill out and give to the show office so they know which categories you are in. exhibits are the actual items.  So this week our entries were due by Thursday but our food exhibits were due before 11 on the Friday and flowers were due before 830 on the Saturday.

We were given perforated stickers, the small left hand side with our entry numbers were to go on the exhibit, we kept the larger part for identification at the end of the show.  Of course I didn’t find this out til Thursday morning so I was trying to juggle plates of food and the stickers.  Thankfully a friend had come to help.  The official notice said use cellophane to wrap the food as plastic makes it sweat.  I had just got the cellophane wrapped because I didn’t know what to do with the stickers.  When we picked up our exhibits they were in plastic bags with freezer ties wrapped around them.  Probably put on after the judging?  Next year I will know what to do with the stickers so I can have a twist tie to make them easier to transport.  The stickers were supposed to go on the right side at the front, so the judges would know what was the front.

We were in the junior cooking section 12 years and under.

Alexander made pikelets for the first time.  I was trying to help him make them round so we used egg rings but they were too large.  Found out afterwards they should be petite.  I think the other problem was we were using an electric fry pan and the heat is not constant, perhaps we should have used the gas cooktop ?  I was nervous enough with him around the frypan let alone the stove so not sure about that one.

Alexander practising pikelets for next year

Both kids entered the six arrowroot biscuits, iced and decorated, 7 years and under. (this is the only cooking one where it was divided into two age groups – perhaps because they have so many entries)  Emily came 1st!  Unfortunately Alexander didn’t place with a 1st, 2nd or Highly commended.  This is a difficult one to find out how you can improve.  I was asking the steward and she was saying it is the judges personal opinion and can differ year to year with judge to judge.  I think they were looking for creativity and difference, not all the biscuits decorated the same.

Ooops I don’t have a photo of Alexander’s finished work – his consisted of 4 faces (albeit using different lollies but still faces) and 1 castle and 1 garden that didn’t really look like a garden (similar to Emily’s with the candy cane).  I decorated one biscuit towards the end (my little man see above) but I let the children decorate how they wanted to.  Trying to make sure it was their work and not a parents. 😉 To make life easy I bought royal icing from the shops which needs just water added to it.  I then divided it into two bowls and the kids stirred in the colouring.

The next was 6 muffins, packet mix.  Unfortunately I overcooked Alexander’s, had the temperature up too high.  The kids did a good job mixing it up themselves and greasing the muffin pan and spooning the mixture in.  Emily’s we were running late with and I had to take it out of the oven and put it straight into the car and let it cool on the way.  She received a highly commended – perhaps because they were still warm and fresh?

The last entry was for Four Decorated Cup Cakes.  Emily received a second.  When I saw the other entries I wondered if they were all supposed to look the same or all look different.  The kids had made the cup cake mixture themselves, excited about cracking the eggs and beating up the mixture and spooning it in.  I realised later they are judging on the decoration and not the cake and we could perhaps have done a packet mix for them. Now I know for next year…. When they are in the 6 patty cakes, iced but not decorated I think they are looking at the cake and it has to be from scratch but while they are young, to make it easy on myself I will buy packet cake mix for the kids to make.  I made cream cheese icing but I think next year we will use royal just like the biscuits.  It was so humid when we were making it that the icing was too runny, I probably needed to compensate for the heat with more icing.  I was trying to teach the kids to pipe but because it wasn’t holding but melting we ended up just spreading it with a knife.  The kids had free reign again with decorating.  I had bought Emily some cup cake silicon holders in the shape of a teacup.  They came with saucers but there was not enough room on the plate for them.  (we were told to provide our own cardboard paper plates).  Probably the casing is what helped her win second prize.

These are Alexander’s and Emily’s together.  Hers are the larger pink ones, he had the smaller lavender ones.

There were two other categories we didn’t enter.  One was a novelty butter cake, decorated with soft icing, birthday theme.  That would use too much supplies and effort to get my kids to make and decorate two different cakes.  If we did that I would probably just make one for the adult section.  The other category was decorated gingerbread men, 2.  I don’t have a large enough gingerbread man cutter.  Here is the winner from this year.

I planned on entering 6 muffins and banana cake, iced.  Unfortunately I wasn’t sure if it should be a round cake or could be in a square pan or rectangle.  It also was a hot day and I am not sure what else went wrong (Planets not aligned?) but my fail safe banana cake failed, I used a round tin and it sunk in the middle.  SO I decided not to enter it.  My mother suggested I make my pear and pecan muffins which she has enjoyed in the past and so I did.  I cheated this time, usually I cut up the pear myself but this time I bought pre chopped pear so then I had to guestimate how much pear to put in.  Anyway from what I gather the judge had a hard time choosing between first and second.  Mine were quite large (I cooked them a silicon muffin pan since you couldn’t have them encased in paper) and the ones that came second were smaller than mine.  I don’t think they taste them, so I don’t know how they decide just looking at them.  Anyway when we were looking at the cakes, we were with some people we know – a preschool mother (her son goes to preschool with my two) and her 13 year old daughter who had won junior champion sash because she came 1st in 3 categories.  Anyway I looked at my muffins, there was a 1st prize in front of them but not my name and nothing on top of mine so I was like oh well I didn’t win.  Then I looked to see what the muffins looked like so I know for next time, anyway there was my name on the second place card.  Ooh was I excited I got second!! Then I thought hey but they aren’t my muffins, so the card has fallen onto the wrong lot.  My friend’s mum was a judge and she was like – you have  a blue sticker on your plate, you came first.  So the chief steward came in and my friend argued my case, I didn’t feel I could push too much as in I didn’t want to look like I was saying I should come first.  They worked it out and I received a first place card!

The other section we entered in was handicraft.  I was going to enter a novelty article in for the needlework but I didn’t get it completed to my satisfaction so I thought it could wait to next year (turned out there was only one entry in that class!).

Alexander entered in the junior classes – a lego model under 8 yrs, no bigger than A3.  I thought he did quite well for his first time.  He only received his first lego for his birthday last year and for Christmas he received plain lego – ie not a kit so he could design his own.  I made him come up with the design himself.  We had been playing the first week or so together, building together but he did his exhibit by himself.  The day before we took our exhibit up I found some kids were entering kits so Alexander ended up with two entries, one from a kit and one he made himself.

The winning entry I was pleased to see was one not from a kit.

The second place though was obviously a kit base and then they had got all their minifigs and staged them all over.  Perhaps they got kudos for their staging ability?  SO next year more minifigs!

I entered in the wall hanging, any medium.  You are allowed work that has been completed with the last 2 years so I entered the Noah’s Ark wall hanging I made Emily for her birthday last year which is technically still in complete because not all the animals have been made yet!  There were 2 other entries as well as mine and I managed to place second.

The other sections I debated were scrapbooking and handmade special occasion card… but I didn’t have anything completed and didn’t want to stress myself out making something.

I noticed some areas didn’t have many entries – such as Bear any size (one entry!).

The other area I might keep a thought about for next year is pencil drawing, any subject, 8 years and under, drawing, any subject or medium, primary school student only.

We had lots of fun and we can’t wait til next year.  My only worry is that next year we might be in the new house with no roses to enter!

Tips for entering shows – with flower arranging in saucers and mugs

I am no expert. I am writing this partly to help me in a year’s time so I remember the things I learnt today. This weekend was our local show so I thought it would be fun for the kids and I to have a go at entering. I downloaded the programme and went through it deciding what we could do.
I then scoured the Internet but got little help there and so this is also why I am writing this.

The first section was decorative, free expression is allowed with choice of material, design and any foliage, adornments or embellishments.  Only fresh flowers to be used.

They had entered floral saucer by exhibitor 8 years and under so we have a few years to get this right.  After a little research we found some sites that mentioned using sand so I used a little in the centre and wet it. The saucer was sloped so I couldn’t get it to the edge.

The hint I was told today was to heap it up, cover the whole saucer and then wet it, make a mound of sand so then you have something to insert the flowers into.

I tried to be as hands off as I could, so I only made a few suggestions and let the children have fun designing their own.  We had had a practice earlier in the week where I had been a bit more – this is how you do it but since they were entering I let them design.

So here we started – a good start and then this is the finish.

Not quite the circular pattern we started with but he was happy.  Unfortunately in the transportation to the show it got a bit messy but Alexander was disinclined to fix it.  This is when I was told that with the sand it wouldn’t move around as much.

Here is Alexander’s finished product.  I think it looks quite pretty and colourful.

Emily’s finished work

This is what they were looking for

I was told that the leaves cannot extend too much past the edge of the saucer.  There was definitely a theme with the circular pattern and you can see the difference esp with Emily’s which is just a massive pile up (then again she is only 4 and I allowed her free reign with what she wanted to do)

We also entered flower arrangement in a mug (though there was some confusion whether it was egg cup or mug.  There were only about 3 entrants in this one and my two had their large mugs and one had a tiny teacup and saucer)  Alexander got first, the teacup got second and unfortunately there is no third.  The steward told me that Emily’s was too bushy.  It needed to be cut down, items should be max 1 1/2 times the size of the cup.  This was also for children under 8.

We were very excited Alexander won the flower category because his sister had done very well in the cooking section and I had also done well and though when we entered I had talked to the children that being our first year we probably won’t win but it is hard when he is the only one who hasn’t won.  So phew!

The other section was Cut Flowers and they were in the junior class which is 16 years and under… so many many years of practise.  Flowers were to be arranged in bowls, vases or suitable stands.

We also entered three leaves in a container, a collection of flowers and a single rose.  All were supposed to be from your own garden. I don’t think I will enter the collection again, wrong time of year for our garden and too hard for me to help both of them find a large enough collection.  Compared to the others, ours were sweet but too small.  The steward was encouraging about the roses and said we should try again next year.  I wondered if ours were too small as the others were on long stems in large vases and he said no we had presented them correctly.  The issue was they hadn’t fully opened.  When we picked the flowers up on the Sunday he commented how nice they looked but the judge can only judge on the time they are looking at the rose.  The winning rose was wilting by the Sunday while ours were still looking fresh.  He said best to pick the night before the show and put in water in a dark cool place.  Next time I will encourage the kids not to pick a bud, but one that is more open.  It has been a hot dry summer so it was hard to find ones that looked good and fresh.

Emily’s leaves are the small ones at the front.  They could be leaves the same or 3 different leaves.  You can’t really see Alexander’s, his are in a glass and are three tall ones.

The children really loved doing this and after our practices kept wanting to have another go.  I think we will perhaps continue this as an activity throughout the year, depending on flower availability.   The good thing about the saucers and the mug is they don’t have to be your own flowers, you can buy them, we got ours from our neighbour and some from mum’s garden.

 

This has been a long entry so I think I will do another one about our cooking entries.

 

Girl’s hair accessory and jewellery organiser

I was at a friend’s little girl’s birthday the other day and one of the presents made by her sister-in-law inspired me so I came home and googled it and while I could find some pictures I could find no tutorials on how to make it do here is my attempt.

Start with a canvas. I had one in the wardrobe which had come in a three pack when I had done the sibling tree craft with my kids. I had purchased it cheaply from our local discount shop The Reject Shop. I padded it with quilters batting (already in craft supplies).

Then I found some fabric that I had recently bought with Emily helping me ie She chose it.

I glued the batting down, lay the fabric right side down and placed the canvas on top. I then used packers tape to hold the fabric taut as I tried to figure out the corners. If I make another, I still have to work out the best way to cut the corners. I just sliced off the corner but not convinced this was the best way.

Especially since it was a bit raggedy.
Once I had it all taped to my satisfaction, I turned it right side up to work out how I wanted the ribbons to look, what colours, what patterns.

That’s Emily’s hands “helping” me.

Once I had chosen the colours I had Emily find a ruler so I could try and work out even spacings. More or less.

I purchased an upright stapler used for stapling to walls from an office supply shop. I bought the cheapest one and it did work. The staples aren’t in all the way but they are holding the fabric and ribbons down.

I can’t say this is the finished article as I need to get to the shops to buy curtain hooks so we can hang her hair bands, necklaces and jewellery from it and I also need to hang it on a wall at her height.
Here she is putting her clips on it.

She thinks it is a great game to play with it, good fine motor skills but I really need to get it on a wall.  She has trodden on it once and the canvas has ripped but thankfully not all the way through the batting or the material on the front.

 

Christmas ornaments

I stumbled across this recipe on Pinterest and will try to link to it. I was planning on making salt dough ornaments when I went into the kids’ preschool so they could be painted but then I found these and thought they looked prettier and would make a smoother surface for painting.

1/2 cup corn flour
1 cup bicarbonate of soda
3/4 cup water

Mix in saucepan over medium-low heat until mixture binds together (lumpy porridge texture).
Remove from heat and place mixture in bowl and cover with damp cloth.
When cooled put on corn floured surface and knead well.
Roll out and cut shapes from it. Use a straw to create hole to put ribbon in after baking.
Use fingers to make prints or rubber stamps.

Place in preheated oven of 80•Celcius for an hour. Turn after half an hour.

I placed mine in the fridge to hold shapes like when I am baking biscuits but they still curled at the edges. I think the website I found this on said don’t roll out too thinly to stop this happening.

Here are some pictures of some cut out shapes from when I did this craft at pre school.

I tied thin Christmas string and used them as gift tags on their teacher’s presents.
I used craft paint that we have used in the past for painting plaster of Paris figures. The website recommended a clear lacquer to Jo over the top but I don’t have any.